Lost in MTV Land.

"I see you wear your political T-shirt Wear your sacred college scarf Discussing the world situation but just for a laugh"

--"Rat Race," The Specials.

From the Brown Line "El" train it was hard to tell what was going on at the three-family flat at 1142 N. Orleans on the morning of April 20.

There were sheriff's department deputies with guns drawn surrounding the large, austere, 106-year-old home that sits on the northwest side of the Cabrini-Green housing complex. Firemen stood ready by their trucks, as did camera people and the talking heads. The train slowly rocked past the scene, the passengers in my car gawking and commenting. "Oh, yeah, it's those people," a guy in a leather jacket said out loud, but to nobody in particular. "The judge told `em to get out. I guess that's why the cops are there." The cops were there because five members of the Communist Youth Brigade had barricaded themselves in a third-floor room in an act of civil disobedience.

"We stand by what we have done," reads part of a statement that appeared in a Chicago Tribune story. "We have won a moral and political victory that cannot be taken away or demolished. We have forced the city of Chicago to show it serves a small, greedy, and avaricious class of monied people." The city evicted the residents from the house in order to make way for the gentrification of Cabrini-Green. By the time I rode the train back home that evening, the house had been bulldozed.

Eventually, the lot will be the site of condos no one from that neighborhood will be able to afford.

I'm no big fan of the Communist Youth Brigade, primarily because of their stridency, and because the members I knew were all-theory, no-action wannabes. Then again, most of us "really political" kids in the eighties were the same way. I was an all-theory, no-action wannabe, listening to The Clash and The Specials and college radio, telling myself that I'd never be a sell-out. So, there I am on the train, wearing my well-branded oxford shirt and khaki pants, and holding my well-branded computer bag, which announces to the world that I work for a downtown software company. I stared at the building and wondered why the hell is MTV given so much credit for raising the political consciousness of American youth? Follow me, dear reader, because there is a point coming.

You see, MTV, according to Ad-weekOnline, is reestablishing itself as "the youth-culture zeitgeist." This statement came only weeks after the network brought Jerry Springer and his brand of way-low culture to the beer-soaked, brain-dead, many-thong-butted shores of Florida for a debauched celebration of spring so brazen that it would've made the early pagans go to Jesus pretty quickly. And the antics of said host, as well as those of musicians, drunken co-eds (oooh, look at the two girls French kiss for the camera), and a gaggle of wrestlers were beamed via satellite for an anxious world to see. Look, I'm all for a good time, but at that same moment, the U.S. and NATO were bombing Yugoslavia.

Much has been written about the cultural and political significance of MTV, including the "Rock the Vote" campaign and the coverage of the 1992 election. Yes, MTV did bring many to the table to vote, and yes, MTV's political reporter Tabitha Soren broke ground by interviewing both Bill Clinton and George Bush. But, to paraphrase MTV icon Janet Jackson, what have you done for us lately?

MTV has managed to squander a chance to raise the political dialogue by going beyond the simple--register to vote, choose between two party drones--to the more meaningful, including frank discussions about third parties.

Hell, why not discuss voter redistricting, race baiting by politicians, campaign finance reform or the lack thereof, and how women are half the population, but you'd never know by looking at the Congressional scorecard? Instead, what MTV, presumably with the wholehearted blessing from its parent, Viacom, has given America's youth is the political version of "Up With People," in all its finger-poppin', record scratchin', post-modern glory.

The network doesn't even do a good job with the ghosts of rock's political past, who are fawned over in lifeless tributes, with analysis as thin and lacking as packaged ham. Hey, kids, John and Yoko thought war was bad, so they sat in bed naked. Look at Yoko's hair. Look at John's beard. Aren't they a stitch?

Where Rolling Stone at least had a political tradition to forsake in later years, MTV started off apolitical--and lily white--and through a combination of public relations and good fortune, it has turned itself into an undeserving national political player.

The road to the White House in 2000 will wind its way through MTV's New York studios. I don't expect to see anyone but those anointed by the mainstream media, much less a well-rounded discussion of the issues. In an effort to be nonpartisan--just register to vote is all they ask--MTV fails to connect with an electorate that is confused to the point of apathy. The Up With Politics gesture is dead on arrival.

While walking from the train to my office, I couldn't help but wonder if the Communist Youth Brigade's crusade was meaningless because so few people would see it, much less understand it. No amount of rocking the vote or music and movie stars talking about the evils of violence can equal five plain-looking people willing to lock themselves on the third floor of a 106-year-old house to protest the gentrification of the Cabrini-Green area. One is fashionable sloganeering from a multibillion-dollar conglomerate; the other is an act of political courage.