Dear Frank Rich,
Boomer nostalgia in the service of liberalism is no less annoying and alienating for post-boomers than boomer nostalgia used for more nefarious ends. If you want me to take your columns even remotely seriously, please stop.
Thanks,
Erik
Matt Bai's piece on current political debates STILL being stuck in the 60s drives home one of my biggest irritants--that almost 50 years after they grew up, the 60s generation still dominates American political discourse. The article points out 2 issues of the last week--Rand Paul's waffling on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Richard Blumenthal exaggerating his service in Vietnam. It ignores the biggest manifestation of 60s politics today--the rhetoric, tactics, and cultural references of the Teabaggers, who see themselves as the conservative response to 1968.
I don't necessarily agree with lumping the Rand Paul issue with Blumenthal. Paul is of a younger generation and what he's talking about is current political policy. While it does reference a key law of the 60s, Paul is talking about the role of the government today and using 1964 as an example. But that's nitpicking.
My real issue with the 60s generation is summed up in one sentence:
It is your classic self-fulfilling prophecy: the more the ’60s generation dominates the political discourse, the less that discourse engages younger voters, and the longer the boomers hold sway over our politics.
Hillbillies? No. Self-absorbed, university-educated, racist white baby boomer males? Yep.
Stupid? Well, I think you can still make that argument...
Hey, what's that you guys were saying earlier in comments about my characterization of Baby Boomers as self-centered and constantly self-referencing being unfair?
I mean, maybe you can argue that the Boomers are the wealthiest generation. You can chart that. Most influential? As described by themselves? Classic Boomer narcissism.
When we elected Obama, I finally thought the nation had moved beyond the nightmare of the 60s. For 40 years, Baby Boomers have fought the battles of the 60s over and over again. They are getting older and I was optimistic that we could put this behind us.
But as several examinations of the Tea Party movement show, the new right-wing activism is dominated by older white men. And now, via Sadly, No, we have this:
POPLAR BLUFF, MO. (AP) – A southeast Missouri man will host a five-day event in June that is set up like Woodstock, but with what he calls an opposite message.
Jerry Murphy owns a 400-acre farm in Butler County just northeast of Poplar Bluff. The Poplar Bluff Daily American Republic says he has linked with a group of ministers from around the country to host the gathering called “Wilderness Outcry” June 14-18.
The gathering will feature gospel music and religious speakers.
Murphy says Woodstock in 1969 marked a retreat from Judeo-Christian values in American culture. He hopes Wilderness Outcry helps turn that around.
Admission will be free, though Murphy may charge for camping to help recover the cost of hosting the event.
Officers with the Poplar Bluff Police Department say they’re worried about not having the resources to staff an event that’s rumored to possibly bring in up to 100,000 people.
On this date 31 years ago, 909 people committed mass suicide at Jim Jones' compound in Guyana.
Any time 900 people die from one cause, it's a bad day. But I think this is an especially bad day because it represents some of the worst trends in American culture--religious extremism, mass violence, apocalyptic messaging. Those consistent threads in our history were exacerbated by the late 1960s and 1970s--too many drugs, too much instability, too many people thinking they needed to find themselves. Jones was hardly the only manifestation of someone taking advantage of this. Any number of gurus in the 60s and 70s popped up, some of which caused problems well into the 80s, such as the Baghwan Shree Rajneesh, who took over an Oregon town and starting trying to kill local residents when the government began cracking down.
I see Jim Jones, Rajneesh, Manson, and so many of these other lunatics as shining symbols of what I call The Worst Generation. The Worst Generation talks all about The Greatest Generation, but it's not that the WWII generation were that great, it's that the baby boomers were so terrible. It's been all about them since the 1950s and continues to be today. Their concerns trump all others, including national problems. Their constant search for who they are led to all sorts of annoying things during these years--37 minute Jerry Garcia solos, communes in New Mexico, the New Age movement, Hare Krishnas' Jim Jones. And then later, deciding to make money and going to Wall Street, buying huge mountaintop mansions in Colorado ruining views for everyone, voting in Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, and George W. Bush, bankrupting the country for their own desires, etc., etc.
Perhaps I overstate the case. But I think it's a reasonable outline of the history of the last 40 years.
As for Jones in particular, he was a real interesting dude. Former commie, was hauled in front of the Senate during McCarthyism to answer about his politics, including his mother's friendship with Paul Robeson. He was freaked out, like a lot of other people, about the seeming inevitable coming nuclear holocaust, which is what led him to South America in the first place. He worked in the civil rights movement in Indiana, helping accomplish a lot of integrationist goals. He and his wife were the first white couple in Indiana to adopt a black child, in 1961. Later in the 60s, he began his cult, moving to San Francisco in the 70s, where his supporters helped elect San Francisco Mayor George Moscone (boy, that was left out of the film biography of Harvey Milk!). In fact, let me quote his Wikipedia page here--I know it's Wikipedia, but this stuff is pretty well cited.
In September 1976, Willie Brown served as master of ceremonies at a large testimonial dinner for Jones attended by Governor Jerry Brown and Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally and other political figures.[46] At that dinner, while introducing Jones, Willie Brown stated "Let me present to you what you should see every day when you look in the mirror in the early morning hours ... Let me present to you a combination of Martin King, Angela Davis, Albert Einstein ... Chairman Mao."[47] Harvey Milk, who spoke at political rallies at the Temple,[48] and wrote to Jones after a visit to the Temple: "Rev Jim, It may take me many a day to come back down from the high that I reach today. I found something dear today. I found a sense of being that makes up for all the hours and energy placed in a fight. I found what you wanted me to find. I shall be back. For I can never leave."[49][50]
When fretting about modern manhood, American masculinity worriers have usually looked to the past--sometimes to the revolutionary generation, sometimes to romanticized Indians, often to Theodore Roosevelt and his ilk of the Progressive Era. In recent decades, we've added a new idealized period of masculinity: World War II.
With Tom Brokaw's group fellatio of, er, book about the World War II generation, an entire other generation, which perhaps we can name "The Worst Generation," looked to their fathers as heroes in innumerable ways, including as specimens of ideal masculinity.
Not surprisingly, our friends at The Art of Manliness buy whole hog into this:
Tom Brokaw gave them that name, and while it’s a bold claim, I wholly support it. They weren’t perfect by any means, of course, but as a whole they were a cut above the rest. One of the inspirations for Kate and I starting the Art of Manliness was our grandfathers. When I looked at them, and then at the men of today, the chasm of manliness seemed jarring. These are men cut from a different cloth of manliness; they simply don’t build them like that anymore. Their extraordinary manliness is not something you can scientifically measure. But you can sure feel it. And you can see it in old pictures. It seems every man back then was dashingly handsome; their manliness practically leaps off the page.
The men of the Greatest Generation took their marriage vows seriously. Brokaw wrote, “It was the last generation in which, broadly speaking, marriage was a commitment and divorce was not an option. I can’t remember one of my parents’ friends who was divorced. In the communities where we lived it was treated as a minor scandal.” The numbers bear Brokaw’s anecdotal evidence out: of all the new marriages in 1940, 1 in 6 ended in divorce. By the late 1990’s, that number was 1 in 2.
This was a time where there was no hanging out or “hooking up.” Men asked women on real dates, and had serious intentions in doing so. When a particular gal caught a man’s heart, he proposed, and they got hitched. And they were married for the next 60 years.
Even if they did stay married for 60 years, was this a good thing? How many couples stayed together through sexual abuse of children, domestic violence, alcoholism, affairs, women forced to stay in the home against their will, etc? A lot. An awful damn lot. Divorce is a good thing--it ends some horrible horrible situations and allows people to move on with their lives.
And when did this rise in divorce rates begin? By 1960--and some of this was the supposed committed men and women themselves getting divorced. Moreover, today divorce rates are actually going down. I don't know why this is, but I think it's pretty strong evidence that supposed lack of commitment in the modern generation is a bunch of hooey.
Finally, there's this to end the piece:
If there’s a common thread in these lessons, it’s having a common sense and a level-headed approach to life. In our day, when men are obsessing about finding themselves, their holy grail of a woman, and their “passion,” the Greatest Generation’s uncomplicated approach to life is refreshing. They didn’t go on a diet, they simply ate whole food; they didn’t exercise, they worked around the house; they didn’t obsess about their relationships, they just found a gal they loved and married her. They always looked sharp, but never fussed with fashion trends. They didn’t mull over which appliance better suited their personality and image, they just bought the machine that worked the best. They didn’t think about how to get things done, they just got em’ done. When Joe Foss, a celebrated and daring WWII pilot and then governor of South Dakota was asked if he missed his younger days, he said, “Oh no. I’m not a guy who missed anything from anywhere. I’ve always been a guy who just gets up and goes.” Instead of spending you time navel gazing your life away, just get up and go!
They didn't worry about going to prison, they just whacked their wife in the face. They weren't concerned with free speech, they just drove the commie out of his job. They didn't worry about gay rights, they just beat the queers up. They didn't worry about the dignity of their daughters, they just forced her to have her child in an institution. They didn't fret about political correctness, they just lynched the darkey.
Maybe my characterization of the World War II generation's dark side is overheated, but no more than so than the religious cult that has sprung up around them. And we really need a corrective. I agree that Cary Grant was a pretty suave guy, but can we please look at these people's lives in some kind of reasonable perspective. And for the love of God, not look at these men as some font of mythical masculinity to which can only futilely aspire.
