The Boomer Legacy: Everything Sucks

Dallasblog.com | Caroline Walker:

“How could we have gone from Horatio Alger to Michael Moore in the span of a single generation? Because by now the guiding principle enshrined by Boomers forty years ago at San Francisco’s 'Summer of Love' – Challenge Authority! – has so thoroughly infiltrated every American institution and art form that no one remembers anymore when it wasn’t the dominant worldview.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

More whining by Caroline Walker. The Boomer Legacy is divided. There were the flower children from the Summer of Love, the vanguard of the liberal and progressive culture of the second half of the twentieth century. Then there were the uptight, offended bluenoses, the conservatives who today write columns for Dallas Blog about how Everything Sucks. The Boomers encompass both types.

By the way, Michael Moore may not be today's Horatio Alger, although he has risen from a working class background to become a very successful independent filmmaker. No, he's more like today's Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Upton Sinclair or Frank Norris — muckrakers who exposed corruption, scandals and inhuman conditions for the poor and working class. "Challenge Authority!" is a guiding principle for every generation faced with great injustice. The Caroline Walkers of long ago had nothing good to say about that era's muckrakers, either.

P.S. Tom Pauken has blocked me from commenting on Dallas Blog itself. Maybe he thinks I suck.