VLVL(6) - The Children of the 60's
Paul Mackin
pmackin at pmackin.clark.net
Wed Dec 9 21:43:02 CST 1998
On Wed, 9 Dec 1998, christine karatnytsky wrote:
> Quoth the righteous John on Bob Barr:
>
> >have you ever seen a more frightening human being?--
> >represents that class of folks who so hate the sixties that they're
> >trying to return the country to a fifties that
> >never existed in the first place (in its purest
> >unadulteryated Pleasantville form--no toilets, no sex organs!!)
>
> Ah, my sweet, but it *does* exist--it never died!--it's the genuine myth,
> the urban (HA!) legend to beat all urban legends, that fills to brimming
> with comfortable and self-satisfied consumers those manufactured and
> sexless wonderlands in Anaheim and Orlando. Millions pay...well,
> millions, to stupefy, numb and otherwise fool their already-addled brains
> into a more perfect disregard of the World--the City!--as it really
is..
Both John and Chris seem to be expressing the idea that in America
variability AMONG people--geographically, socio-economically and a zillion
other ways--may well be greater than the overall average changes in
the country from decade to decade--undeniable as these average changes
are--perhaps particularly with the sixties? It's why America is so hard to
analyze and make generalizations about.
Each decade has its big advance. In the 50s it was the start of
desegration--de jure at least. In the 60s the pill. In the 70s the
legalization of abortion.
Dare say there may be proportionally fewer Bob Barrs in 1998 than in
1955 but there are plenty in all decades. And of course Thomas
Pynchon strides MANY recent decades.
P.
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