Presidential Coolness

The place in space-time that exemplifies my generation's aspirations to coolness is Washington D.C. on January 20, 2009. With the election of President Obama, our entire generation has gained not only hope, but we have also proven that we have the capability to actually make changes if we dedicate ourselves enough to a cause. I would argue that our generation, in contrast to the generations of the past, holds the ability to forge the country to fit our ideas of morality and proper policy as a cool ideal. The previous generation believed in using anarchy and subterfuge to slip through governmental oppression. This ideal of coolness was succeeded by my generation' s idea of working towards changing the government itself so that there is no need to walk around the laws.
The reason that I lock my generation's location of coolness on inauguration day in Washington is because that day is the vertex of our feelings for change. From that day forward, the momentum of change will inevitably loose steam as information about President Obama and his administration is filtered through the corrupting factor of 24-hour cable news. However, there is little that can be done to change the idealistic day of the president's inauguration. Even though there was no real policy change made on January 20, the change in administration serves as an idealistic point for my generation to look to for political coolness.
Aside from this single point of coolness, which only covers a single shade of my generation's coolness, I cannot find a single place that fits my generation like London fit the 1960's. I believe that this may be a result of the merging of Western culture through the medium of the internet. The mass linkage of all information has made the transmission of cool almost instantaneous, making something that originates in New York lose its origins as soon as it is posted on the net. In a way, this has caused the internet itself to become a place for my generation to look to coolness. Web sites like Youtube and 4chan* are used by people to get their ideas of coolness to the entire world at once. Almost simultaneously, Facebook and MySpace allow people to discuss and send people to view the cool things that are found in other parts of the internet. In essence, this creates a quantifiable sense of coolness: More views equals more cool.