comment #1

Walter Sobchak says ...

Do Baby Boomers EVER let up?

And without actually watching the clips, I'll go ahead and predict the song list.

"For What It's Worth" (duh)
"All Along the Watchtower" (accompanying stock Huey footage)
"Get Together"

...and don't forget the footage of the painted kids dancing around Golden Gate Park

BTW, does Denver have a power-wielding, machine-driven mayor whose thugs will beat up CBS reporters on the convention floor?

Seacrest out.

comment #2

The Hoyk says ...

Walter, you had this clotting-heart liberal laughing up until the point you brought Seacrest in. Then you made it personal.

comment #3

Wrecktum says ...

You do point out that the music back then kicked major ass. Score one point for the boomers.

You forgot San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair), by the way.

comment #4

MovieBob says ...

Gawd, these poor kids...

It's going to be so sad to watch them realize - likely all at once at the last reasonable moment - that he's not going to win it. You could grab the P.A. system mic at Disney World and yell "THERE'S NO SANTA CLAUS!!!" at the top of your lungs for all to hear and you STILL wouldn't see as many dumbstruck, tear-stained, disbelieving young faces as you will when this hits home for the Obama Kids.

Me? I wake up every day and thank the gods that the GOP was so terrified of Hillary that they went with someone fairly non-objectionable. I mean, if the Republicans had their primary to do over knowing that this glass-jawed twerp was going to be their competition, they'd have put up ROMNEY and we'd all be in HUGE trouble right now.

comment #5

D.Z. says ...

Bob: You seem to forget that Bill recently used the phrase "fairy tale" in relation to Obama, only a few months before he snagged the nomination from Clinton's wife. And you're still not telling me what magical powers McCain will use to undo Bush's awful approval rating, and how he'll save the sliding economy in the next five months.

comment #6

Arizona Joe says ...

I agree there are some analogies between 1968 and 2008. But when CNN does a show like this it really highlights the differences.

In many ways, Iraq is a more stupid war than Vietnam. But I don't see young people protesting. Instead they are sort of submerged on the Internet and on blog sites. This could change in the fall, with more palpable manifestations and demonstrations, but it will be nothing like 1968.

What you do see is a bunch of dumbass young people still driving around in SUVs and trucks they don't need. $4 per gallon gas has diminished that practice somewhat, but only because of cost reasons, not concern about global warming.

So, we have subliminal internet protest, apathy, naivety, and nothing approaching the drop out, tune in, turn on culture of '68. Historical writer David Halberstam pointed out that if one did drop out, you could drop back in very easily because of American industrial hegemony back then.

Now, no one would dare drop out for fear of offending the suits, and thus being deprived of a chance at the big house and a status vehicle.

So, I don't think there are a lot of parallels. American has become de-industrialized, deregulated, much more consumeristic and is hooked up different because of the internet. It's a whole different country run by MBAs, with lots of Spanish, less Great Society, and less opportunity for the hoi polloi - although they don't notice it because they are distracted by drugs, or Bible thumping, or the endogenous narcotic of gambling, or duped by someone like Sean Hannity telling them they really should enjoy being sodomized.

In addition, today's music is really crappy, perhaps because it is too easy to record. In 1968, every other week there was a single or an album that would just blow your mind. (FYI, I was just a pubescent then.) Now, the kids just surf comfortably with iPods, and nothing seminal or revolutionary ever surprises them, unless one counts freakishness for its own sake.

So, this is not 1968.

comment #7

SpinDozer says ...

If only AZ Joe would post every time a right winger blubbered...

comment #8

Rich S. says ...

I think a closer parallel is 1976. With the economy in the tank, an intellectual outsider promising change sweeps in on the wave of disgust caused by a corrupt Republican administration.

I just hope like hell that Obama doesn't turn out to be Jimmy Carter II.

comment #9

jackkerouac says ...

Arizona Joe...

I was going to post with some of the same exact sentiments, but now there is no need. You said it all and said it very well.

Amen, Brother.

comment #10

bents75 says ...

Arizona Joe - Being in my 20's, and knowing the rediculous penchants of some of my peers, I won't disagree with much of what you said.

What I would point out though, is that most of the problems or seemingly negative comparisons you see are almost entirely the result of your generation.

I'm not saying the youth today isn't complacent. But we didn't start the Iraq War, we didn't buy, manufacture or promote those SUV's, we didn't invent the Internet (although we arguably pushed it to its dominance), we didn't deregulate everything, we didn't envoke this notion that you're a failure without the big house, and we sure as hell didn't introduce Sean Hannity.

We also didn't promote the polution of the food industry with the demand for cheap food, we didn't invent the ipod, computer, or television, we didn't end the draft, we didn't insist on sending our kids to college and then complained when those same kids took our jobs, we didn't elect George Bush, we didn't, quite simply, start the fire.

But maybe we'll put it out. Or maybe we won't. What you shouldn't do though is underestimate our recognition that the world we were brought in to is crumbling.

The only thing I can say we did do with confidence, is give you Ryan Seacrest.

Oh, and I don't think the music commentary is fair. We weren't the ones that made it easy to record an album. There is more music released, so of course there is more crap music. But there is certainly music being put out on occasion right now that my generation does view as seminal...it's just not seminal for you, and apparently you don't get it. And, despite that, some of us do still listen to and enjoy music from the 60's and 70's...even the 50's. So it might not be current, but that doesn't necessarily negate its influence.

comment #11

bents75 says ...

And keep talking shit moviebob. Please, I beg of you.

It's that kind of attitude that will shake people out of apathy. The more you rock the boat, the more geriatrics we'll throw overboard to keep it steady.

comment #12

joncro says ...

"But I don't see young people protesting".

No draft in 2008.

This explains pretty much all of it.

comment #13

Movie Watcher says ...

Arizona Joe, you hit the mark. I was 10 back in 1968, so I do remember the protests, marches, and of course, the war, on the national news every night. No cable, or 24/7 news coverage back then. My son is 17, and he and his friends have no intention of joining the military. Now and 40 years ago...war/unpopular president. The difference is a republican instead of a democrat in the white house. I don't see how McCain can win;even some in his own party doubt he can win. Still...when people stand alone in the voting booth, can they put aside there uneasiness of voting for Obama? You know the GOP, with the help of Fox News, will get that maching up and running. The advantage Obama has is the ability to raise millions of dollars via the 'net. Where is McCain going to get his money? I don't see him matching Obama in the money aspect. It will be interesting.

comment #14

Movie Watcher says ...

Arizona Joe, you hit the mark. I was 10 back in 1968, so I do remember the protests, marches, and of course, the war, on the national news every night. No cable, or 24/7 news coverage back then. My son is 17, and he and his friends have no intention of joining the military. Now and 40 years ago...war/unpopular president. The difference is a republican instead of a democrat in the white house. I don't see how McCain can win;even some in his own party doubt he can win. Still...when people stand alone in the voting booth, can they put aside there uneasiness of voting for Obama? You know the GOP, with the help of Fox News, will get that maching up and running. The advantage Obama has is the ability to raise millions of dollars via the 'net. Where is McCain going to get his money? I don't see him matching Obama in the money aspect. It will be interesting.

comment #15

Movie Watcher says ...

Arizona Joe, you hit the mark. I was 10 back in 1968, so I do remember the protests, marches, and of course, the war, on the national news every night. No cable, or 24/7 news coverage back then. My son is 17, and he and his friends have no intention of joining the military. Now and 40 years ago...war/unpopular president. The difference is a republican instead of a democrat in the white house. I don't see how McCain can win;even some in his own party doubt he can win. Still...when people stand alone in the voting booth, can they put aside there uneasiness of voting for Obama? You know the GOP, with the help of Fox News, will get that maching up and running. The advantage Obama has is the ability to raise millions of dollars via the 'net. Where is McCain going to get his money? I don't see him matching Obama in the money aspect. It will be interesting.

comment #16

D.Z. says ...

Joe: "In many ways, Iraq is a more stupid war than Vietnam. But I don't see young people protesting. Instead they are sort of submerged on the Internet and on blog sites."

I'm sure there were a lot of young people who didn't protest that war, either, and that most of them back then were leftovers of the Civil Rights movement. That generation gets a little too much credit, while we get almost no credit, considering that it took them ten years to end the war; and they only passed legislation for 18 year olds to vote in the process. [That might seem impressive, until you realize more young people voting didn't automatically end the war. Sure, you also helped black people vote and live next to white people, but then you chose to build gated communities, gut their education, and ignore what happened in Florida.] The abolishment of the draft was only temporary, and those jerks sold us out for a Reagan administration, just so that they could feel good about beating more commies in Afghanistan with Osama's help.

Meanwhile, we're the ones who get treated like ADD-riddled slackers, even though they didn't even think about the implications of a second term for Bush, until it was too late. But no, it's not that we're too lazy to take a stand that keeps us from getting noticed for running nude on award shows. It's that we have to work harder to make up for the declining value of the dollar and income the previous generation chose to dump on to us, in exchange for lower taxes.

"What you do see is a bunch of dumbass young people still driving around in SUVs and trucks they don't need. $4 per gallon gas has diminished that practice somewhat, but only because of cost reasons, not concern about global warming."

It's more middle-aged people than young people. Though any young people who do that nowadays are just picking up that generation's bad habits-kind of like how
so many teens are use guns and drugs to solve their problems.

"Now, no one would dare drop out for fear of offending the suits, and thus being deprived of a chance at the big house and a status vehicle."

It's more like today's young people can't afford to drop out, because they don't have rich parents who can pay for their college tuition and still have enough money left
to blow on hallucinogens, unprotected sex and opportunistic hucksters promising them spiritual enlightenment .

"In addition, today's music is really crappy, perhaps because it is too easy to record. In 1968, every other week there was a single or an album that would just blow your mind."

I've heard plenty of bad 60s music on K-Earth. People just seem to think the music was better, because they were tripping on acid at the time. But now they look at Mick Jagger and listen to the 'Dead, and they just wonder why they liked them in the first place.

Rich: "I just hope like hell that Obama doesn't turn out to be Jimmy Carter II."

Why? We could use another peace agreement and an energy policy.

comment #17

Movie Watcher says ...

Sorry for the triple post. Don't know what happened.

comment #18

Rich S. says ...

D.Z., Jimmy Carter led to 8 years of Reagan and 4 of Bush senior. I can't imagine you want a repeat of that scenario.

comment #19

MAGGA says ...

The people who were young in the sixties left their idealism behind pretty damn quickly and took part in creating the mess most posters on this site believe Amrica is in right now. Also, there is no right answer to when the best music was, because you can't quantify such a thing. There is more music now, probably more crap but also mindblowing music. The "problem" is that baby boomers dismiss the electro revolution of the late eighties, the underground rock movement of the same period, the genre-crashing cross.puulotion of eraly nineties music, punk, new wave, the reggae influence and most other things that have happened subsequently, which is fine. It wasn't made for them. The opportunities for experiencing music (festivals every two or three weeks rather than just Woodstock and some thinly spread follow-ups in the late sixties, incredible clubs in almost all cities and downloadable tracks) all contributing to the young people who are serious about music to have an opportunity for a much broader pop-cultural pallete than previously. There were fewer streams in the sixties, making the chances of followers choosing quality stuff bigger. But I have found equally good music in all decades since the fifties, and the sixties are not as special as the young perople of the times make out (by relating what might be a new pradigm shift with Obama directly to it's own nostalgic past at almost all times and ignoring other precendets, for instance). Others have pointed out the failures of baby boomers on this post, and I hope they grow up enough to realize there's more to life than their rose-tinted puberties

comment #20

D.Z. says ...

Rich: "D.Z., Jimmy Carter led to 8 years of Reagan and 4 of Bush senior. I can't imagine you want a repeat of that scenario."

No, Nixon led to Reagan and Bush, since the scumbag dumped a crappy economy and unstable international situation on Carter.

comment #21

MAGGA says ...

D.Z, so too does Bush on Obama. The Carter analogy is a better one than RFK, despite the last digits of the year being the same

comment #22

dinther says ...

As time passes, the "60s" (more like the mid-60s to the mid-70s) has been mythologized (primarily by baby-boomers, the most self-aggrandizing generation of all history) into something that it wasn't. There is a prevailing misconception that every teenager and person under 30 was tuning out and dropping out, when, in fact, only a small percentage of the population had the backbone to stand up against the status quo. By contrast, a vast percentage of people of that age did as they were told, joined no protests, and otherwise watched events unfold on television.

I agree w/ Arizona Joe's lament that today's younger generation has been lulled to sleep. But I think part of the reason is that those abusing power have become much more clever. State abuse is much more nuanced now, shrouded behind institution walls and in other countries, rather than on the lawns of Kent State. And bathed in the lexicon of "terror."

As for the music, this is something I don't understand: the democratization of the music industry - allowing smaller independent acts to be heard on par with major ones - has given us what? American Idol and 10 years of cheezy Nirvana rip-offs. Perhaps, rather than "democratization," it should be labeled "balkanization" - the music industry so fragmented that no one act can rise above the din of all the crap that is out there. So a didactic, one-dimensional autocrat (American Idol) seizes the power vacuum and quashes all interesting music that challenges it.

comment #23

Arizona Joe says ...

The music died with Kurt Cobain. Don't tell me about Radiohead or Coldplay. I half like Foo Fighters when their compositions are good. I like Juanes out of Columbia, he can play and has front man star power.

I like Morrissey a great deal, but he's a boomer, also. His band is always tight.

If there was good music, it would be on SNL, but 90% of the time I turn the sound off because it is such derivative drivel and dross.

It's ironic that MTV is not about music. It's just a conduit to sell stuff to these nouveau hedonists. I agree, that's a function of manipulation by boomer MBAs. But it takes two to tango in the marketplace. It's a far cry from when we flew the mighty Buzzard, listened to Kid Leo in Cleveland, and pecuniary matters did not dominate.

comment #24

MAGGA says ...

dinther, American Idol doesn't represent deocratisation of music. It's merely a competition. It all depends on what kind of music you like. The club scene now is brilliant, better even than in it's inception. Obviously I don't live in America and have no idea what the scene there is like, but reading many American sites I feel they are perceptive about what goes on around the world. Also, a lot of great acts are making their mark in new ways, not connected to record companies but earning a living on gigs while prividing their music for free. Just watched some of them last weekend. Also, worldwide there are plenty of Iraq-war protests, and many of the world's leaders actually listened and followed the will of the people in not joining the war. People are gradually more careful about the environment, gouvernments ad taxes to gasoline to make irresponsability as expensive as possible, people are getting educated in scientific solutions. If Obama can improve America's health care it goes in the direction things have been heading in the last couple of years, by which I mean doing things rather than shouting one's disaproval as loudly as possible. The amoubnt of people voting is increasing again, and while dismissing the internet as a communication tool is easy, these improvements are direct results of, amongst other things, these ways of relating to one another. I'm not trying to glamourize the young 'uns like the boomers do themselves, but as someone now approaching thirty (only two more years!) I feel that todays's kids are more concerned with the world than my generation was (I'm astonished by how many people have actually read the texts of many of the world's religions while I never even got through the whole bible). The late nineties/early noughties were a lowpoint in many ways, but things are getting better by the month. As for the balkanization - balkan music is pretty awesome, especially when mixed with the electronic movement, but I know that's not what you meant - the notion of no-one rising above all the crap is accurate in some ways, but it simply requires people to investigate. I'd rather have that than a homogenous scene. Just heard some friggin' amazing german reggae the other day and am kicking myself for not remembering the name. The music industry is dead for sure, but music is in a very interesting phase.

comment #25

televisiontears says ...

I don't know which is worse: boomers jerking off to the faded memories of the last time they didn't feel dead inside (the 60's), or the hopeless ex- Seattle-hangers-on who claim they hung out at the same clubs as Cobain. They're kinda one in the same.

"The music died with Kurt Cobain." "The music died with Lennon." "The music died with fucking Beethoven." Sorry Arizona Joe, the only thing that died is your passion for music and the slightest interest in checking out a new band that hasn't been pointlessly hailed as "the next big thing".

If half-liking Foo Fighters and not being told about Radiohead is your thing, that's fine. Keep getting your records from Starbucks and we can chat about the weather while waiting for our lattes. But don't denounce an entire generation's music based on what you hear on top 40 radio or see in Time Magazine. That's never been where the music is. That's where the music goes to die.

comment #26

Arizona Joe says ...

I have been to a Starbucks, twice, FYI. You tell me what's good, and I'll listen to it.

Keith Richards has admitted to making noise. Jimmy Page once said that his stuff was very primitive in construction vis a vis classical composers and more akin to folk music. Pop/ rock music draws heavily from society, its milieu, and is as much performance as music.

Hence, with pop music being commoditized, and just another product, with no real baseline of the establishment to assault, there's really not much of a point to it. Society has been liberated to a level where there cannot be another Beatles, or much of anything in the genre.

These days youngsters don't have to sublimate unseemly desires or vicariously live through the music, they can just have at it.

And then they ride away in their quads, despoiling the ecology in which they live. I know, their cretinous boomer parents purchased their ATVs for them.

comment #27

MovieBob says ...

"That generation gets a little too much credit, while we get almost no credit, considering that it took them ten years to end the war; and they only passed legislation for 18 year olds to vote in the process."

Yegh. Y'know, D.Z., it's kids like you that make me wish RATM would re-unite for good and put out some new albums so you'd be spending more time alone in your room ;)

It's nifty, though, isn't it? The Boomers grew up fat and happy, drunk on and eventually resentful-of the benefits of the great accomplishments of their parents - which they proceeded to denigrate and marginalize as merely machinations of "the military industrial complex." And now YOU, of a similarly comfy generation, toss THEIR accomplishments aside just the same. How cute. What will YOUR kids say about you, D.Z.?

Of course, this ALSO means that your/my generation will hit middle-age and start fetishizing/lionizing our now-elderly boomer parents just like they did, eh? Just think... right now there's a kid in film school who'll grow up and make the "Saving Private Ryan of Woodstock movies" - probably with a 40-something Shia LeBouf in the Tom Hanks spot :)

comment #28

D.Z. says ...

Bob: "Y'know, D.Z., it's kids like you that make me wish RATM would re-unite for good and put out some new albums so you'd be spending more time alone in your room ;)"

I don't listen to them.

"The Boomers grew up fat and happy, drunk on and eventually resentful-of the benefits of the great accomplishments of their parents - which they proceeded to denigrate and marginalize as merely machinations of "the military industrial complex." And now YOU, of a similarly comfy generation, toss THEIR accomplishments aside just the same. How cute. What will YOUR kids say about you, D.Z.?"

I think the reason we're resentful is the Boomers at least got jobs and benefits from their parents' generation. I'm guessing the reason the Boomers were resentful was because they had messianic delusions of grandeur, but they were being stifled by their comfort. So playing the pseudo-martyr game at protest rallies made them feel more important. But once the issues became more complex than they were willing to acknowledge
[equal pay for women, gay marriage, etc.], they decided to make a deal with the Devil to sell everyone else out, so they wouldn't have to deal with the new problems.

As for my kids, I'll be lucky if I can afford to have any in the future.

comment #29

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comment #30

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