Monday, May 12, 2008
How much blame can the '60s take? Plus: Scantily clad women have replaced Joe Camel; Japanese girls shouldn't encourage panty freaks.
Feb 14, 2000 | Himmelfarb vs. the '60s
BY CHARLES TAYLOR
(02/09/00)
Bravo, Charles Taylor! Thank you for a well-thought-out essay on another of the books that seems to appear with the inevitability of liver spots whenever a conservative writer reaches a certain age.
Himmelfarb's book raises a serious question that has troubled me for some time. I have just published my first academic book. Before it was accepted, three qualified scholars read the manuscript, pointing out errors of logic, suggesting the need for more verification and indicating parts that simply needed to be rewritten because the thread of the argument got tangled. Does a person like Himmelfarb reach a certain point in his or her career when this sort of peer review ceases, like teaching observation of non-tenured faculty?
-- Thomas Barran
Both conservatives and liberals make themselves ridiculous because both make the mistake of treating the '60s as the most crucial decade of the century. Teenagers and college kids weren't running the country in the 1960s, middle-aged men were. The '30s and '40s made the world we live in.
A generation of young men, having grown up in the Depression, was put into uniform and marched off to war. Hundreds of thousands of them were killed and wounded, all the rest were shell-shocked. The survivors were brought home, stuffed into gray flannel suits, sent to work as yes-men in a resurgent corporate-consumerist soul-devouring culture, convinced to raise their families in suburban ticky-tacky prisons, and then forbidden to talk about the most important experiences of their lives.
The divorce rate began to rise, drugs entered the cultural mainstream, sex became a national obsession, and fathers began abandoning their children, physically or emotionally in the late 1940s and early '50s. All the things Himmelfarb blames on the children of these war-haunted men began when the "Greatest Generation" came limping home.
-- David Reilly
Can't we ever get past this ridiculous notion that we as a nation dropped off the moral radar screen after the 1960s? And that before then we were a beacon of unimpeachable rectitude? Not only is this view based on denial, fear and ignorance, I also can't help thinking that it is oh-so-slightly racist: ask a black man or woman which time they would prefer to live in, the past or the present. Could Himmelfarb's objection to the socio-cultural-political shift have to do with "those people" having the nerve to demand simple human rights?
Afraid to live, afraid to love, afraid to think, poor Gertrude wants to have life spoon-fed to her. Good luck to her. The rest of us will carry on, questioning authority when necessary, indulging our private proclivities with any and all consenting partners and trying to navigate the thorny issues contemporary existence throws our way (divorce, abortion, violence, corruption) one day at a time, according to requirements of our own individual beliefs.
-- Ken Munch
It seems Charles Taylor is guilty of exactly the same crime of which he accuses Ms. Himmelfarb. Anyone who begins by saying:
"Having stuck only the daintiest toe into the waters of her erudition ... I hope her other work does something to justify her repute."
And concludes by saying:
"If you have no experience of the subject at hand, the smart thing to do is shut the hell up."
is a hypocrite, an idiot, or both.
-- Greg Ludvik
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