Maureen Dowd: The right's implacable war with the 60s

[acmavm]

http://www.iht.com/articles/528170.html

Wednesday, July 7, 2004

<snip>
I didn't appreciate the '60s in high school. I spurned the unisex style of dirty jeans. I was more under the influence of nuns than bongs. And I was frightened of the cost of free love. But as other decades passed - the bland, polyester '70s; the greedy, padded-shoulder '80s; the materialistic, designer '90s; the bullying, Botox '00s - I've become nostalgic for the idealistic passion of the '60s.

It's amazing, given how far we've come from the spirit of the '60s - with Bob Dylan hawking Victoria's Secret and Hillary Clinton a hawk - how obsessed conservatives still are with pulverizing that decade.

Their disgust with the '60s spurs oxymoronic - and moronic - behavior, as anti-big-government types conjure up audacious social engineering schemes to turn back the clock.

<snip>

W., who had tuned out during the '60s, preferring frat parties to war moratoriums and civil rights marches, and George Jones to "psychedelic" Beatles albums, was on board with his regents' retro concerns, like Star Wars and Saddam, and outdated cold war assumptions, like the idea that terrorists could thrive only if sponsored by a state.

On his book tour, Bill Clinton has been defending the '60s, noting that the polarization of American politics began with the civil rights, women's rights, gay rights and abortion rights struggles of the '60s and the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. "If you look back on the '60s and on balance, you think there was more good than harm, then you're probably a Democrat," he told a Chicago audience. "If you think there was more harm than good, you're probably a Republican."

-MORE-

[Unperson 309]

1. Amen to THAT! The Boomers are the most Hated Generation...

...EVER! In the Fifties, the older ones were called Juvenile Delinquents. In the Sixties, we were hated for our music, our clothing, our politics, our hair, our bloody EVERYTHING! Our parents hated us, the older generations hated us... In the seventies, we were attacked over Disco and Punk, then came AIDS (our fault!) and during the Eighties and Nineties we sold out BIG TIME, hating ourselves... and now the younger generations hate us for ruining sex, drugs and rock and roll (hey, we DON'T claim rap... YOU guys messed tHAT up!) for having had it all and using it up before THEY could have some! Frankly, I don't blame them! we DID!

Frankly, I don't know a single person who likes Boomers, including myself! And I think the whole anti-Clinton thing was as much against the Boom generation he "represented" as it was against him as a person. He became a symbol. They're trying to make Kerry a symbol also.

The hatred of the Sixties and of out generation continues unabated.

309

[The Zanti Regent]

2. Once again, Whoreen takes a slap at Hillary.

Whoreen needs to get a life!

[Demeter]

3. Well, the Nuns Explains A Lot

about Miss Mary Sunshine and her irrationality.

But as for fighting the 60's, talk about hopeless cases!

That battle was over in 1967, and the GOP has been losing moral ground ever since. Now they've lost it all. Never to return.

[Mountainman]

4. Right wingers hate the sixties because they were sold out by those

they looked up to. They were told that all those loving sex, drugs and rock and roll will end up losers. But then came Bill Gates and Bill Clinton. Most of the freeps ended up as losers because they thrive on hate and remorse.

[Jade Fox]

5. "If it makes somebody else feel bad, do it." HA! When she's good she's..

great.

This article sums up for me things I've been thinking for awhile, but she
leaves out one important element: sixties envy

A lot of these anti-sixties geeks are jealous. They'd like to tune in, turn
on, and drop out too, but they can't figure out how! So they have to punish
those who did. They probably spent the sixties keeping their noses
painfully clean and, as Dowd points out, they're mad that some of those
hippies became big successes.

[nightperson]

6. Yeah, people forget what became of

"some of those hippies":

Yes, the Internet we know and love was brought to us, at least in great part, by California's LSD community. Lotus was founded on a psychedelic-Zen philosophy. Steve Jobs Apple concept was born bongwater-stained dorm rooms of Reid College. Global Business Network founder Stewart Brand was a member of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters and received his "Acid Test" diploma in 1966, and Electronic Frontiers Foundation founder John Barlow was a lyricist for the Grateful Dead and outspoken LSD advocate. Timothy Leary himself was one of the first to publicly promote the use of "word processors" as a way for people to communicate with one another.

It is no coincidence that the first shots of the computer revolution were fired from the same Bay Area that brought us Haight-Ashbury in the 1960's. The very conception of the almost hallucinatory realm we call "cyberspace" required the imaginative capacities of people who were familiar with navigating hallucinatory headspace. This is why so many Silicon Valley firms eschew the employee drug testing of their counterparts in other industries. If hi-tech companies weeded out weed users, they'd have few employees left.

Also.

[Jade Fox]

7. Interesting info. Thanks n/t