Obama Coins?

I was at the mall this weekend, and saw a kid who looked to be about 16 years old wearing an Obama t-shirt. I've been working with kids for a long time, and I don't remember ever seeing one wearing a t-shirt with a picture of a U.S. politician on it (unless it was being derogatory.) But this guy was wearing the shirt unironically. I just can't remember ever seeing one of my students' wearing a Reagan, Bush (I or II), or Clinton t-shirt. The New York Times is today calling this "Generation O."

(Also, over the weekend, I saw a television commercial for "official" Obama coins. It reminds me of the kinds of merchandising you see in Europe that feature members of a royal family or in Memphis for Elvis. I guess it doesn't take long for the kitsch to come along.)

But one wonders how this kind of admiration for a president will transform not only the media's longstanding satirizing of the powerful, but an entire construct of "teenage" that has developed over the last century.