BabyboomReview: Generational News and Views

John Lennon's Jukebox Reveals Much About the Early Beatles

2010-04-30T09:48:00.000-07:00

This UK doumentary is a fascinating find--anyone with just a passing interest in the Beatles will learn much about the group's influences

Happy Holidays and Some Updates

2009-12-20T06:02:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays Everyone!

The site is about to reinvent itself.. We have some wonderful things to announce for 2010! So please stay tuned..Meanwhile--under All the Buzz check out award winning writer Brad Auerbach's guide to a Beatles themed gift giving for this years' Holiday Season!

Reflections on The 40th anniversary of the Moon Landing: One Giant Leap to Nowhere?

2009-07-21T13:38:00.000-07:00

The 40th anniversary of the Moon Landing was a good time for those of us of a certain age to reminisce. We looked at that silvery orb in the sky that night
a bit differently. But we also looked at ourselves with new eyes too.
Norman Cousins, who addressed a Congressional hearing about what going to the moon meant, where he said, 'The significance of Apollo was not so much that man set foot on the moon but that he set eye on the Earth.’

We certainly had the wonderful photos to prove that the earth was indeed a tiny blue fragile looking planet set against a sky of infinite blackness. But after 1969 not much else happened. We still found ourselves in too deep in the VietNam war. Nixon did not change his policies as a result. The so called technological "victory" over the Soviet Union did not much to change the determination to confront their eastern bloc neighbors if they showed any signs of breaking free of their communist yoke.
Schools just added Neil Armstrong to the list of great American explorers who made history. Probably the best outcome was the use made by politicians to make us believe in ourselves as capable of solving enormously intractable problems such as world hunger. How many of us heard that phrase--"if we can go to the moon..then.."
and stopped listening to it after it was repeated too many times and issues such as radically unequal education and housing persisted.

The moon project was then dropped. I heard from one commentator recently all the technology was sort of placed in deep freeze, the teams of engineers that were assembled the variety of resources supporting a manned landing all were dissolved as if the entire enterprise had been nothing but a show. Funding for NASA sank like a stone. As Tom Wolfe wrote in the New York Times the moon landing was "one giant leap to nowhere"

As Wolfe writes the funding for NASA went "from $5 billion in the mid-1960s to $3 billion in the mid-1970s. It was at this point that NASA’s lack of a philosopher corps became a real problem. The fact was, NASA had only one philosopher, Wernher von Braun. Toward the end of his life, von Braun knew he was dying of cancer and became very contemplative. I happened to hear him speak at a dinner in his honor in San Francisco. He raised the question of what the space program was really all about. Therefore we must build a bridge to the stars, because as far as we know, we are the only sentient creatures in the entire universe. When do we start building that bridge to the stars? We begin as soon as we are able, and this is that time. We must not fail in this obligation we have to keep alive the only meaningful life we know of.

Unfortunately, NASA couldn’t present as its spokesman and great philosopher a former high-ranking member of the Nazi Wehrmacht with a heavy German accent.

As a result, the space program has been killing time for 40 years with a series of orbital projects ... Skylab, the Apollo-Soyuz joint mission, the International Space Station and the space shuttle. These programs have required a courage and engineering brilliance comparable to the manned programs that preceded them. But their purpose has been mainly to keep the lights on at the Kennedy Space Center and Houston’s Johnson Space Center — by removing manned flight from the heavens and bringing it very much down to earth."

But even had Werner Von Braun had better credentials to be the kind of Captain Kirk like visionary for the new age of space exploration it is doubtful that any air would have pumped back into the space program. If a venture is conceived as a PR victory it stays a PR victory. Kennedy's words we "choose to go to the moon not because it is easy but because it is hard"--an appeal to man's never ending search for challenge--rings hollow today--the reason --we have ignored doing some easy things because it is too hard to do the hard work of organize a vision around our common humanity--our essential brother and sisterhood. Without that vision the people indeed do perish as do missions however brave and magnficent as the moon landing.

Salinger--Overly Protective Literary Parent or Litigious Recluse? You Decide

2009-07-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

In a strange legal twist, J.D. Salinger the author of (arguably) the most read book by babyboom generation The Catcher in the Rye has now successfully challenged an effort to censor a So called sequel to the book. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) explains
that the new work is entitled 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, and "depicts Holden as Mr. C., an irascible 76-year-old still spouting the same vitriol about "godamn phonies" and nursing the same distrust of the world around him. But this is not a sequel penned by Mr. Salinger, now 90, whose last published work appeared in June 1965. And if the author, a Swedish publisher named Fredrik Colting, is to be believed, it is not a sequel to the original. Rather, he maintains that the book is "literary commentary on 'Catcher' and the relationship between Holden and Salinger." To that end, a fictive Salinger makes an appearance as a character in "60 Years Later."

The judge ruled in Salinger's favor --disagreeing with the defense position that the Swedish author was attempting a work of literary criticism and upholding Salinger's attorneys who argued that Holden's character was "copyrightable."

"..literary critique in the form of a novel is not unheard of. Jean Rhys's "Wide Sargasso Sea" retells "Jane Eyre" from the point of view of Bertha, the madwoman in the attic. Rita Copeland, a comparative literature professor at the University of Pennsylvania, calls it "a deep exploration of the political, social and racial issues that underlie Charlotte Brontë's novel. Of course Rhys' book is a great novel, but it's also an important 'reading' of 'Jane Eyre,' of the Caribbean side of the story in Brontë's novel and of the European relationship to the West Indies."

The ruling seems bizarre and will likely be overturned on appeal--(if of course Mr Colting has the funds to appeal) since there is no question that Salinger owns Caulfied in the way that Shakespeare owns Macbeth and Hamlet--only that author could have created the actual character and only his rendering is authentic. Colting has not disguised the fact that he is writing the story not Salinger. But the counter logic would suggest that since no one but Disney can market Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck in the verbal realm--Salinger's rights are akin to those of Disneys. But we are hitting here the limits of the legal imagination that can make a distinction between marketable Mickey Mouse and not so marketable Holden Caulfield.

But the more important lesson from this is perhaps the way that Salinger sees himself at this point in time. The WSJ characterizes his posture well:

"Mr. Salinger is notorious for his protection of his creations. He has denied movie directors the rights to option "Catcher" and turned down licensing deals that could have turned Holden Caulfield into a mass-marketing bonanza. We should add he bitterly fought British author Ian Hamilton from publishing his biography."

According to the WSJ "60 Years Later" mostly centers on Mr. C. (70% of the book is devoted to him) and includes only a few snippets of the Salinger character; the climax of the interaction is sketched out in one of the final chapters. Without Mr. C., the book could not exist. Without Salinger, it still paints a vivid portrait of how Holden stayed huddled in his cocoon and remained a boy in a man's body."

Is Holden really Salinger? I guess we will have to read the book to find out...

Boomers Receive another Call to Service

2009-06-23T12:27:00.000-07:00

Harvard University's Business Guru, Rosabeth Moss Kanter issues a new blast of encouragement to boomers to dedicate their "retirement years" to service--

World, get ready! The Baby Boomers are becoming the Senior Boomers, and they want to change you again.

The generation that marched in Washington in the 1960s is marching into elementary schools, high schools, hospitals, and homeless shelters seeking opportunities to serve. Activists in civil rights and women's movements four decades ago now want to eradicate diseases, transform education, reform health care, or alleviate global poverty.

She contrasts the last generation's choices--Gerry Ford and let us add George Bush--with those of the boomer crowd:

Post-career options for healthy adults once ran the gamut from A to B & B. They could choose athletics (as in golf), like former President Gerald Ford and countless former CEOs, or run a Bed-and-Breakfast, the choices of former Senator George McGovern. Today's mature boomers aspire to be Bills: to start a foundation and champion social causes like Bill Clinton and Bill Gates. Among leading edge boomers, 50-59 years old, who say they will never retire, nearly two-thirds are interested in public purpose work.
For a nation still reeling from the economic meltdown, this is a huge opportunity. The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act recently signed by President Obama, includes provisions encouraging boomers to embrace service careers for their next life stage.

We should add for realism purposes--that the two Bills can well afford the choices they made--since they continue to earn income as they move through the more morally uplifting worlds of philanthropy--many of us not so blessed with the skills and talents they share may have to engage in more mundane activities. But it would be interesting to hear from you dear reader as to what choices are on your mind right now.

A 1966 Liverpool Meeting Remembered

2009-06-02T09:31:00.000-07:00

Dylan met with some Liverpool kids when on a historic European tour in May 1966--one of the children whom he was photographed with--Chris Hockenhall describes in a blog why he made this short film for the BBC. Chris remembers the day (despite being 10 years old) so well for two main reasons--"On the morning of 14 May 1966 I had been doing some extra school maths work (not my decision) with my aunt but my concentration was nil as I literally counted the minutes away to when I could get back home for the BBC showing of the Cup Final." The final was between his own team Everton and Sheffield Wednesday. Everton won the cup that year despite being two goals down at one point.

After the game he and some other "similar aged Everton fans" kicked a soccer ball around "on some waste ground on Dublin Street, near the Dock Road" when a curious Bob Dylan came across them and had some photos taken... That night, Chris adds "one of rocks greatest tours played at the Odeon and If I had been a few years older I may well have been there... and what a 24 hours that could have been — except I was oblivious to the evenings events at that time."

I wondered what I would have have made of meeting Mr Dylan at age 10? Why did he want to be photographed with these children? Was he sensing something authentic here--something hard to find in the States? Was he intrigued by the poverty and dour nature of these hard looking Victorian streets? What do the adults now make of Dylan's music? What songs, if any. touch them or speak to their experience? On a more contemporary note--where were their lawyers? Since most probably Barry Feinstein (Dylan's photographer and featured in the video below) failed to gain parental permission to take these under age children's pictures, and most probably did not compensate them for their work-- it seems odd there were no lawsuits filed.
A testament to the positive feelings for Dylan shared by this group?

Here is the little over nine minute video :

Darwin, Lincoln and Us

2009-05-25T14:04:00.001-07:00

Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln and Modern Life, is a good read. Smart, well written, non condescending and large visioned. His case that Lincoln and Darwin--born on the exact same day in history --February 12, 1809 (any astrologers listening?) shaped profoundly the late Victorian view of the world--and modern liberalism is well argued. Gopnik--an accomplished New Yorker writer focuses on both mens' use of language and shows how their literary style enabled them to make their arguments resonate beyond the elites. Lincoln found a way to look at history--as a working out of the balance of forces the moral fate of mankind--a Providence that acted without regard to individuals throughout history. Darwin--came more or less to the same conclusion--in terms of our place in the universe using methods 180 degrees different from Lincoln. The interest is not in the profundity of these ideas--ideas that could easily have been dismissed or ignored in the hands of other less accomplished writers--but in the ways they advanced their ideas and gained large and influential followings. Both created a new kind of scientfic based secularism--one that did not so much banish faith--but placed religion on a different less central track in our affairs. What does this have to do with boomers? Some thoughts come to mind--boomers questioned the way that liberal ideas had been handed down to government (in the post JFK era) in the service of flag and country to justify a militaristic set of policies that benefited one group rather than the larger whole. Instead they urged a new foreign and domestic policies --policies based on anti colonialism, pluralism rather than the numbing 50s conformity and freedom of expression. Boomers rebelled against the way the mass media worked hand in hand with governments in the "manufacturing of consent." In doing so they turned to Freud and Marx--(successors at least to Darwin--Lincoln having got lost somewhere in the mix). Freud and Marx back in the sixties needed a bit of spicing up so their latter day interpreters--Marcuse, Fanon, Levi Strauss, O'Brown, Reich)got to work to do battle with the military industrial complex and post colonialism. Since these intellectuals had no real lasting answers to society's ills-it is not surprising that the 60s counter culture movement such as it was --ended up in such a mess.

As the new right gained ascendancy in the post Goldwater years--conservative intellectuals such as William F Buckley seemed to offer some moral spine to what was perceived as directionless social forces. But what was lost in the mix was the moral beliefs articulated by Lincoln--that democracy --government of the people--by the people-- embodied a more important set of values than government as the uncritical friend of the rich and powerful.

Possibly now under Obama--influenced strongly by Lincoln as well as Darwin (note the new Presidents' support of stem cell research, his respect for the science supporting aggressive approaches to combating global warming)can help bring us back to a return to the older version of liberalism. Arguably, Obama's political project is now possible because the right ca no longer use race and gender as a barrier to social progress or employ crude patriotic appeals to support policies that only benefit the rich and powerful. Our victory as boomers was key to this success--but as in all things but particularly politics--there are no lasting victories--and no permanent defeats--we must keep on working for the values we believe in.

Boomers Unprepared for Retirement

2009-05-07T12:44:00.001-07:00

Boomers who tended in their youth to live for the moment need to wake up according to Washington Post columinist David Ignatius--who writes as a fellow boomer

"People have accused the baby boomers of being whiners almost since we were born. But just wait until we get to retirement age and discover that we don't have nearly enough money to take care of our "golden years." That's going to be the ultimate generational bummer."

According to new research boomers who have not taken seriously the need to prepare for their "golden years" are about to get hit with another whammy--the recent economic meltdown:

"53 percent of households that hold at least one retirement account, the median combined balance was a mere $45,000.Hold on, you say, that figure includes some younger workers who haven't started saving in earnest yet. Okay, for households headed by persons between the ages of 55 and 64, the median value of all retirement accounts was just $100,000. Purcell noted that for a 65-year-old man retiring last month, that $100,000 would buy an annuity that would pay a paltry $700 a month for life, based on current interest rates. And here's an extra bit of bad news: The Fed data used in Purcell's study were gathered in 2007. With stock market declines since then, the median account balances are probably even lower now."
Ignatius quotes from a poll released in January by the National Institute on Retirement Security showing that "83 percent.. were worried about having a secure retirement; of those with a 401(k) account, only about half thought they would have enough money to retire. And 71 percent said it was harder to retire now than for previous generations."

So no longer is the line "I am going to work until I drop" a throwaway line--it is going to be all too true of our fellow boomers. Boomers helped by people like Madoff, may have killed retirement as a serious option in America for a generation or more, except as an option for the extremely wealthy--and even many of those (haven't you noticed) --prefer to keep on working.

Are Boomers Prepared for Alzheimers?

2009-05-05T13:38:00.000-07:00

Alzheimer's is the second most-feared illness in America, following cancer, and may affect as many as five million Americans. As the baby-boom generation moves through retirement, that number could soar to more than 11 million by 2040, and have a huge economic impact on America's already fragile healthcare system."
Maria Shriver (wife of the California Governor) is raising awareness about the need for research into this tragic disease and offering some hope in focusing on some recent discoveries that will accelerate a cure if further funding is forthcoming.
According to the HBO Alzheimers Project Shriver (whose father died of the disease and is the projects executive producer) described Alzheimer's as "an epidemic for this generation", saying that as Baby Boomers age, the disease is coming right at them and something needs to be done.
She said a cure could be within reach if the world focused on it, allocated the funds for research, and pressured lawmakers.

On a personal note, I started my website LifestoryDVD in part as a way to help people who maybe in the early stages of the disease at least record their memories for their children and grandchildren, and use lifestory telling as a therapy to at least help delay the full onset of the disease.

Will Boomers Embrace or Resist the Coming E-Book Revolution?

2009-04-21T17:43:00.000-07:00

Will boomers embrace the new e-book revolution or resist it and leave it to generation x or y to figure out?
As the largest generation with still a good deal of disposable income despite the crash, also with the last
generation for a taste for reading as opposed to sitting by an electronic screen--my guess is that the boomers
will reinvent the entire process of writing books, distributing them and reading before we move off.
I was prompted by these thoughts due to an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal that
focused on how the economics of ebooks--otherwise known as digital books will transform
our half a millenium or so habit of reading the printed word. Author Steven Johnson writes
in this section about how we will get to discover new books:

"The economics of digital books will likely change the conventions of reading and writing as well. Digital distribution makes it a simple matter to offer prospective buyers a "free sample" to entice them to purchase the whole thing. Many books offered for the Kindle, for instance, allow readers to download the first chapter free of charge. The "free sample" component of a book will become as conventional as jacket-flap copy and blurbs; authors will devise a host of stylistic and commercial techniques in crafting these giveaway sections, just as Dickens mastered the cliffhanger device almost two centuries before.

It's not hard to imagine, for instance, how introductions will be transformed in this new world. Right now, introductions are written with the assumption that people have already bought the book. That won't be the case in the future, when the introduction is given away. It will, no doubt, be written more to entice readers to buy the whole book.

Steven Johnson tells a story about how he was suddenly inspired in a coffee shop to stop what he was reading on his Kindle
and "dutifully working my way through an e-book about business and technology, when I was hit with a sudden desire to read a novel. After a few taps on the Kindle, I was browsing the Amazon store, and within a minute or two I'd bought and downloaded Zadie Smith's novel "On Beauty." By the time the check arrived, I'd finished the first chapter."

Nice.

Johnson predicts that a la carte pricing will emerge

".. as it has in the marketplace for digital music. Readers will have the option to purchase a chapter for 99 cents, the same way they now buy an individual song on iTunes. The marketplace will start to reward modular books that can be intelligibly split into standalone chapters.

This fragmentation sounds unnerving -- yet another blow to the deep-focus linearity of the print-book tradition. Breaking the book into detachable parts may sell more books, but there are certain kinds of experiences and arguments that can only be conveyed by the steady, directed immersion that a 400-page book gives you. A playlist of the best chapters from "Middlemarch," "Gravity's Rainbow" and "Beloved" will never work the way a playlist of songs culled from different albums does today."

Boomers are we ready for this world--will we be the ones to embrace or resist? What about you? Please send us your comments.

Is the Obama Era Heralding a Return to Sixties Values?

2009-04-14T10:34:00.000-07:00

Frank Rich got it about right this week in the New York Times as he applauded Harvard's President and Ohio Weslyan's cajloing new graduates to forgoe the promises of getting rich and do something important for humanity.Rich quotes first Dr Drew Giplin Faust who urged the new grads to

to "Find work you love,” adding that The “most remunerative” job choice “may not be the most meaningful and the most satisfying.”
This same note was hit a month earlier by the commencement speaker at Wesleyan University, Barack Obama. “The big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy,” he said, amount to “a poverty of ambition.” He wasn’t speaking idly. As America knows, Obama turned down the lucrative career path guaranteed to the first African-American president of The Harvard Law Review to pursue the missions of service and teaching instead. The potential rewards for our country, now that that early choice has led him into the White House, are enormous.

Obama had choices--but many of today's grads know that the high paying jobs on Wall Street aren't likely to come back for a while if at all. The loans however that it took to enter the Ivy League are not going anywhere and so most new graduates will have to look forward to a long period of reduced lifestyles before they can become the new masters of the universe.
Good thing though? Non profits and idealistic enterprises can sure use the brainpower that would otherwise be wasted making huge bonuses for not very economically productive work.

So our "thought leaders" will need to help our young students whose reward system has been measured out in dollar signs with new harsher realities. Boomers will have to rise to the challenge too. As the parents of many of these youngsters -they have a role to inform them of the choices they made not necessarily between serving mamon and public service but in terms of the humanistic values they recognize as important and lasting. Good luck everyone as we enter (re-enter) this brave new idealistic age.
Let's hope this one--makes the lasting improvements that the sixties seemed only to promise us.

John Martyn Original Singer Songwriter Dies--1948-2009

2009-04-07T18:45:00.000-07:00

John Martyn-- a much under-rated singer songwriter from the 1960s died in January.
Martyn leaves behind many great songs to remember him by. Solid Air was a masterpiece album and it deserves to be better known. Martyn's musical originality was easily apparent --his ability to fuse jazz and folk rhythms set him apart from his fellow artists. He was not one to court fame or seek a more commercial sound. It is sad to read about the misfortunes that attended him towards the end. We hope that Word Magazine a new and superbly written and edited UK music journal will allow us to reprint some of the great article they published in their March issue on the singer's life and achievements..

New Dylan Album on the Way- and-the Oracle Gives another Interview

2009-03-18T08:31:00.000-07:00

Who of us given some of the great tracks on Modern Times can resist another Dylan fix? Who can resist another glimpse into the musical worlds Dylan now so masterfully creates? Yes folks a brand new album (not one of those compiliations of outtakes and rejects that he likes to throw out from time to time) the title is intriguing enough--Together Through Life-- to be released in April 28. As expected there is a new interview out--designed to create the necessary "buzz"--in it Dylan delivers the same mixture of wry wisdom, humor and mystery as he prepares his audience for another musical reinvention. Asked why he doesn't "milk" his best selling Modern Times album and not change things around:

"I think we milked it all we could on that last record and then some. We squeezed the cow dry. All the Modern Times songs were written and performed in the widest range possible so they had a little bit of everything. These new songs have more of a romantic edge."
How so?
These songs don’t need to cover the same ground. The songs on Modern Times songs brought my repertoire up to date, and the light was directed in a certain way. You have to have somebody in mind as an audience otherwise there’s no point.
What do you mean by that?
There didn’t seem to be any general consensus among my listeners. Some people preferred my first period songs. Some, the second. Some, the Christian period. Some, the post Colombian. Some, the Pre-Raphaelite. Some people prefer my songs from the nineties. I see that my audience now doesn’t particular care what period the songs are from. They feel style and substance in a more visceral way and let it go at that. Images don’t hang anybody up. Like if there’s an astrologer with a criminal record in one of my songs it’s not going to make anybody wonder if the human race is doomed. Images are taken at face value and it kind of freed me up.

The last point is an important one--Dylan's supersensitivity to all aspects of his personae--including the prophet image that has stuck with him since the early days
must have been a burden. Now he has found, it seems, a way to work through it--to free himself artistically even more. So eager anticipation across the globe--this is a master setting an example for all of us boomers as to the possibilities of reinventing and reimagining ourselves..and we all should pay close attention.

First Beatles Masters Degree Offered--Mixed Reactions

2009-03-08T11:12:00.000-07:00

Well it has finally happened--the first Masters Degree Program in Beatles studies--now hosted in the home of the Beatles at Liverpools' aptly titled "Hope University."

There are about six reactions I have--three vaguely negative and three a bit more positive--here are the negatives:
1) It is a bit of a leap--to study just one rock group--how about the entire phenom known as British rock circa 1960 -1975--perhaps more ripe for sociological explanations and less more iffy speculations based on personality and armchair psychology?
after all we don't do Wordsworth or Keats MAs --rather we study Romantic Poetry, the Late Victorian novel within the context of an established discipline.
2) As the New York Times op ed writer Allan Koznin also notes "what do you do with a degree in Beatles studies?"--be a Beatles tour guide? Aren't you setting yourself up for polite chuckles if you add this particular credential to your resume?
3) How do you do original research--Abbey Road/ Apple tapes--interviews with Paul and Ringo? Do you make the two surviving Beatles honorary professors?
On the positive side:
1) As Beatles books over the last few years have become more serious and interesting it is fitting that more academics move into this space concerning this remarkable band. We need to understand better the interplay between commercial pressure, individual artistry, audio engineering etc.
2) A degree program will encourage more scholars to cross the usual academic boundaries that the best Beatles criticism is able to straddle.
3) Understanding the popularity of the Beatles is a step towards understanding one of the unifying aspects of the boomer generation. The Beatles were our avant garde--leading us towards new forms of expression and experiences that had an important role, if we are honest in shaping the kinds of people we are today.

OK where do I really stand? What should Beatles study be all about? What is the "meat" in the sandwich? I think the meat is to understand the sixties which they mostly inhabited. Understand their social and historical background and the way that like the great artists they were--together they transcended their early influences. Studying the Beatles is different from studying someone like Dickens if only because you are taking on a larger range of social forces --ones that have not been properly absorbed into some of the usual disciplines like literature, sociology and history. The study involves musicology, sociology
and cultural studies (absorbing media studies) and semiology. It is also about the interplay of four very different personalities and their managers, record companies, studio engineers, agents, friends, girlfriends, wives, other artists, politicians and what can be losely called the 'temper of the times.'

Let it roll I say--let us all await a new generation of Beatles scholars--just as long as they keep a sense of humor about them--I won't mind too much and don't try to over interpret Yellow Submarine as some kind of answer to Freud's theory of the subconscious.

Boomers Trending to Facebook in Large Numbers

2009-02-17T17:52:00.001-08:00

What are we to make of the fact that Facebook's fastest growing demographic group are boomers and more specifically, boomer women. Inner Architect refers to the following statistic:

"According to Hitwise, there has been a big shift in audience demographics over just the past year. While users aged 18 to 24 represented a 42% share of the Facebook audience in January 2008, that segment in 2009 accounted for only 24%. Take a look at how the age distribution has evolved:

So a trend in motion--produced by? Here are some of my thoughts--
1) Generational envy--as the media has talked more and more about Facebook
and we have looked at our children's ease with the social networking thing--we have slowly come on board.
2) We are finding a way to keep current not just with our children but with the new generational force that the new Obama administration represents.
3) Facebook is very easy to use and Facebook has maintained a better control over unwanted ads and nastiness found in sites like MySpace.

My prediction is that Facebook will grow as the preferred choice for social networking among boomers and once the non boomers realize this they will fly off in greater droves to find new hipper forms of networking--at the moment --Twitter serves this function quite well for non boomers. Boomers are not quite as comfortable staying in touch on a 24x7 basis with their chosen peer group and find the notion of instant texting somewhat neurotic--now there is a word us boomers are familiar with..

John Updike--Major 20th century Author Departs the Scene

2009-01-28T14:11:00.000-08:00

John Updike died of lung cancer on Tuesday and with his passing vanishes one of the last of the great American novelists of the past century. And the first person many of us boomers read (let us be honest) to find out about male female relations. There was no more joyful introduction to that world than his superb novel Couples. In this novel he seemed to perfect a wonderfully lyrical sentence that fused insight with crystal clear observation that allowed us to glimpse a more spirtually resplendent world than the one we currently inhabited.

Updike was wonderful observer of humankind--particularly a certain type of New England middle class American--many of whom might be described as self involved boomers. If his themes were a bit too narrow to win him the Nobel prize, his range as a writer was large-from Bech a Book, to Witches of Eastwick to Terrorist. .

But they all seemed terribly minor works next to the Rabbit books for which he will undoubtedly be remembered for.
The novels bring to life a version of what it was like to experience an America that although prosperous and happy on the outside was often anxious, depressed and disatisfied. Rabbit is Rich, possibly the best of the novels and the last in the series describes a less than fulfilling American dream for the former basketball player as a Toyota dealer salesman. Updike's technique in the Rabbit series clearly influenced Richard Ford to create his own Bascombe series of novels (The SportsWriter, Independence Day and Lay of the Land) to take the analysis of American middle age discontent further and deeper. He was also a fine critic--he leaves several volumes of superb criticism that was often too exquisitely written and lacking a central punch or theme.

Jesse Kornbluth recounts an interesting anecdote. As a testament to that early greatness that was so obvious as early as the 1970s Jesse Kornbluth recounts a mistaken call that led the writer John Cheever to write an early obituary of Updike.

"

A reporter who called him at four in the morning to tell him --- incorrectly --- that Updike had been killed in a car crash. Later, Cheever wrote in his journal:

As for John, he was a man I so esteemed as a colleague and so loved as a friend that his loss is indescribable. He was a prince. I think it not difficult to kiss him goodbye --- I can think of no other way of parting from him, although he would, in my case, have been embarrassed. I think him peerless as a writer of his generation; and his gift of communicating --- to millions of strangers --- his most exalted and desperate emotions was, in his case, fortified by immense and uncommon intelligence and erudition."

For a first seismic sense of the magnitude of the loss and the debt felt by the American literary scene--from Jonathan Lethem, Joyce Carol Oates to Richard Ford---there is no better place to visit than the New Yorker magazine's "Remembering Updike"

Patrick McGoohan Dead at Age 80: Forever Remembered as "The Prisoner"

2009-01-15T10:48:00.001-08:00

Patrick McGoohan was to many of us who grew up in the UK in particular a boomer hero-and in The Prisoner became the epitome of a rebel aginst conformity, encroaching state and corporate control--with his great speech--always played at the opening of the Prisoner--I am not a number --I am a free man. See Chas Andrews review on the website for more details of the Prisoner and why it quickly became the hit among so many of us boomers.

While McGoohan did not have a stellar film career as the Washington Post obituary points out --he did deserve credit for keeping the man he played in several TV and cinematic roles essentially the same straight arrow: He resisted the womanizing Bond image and interestingly turned down playing Bond before Sean Connery took the part and made it his own:

"When Drake fights, he fights clean," Mr. McGoohan once explained. "He abhors bloodshed. He carries a gun, but doesn't use it unless necessary -- and then he doesn't shoot to kill. He prefers to use his wits. He is a person with a sophisticated background and a philosophy. I want Drake to be in the heroic mould, like the classic Western hero -- which means he has to be a good man."

And so he has entered TV and Boomer legend history--except he was more than just an actor--writing some of the episodes of The Prisoner himself--directing others and
was also responsible for choosing the great setting for the show--always to be known as "the village" --he discovered the sinister place whule making "Danger Man, which as the Post informs us "was filmed at the Portmeirion resort in North Wales. He was so struck by the architecture, which blended several incongruous styles, that he made it the background for "The Prisoner."

So we will miss him. If any of the networks will care to re-run the Prisoner --I will be watching..

William Zantzinger dead--Made Infamous by Dylan in Song

2009-01-10T10:07:00.000-08:00

The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll is surely one of Dylan's most important songs --the detailed imaginative leap in understanding Hattie Carroll's world allows us to feel in our spleen Zantzinger's repellent racist act--teaching our entire moral sensibility-- not just our heads.

We now might regard the death of William Zantzinger on January 3rd this year as an end of an era as we get ready to inaugurate our first African American President. A bookmark made more poignant by noting that Zantzinger was a child of privilege and attended the same school--Sidwell Friends --as the one that the Obama children have just begun this past week.
The Washington Post notes his passing and opens the obituary notice with words taken from the great lyric:

William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll

With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger

At a Baltimore hotel society gath'rin'.

The song first appeared on his 1964 album "The Times They Are A-Changin'." The Post informs us that "Dylan used an incorrect spelling of Mr. Zantzinger's surname in the song lyrics."

The Post reconfirms that Dylan did not change any of the essential details of the incident :

On Feb. 8, 1963, a young, socially prominent tobacco farmer from Southern Maryland named William Devereux Zantzinger got uncontrollably drunk at a charity ball hosted at Baltimore's Emerson Hotel. Carrying a cheap toy cane and dressed in top hat for the Spinsters Ball, he began the evening in a spirit of jest by imitating Fred Astaire.

As he drank more, Mr. Zantzinger, who was a husky 6-foot-2, became threatening in his demeanor. He assaulted a bellhop with his cane and shouted at a waitress, "Hey, black girl, bring me a drink!" He tumbled down on his wife while dancing with her.

Then he went back to the bar and demanded a drink from Hattie Carroll, a 51-year-old barmaid with 11 children and a history of high blood pressure. "Just a minute, sir," she said, which angered Mr. Zantzinger. It was not how he was used to being treated on his 630-acre farm along the Wicomico River in Charles County.

Zantzinger we learn from the obituary served only six months in jail and paid a $500 fine. The 'regular Southern Maryland boy' then in 1991 was indicted for collecting more than $64,000 in rent on properties he no longer owned--properties located off a dirt road and lacked indoor plumbing. He even had the audacity to sue for rent when his "tenants" did not pay and raised the rent on the properties. He had no kind words for Dylan whom he called a "no-account [expletive]" who had distorted the facts of the case. He told Dylan biographer Howard Sounes, "I should have sued him and put him in jail."

But let Dylan have the last word on this as he sings circa 1964 his great song--courtesy of YouTube:

Tom Rush on the Gentle Art of Forgetting

2009-01-10T09:57:00.000-08:00

This is a post from an excellent website "Fifty is the New."..http://www.fiftyisthenew.com/

Honey, Did you Put Away the Groceries… (or did I)?
December 23, 2008, by Prudence Baird

If you have ever found the dishwasher running and wondered who turned it on—even though you’re the only one home—then this song is for you!
I was lucky enough to see folksinger Tom Rush at the fabulous and vintage Colonial Theater in Keene, New Hampshire, last month. He makes mis-remembering acceptably cool.

Learn more about Tom Rush at his website >>

As We Say Goodbye to George Carlin--One last laugh at the Boomers Expense

2008-12-27T10:41:00.000-08:00

George Carlin who died this year we can all agree has some good riffs --this one at the boomers' expense:

For historical purposes Carlin was born in 1939. Carlin is not alone in his view that boomers took more than their share, are narcisstic and hypocritical. But here is a challenge for you dear reader--can you or anyone find some kind words to say about us--failing this can you share some other good funny material about our incorrigible ways?

Boomers, Corruption and a New Years Plea

2008-12-24T11:04:00.000-08:00

The list of bad guys of 2008 is a long one--but what do they all have in common? I am talking about the current Illinois Governor, Elliot Spitzer, John Edwards and then all those various heads of big organizations like the SEC and Freddie Mae who deny any responsibility for the currrent crisis but are inevitably implicated in the mess of greed and corruption. We cannot leave out our good Senators and Congressman as well who took campaign contributions and pushed for more relaxed regulations. Senator Charles Schumer from New York being one prime example as the New York Times reveals. Well what do they have in common? Most of them were boomers. Even if we exclude Bernie Madoff (with all your money) who is 70 (and Bill Clinton who committed his sins a while back and punished us all for them by allowing the incumbent to win campaigning on a false promise of bringing "honor and dignity back to the White House.")

So here is my hope for the new Obama's presidency that it will continue to indicate by words and action a new tilt towards morality, public welfare, trust and responsible government. But the new President can only take it so far. As the Schumer article makes clear the system invites a level of corruption that is hard to detect because manipulators can be so well rewarded.

If Obama will insist on having all his cabinet officers--recruit people with years of consistent public service, and ensure that the "end justifies the means" politicians and staffers don't sabotage a commitment to morality and transparency that he has pledged. We all have a trust to help him fulfill this necessary correction to our current politics to avoid another meltdown that could take our political system down with it as well as our financial one.

Neil Young has a solution to the crisis in Detroit

2008-11-14T12:15:00.000-08:00

Blogging on Huffington Post--the great rocker says:

Find a new ownership group. The culture must change. It is time to turn the page. In the high technology sector there are several candidates for ownership of a major car and truck manufacturer. We need forward looking people who are not restricted by the existing culture in Detroit. We need visionary people now with business sense to create automobiles that do not contribute to global warming.

It is time to change and our problems can facilitate our solutions. We can no longer afford to continue down Detroit's old road. The people have spoken. They do not want gas guzzlers (although they still like big cars and trucks). It is possible to build large long-range vehicles that are very efficient. People will buy those vehicles because they represent real change and a solution that we can live with.

BabyBoomReview Celebrates Obama's Historic Victory!

2008-11-05T06:34:00.001-08:00

BabyBoom Review is currently collecting the experiences of those who lived through the sixties and want to write about what they learned that can apply to the new Obama administration.

In the spirit of this project and connecting the generations--take a look at this very sixties video tribute to Obama (see below) and then check out the art of Michael Cuffe at his website

Paul Simon Donates Song to Obama Campaign

2008-11-03T07:32:00.000-08:00

Paul Simon babyboom tune smith extraordainaire gives his very appropriate song
"American Tune" to the Obama campaign for
use in an effective ad. Go watch here:

Ralph McTell Back in the Swing

2008-11-02T05:55:00.000-08:00

Sounds of Ralph McTell and Dylan share top bill
Oct 31 2008 Folk With Pete Willow
RALPH McTELL and the Dylan Project share the billing for a one-off musical treat in the Midlands tomorrow. Birmingham Town Hall Singer-songwriter and Ivor Novello award-winner McTell will start the evening with a solo set and will be playing such all-time favourites as Streets of London and From Clare to Here.
The date at Birmingham Town Hall will also be the only Midlands appearance of his current UK tour.
The second half sees blues-rock singer and guitarist Steve Gibbons, fronting an all-star line-up playing powerful arrangements of Bob Dylan songs.

BabyBoomReview Announces New Video Competition

2008-10-30T19:29:00.000-07:00

BabyboomReview launches a new You Tube competition--video your own album, movie and book review
More points if you do it against a historic site like BabyBoom co-founder, Mike Peters did at Abbey Road Studios, in London's St Johns Wood neighborhood, close to where both founders lived in the 1970s..

Send in your videos to You Tube and send us the link at bboomreview@gmail.com

New Podcast Explores Suze Rotolo's Relationship with Dylan

2008-10-27T06:22:00.000-07:00

I discussed the memoir Suze Rotolo published recently entitled A Freewheelin Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the 1960s with Chris Hale--a well known author and film director and regular contributor to BabyBoom Review. There is both a tender and a dark side to the relationship with Rotolo and the memoir allows us to see both aspects. Rotolo's honest self aware account of her relationship with arguably the greatest singer songwriter
of our era reveals the difficulty of being a proto feminist in the 1960s when the expectations for girlfriends of famous artists was to simply be available and not complain about your second string status. We discuss these tensions in the context of Dylan's the evolving relationship--and how their affair marked a turning point in both young people's lives. The podcast is roughly 25 minutes--give it a listen and let us know what you think by emailing us at bboomreview@google.com..

You can listen to the podcast by going to http://babyboomreview.podbean.com/ or clicking on the tab marked "podcast" on the
babyboomreview website. You can also while there listen to interviews with Rick Perlstein and David Hajdu concerning Nixon and the later Dylan relationships with Joan Baez and Richard Farina respectively.

Invitation to Write and Get Published On the 1960s

2008-10-17T10:59:00.000-07:00

Invitation to Contribute to a Different Kind of Sixties Publishing Project: Voices from the Sixties: Baby Boomers' Experiences and Reflections 50 Years On

If you lived through the 60s and - better yet - are one of the few who can remember it – then we have a project for you! We are in the initial stages of negotiating with publishers to bring out an anthology of essays that will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1960s through individual stories describing some key moments that made the writers aware that they were living through interesting and possibly historic times.

OK, you have some questions. Go ahead -

So what counts as important? Clearly you define that for yourself. You don’t need to have met one of the Beatles or spent time with Jerry Rubin, walked with Martin Luther King or witnessed the Kent State shootings—you just need to be able to write about a moment when something crystallized in your mind. Call it an “epiphany” or just a plain old thought—that here was some history occurring in front of your eyes and one day you might look back on it and tell your grandchildren. It could be the time you were beaten up for having long hair, the moment you listened to the first ________ name your band, the moment you saw racist/sexist language or actions in a new light, as not simply racist but as unacceptable and important enough to demonstrate against.

Now what counts as connecting with current readers? Here we have to be even less prescriptive. It will be up to each writer to suggest for the reader as vividly as possible the way a particular moment changed him or her and to comment on how it might have led to a new way of seeing or thinking or acting. So to paraphrase Orwell, who says in one of his essays if any of the “rules” gets in the way of good writing – we will waive them in a heartbeat!

What length are you looking for? Contributors should shoot for between 500 and 2000 words.

Will I get paid for my work? Needless to say, we would do some revenue sharing from the publication with our writers.

When do I need to submit by? We look forward to hearing expressions of intent (with a brief outline of what you intend to write) by December 15th 2008

How do I find out more?

To find out more details and ask any questions, please get in touch by e-mailing us at bboomreview@gmail.com

Latest Stock Market Crash Causing Retirement Rethink for Boomers

2008-10-14T10:17:00.000-07:00

There are many ways to rationalize away the loss of a few trillion dollars in retirement income the boomers were expecting and it seems from latest news reports that we are now past this stage and into something new--an advanced type of spin control -we are now being told by Dr Ros Altman that "traditional pension products and policies are outdated and a major rethink is needed as baby boomers approach retirement."
Who knew?
Dr Altman provided her insights at a recent Kings College London forum where she remarked that "concerns of where to turn for financial advice are accelerating because of the current market turmoil." Professor Simon Briggs, director at the Institute of Gerontology at King’s College London, added (conveniently enough) that “Rather than seeing retirement as a social death sentence, boomers are much more likely to see retirement as a time in which to develop those parts of the self that have been neglected while building a career and raising a family.” Professor Briggs believes "retirees are in a state of transition rather than stagnation, according to patterns of leisure time and consumption in retirement."

Now there is something for boomers to feel jolly about!

Boomers Just Like Their Parents?

2008-10-11T06:16:00.000-07:00

Another account as to why boomers are ending up like their parents--this time based on a Keele University survey
of boomers in their 50s

Dr Leach said: 'Most have fairly modest aspirations, hoping at best to maintain current lifestyles and activities provided health and finances permit them to do so. 'The range of lifestyles is greater than would have been the case with previous generations but there is little evidence of alternative models of consumption.' She said the surveys showed that only around one in 20 of the hippie generation now uses the alternative medicines which were the height of fashion in the 1970s.

Rather than following alternative lifestyles, the baby boomers are the generation obsessed with their houses, the report said. The explosion in home ownership since the 1950s means a third own their homes outright, half have mortgages and one in six have second homes. 'Home improvements form a significant part of boomer lifestyles,' the report said. 'So does increasing value of homes, especially in terms of using housing to fund retirement.'

But the credit crunch now seems more influential on the situation than any distinct boomer cultural attitudes--as the study suggests:

"The harm done to expectations of income from their homes by the credit crunch adds to other financial pressures that early generations did not have. Four out of ten of those in their late 50s still have children living at home. More than a third are also supporting grandchildren, for example by paying for childcare, and around half spend some time or money caring for their own parents. "

New Neil Young Documentary

2008-10-02T10:56:00.000-07:00

UK Young fans are in for a treat--according to the UK rock magazine Uncut a "new hour long Neil Young documentary entitled "Don't Be Denied" is to air on BBC Four next month and Uncut has seen a preview of it.

The BBC documentary is the first TV special with the reclusive singer, and includes two new interviews with Young, nine months apart in New York and California.

Screening on October 31, the documentary also looks back over the singer's archives, with some great never-seen-before archive footage from Buffalo Springfield and Crazy Horse as well as solo performances."

Where have all the protests gone?

2008-09-26T12:11:00.000-07:00

Like many babyboomers, particularly those with kids in college like myself, the question usually comes up where are the protest movements. The Bush regime has offered us one policy disaster after another, from Iraq, torture, to an 11 trillion dollar deficit to Katrina, the billionaire tax cut, the cronyism and the scandals, to the latest Wall Street crash (which technically they did not start but helped create the conditions for), to global warming denial. In contrast to late 1960s --the question is asked by me and other boomers --why were the campuses so silent during this period? David Segal in "Where Have All the Protests Gone?" in Wednesday's Washington Post offers a few "expert" explanations:

Explanation Number #1--It is Due to the Internet:

"I think the Internet has become a channel for all kinds of countercultural expression, including discontent and critique," said Miles Orvell, a professor of American studies at Temple University. "But it might have this paradoxical effect. It enlarges the conversation, but it can also produce a kind of passivity. It's like, 'I've said it and that's all I need to do.' A lot of young people seem to use the Internet as a surrogate community, and to that extent, it might diminish participation in the visible sphere."

Explanation Number #2: Protests are no longer where it is at--it is organizing:

"The action now, according to Daniel May, who once worked for the Service Employees International Union, is all door to door. They're raising money, they're getting out the vote.

Explantion #3
Our Kids Are Smarter Now--They Realize that Protests Create Ugly Backlashes:

"The organizers of my generation were shaped by 1968," said May, who is working toward a master's degree from Harvard. "But one lesson is that 1968 marked the first year of 40 years of conservative rule. Why would we want to replicate that? There's a real limit to protest politics. It's politics as catharsis and that eventually leads to cynicism."

It would be a mistake, in May's estimation, to confuse the lack of effigies with a lack of passion. The kids who once marched are now trying a different approach, he said, using techniques that were dismissed by their parents as too establishment. May's mother, Elaine Tyler May, a historian at the University of Minnesota, says she used to think that the youth of today just couldn't be bothered. But she has changed her mind.

"My son tells me it's politics that's more interested in power than in protest, and on a good day, that's how I see it," she said. "I still have this impulse to go yelling in the street, but what I see my kids doing is far more effective. I think we're just old and we don't realize -- there's a groundswell of political engagement that we just don't see."

Explanation #4: Careerism has Replaced Intellectual curiosity

"Most college students just don't feel like they have a vested interest in what is happening today," she said. "I hate to say it, but a lot of my peers calculate the opportunity cost of coordinating with others -- or planning a sit-in or a walkout or just some protest -- against the urge to write a paper, get an A and go to Harvard Law School."

McMillan isn't exempting herself from this charge. She quit the CCD last year after spending five hours squabbling with the Socialist Club about what to put in a news release. It all seemed tragically disorganized to her. But she knows what's happening in the world beyond Columbia, which is more than she can say for a lot of her classmates.

"No one was really curious about Iran until the president of the country came to speak at our campus," she said. "Then it was like, 'Oh, yeah. Iran.' A lot of my friends get all their political news from 'The Daily Show,' or from Perez Hilton, who does more political commentary than you'd think. We spend more time padding our résumés than trying to stay informed."

Todd Gitlin sixties expert and Columbia University Professor has an interesting take on the changes in popular culture as part of the reason:

"There was a culture of confrontation back then," he said. "You were either on the side of the authorities -- not just the president, but the police and the suits -- or you were an outlaw. You took psychedelic drugs and you protested and you drew a line between yourself and the prevailing culture."

That line is getting harder to draw, Gitlin said, in part because the counterculture has been mainstreamed. Rebellion is no longer a clarion call; it's a marketing pitch.

"Where is the Frank Sinatra of today? Where is the Tony Bennett? Who represents easy-listening normality? Popular culture is now a rebel industry. There is no inside to it. It's all outside now."

Look at rap. Gangsta rappers such as Jay-Z and Rick Ross are self-professed outlaws all right, but they don't want to opt out. They want to buy in. Their aspirations are hard to distinguish from those of a hedge-fund cowboy -- luxury cars, Cristal, yachts. They are unabashed fans of success just as it is defined by the latest crop of MBAs.

"430 Lex with the convertible top," Big Tymers rap on "Still Fly," a song that also name-checks Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Prada and Gucci.

Luxury product placement in a song from the mid- or late '60s? No way. Music was ominous (Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower"), sometimes sardonic (Creedence Clearwater's "Fortunate Son") and occasionally satiric (the Beatles' "Piggies"). It reflected the gravity of the times or it looked forward to a utopian future that seemed distant but possible. There wasn't a lot of rhapsodizing about money."

Good points? I wonder? It would be nice to have some reader feedback on this one--come on folks? Let us hear from you--babyboomers and their children!

BabyBoom Review Partners with WetPaint --as a "Leading Brand"

2008-09-25T19:50:00.000-07:00

In a special promotion of Wetpaint Injected--Wetpaint now features BabyBoom Review along with mega sites like Flixster and IGN International in a special promotion. BabyBoom Review now referred to as a "leading brand" looks forward to expanding over the next year to become the space on the web for babyboomers to review the cultural highlights of their era.

Never Retire!--Drawing Inspiration from Gordon Lightfoot at 69

2008-09-23T11:36:00.000-07:00

Gordon Lightfoot turns 69 and with no plans to retire according to The Buffalo News where he is giving a concert this Sunday:

“I want to be like my buddies! I want to be like Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson. Even Tony Bennett, hey, let’s throw him in!”

What about Mick Jagger? “He doesn’t count, he’s one of the younger guys,” says Lightfoot with a chuckle. “Bob Dylan is two years younger than I am, Kris is two years older, Willie is four years older.”

These guys are more than just longevity role models for Lightfoot — they’re also pals, and most of their friendships go way back. In 1975, Lightfoot played at both of Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue shows in Toronto, and was later filmed singing Dylan’s “Ballad in Plain D” for Dylan’s film, “Renaldo and Clara.” In 1986, inducting Lightfoot into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, Dylan praised Lightfoot as “somebody of rare talent and all that.”

More power to you Gordon and all that!

2008-09-19T09:52:00.002-07:00

Having mentioned Art Garfunkel just recently on this blog--worth commenting that Paul Simon is still getting out and in good voice. According to The Washington Post

"The 66-year-old singer, voice virtually unchanged from his younger days, hit every career highlight in a nearly two-hour show: early Simon & Garfunkel songs, the best of "The Graduate" soundtrack, and decades of solo material."

He was singing at the AARP convention no less..and it seems a jaunty time was had by all...

Quick Note: Dylan Lyric Becomes a Children's Book

2008-09-18T06:10:00.000-07:00

An enterprising idea "Illustrator Paul Rogers elevates the lyrics of Dylan's 1974 song into a sweet blessing for children, accompanied by accessible, primitively drawn images that form a playful visual history of Dylan's musical career and his influences -Woodie Guthrie, Alan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs. It looks like Paul Rogers may be onto a whole genre of childrens' books carved out of great song lyrics from the boomer era? What do you all think about this? Will you be buying? Let us know here on this space...

Art Garfunkel's Library-A Challenge to us all

2008-09-17T20:27:00.000-07:00

Interesting to note that Art Garfunkel keeps a blog of every book he has read since June 1968--
Now boomers--a challenge--has anyone else done anything like this?
What do we make of it? What does it tell us about the less famous half of the S&G duo?
Please write to us and we will be sure to note it in these pages.
Alternatively if you want to create some fictional reading lists for
boomers either in or out of the news this is also the space to do it in.

Democratic Convention Recalls 1963

2008-09-04T12:54:00.000-07:00

The last night of the Democratic convention was historic for all kinds of reasons. The most obvious was of course the nomination of the first black candidate as presidential nominee, but in an interesting column, James Carroll in the Boston Globe suggests that night takes us back to 1963

It is not just baby boomers who take their bearings along a course set in 1963. Obama himself, and the legion of his young supporters, understand themselves in the language of just that time. And the music: Stevie Wonder was Obama's warm-up. 1963 was the year of his first hit (coming in an album entitled "12 year old genius"). It was in 1963 that American rhythms began swinging between the Beatles and Bob Dylan, and they still do. But the songs were only anthems of a deeper stirring in the national imagination, an overturning that would leave nothing untouched.

In 1963, a presidential commission condemned the vast inequities between the sexes, but women took the matter into their own hands with that year's manifesto, "The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan. In 1963 "second-wave" feminism was launched, a movement Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama have ridden so deftly, with countless sisters.

The column is well worth a read and a good ponder about where we are today in relation to that era.

Dylan 's Third Theme Time Radio Season About to Begin

2008-09-04T12:31:00.000-07:00

Radio Performance: According to a press release from XM satellite radio
The new season is set to begin with the topic "Hello," September 19th (XM 40, Wednesdays, 10 a.m. ET/7 PT). Future shows will center on such motifs as "Young & Old," "California," "Dreams," "Fruit," "Something," "Nothing," "Streets," "Parties" and "Mail," with guests to include Luke Wilson, Amy Sedaris, Jack White and John Cusack. The satellite radio program draws nearly 2 million listeners weekly."

Sixties Memories--New Publishing Opportunity

2008-08-26T10:52:00.000-07:00

Fresh from talks with the co-founder in London--we are here to announce a new
publishing opportunity-submit your defining memory of the sixties-and participate in the first generational and global publishing project!

Take a look and send any expressions of interest to bboomreview@gmail.com

Cassette Tapes About to Go the Way of Eight Tracks?

2008-07-28T19:14:00.000-07:00

First it was the eight track, then Beta Format video tapes, then the VHS format then vinyl records then the floppy disk now the sign that we are at the end of an era--the cassette tape. Here is a New York Times article,Say So Long to an Old Companion: Cassette Tapes that reads the tealeaves and tells us that our dearly beloved cassette tapes are not long for this world.

2008-07-14T10:36:00.001-07:00

Technorati Profile

Boomers : A Gloomy Crowd?

2008-07-10T06:46:00.001-07:00

Boomers are pessimistic and grumpy these days according to the Washington Post's interesting report today, Baby Boomers Got the Blues Viewing Life Through Morose-Colored Glasses
It maybe a generational thing--it seems that there were a lot of us and that meant quite a bit of competition for the prizes. When we consider the optimism and excitment about the future--not getting your dream fulfilled can seem to be more of a downer for this generation than for others. A "generational historian" is also quoted to make parallels with other generations that were similarly placed in history who experienced the same sense of disappointment:

It's a cyclical downer that follows many generations born after times of crisis, says Neil Howe, an author who gained fame for his theories of recurrent generational behavior. It plagued the Transcendental generation, born on the heels of American independence, and the Missionary generation that arrived after the Civil War.

"People born in times of cultural renewal tend to take an overt attitude of pessimism," Howe says.

They see their pessimism as a tonic that will wake up the world, then they just end up drunk on disappointment.

Rick Perlstein's Nixonland -Must Read of the Year?

2008-07-10T06:35:00.000-07:00

Nixonland looks more and more like the must read book of the year. CNN gave Rick Perlstein some space on its website to feature his new book. A particular focus for Perlstein in this report was the angry divide between the generations that Nixon was able to exploit effectively as it turned out:

"The generational divide went so deep as to form a fundamental argument about what was moral and what was immoral," Perlstein says. "This was how people lived in the world -- through popular culture and through politics. The two feed off each other."

Though the era is now remembered through the rosy lenses of the baby boomers, their parents -- the heart of the "Silent Majority" -- didn't look upon the culture so fondly. Many disdained the era's pop music, the most obvious expression of youth.

Moreover, some of the highest-rated TV specials of 1969 and 1970 were Bob Hope programs, Perlstein writes, and when a movie such as 1970's "Joe" came out -- about a hardhat who loathes the hippies -- many in the audience came to cheer for the hardhat.

Movies may have been the most revealing mirror of society. The rise of the youth culture coincided with the death of the studio system. Some of what emerged were films willing to show the grit and ugliness of the cities ("the cities" being a common euphemism for civic decline). "Midnight Cowboy" and "The French Connection," the Academy Awards' best pictures of 1969 and 1971 respectively, show a weary, cold New York crumbling under its residents' feet.

There are some good slide shows with Perlstein's voice over. The one on movies and TV is quite insightful--supporting a review I recently completed on Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Harris that traces the key movies of the same time period that transformed Hollywood.

Changing of the Guard on Campus as Boomer Professors Retire

2008-07-07T11:58:00.000-07:00

The New York Times loves stories that show large social trends at work--so the reporters can show their sociological as well as journalistic skills. The following article on how the so called 'left wing' or 'liberal professors' are now retiring and leaving the campus to their more conformist colleagues contains the same kinds of over simplifications about the boomer era many of us are used to by now.

First the tag 'liberal' or 'liberal activist' without the use of a corollary term for the radical right wing activist--the excuse is that this is the way they supposedly describe themselves--but when they are filling out a survey you only get to choose the terms the survey writer uses. Of course more people would define themselves as 'moderate' as that seems more in line with rational discourse and the duties of a professor.

In general, information on professors’ political and ideological leanings tends to be scarce. But a new study of the social and political views of American professors by Neil Gross at the University of British Columbia and Solon Simmons at George Mason University found that the notion of a generational divide is more than a glancing impression. “Self-described liberals are most common within the ranks of those professors aged 50-64, who were teenagers or young adults in the 1960s,” they wrote, making up just under 50 percent. At the same time, the youngest group, ages 26 to 35, contains the highest percentage of moderates, some 60 percent, and the lowest percentage of liberals, just under a third.

When it comes to those who consider themselves “liberal activists,” 17.2 percent of the 50-64 age group take up the banner compared with only 1.3 percent of professors 35 and younger.

The reporter wonders what this is all due to? Encroaching corporate forces seem to be the most to blame for the new conservatism on campus.

Gerald Graff does not see such a drastic change Gerald Graff, president of the Modern Language Association and author of the 1992 book “Beyond the Culture Wars,” is more skeptical, saying he hasn’t seen evidence of change at the University of Illinois in Chicago, where he teaches English. “You’d think that the further we get away from the ’60s, where a lot of our political attitudes are nurtured, there would be,” he said, “but I have to say it doesn’t seem to be happening.”

What is your impression--major change--or not much? What did the boomers add to the academic conversations--we are told in the article--it was their ability to look at large social forces and develop theories around them--as opposed to today's interest in building out (but not very far I would argue) from small empirical studies--lets start a discussion on this in the News wiki..

Ray Davis Announces New Canadian /US Tour

2008-06-27T10:16:00.000-07:00

Ray Davies has announced plans for a North American tour focusing on his latest solo album Working Man’s Café.

Ray Davis is something of a legend--a new appreciation for the Kinks and their artistry is making it possible for Ray Davis the Kinks legendary singer songwriter to play a series of acoustic shows, beginning on the July 11 in Ottawa. According to the UK's Uncut

After performing three shows in Canada he will move down the coast to Oregon and Washington concluding the tour in California on July 22.

The tour dates are:
Ottawa, ON Cisco Ottawa Bluesfest (July 11)
Winnipeg, MB Winnipeg Folk Festival (13)
Calgary, AB Jack Singer Hall (14)
Edmonton, AB Francis Winspear Centre for Music (15)
Portland, OR Crystal Ballroom (18)
Seattle, WA Showbox SoDo (19)
Anaheim, CA The Grove of Anaheim (22)

New BabyBoom Review Companion Website to this Blog Gets Launched

2008-06-25T19:05:00.000-07:00

The Press Release issued today includes the following

Today Baby Boom Review was launched as a new social networking site with the goal to start fighting back the media criticism that places babyboomers on the defensive when they start to talk about their legacy. "We want to celebrate the books, movies and music of the sixties in particular" says co-founder and lifelong educator Laurence Peters who began the website with his brother, Mike Peters.

"We want to start a generational conversation--one grounded on our appreciation of the books media and unique culture of the period" commented Dr. Peters.

With the use of wiki enabled discussions the brothers hope that the conversation will flow naturally --focused on the great work of the era.

"it will all help us sort out what will last and what deserves to be forgotten--better we do it as boomers than leave it to others who may not understand the context of the times when the stuff was set down." says Mike Peters, a London based teacher and lecturer who will provide a UK perspective on the times.

To start a conversation just click on one of the buttons "Books, Albums, Movies" and you are immediately sent to a wiki where you can start the discussion.

We hope that these wiki conversations will lead to published collections of articles and essays --right now we have a plan to produce a unque Best of BabyBoomReview Annual Collection. "This I believe is a unique innovation in the blog and wiki world--a way that everyone can see a way to evolve their expressions into a more permanent form-benefiting from the input they receive in the wiki forum." says Dr Peters a former college writing teacher himself and author.

Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez--brother!

Obama is a Dylan Fan--Likes to Listen to Maggies Farm

2008-06-25T18:59:00.001-07:00

Now the test of who you vote for is not necessarily their views on the issues --but their musical tastes. The question we will shortly be asking of all candidates is the one AP asked Obama--"What's On Your i-Pod?" It turns out that predictably Obama's taste is ecletic

The Illinois senator's playlist contains these musicians, along with about 30 songs from Dylan and the singer's "Blood on the Tracks" album. Jazz legends Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Charlie Parker are also in the mix.

"Actually, one of my favorites during the political season is 'Maggie's Farm,' " Obama said of one of Dylan's tracks. "It speaks to me as I listen to some of the political rhetoric..n the song, Dylan sings about trying be himself, "but everybody wants you to be just like them.."

Obama also likes Springsteen. A study will no doubt be done soon of all Presidential candidates and their musical tastes..

George Carlin dead at 71--Change Agent for a New Kind of Comedy

2008-06-25T18:54:00.001-07:00

Richard Zoglin the Time magazine writer has some insightful things to say about Carlin's career in reference to the Boomer era in an interview he gave to Pacifica Radio's Amy Goodman

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about Geroge Carlin, how his style evolved, who he was.

RICHARD ZOGLIN: Well, in the late ’60s, when this country really went through a cultural revolution, you know, he was the guy, I think, who brought stand-up comedy into that cultural revolution. I mean, he was short-haired comic, sort of skinny-tie guy, who did sort of straight-laced material on the Ed Sullivan Show. He looked around in the late ’60s, and, you know, he was hanging out with musicians, he was singing with the protest movement, and he was seeing what was happening. And he decided he was doing material for the enemy. He wanted to talk to a different audience, the college audience. He wanted to go back into the coffee houses. And this was a radical thing for a guy to do with a successful career. So he started all over again, and he started doing material that really reflected the attitudes of that counterculture generation

Dylan about to come out with new album!

2008-06-25T18:46:00.000-07:00

According to Neil McCormick who blogs for London's Daily Telegraph, Dylan is about to come out a new CD!
Modern Times as McCormick notes was two years ago.
If McCormick's sources are right-we won't have too long to wait--
the tapes are somewhere in the bowels of London' SonyBMG studios.
Quite a scoop!

BabyBoom Review News Items

2008-06-24T07:55:00.001-07:00

The kind of discussion we are hoping for here is to reflect on what leading boomers are doing, new trends that are making the boomers either nervous or happy about their situation and anything you find funny or interesting in the world that you think of interest to boomers. Some for examples follow:

Three items caught my attention today:

1. The Woodstock Museum opened--controversial and interesting landmark in our view of this event and this period judging by some of the pre-opening coverage that involved Senator Hillary Clinton's move to find federal money to fund the new building.

2.Dylan and his son in the Barack camp.

3.An unexpected interest in Dylan Thomas life--from Mick Jagger of all people.

______________

First the Woodstock Museum:

Yesterday--June 20, 2008 the Woodstock museum opened:

Woodstock Museum opens

"This was the museum, after all, that sparked campaign-season digs from Republicans last year after Hillary Rodham Clinton tried to help earmark $1 million for the museum. Visitors can watch videos of conservative critics skewering Woodstock, but fair warning: listening to Reagan administration Attorney General Edwin Meese describe the ’60s as a decade of self-indulgence on the way out the door might be a buzzkill.

People who were there, and remember it, can step up to a microphone to record their own experiences for posterity.

Visitors wishing to see the main stage area and imagine what the grassy hillside looked like loaded with hippies can drive down the hill from the museum and park by a marker that has been the main historical attraction here for years.

On a recent day as workers put finishing touches on the museum, Jens Haulund drove his minivan from Trumbull, Conn., to visit the marker with two young visitors from Europe. Haulund came to the United States from Denmark in 1996, and as his daughter climbed on the monument he talked about how as a young man, the Woodstock message of peace and love resonated across the Atlantic.

“It’s one of the main reasons I came to the U.S.,” he said."

_________________

New interest in Dylan Thomas's life

See the Guardian Film Blog for the article in full but the details sound intriguing

"Why the Dylan Thomas, dead for 55 years, still continues to fascinate. And, moreover, fascinate the famous to an unusual degree. If a rock star, or indeed a film star, has heard of a poet, then that poet is going to be Dylan Thomas.

Mick Jagger, for instance, owns the rights to his 1939 collection, The Map of Love, and made John Maybury, director of The Edge of Love (about Dylan Thomas's relationship with his wife Caitlin and Vera Phillips) remove everything from that book that had been in the film, under pain of legal action. For Jagger intends to make his own film about the poet."
____________________________________________
The Dylan family seems to be backing Obama. It seems young Jakob--was responsible for the Yes We Can video that wowed voters in the primaries and his old man was pleased with the work.

2008-06-19T07:46:00.000-07:00

New interest in Dylan Thomas's life --Jagger's surprising interest.

The Dylan family seems to be backing Obama
http://rogovoy.com/news1589.html

Woodstock Museum opens

"This was the museum, after all, that sparked campaign-season digs from Republicans last year after Hillary Rodham Clinton tried to help earmark $1 million for the museum. Visitors can watch videos of conservative critics skewering Woodstock, but fair warning: listening to Reagan administration Attorney General Edwin Meese describe the ’60s as a decade of self-indulgence on the way out the door might be a buzzkill.

People who were there, and remember it, can step up to a microphone to record their own experiences for posterity.

Visitors wishing to see the main stage area and imagine what the grassy hillside looked like loaded with hippies can drive down the hill from the museum and park by a marker that has been the main historical attraction here for years.

On a recent day as workers put finishing touches on the museum, Jens Haulund drove his minivan from Trumbull, Conn., to visit the marker with two young visitors from Europe. Haulund came to the United States from Denmark in 1996, and as his daughter climbed on the monument he talked about how as a young man, the Woodstock message of peace and love resonated across the Atlantic.

“It’s one of the main reasons I came to the U.S.,” he said."

Boomer Items Worthy of Note

2008-06-19T07:33:00.000-07:00

Leonard Cohen's concert in Manchester.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/live_reviews/article4161404.ece

Vanishing American blog has a few good references to a Hitchens piece and some other quite intellectual content about the boomer contribution. Vanishing American seems of the view that the boomers took a few wrong turns--but does not explain clearly enough for this readers' satisfaction as to why he believes that to be the case.

Boomer Related Blogs to Read

2008-06-03T12:44:00.000-07:00

In our continuing series of blogs to read –it is worth checking out Brian Appleyards’. As well as being Sunday Times' cultural critic he is a prolific author and radio and TV personality--a sort of new generation Clive James. His blog Appleyard’s Thought Experiments: The Blog is as its name implies a highly intellectual affair but nonetheless highly readable and well organized. For those who don’t regularly read his Sunday Times columns they are collected here in the form of selected articles.

He notes in his excellent piece Reassessing the 1970s that it is only now that decade best remembered for bad Abba records and flared jeans is being remembered as a precursor for our current age because a “second wave” of boomers are coming of age. As he writes:

. In part, this is a matter of simple chronology. The first wave of baby-boomers, who came of age in the 1960s, have had their say, and now it’s time for the second wave – who, in Haslam’s terms, “arrived too late” – to have theirs.

One can dispute the way he connects the “supreme” 1970s movie Chinatown with the recently released There Will Be Blood (“both involve dark forces, a sinister tycoon, a precious resource – water or oil – and a bleak, violent, hopeless conclusion), or his conclusion that the BBC series Life on Mars was the “best British television series of recent years” , but be fascinated by his deeper reflections on the era. These reflections were fueled by his conversations with Bruce Schulman, professor of history at Boston University, who informs him that “the shape of contemporary America was born in the crucible of the 1970s”. In his book The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics, he speaks of “the long 1970s”, lasting from 1968 to 1984. From 1968, he argues in his book the postwar settlement began to crumble. In politics, the leftish consensus, known as Butskellism in Britain, was proving incapable of adapting to the demands of affluence. The hyper-individualism that was the flip side of 1960s idealism was undermining the communality of the old consensus. The power of the liberal, consensual northeastern American intellectuals was undermined by the new assertiveness of the southern “sunbelt”.” The shocks of terrorism in the form of Black September, the IRA and the kidnapping of Patty Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army led to a culture that was far more individualistic and less community centered –a mood that fed the art of the period as he shows in the work of David Hockney as well as the movies of the time “Scorsese’s films Mean Streets and Taxi Driver showed an individualistic, Hobbesian war of all against all as the systems and laws of the old consensus collapsed. Coppola’s Apocalypse Now threatened the defeat of a demoralised West.”

Good provocative wide ranging ideas that we like on this blog—that will hopefully lead to equally interesting discussions.

Leonard Cohen at 70 and His Continuing Appeal to Boomers

2008-05-30T09:08:00.000-07:00

Leonard Cohen is not technically a baby boomer –he just missed the wave of this famous demographic wave. Born in 1938 he is now the grand old man of 70 and looks the part of a wise old sage enough for a documentary to be made about him recently, “I’m Your Man” featuring Bono everyone’s favorite global conscience pricker and a cast of the younger generation of his admirers—most notably Nick Cave and RufusWainwright. But Cohen has made his impact on boomers in more subtle ways than say someone like Dylan, who at 67 can be entitled to the crown boomer popular music artist in chief. Cohen is what we listened to in the 1970s and 1980s as the hope of free love and peace romance faded. The rise of Reaganism, the murder of John Lennon, the corporate takeover of youth culture gave us all some very bad days—not that Cohen’s music was the only solace, but it was good to know that the old man of song was still being faithful to his lonely muse, even when Dylan was turning to Jesus.

What was it about Cohen’s melancholy that struck such a chord for boomers? His songs are often about betrayal and loss—beautifully expressed as with the Famous Blue Raincoat—how can we not be moved by the dark chords that open that great song

It’s four in the morning, the end of December
I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better
New York is cold, but I like where I’m living
There’s music on Clinton Street all through the evening.

His personae is akin to Dylan wishing his former lover well—in songs like “Girl From the North Country”—but he knows something about the bleakness in her heart that Dylan did not suspect about his lovers

I hear that you’re building your little house deep in the desert
You’re living for nothing now,
I hope you’re keeping some kind of record.

The song though turns out not to be about either of them but the person who deserted both of them

She sends her regards.
And what can I tell you my brother, my killer
What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you
I’m glad you stood in my way.

Dylan of the early and middle period at least could not go near these kind of complex emotions. Emotions that seem always shadowed by a faint masochism—an early theme in Cohen and one that seems to be part of a willingness to be naked, vulnerable in a shocking way akin to the picture of the naked Lennon and Ono taken by Annie Lebowitz as one of the most iconic Rolling Stone covers.

Cohen is always after what it means to be in despair –to be absolutely naked –and alone-and therefore religion with its huge weight of language imagery is always playing near or at a distance from his lyrics. That sense of the sacred as never far from the personal if not the profane maybe part of the reason boomers are drawn to his lyrics—because while a mass of us rebelled from organized religion and its power to suppress individuality Cohen’s insistence that the iconography still had meaning (as in his great anthem to love in “Hallelujah") a meaning that we were free to interpret in a personal way gave his songs a Biblical resonance that Dylan had once aspired to in a song like “A Hard Rain is Gonna Fall” and returned to again in “Every Grain of Sand.” You don’t need to be a believer he seems to be saying in “Hallelujah” to understand the spiritual nature of the world,

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

The man seemed not to be posing—as Dylan who changed his image and style every decade might be accused of –Cohen’s theme of finding meaning through suffering and failed love was there from the beginning. Cohen confirms in a recent BBC interview that he actually met with Bob Dylan, - “a lovely afternoon just of shop-talk” but was careful to note the difference in the time it takes Dylan to compose his songs as opposed to the time it takes Cohen – two years for “Hallelujah” as against fifteen minutes for one of Dylan`s songs. The boomers who are for the most part re-discovering him today are returning partly because of nostalgia for a bygone era—but also they are now ready for the denser material that Cohen had created than the typical pop lyric of their youth. They were also ready for a further challenge—now that they had passed on their love for artists like the Beatles and the Stones was it not time to try to pass on a few other greats?

It was no surprise that while boomers were getting rich—Cohen was shedding his wealth—having been defrauded $5 million dollars by an agent he trusted while he sojourning during some of this period in a Buddhist Monastery. It seems that the period spent in the monastery—a period he now sees as a kind of failure—was the spur for the latest reintroduction of Cohen. Bono and others in the pop fraternity were clearly concerned that the loss of Cohen’s nest egg would pauperize the singer, which might explain Bono’s hyped praise for the singer—comparing him a few times to Keats and Byron. The fact that "I’m Your Man" may disappoint boomers and their children –with the new generation of singers like Cave and Wainwright only supplying us with hints of the singers’ power and Cohen equally only a few glimpses into his creative drive, should not be seen as too much of a setback. Cohen is now being talked about again by the people who cared for him back in their youth and the upcoming world tour—a massive challenge for any boomer is being taken on by this septuagenarian although as he admits in Tower of Song whose friends are gone and whose hair has turned grey still

“ache(s) in the places where I used to play”
And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on
I'm just paying my rent every day”

As optimistic and as life affirming as Leonard Cohen can get in person and in any lyric.

Nixonland

2008-05-28T17:30:00.000-07:00

Nixon continues to haunt the boomers. He offers those who grew up in the sixties a core reason to revolt against his callow heartless amorality. Just as he nursed insane grudges against defenseless individuals even to the point of resorting to criminal behavior he continued to expand the cruel and inhumane VietNam war after promising using his "secret plan" to end it. As Frank makes clear that revolt was grist to the Nixon mill--he thrived on it as he knew his political base --the great "silent majority"-fearful of losing power to minorities and women were looking for a leader to preserve their sense of themselves. They were the ones that appreciated the code word "law and order" as they ran from the central cities and inner suburbs to discover ever new areas to re-create their 1950s nirvanas.

It was fitting that on his enemies list was John Lennon as well as a host of other boomer intellectuals and artists--as if in the depths of his inner personae he was also waging a deeper war against anyone who struggled towards wholeness and authenticity. Thomas Frank has already distingushed himself by writing one of the best recent books of our political analysis-What's the Matter with Kansas--and in his review of Rick Perlstein's Nixonland for the Wall Street Journal he writes that Nixon was the "The politician who fashioned a permanent Republican parable out of the decade's antagonisms was Richard Nixon. The man was born for the backlash." What Nixon mastered and became his road to political power, according to Perlstein was the revenge of the a resolutely indeterminate class who felt left out of the sixties cultural revolution leaving them isolated and insecure. In college he started a society he termed the "The Orthogonians" The term was as Frank describes it..."a made-up name that might well have meant, "the squares." Orthogonians weren't working-class, exactly, but nevertheless there was a real authenticity to their revolt against the glamorous ones – the "Franklins" – who lorded it over them. Recruiting like-minded Orthogonians and fueling their grievances, Mr. Perlstein writes, became the signature maneuver of Nixon's career, from the days of Alger Hiss all the way to the White House."

Frank's column is worth reading for the way he brings the Nixon achievement up to date by suggesting that the war between the elites and the rest of us is something that continues to fuel our politics in ways that may seem non obvious. Frank writes,

"Backlash is a chronic condition now, and one of the reasons is that hipness is chronic, too. The '60s culture that infuriated Nixon and his followers is everywhere today, because hipness and "revolution" have become a default mode of corporate speech. Youth had nothing to do with it: It happened thanks to the need for ever-accelerating novelty, reverence for a supposedly enlightened cyber-vanguard, and the great god "creativity.""

Frank gives what he terms a "typical example":

"Six years ago, when Business Week wanted to report that the South Korean economy was doing well, it ran a cover story proclaiming not that Korea was "Prosperous," or "Recovering," but that the country was "Cool," a concept it illustrated with a pair of young hipsters hanging out on the main drag of their university neighborhood."

Bringing Frank to some sobering conclusions about our current plight;

Yes, this culture is elitist. Just walk down the aisles of your local, union-free organic grocery, unutterably cool but way beyond your price range. Or stroll through the most upscale shopping district of your city, where you might notice the fake-shattered windows favored by one national retailer, evidently trying for that '60s look while not losing any stock to actual looters.

Yes, it's offensive, too. It's meant to be that way, to remind you always that you are not hot; that you've bought the wrong brand; that the vanguard is way ahead of you; that, with your organization-man craving for health benefits or job security, you probably need to be fired.

That is as close as anyone in recent memory has come to tracing the contortions of our current idiotic politics --with some large blame pointing back like the fingerprints on that Watergate door so many decades ago to the trickster in chief.

Robert Harris Ghost-Tony Blair redux

2008-05-27T10:30:00.000-07:00

Tony Blair has entered contemporary fiction with a bang in this recent British thriller by the master story teller Robert Harris. He made of course a passing entrance in Ian McEwans' Saturday where a brief glimpse of him pretending to smile and care about some individual he was shaking hands with at the Tate Art Gallery was intended to confirm the impression of the empty suit inhabited by a skilled actor.

Robert Harris does not dispute McEwans' basic insight--but takes it further--much further--not to spoil it for readers but this highly accomplished babyboomer is reduced to a pretty accomplished puppet of a foreign power (no prizes for guessing which).

The fun is seeing how well Harris manages to (temporarily at least) convince us of the possibility and to entertain us with his amazing ability to keep his cool in situations that would alarm even the best of us. In some senses the book is more a comedy than a thriller although it has a few Agatha Christie like turns--when the book does not have its spotlight on Adam Lang-the Tony Blair character it reverts to being somewhat wooden --but as soon as Adam and to some extent his co-conspiring spouse appears--the novel becomes remarkably gripping.

What are we to make of this portrait of perhaps one of the top ten babyboomers we have -the silver tongued two term PM who dominated UK politics for more than a decade and ascended the world stage with his confident speeches that enabled the Bush doctrine of preemptive attack to be taken a lot more seriously by the liberal media in particular than if Bush was the one who had to "mis-articulate" it?

The portrait is clearly an over-reaction even a caricature--but does well to help illuminate the quality that any highly successful boomer must have--ability to perform well in front of a camera. This is a trait that Mr. Blair shared with his US counterpart Bill Clinton--both of them have a consumate ability to use TV to persuade. This gives them both remarkable powers--Harris helps us examine what happens to the inner person if those powers are not balanced by some moral compass, or even if they discover their moral core has atrophied completely. Boomers can identify with this problem well---after all were we not all brought up in the age of television--we know its capabilities and power in a way no other generation has. Add to this those skill Blair and Clinton in particular acquired as a result of their legal training. Both men have shown us their nimble skill in debate and argumentation with TV --in a way that even Nixon could not have managed as well.

Readers--do you agree with my assessment of the Harris novel--am I taking it too seriously regarding the babyboom theme--if there is one --and is there such a thing as a babyboom novel yet?