From The Editor |
As I write this, Our Glorious President And Moral Leader of the Western World is being questioned by Kenneth Starr and his minions. We’ve been inundated by eager newscasters, breathless talk show hosts, and callers saying, "He hasn’t done anything any President since Roosevelt hasn’t done."
Which begs the question, which is, the Presidency is an office to which we aspire. That means it’s an office of high stature, one which we look up to, not one in which the holder appeals to our basest instincts. (And let me say here, I voted for him, so … )
… it’s all my fault. At least, that’s what my Beloved Spouse says: my generation is the one which tore down the bastions of respectability, demanded that "it all hang out," sneered at politeness as "just another example of the bourgeois mentality and fakery that the over-30 generation is prey to," demanded our right to say four-letter words in public, discarded grammar and memorization because "what we were saying was more important than how it was said;" advocated "situational ethics" because there was no absolute right and wrong …
So now we’ve got road rage; movies that can’t get through 90 minutes without a dozen obscenities; a crop of teachers who can’t pass basic skills tests … and Clinton.
This isn’t quite the legacy we had in mind when we put flowers in the gun barrels of the National Guard.
I was in a clothing store catering to teens last week, filled with pounding music, lots of tattoos and pierced body parts, and jeans containing more fabric than my couch slipcovers. One of the little sales clerks started talking to me and asked me about the 60’s – what we really felt. And I told her, the one thing that unified us all was that we really believed. We really thought that loving other people, being "true to our feelings", "doing our own thing" would change the world.
But instead of culminating in the highest of our aspirations, it looks like we’re stuck with the dregs.
Our generation did it. Now, unfortunately, it’s up to our kids to clean it up. But they don’t even know what a clean room looks like.