~
This is a confession.
For forty years now, I have harbored a deep resentment bordering on hatred for the so-called '60's Generation. Oh, of course I don't mean each and every member of that bunch. But I do mean those who did their best to destroy America as I knew it, those who proved to be big public pains in the ass - and there are an awful lot of them. My confession isn't that I resent or hate them... no... no. My confession is something quite more nefarious than that.
For forty years, I have detested the endless spitting-up of their own self-serving, egotistical bile. My stomach churned at their anti-culture tunes and films. My guts clenched at each new anti-American book and tv special. It has been forty years of gagging over the government programs they pushed on the rest of us. They made America suffer in stifling silent pain as they shredded whatever might have been decent about our country. I did my share of swimming against this tidal wave... it's not my nature to be quiet in the face of obvious wrong-doing. But to raise your voice against their rantings back then automatically put you in the category of a Richard Nixon or a racist or a bigot or some sort of party-pooping cretan of some kind or another.
Now the '60's generation is getting long in the tooth. Let me make it very clear that, being born early in the year WWII erupted, I am a bit older than many, though not all, of the '60's crowd. Witnessing their demise gives me another reason to live.
You can tell it's happening because you see it in some of the current tv shows. Specials dedicated to how that generation "refuses to get old." Ha-ha-ha! You pathetic idiots. It's still all about you isn't it? I love watching you appear on talk shows now, faces aged to the point where no operation or medication yet known to man can cover the wrinkles and sags. This actually brings smiles to my own face and seems to actually keep me from getting as badly wrinkled.
Oh. You expect me to name names. No, I don't think so. The list would take pages and pages. Besides, you know who they are. They are men and women who started out as hippies, created the drug culture in America, then grew to be writers, actors, singers, entertainers, politicians, professors, stock brokers, and yes, even Supreme Court Justices.
All through the debacle called "The '60s," those of us conservatively inclined resisted their cries to "Bring it all down, baby." We simply carried on with life, pursuing our careers, raising our own families and in general doing our best to avoid becoming corrupted by the perverted habits of their secular world. As a tribute to the soft-headedness of many Americans, many of the '60's Big-Mouths had very successful and lengthy runs. Many became household names. Made fortunes. They are not without considerable talent, this group. But what do you call talent which is used in such a perverted way?
Now their runs are coming to an end. Surely you've heard the rock stars who've lost their voices. The old entertainers trying too hard to be hip, who look as terrible on-camera as off. The journalists who no longer have viable tv gigs to preach their progressive pap at us. Badly aging politicians still spouting the same bullshit they did in the '60's - so worn out they seem to be propped up in front of the cameras like dummies, reciting their puppet-master's scripts.
A few of the '60's crowd have turned from the dark side and now prance around pretending to be new paragons of virtue, preaching the yin to the yang of their previous lives.
Yeh, soon they will all be joining the ranks of already-departed '60's icons like Timothy Leary, Andy Warhol and Alan Ginsberg. I savored each and every one of these departures, and I plan to celebrate a lot more in the months and years ahead. While some will be placing flowers and Teddy Bears on their make-shift memorials, I will be doing a little jig as I check their names off my list. Sure there will be new assholes to replace the old. As Warhol himself noted, "Everyone will have fifteen minutes of fame." But each successive generation's number of minutes shrinks as media time accelerates and the world shrinks.
This may not be poetic justice or payback exactly, but for me, well... in a perverse sort of way, I'm finally getting my fifteen minutes. Not of fame, but of satisfaction.
~
