VH-1's I Loathe The 60's

Well, they adore it; the rest of us hate it. Johnny Triangles digests (with lots of video, including of Ronald Reagan) VH-1's The Drug Years, featuring a lot of people who just can't get over the amazing fact that when they were in college and no families or financial obligations they could get laid a lot and go to a lot of concerts and smoke a lot of pot.

This is a glimpse of the way America could be, the idiot interviewees keep saying.

No, moron. This is the way America was, is, and always will be, at least for 18-21 year olds.

And when I became an adult, I put away childish things.

Too bad so many just can't seem to get over it.

The 70s is portrayed as an era when mainstream America "misinterpreted" the lofty messages and ideals of the 60s radicals and just used drugs minus the enlightened mindset and goals of the hippies. People in the 70s just used drugs for narcissism and hedonism apparently, while in the hands of the hippies drugs were tools to save the world. To this I say "bullshit." Drugs were just as much about narcissism and hedonism in the 60s as they were in the 70s, the only difference was that the users in the 70s were unpretentious and honest enough to be real about it and not dress it up with preachy sermonizing and new age pseudointellectual blather. What kind of "revolution" leaves the existing power structure intact at the end of the day? That's not a revolution at all. Everything they supposedly rebelled against is still intact, and even more hypocritically, the rebels joined the establishment once it was time to make some money and pay some bills. Revolution, my ass. Eat a dick.

And of course the 80s are despised as the Decade of Greed and Izod, supposedly because those are the years when idealism turned to cynicism.

Johnny Triangles thinks the Woodstockers just hate the 80s because that was the decade they got old and couldn't pick up college-age hippie chicks anymore.

I think his theory is closer to the mark.

posted by Ace at 01:24 PM

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