The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik writes:
Doug, it’s ALWAYS about the Hippies. ALWAYS, FUCKING ALWAYS. There’s nothing in this country you can’t blame on hippies and get away with it seems, because Americans can’t suffer a hippie to live.
I don’t think EVERYTHING can be blamed on hippies, there are also things can better be blamed on strapping young bucks. Though it’s also true that it was hippie social welfare programs that turned all the strapping young bucks into moochers and looters.
Sometimes I wonder, though, who will be blamed for everything when no one can remember hippies anymore. Any ideas? I have noticed a lot of inexplicable hate towards hipsters (my own two cents here: I do dislike hipster music, but I like hipster food, coffee, and cocktails), but I’m not sure they’ll ever make such great scapegoats.
fasteddie9318
When the hippies no longer exist, society will need to invent them.
jl
I had to listen to this DFH bashing crud when I was in grade school and jr high. Thanks, my older sibling DFHs, who primed my teachers with rage and resentment against all youth.
So, I have zero patience for it.
And David Brooks and go to heck (civility clause).
Violet
Brown people
Women
The French
Atheists
Muslims
Villago Delenda Est
Well, it’s just not politically correct to blame clean shaven, close cropped men in uniform for these sorts of things.
It is, however, very politically correct to blame long haired, bearded skinny white guys dressed in old field jackets for it.
Along with aforementioned young bucks who SHOULD be out in the fields totin’ bales, gosh darn it.
Gex
the backlash will switch to those who are “politically correct.” You hear it all the time. People complain about the idea of not being balls to the wall offensive about others, and the sappy liberal bullshit behind acting as though others matter.
birthmarker
Was the Depression blamed on the Flappers? Just wondering….
tweez
There is TREMENDOUS, white-hot hatred of hippies out there, even among staunch liberals. Many experience hippies as being smug whiners who are deeply un-serious, and lazy.
I think hippies are well-meaning, somewhat naive, and mostly harmless. Usually they’re generous and welcoming to all sorts of people as well.
Why they’re so popular a punching-bag, I don’t know.
birthmarker
@Gex: This is true, esp. amongst Rush listeners, I have noticed…
WereBear
I lurve me some hippies! While I was born too late, I credit them with stuff like environmental awareness, sustainable earth management, the freedom to wear clothing and hairstyles to suit oneself, and mixing orange and green.
What’s a few avocado shag rugs between friends.
Speaking of which, the OWS has won in court. They’re coming back!
C Nelson Reilly
The Beatniks started this shit
jibeaux
immigrants are classic scapegoats…
I think of hipsters as mostly fun to tease, because there are things that are good because they are good (coffee, food, cocktails) and there are things that are good in an ironic way, which is where it’s fun to tease. I’m thinking of websites I’ve seen like this one, and then there was one kind of like, Dads are the original hipsters. Which is so true — my dad had the coke-bottle glasses and the PBR in a can, like, forty years ago.
BGinCHI
Hipsters can only be blamed for riding interesting bicycles.
So no, they won’t do for the next incarnation of Commies (which is what Hippies were the next iteration of).
jake the snake
Is Boomer Bashing a subcategory of hippie punching, or vice versa?
Walter Russell Mead ( I refuse to link, if you want a abuse yourself, go find it) has a long, mostly incoherent rant blaming boomers for everything but jock itch.
Brachiator
Hell, I’ll go further. People like to give hippies credit for shit when they were just the tail end of a long tradition of activism.
The worst hippies were little more than the residue of the Beat movement. Remember Beatnicks, anyone? Anyone? Like Maynard G Krebs on the ancient tv show The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis?
Beatnicks begat hippies, who begat slackers (Sean Penn’s Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
But none of this has anything to do with the long tradition of people who put their butts on the line trying to bring a little justice. And who always get blamed and belittled by reactionaries.
Morbo
Hollywood. Something like 1/3 of young people say Hollywood doesn’t agree with their values. I was floored by this, as I thought that was an attitude reserved to grandparents.
Shlemizel
you are conflating hippies and hipsters – 2 very different things.
Hippies were the flower children of the 60s – peace, love & understanding.
Hipsters are folks who try so hard to be different, to be ahead of the wave. Once something becomes cool they hate it & talk about how great it used to be.
shortstop
Can’t a communist get a little love? This is a mighty exclusive axis of evil you’re running, especially when you consider that commies are the ones who made the strapping young bucks get so uppity with their marches and lunch counter shenanigans and whatnot.
Gex
Frankly, I believe hipsters is a phantom demo. Everyone complains and jokes about hipsters. Even people I would deem hipsters. No one thinks they are a hipster. People in big pants on a unicycle with waxed mustaches make fun of hipsters. I’m not sure how it will all play out.
e_anders
Yupsters will be this country’s saviours.
Elizabelle
Do you think Bloomberg and the NYPD particularly chose this time because cable and the networks are flapping 24/7 about Penn State/Sandusky/last night’s NBC interview?
I mean, how convenient.
Not that our liberal media would be covering OWS that much anyhoo, but they’re absolutely salivating over the ugliness of the Sandusky case.
Yutsano
@Violet: You fergot teh ghey. That particular social war will go on for quite some time.
Ahasuerus
Interesting. The real-live actual hippies I remember were all over-privileged caucasian 20-somethings back in the mid-60s to early 70s. Doing the math, they would be in their late 60s to early 80s today. Isn’t that the core of the GOP teabagger contingent? If so, perhaps it isn’t too far off to blame the actual DFHs for our problems.
Tractarian
Your premise is flawed. Real Murkins will never forget the hippies and the abject destruction they have wrought upon this great nation. In fact, with the passage of time, the legend of the evil Hippie will no doubt grow larger and larger. By the 2050s, most school textbooks will state that Hippies caused the Black Death, the Inquisition, the Great Depression, and 9/11.
eemom
You’re right, one post was TOTALLY not enough for this simpering idiocy. We really needed another, completely redundant one.
Does it ever occur to you that everyone in the world does NOT hang on David Brooks’ every word like you do?
chopper
neo-hippies.
Suffern ACE
@Gex: I did have a conversation with a self-proclaimed hipster. Well, it wasn’t much of a conversation. More like “Aren’t you a little far from Williamsburg to be a hipster?” followed by a whole lot invectives hurled back against me. I guess if you are going to own the identify with the label that much, there must be a demographic to support it.
Brachiator
@Shlemizel:
Hipsters are the amoral, materialistic spiritual spawn of beatniks.
Gex
@Yutsano: Agreed. It seems like anti-gay sentiment might die out with the 65+ generation, but the majority of Christian denominations in the US are doing all they can to perpetuate it. And there are plenty of virulently homophobic people under 65.
We don’t have the ability to neutralize the issue by demographic gains like other punching bag demos.
Ben JB
@jibeaux: Yeah, before it was hippies/strapping young bucks, the immigrant/outside agitator meme was strong. In other words, before hippies, it was Catholics, etc. There’s always someone to punch.
And if you can’t find some minority to punch, you can always try blaming things on the mob, the unruly, the rabble. (Though you can sometimes try to rehabilitate the rabble into knowing their place if you can target the rabble rouser–that outside agitator again.)
Gex
@Suffern ACE: Really?! Wow. Who knew they were such mean mofos. This is the first I’ve heard of anyone claiming the label.
I always thought, and it may be true, that as soon as a hipster realizes they are a hipster, they are no longer a hipster. If he wants to be a hipster, then he’s clearly a poseur.
DougJ
@eemom:
At the meet up, many people told me that I should write about Bobo even more. I am not kidding.
Mike G
Repukes are still hurling ‘commie’ insults at people, when communism as a significant worldwide political force hasn’t existed for two decades. It’s a lizard-brain hurled insult — critiquing its inaccuracy doesn’t prompt the lizard to correct himself.
Violet
@Yutsano:
Oh, yeah. Teh gheys. It wasn’t meant to be a complete list. Just a start.
But DougJ, keep in mind that ALL of the categories I listed are even in existence because of the Hippies.
Brown people — would be working in the fields and still not having any rights to vote if it weren’t for the Hippies
Women — Would be in barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, certainly not out working and voting and generally being independent if it weren’t for those damned Hippies.
The French — well, okay, maybe the French aren’t all the fault of the DFH’s, but their cheese-eating surrender monkeys so they’re full of DFHs anyway.
Atheists — there wouldn’t be any atheists if it weren’t for DFHs
Muslims — would all be back in Muslimia if it weren’t for DFH and their multicultural crap.
And of course Teh Gheys wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for DFHs and their making everyone homosexual.
shortstop
@Gex: That’s because you’re a shiftless slacker, another source of America’s problems. If you had any get-up-and-go, you’d be busy recruiting our children for your gay army.
cat
@WereBear:
Actually thats from this morning and temporary. So temporary they just ignored it.
They are having a more ‘credible’ hearing this afternoon.
Gex
@Violet: The complete list is impossible, because they will always seek and find a scapegoat.
John M. Burt
Why on Earth would they ever stop blaming hippies? They will probably be blaming imaginary hippies fifty years from now.
Willard
I would like to nominate the lazy union worker that makes $63/hr to the list of mythical right wing scapegoats.
rob!
If you read the comments section of almost any right wing blog (something I don’t recommend), there’s always a bunch of wingnuts that go on and on about who liberals really are, why they’re so disgusting, etc., and the descriptions sound like they come from those Time-Life documentaries about the 1960s, not from actual experience.
These young sociopaths were told by their wingnut parents how bad hippies were, and they’re just regurgitating it en masse, even though its completely, woefully out of date.
shortstop
@Mike G: It’s not so much “still” as “again.” For a good while there, “commie” was a fun retro insult to use for a minor laugh. I never predicted that the election of a black man to the presidency would bring it back into non-joking currency.
Gex
@shortstop: Trust me, we keep trying over here. Totally failing at making a gay kid by emitting gay pheromones.
Seebach
@Morbo: I’m still somewhat a young person, and Hollywood doesn’t agree with my values. Stupid blockbusters and vapid pretty people aren’t my values. The anti-female sexual pleasure stance of the MPAA sucks also.
Hollywood is frankly, too conservative.
MikeJake
Hippies are still referenced, even though they haven’t been a relevant subculture in 40 years.
So I’m guessing that in 2050, when protests and riots break out after we finally end social security to pay for an invasion of Canada or something, conservative politicians and television news anchors will dismiss the protests as nothing more than the tantrums of angry, loser juggalos.
jibeaux
@Ben JB: I think especially with illegals, it’s still pretty strong. I mean, what the hell problem was Alabama trying to solve with their papers please legislation — too much produce getting picked? The ironic thing is that legislation like that reflects such a clear belief that these people are undesirable, they’re not worthy, even their kids are undeserving of school — while the whole time the farm owners know who can pick a shitload of tomatoes in a day, and it ain’t whitey. I saw one guy quoted that Americans, if they even lasted the day, couldn’t pick a quarter of what an experienced Latino fieldhand could pick, and he talked about how unfair it was that this was called “unskilled” labor — it’s most definitely a skill, one that Americans just flat don’t have.
Chris
@Violet:
That’s Muslimbeckibeckibeckistan to you.
MagicPanda
Just in case this is an actual question (as opposed to thought-free snark)…
What we call “hippie punching” is not literally driven by hatred of hippies. It is just a general fear of cultural change, which is something that will never go away.
There is a certain segment of the population that will always romanticize the past and worry about how kids today have loose morals, etc. That is not a specific reaction to the Summer of Love. That’s just a general phenomenon of human nature, which we THINK OF as a reaction to the Summer of Love, etc.
Howlin Wolfe
Doug, I’m not sure what you mean by “hipster” as in “hipster” music, food, etc. Going back to the late 30’s and the 40’s, when the word first gained circulation, the music was definitely be-bop. Charlie Parker was a legend in his own time.
I hope that’s not the music you don’t like, or I’m gonna have to stop reading your posts, cuz then you’re EVIL!!
WereBear
@cat: Dang.
Got happy too soon.
shortstop
@Chris: Is that the same as Libya? Wait, just a second. I need to see. I’ve got a strong breeze swirling around in my brain.
Nicole
@DougJ: I KNEW I should have taken a stroll to the other end of the table…
As both hippie and hipster have as their root, the idea of someone being “hip,” I imagine there are any number of possible names for those annoying future generations of youngsters who don’t understand children are supposed to be seen and not heard: hipicans, hippish, hipoleons (the short ones, anyway), etc.
JC
No real analysis in this post, which I guess is okay.
Point 1: There were 200 people in Zucotti Park – haters are gonna hate, people in power are always gonna demonize, so you’ve got to expect it.
200 people is not a movement, it’s more of a curiosity. When thousands upon thousands – and across the country, this would then be hundreds of thousands – take to the streets in a sustained manner, and refuse to be ignored, then the situation will change.
Point 2: The media lockdown. For all the coverage given to Zucotti Park, the fact that reporters were injured kept away, the fact of the closing of the park, and throwing out of the protestors – it’s a big deal. The fact that no one is reporting on it, screams to me ACTIVE media complicity. How could it be anything else? Editors were given their marching orders, and no tv covering the event ensued.
That it is THAT COORDINATED – and that the interest can be turned off at the drop of a hat – is truly chilling. As it shows that ‘free media’ is simply a lie. 4 or 5 big media conglomerates own 90% of the media, all the BIG MEDIA, so it’s pretty easy to shut it all down.
Point 3: There still are easy ‘hippies’ to demonize, though a small small small segment of things. Heck, the SF Occupy group, lots of extremists with shaggy hair, wanting to give up capitalism completely.
It’s just the extremists on the other side – the side of the 1% – have the ACTUAL power.
Point 4: Related back to Point 1 – there simply isn’t enough pain for the masses, at this point, to get motivated enough to challenge the sophisticated coping and suppression mechanisms – both in clearing parks, and in media strategies – of those in power.
Tahrir Square suffered 30-40 years of corruption and siphoning of the countries wealth into the elite. So the pain was immense.
That type of pain isn’t here in the United States. Until it does, the 1% will get away with gaming the system.
Brachiator
@Violet:
You are joking, right?
DougJ
@Howlin Wolfe:
I love that kind of hipster music, obviously.
Mnemosyne
@MagicPanda:
I think that, like so many other things related to the Baby Boomers, the effect is exaggerated due to the large size of the cohort. So the normal social change seems even more sweeping because so many people participated and/or were affected by it.
slag
@MikeJake:
Indeed. Secular humanists and atheists are right up there in both cultural relevance and conservative bogeyman status.
4tehlulz
World Jewry will do its best to ensure that “the hippie” will be a distraction to good white patriots.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
Doug, most people TODAY can’t remember what actual hippies are anymore. It’s mostly become a boogeyman that no one remembers why they were bad, just that they were “leftist” and that they were “bad”.
@fasteddie9318:
This. That’s the whole point of “hippie punching” as I continue to point out. You’re not punching actual, patchouli-smoking, beard-smelling, dope-wearing hippies. You’re inventing a strawman hippie and punching him down not only to delegitimize a target, but every single person to his or her left, and trusting in the instinctual revulsion of those mythical, unserious “hippies” to carry the day.
Paul in KY
@Brachiator: IMO, one of Mr. Penn’s great failings in his career was that he never reprised Jeff Spicoli.
Spicoli is right up there with Ed Norton and Ernest T. as the greatest secondary character ever in TV/Movies.
SectarianSofa
@DougJ
You hipper-than-thou hipster.
gnomedad
Don’t forget the Librul Media! Very useful — a license to deny any facts that don’t fit in.
Chris
@MagicPanda:
First of all, this.
Second, I think “hippie punching” is so popular on the right precisely because “hippie” are a stand-in for pretty much all of these cultural changes.
If you’re a racist, you can hate hippies because they’re n*gg*r-lovers who enabled the civil rights movement. If you’re a nativist, you hate them because they enable the rights of those bastard Mexicans and Muslims. If you’re a Christian fundamentalist, you hate hippies because they’re the fairies who enabled gay rights and women’s rights. If you’re a neocon/hardcore nationalist, you hate hippies because they’re the traitors who sympathize with the brown people that it’s our God-given duty to bomb and waterboard. If you’re an economic royalist, you hate hippies because they’re the class traitors who speak up for the riff-raff and blue collar workers who should be busy enriching you.
Not everyone’s a racist, not everyone’s a nativist, not everyone’s a fundie, not everyone’s a militarist and not everyone’s an economic royalist. Not everyone can agree to hate black people, or immigrants, or sinners, or foreigners, or working class whites. But they can all agree to hate hippies, if not always for the same reasons.
Hippie-punching, IOW, is basically the sound of every single prejudice in America being fused together. Hence its enormous popularity.
Paul in KY
@e_anders: And then the Zipsters will save us from the Yupsters.
Circle of life & all that…
joeyess
For one thing, hipsters never ended a war. Secondly, there isn’t a 2 1/2 hour movie about hipsters sliding down muddy hillsides, warnings of taking the brown acid, and scenes of nude hipster women with hairy armpits and other hairy lady bits swimming with nude long haired hipster men in ponds.
That kind of behavior just will not be tolerated.
When no one remembers the hippies, perhaps they’ll move onto firmer ground……. single mothers?
Martin
This is basic authoritarianism.
The left place blame upward – toward those in power. No matter what it is, the left puts the blame on those who have the the power to do right, to make changes, to create policy, to serve as public examples.
The right places blame downward – toward those out of power. No matter what it is, the right puts the blame on those who are powerless – the poor, minorities, gays, immigrants, atheists, hippies – you name it. All the problems of the world are the fault of the people that have no power to affect those problems.
Katrina? The right blamed black people, poor people, and gays. The left blamed the Army Corps, FEMA, and the President.
If you want to explain left/right to someone in a sentence: the left blames those in power, the right blames those who are powerless. Period.
Paul in KY
@eemom: I never read the shit. I only hear about his blather when I read an article here (so, I guess I stay up on him).
stickler
Before there were hippies, there were beatniks. And before them, the damned dirty Bolsheviks. And before them, it was the wops and the heathen Chinee. And before them, it was the Krauts and the Micks.
And the neegroes, too, going back to about 1699.
And before them, it was witches.
There’s always someone to blame it on.
joeyess
what I wouldn’t give for a picture of Bobo pulling on a bong.
Chris
@Martin:
This also is an excellent summary.
Brachiator
@Howlin Wolfe:
Uh, no. one of the original hepcats was Cab Calloway. These cats preceded the bip which was bop by decades.
Here’s Cab singing about The Reefer Man.
Bird and Diz came later, a tributary of a larger river of heptitude.
Gus
That’s because they don’t care about anything but hipster music, food, coffee and cocktails.
Violet
@Brachiator:
From a Bobo perspective, I’m completely accurate. That is not the same thing as being accurate.
Paul in KY
@joeyess: I bet he’d poot it.
Satanicpanic
People not having fun will always be angry at people who are having fun.
BTW, why are you ignoring what’s going on with OWS? You’re forcing me to spend time at the GOS damnnit
eemom
@DougJ:
all that proves is that you’ve created a few monsters up there in NYC.
Now if you’d held a meet up down here in God’s Country, we would’ve straightened things out.
Poopyman
Well before hippies there were Anarchists. I mean the 19th Century variety, not the 21st Century “anarchists” who mostly just seem to be punks. Those assholes give real anarchists a bad name.
My theory is that hippie-haters just can’t handle the patchouli.
DFH no.6
DougJ,
Pretty much a minor theme to your post, but I’m curious:
What do you consider “hipster music” that you dislike?
Got some examples?
Culture of Truth
More hippies.
Clown Shoes
The hipsters are already the enemy (hipster urbanists, to be more precise). Such is life in the Captain Morgan economy.
Brachiator
@Paul in KY:
Agree that Spicoli is a great character. But sometimes you just have to let it be and move on.
That’s why I hope that attempts to reprise The Big Lebowski never get past the discussion stage. The Dude Abides.
And although he is not a comic character, Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday in Tombstone is also up there in the pantheon of greatest secondary characters ever.
@stickler:
As Tom Lehrer sings in National Brotherhood Week,
Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Hindus hate the Muslims,
And everyone hates the Jews…
Julia Grey
That’s only because he’s temporarily forgetting the “dirty” part of DFH.
artem1s
Cardassians and the Borg
harlana
@Brachiator: aw, he was great!
jake the snake
@jibeaux:
If pinkish-beige Americans started in the fields as children, then they would have the same skills as the
average migrant worker.
When I was a child, there were many pinkish-beige Americans as well as brown Americans and a few brown Cental Americans who had these skill. As the manufacturing spread into more rural areas, the more dendable, higher wage manufacturing jobs replaced those skilled agricultural jobs. The agriculteral jobs were passed on to other workers, mostly brown Central American immigrants, many of whom were without benefit of papers.
It is true that those jobs are skilled. From the regional perspective of my youth, anyone who can ride a tobacco setter without getting their fingers mutilated, or spike tobacco without getting the spike run through their hand do
have a highly valuable, if under-compensated skill.
Litlebritdifrnt
OT – and urgent – could one of the Front Pagers do a bleg please.
http://www.rumproast.com/index.php/site/comments/urgent_message_to_the_rumproast_community_concerning_strangeappar8us/#99048
Three kitties in the PA area need an emergency home.
Villago Delenda Est
I think Huey Lewis put it best:
“It’s hip to be square.”
DougJ
@DFH no.6:
All that mopey stuff I hear at the coffee shop. I don’t know the names of the bands. They all sound like Hampshire college drop outs if that narrows it down at all.
Paul in KY
@Brachiator: I would have wanted him to do it back when he was young. Would not like to see Jeff as a 48 year old burnout working in a Kinkos.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mike G:
Actually, this is an interesting thing to point out. It never stopped being the Vietnam era for the hardcore GOP base. They’re old people who grew up at that time. Many (most?) of them WERE hippies. Communism and hippies are the social forces they think they understand.
@Poopyman:
The Koch brothers are still fighting them. Have you read up on them? Their dad seriously had it in for the early 20th century revolutionary types, and the Koch brothers have been fighting that nonexistent threat all their lives.
soonergrunt
@Villago Delenda Est: That depends on the uniform. The fucking Air Force…
Chris
@Martin:
Oh,
It’s also why fascism is considered on the right and communism on the left. Communism is established when those without power finally rise up and took it, fascism is established when those in power install an even more draconian regime to stop that from happening.
Martin’s concept used to be perfectly well understood, but that was before Jonah Goldberg and the like started muddying the waters…
Paul in KY
@DougJ: Maybe ‘Vampire Weekend’ or ‘Feist’ or ‘TV on the Radio’ (trying to think of some who are particularily mopey).
shortstop
@Julia Grey: Nice.
Roger Moore
@Willard:
Can’t we Costal ivory tower liberals get any credit? We’re the ones pulling the strings of all those other groups.
Paul in KY
@soonergrunt: You’re just jealous of our nice golf courses, and NCO Clubs, and snazzy uniforms, and valet parking…
Villago Delenda Est
@Frankensteinbeck:
The Koch brothers’ dad locked horns with another master of the universe…Uncle Joe Stalin…and lost.
Hence their dad’s take on “communists” who were really very shrewd masters of the universe who just beat the motherfucker at his own game.
Suffern ACE
@DougJ: That sing-song monotonous music, like the Juno soundtrack?
CaptainFwiffo
Hippies are just so easy to hate. I mean, I just see a drum circle and it just sends me into a blind rage. The only thing worse than a drum circle is people apparently enjoying a drum circle.
I seriously do hate all the hippie culture shit. I know I’m stereotyping, but the patchouli, lack of bathing, drum circles, sing-alongs, puppets, gas masks, etc. only serves to alienate people who, economically, should be allies. I’m not talking about “culture war” issues, gods, guns, gays, but all the nonsense aesthetics that go along with protests.
If people see protesters on TV that look like “others” doing weird shit, they’re much less inclined to listen to the message. If they see “people like them” getting angry about stuff, they’ll be a lot more sympathetic.
handsmile
A partial apology for this O/T comment (though the subject is interjected a number of times above), but I do hope people are keeping one eye on these unfolding and disturbing events.
There is some truly despotic behavior now taking place in New York City with this morning’s cowardly police raid on Zuccotti Park.
NYCP commissioner has declared that more than 200 people were arrested in the park and adjacent streets during the raid. That figure does not include those who have been arrested in later demonstrations that continue to roil lower Manhattan. Among the number are at least four journalists, from NPR, the NY Daily News, and AP.
At this moment, NYPD are refusing to comply with a temporary restraining order permitting protesters to return to Zuccotti Park. There is a appeals court hearing scheduled for 2:30pm to “clarify” the judge’s order.
Several senior NYC political officials including the city comptroller and the public advocate have issued statements strongly criticizing emperor Bloomberg’s actions.
As always, the Guardian’s live blog is essential for comprehensive information: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/nov/15/occupy-wall-street-zuccotti-eviction-live
Again, somewhat sorry for the intrusion here. But all this is taking place, not in some third world regime, but on the streets of New York. And a lot more than hippies are being punched.
soonergrunt
@tweez:
Because as a general rule, they do not punch back.
fuzz
I always thought hipster was just about music too, people who listen to certain bands and are condescending about it.
Animal collective, grizzly bear, lcd soundsystem, “old school rap”, etc.
SectarianSofa
@DougJ:
What, Elliot Smith?
Anyway, Hampshire is mostly a hippie school, not a hipster school. In my experience, schools like NYU or UT-Austin have a lot more hipster representation (not just because they’re 12 times as large).
And I hate to say it (because I like you DougJ, I really do), but the fact that you hang out in coffee shops and are hyper-critical of the sub-par music — definite hipster trait. Also, the self-hating. Don’t hate yourself for being a hipster. You’re still A-OK with me and the FSM.
WereBear
@CaptainFwiffo: Well, perhaps if they had actual jobs, they could afford a nice suit and weekly haircuts.
Kinda the point, ya think?
Gex
@CaptainFwiffo: I wonder how much growing up in an anti-hippy culture had on that. For all my life people have been describing hippies a certain way, and I was born in 1970. That just seeps in.
Either way, I don’t understand why people have to hate something that others like just because it is not for them. That’s how you get people who are vehemently against arugula.
Frankensteinbeck
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yeah, but he was anti-Stalin because he was ALREADY anti-sokkerist in the early 1900s sense that has nothing to do with today’s definition. The family is completely insane. They BELIEVE that Obama is trying to impose communism.
Poopyman
@soonergrunt: DING!
I was going to point this out as well. At least they’re perceived to not punch back. A review of the ’68 Chicago convention
videofilm might show a somewhat different picture.You Don't Say
@jake the snake: I was wondering that myself. From what I’ve read today, everything is the Boomer’s fault.
Frankensteinbeck
@CaptainFwiffo:
Which is why conservatives and the media will ignore a rally of 100,000 ordinary people so they can find the 20 guys they think look like loser weirdos to take photos of.
SectarianSofa
@fuzz:
God, is that what passes for hipster music these days? Fuck, maybe we should punch hipsters.
On the other hand (not to get all No True Scotsman or anything), but I’m guessing that others higher up on the hipster hierarchy of cynical judgment would recognize these groups as the mass-produced jingle-honkers that they are.
Michael
“Hippies” will be replaced with “Leftists,” which will be represented visually by pictures of the dirtiest, most-engaged-in-property-destruction OWS protester, and described as anyone who doesn’t 110% support our Galtian overlords.
RSA
Of course. And a few other things, as Yutsano mentions, on the ghey. Notice a pattern? Hippies invented sex for white people in the 1960s, and if there’s one thing we know about strapping young bucks, it’s… well, you know. And of course the ghey is responsible for re-inventing sex today.
soonergrunt
@Willard: I just heard about one of those today. My wingnut co-worker told me that the union here had created a janitorial position that made $60,000/year.
I’m like–“Really? The union can dictate what job positions get what GS pay? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? Who is this person, cause surely you know who it is that pushes a broom in housekeeping and yet makes a higher salary than the GS-10 Deputy Facility Manager, right? Right?”
Nutella
@handsmile:
On the OWS raid: The city closed airspace to prevent news helicopters from covering it, prevented reporters from entering the area, and dragged out the one reporter who managed to get in. Obviously wanted no witnesses.
Bloomberg, when challenged on the raid, said health and safety concerns (the OWS food tent presumably has no license) were more important than the first amendment.
Some of the press was apparently more favored than the ones trying to cover the raid:
link
Scott
OffTopic: StrangeAppar8us from the Rumproast blog is hospitalized and fighting for his life.
The Rumproasters are seeking some folks to help care for his cats, possibly permanently.
Other than that, best wishes are surely welcome. And magic heal-all doctors.
RossinDetroit
I was a Jesus Freak among Hippies. I’m not sure what we’re responsible for. Jesus Christ Superstar? John Denver?
It all seemed so innocent at the time. If only I could go back…
CaptainFwiffo
a) I don’t expect people to wear suits.
b) I’m sure there are unemployed stylists/barbers/etc. in the group that can provide some basic hair care.
c) It’s mostly the drum circles that have me cheesed.
I’m calling bullshit on this. Sure, the OWS crowd can’t be to blame for all the anarchists, LaRouchites and some of the other weirdos that show up, but even the media (web videos, etc.) produced by the movement prominently feature the puppets, drum circles, costumes, and all that other shit. It’s like trying to claim that the media was being unfair by portraying tea-baggers wearing tri-corner hats.
David in NY
Actual hippie punching was going on:
http://yfrog.com/od6grnj
By the way, the fear of hippies runs deep. At the Court hearing on Foley Square a few minutes ago, the city claimed that it was justified because the OWS had weapons. Of course, they appeared to have destroyed all OWS property, so they can’t have been too worried about that at the time.
If this is all they can do, I hope Judge Feldman(?) hands them their heads, but, given that he is only an “acting” Supreme Court Justice (dependent on political types for advancement), I’m not betting on it. But who knows, it’s NYC, after all.
Yevgraf
@tweez:
Because they’re perceived as weak and unrealistic fools, unattached as to the day to day requirements of eking out an existence.
For those of us who could be characterized as late boom, GenJones or early GenX (which actually fits my personal mindset due to my peculiar neighborhood demographics), we really fucking and truly hate “The Hippies”, even when we’re unabashedly progressive. Their music overwhelmed our radio, they overconsumed all of society’s education goodies while underproducing on the investment, and their bullshit experimentation with brain addling psychodelics and counterculture linguistics and appearances made their ideology and perspective suspect.
Somebody should have capped Leary the first time he started blathering on about the wonders of LSD. And don’t even get me started on that prick Hoffman.
cleek
@Frankensteinbeck:
change one word and you’ve got the tea-party complaint.
the media is nobody’s friend when it comes to preferring sensation over issues.
David Koch
That’s easy. They’ll blame the Yankees.
Martin
@Poopyman: Well, they don’t punch back – at least in a meaningful way.
That’s my point above about the right blaming downward. If they piss off some group out of power, the group can’t punish them in – either through the electorate, through the media, through the courts, or through lobbying/post-office support.
Pissing off the CEOs, the media powers, and so on carries costs. Pissing off minorities and hippies will only land you a bunch of people at your doorstep with pickets. Pass the right legislation limiting their ability to organize and vote, and they become even more powerless.
David in NY
Quote of the day:
“Our new park smells like Clorox and broken constitutional amendments.” Overheard at Zuccotti, #OWS.
Satanicpanic
@CaptainFwiffo: I would love it if at every demonstration they would just run a quick poll. Just a show of hands- drum circle or no drum circle? It might hurt some feelings, but it would be instructive.
soonergrunt
@DFH no.6: You’ve never heard of any of those bands. They’re too obscure.
DFH no.6
@Paul in KY:
Vampire Weekend and TV on the Radio are mopey?
Feist, I suppose (and no more than a million other female singer/songwriters going back forever).
I liked her a lot better as a member of Boards of Canada than solo.
I don’t drink coffee so don’t frequent coffeeshops. I imagine coffeeshop playlists are mostly quieter (mopier?) tunes by contemporary indie bands (like the three you mentioned).
ed drone
@David Koch:
What? With their payroll, the pinstripers are certainly part of the 1% — not among the blame-worthy at all.
Ed
shortstop
I must have been going to the right demonstrations all these years, because I have escaped the drum circles completely.
Those “free Mumia!” people make me insane, though.
Chris
@Martin:
This.
Anti-intellectualism works the same way. Pissing off politicians, businessmen and media elites carries a huge consequence, as the OWS protestors are finding out, but pissing off college professors carries no penalty at all, which is why it’s so popular among teabaggers. Anti-elitism for chickenshits.
e_anders
Hence the Yupster* as savior.
*yuppie/hipster hypbrid
MagicPanda
@SectarianSofa:
On the one hand, I am 100% sure you are right that these bands are not the marks of true hipsterdom. For one thing, they have been popular for way too long.
On the other hand, I can’t understand how you could call these bands “mass-produced jingle-honkers”. That’s just lazy, especially when it comes to Animal Collective.
It’s fine to say you don’t like them, or that you find them pretentious or stupid or whatever. I just find it odd to say that they sound mass produced.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O1iE0-wYVI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyJjihseiio
I mean, it’s conventional compared to, say, Jandek, but it’s not like it’s Brittney Spears either.
soonergrunt
@Paul in KY: Well, umm, all right, FINE! You got me.
Even the AAFES people are nicer on an AF base than an Army post.
David Koch
Want to get even with Reich Marshall Bloomberg? Here’s how. Stay home, don’t vote. That’ll teach Bloomy a lesson!
Paris
I’m not fond of Goths. I don’t know any personally but they seem so sullen. I hate NIN and everyone who listens to such rubbish.
CaptainFwiffo
@Satanicpanic: I agree!
Seriously – I’m somebody who is completely in-line with the broad segment of OWS ideologically. I am an atheist, a liberal, feminist, environmentalist, lefty guy. And I know all the peace-love-rah-rah stuff is supposed to be about being open and welcoming. But if I guy like me feels alienated and unwelcome, then you’re doing something wrong.
I don’t have a solution, but it can’t be “blame the media” and “blame the hippie-punchers” because that’s just accepting defeat. The media and the hippie punchers aren’t going to stop doing what’s profitable for them. Movement folks are going to have to come up with something that is hippie-punch-proof.
RossinDetroit
Hipsters origin story, in a comic.
Brachiator
@Violet:
Hah! Makes perfect sense.
Yevgraf
@CaptainFwiffo:
The moment I saw that there were “occupy” protests beginning in Oakland and Portland, I knew it was over. Those numbnut anarchist agitators out west are too fucking stupid to run a protest that won’t turn bad.
My theory is that up until recently, Zucotti Park was running OK – it was focused enough and organized enough to have some serious folks involved, and any disorder was down at a tolerable level. Once the morons in Oakland and Portland showed their asses, though, that changed the perception, and local residents and businesses couldn’t help but wonder when their protests were going to turn sour.
Let this be a lesson – next time anybody runs a protest, don’t let anybody out west know – they’ll have an irrelevant event that will go sour and turn your own optics to shit, and will drag competent, progressive mayors down with them. Afterward, during recrimination time they’ll look dazed like the drunk 16 year old at his parents after his entire high school shows up to the house party he holds while they’re away for the night, all while asking “why are you guys so mad at me? It wasn’t my fault – THEY did it”…
burritoboy
But, seriously, before we started punching hippies, the correct scapegoat was commies. Commies were the boogey-man from about 1919 until the hippies. Before then, the boogey-men were the anarchists and before then a combination of the advocates of free-love, suffragettes, vegetarians, atheists and so on. Henry James’ The Bostonians is a very nice early depiction of hippie-punching but there are any number of other literary examples from the 19th century onwards.
Despised ethnic minorities are not the same as these boogey-men. The point of these boogey-men is that you never know who is a secret commie. Obviously, you generally know who is an African-American, etc. You can’t really go around saying African-Americans secretly run the country in 19xx – but you can easily say secret commies (in league with any minority groups you may also dislike) are doing so (this is, of course, precisely what the Birchers said).
28 Percent
I was born in 1972, and it is my fervent wish that before I die I finally get to see a national election that isn’t just another rehashing of the Johnson administration.
Reality Check
OWS Kiddie shocked (SHOCKED!) he can’t find a job with an Masters of Fine Arts in Puppetry. Must be the fault of the Top One Percent(tm) that the only employment he can find is being a substitute art teacher, am I right? I mean, puppetry would be such a lucrative field if it weren’t for the Top One Percent(tm), so lucrative it totally makes sense to quite your full time job, take out tens of thousands of dollars in loans just to get that lucrative, lucrative puppetry degree from UConn!
harlana
you know, the hippies in my age group that i ran into in Western NC, seemed to be pretty well off and just into producing or procuring pottery and art and living in the boonies. i found it somewhat irritating that so many of them just didn’t seem to care about anything but environmentalism, a worthy cause, but i really wanted them to care about war and waste also. the young hippies, it seems, have economic challenges that their elder counterparts often cannot fathom, because they grew up in relatively good times and have a lot to show for it. i don’t want to say i was jealous of them, exactly (i don’t know, maybe i was) but i did find it irritating.
handsmile
@Nutella: (#110)
Thanks for posting that link; it may prompt others to read about yet more suppressive actions by the Bloomberg regime (reminiscent of the 2004 GOP convention here).
I had posted the link a couple hours ago on mistermix’s earlier “Open Park and Open Thread”, but that has become inactive (which probably impelled me to comment here).
This is a bad situation in New York today, and I very much believe the NYPD is antagonizing protesters to provoke more violent resistance. In consolation, I hope this needlessly aggressive behavior by Bloomberg and his security forces will backfire once again, generating more support and sympathy for the resolute and peaceful OWS movement.
Gex
I can almost see why conservatives are so outraged and afraid of the sexual revolution. Many of us embraced the idea that mostly what happens between *consenting* adults is perfectly fine, and not anyone else’s damn business.
They can’t hear the “consenting adults” part, which is why this all became about child rape and bestiality. That’s coming from their minds, not ours, but we’re getting blamed for it anyhow.
Reality Check
@handsmile:
Yes, think of the poor, poor kiddiez with student loans they took out to get degrees in Puppetry and Queer Theory, and the only reason they can’t find a job with such valuable skills is the Top One Percent(tm).
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Brachiator:
NEVER EVER AGAIN should you discuss the history of hipsterism without mentioning Lester Young, without whom hipsterism would have ceased to exist before Charlie Parker ever stepped on a stage.
Paul in KY
@DFH no.6: Compared to ‘Blink-182’ or ‘Franz Ferdinand’, I would say they are. I might have confused ‘Vampire Weekend’ with ‘Owl City’.
I like all these bands, but I was trying to think of some who do more introspective, ballady songs.
Maybe the ‘Animal Collective’ and ‘MGMT’ that another poster mentioned?
Yevgraf
@Reality Check:
God help me, I agree with you on this. That’s a criminal waste of money.
Villago Delenda Est
@Frankensteinbeck:
He liked Uncle Joe’s money just fine…until Uncle Joe out foxed him and derailed the Union of Soviet Soshulist Gravy Trains that he thought he was on.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@RossinDetroit:
Jonestown
Paul in KY
@soonergrunt: I used to work with an ex-Navy guy & his standard USAF joke was that when they were planning/building an Air Force base, they first built the golf course & the O/NCO clubs & if there was any money left over, they then built the flight line.
Not the funniest joke, but if you had known him it was pretty good for the unfunny guy he was.
John Weiss
Douj, hippies aren’t ‘hipsters’. I use the term in the present tense, ’cause I know hippies. And I are one, too. One doesn’t get over it easily.
RossinDetroit
In his book Modern Times, Paul Johnson claims that the disaster of moral relativism can be traced back to, among others, Einstein. I know a bit about General Relativity and I just can’t see it. “What?!? Time Dilation?? Might as well have an affair with the secretary!”
David in NY
@Reality Check: Look asshole, he’s not the only kid who can’t find a job. You know what the unemployment rate among his age cohort is? You know who fucked the economy leading to that level of unemployment? The brilliant 1% masters-of-the-universe, with their fully insured, 100% guaranteed, shit-sandwiched mortgage securities, that’s who.
You can make fun of one person, but the rich, amoral scoundrels who brought us to this pass are the ones you ought to be criticizing if you had an ounce of morality or common sense to your name.
Martin
@RossinDetroit: Time dilation is special relativity. Intrinsic spacial curvature (gravity as a distortion of spacetime) is general relativity.
Has fuckall to do with moral relativism.
Yevgraf
@harlana:
I noticed our occupy folks had branched into protesting tuition increases at the municipal university. The comments to the article consisted of a lot of boomer “I paid my own way without loans on part time jobs” bullshit criticism that doesn’t reflect the reality of $11,000 annual tuition bills BEFORE talking room and board. It really is tough for these kids – it sucked for me during the first wave of increases but for them, it is going to be impossible – a whole shitpile of nonbankruptable debt acquired, and a shitty job market to look forward to.
Paul in KY
@RossinDetroit: The whole ‘things weigh more the faster they go’ was what led to the epidemic of dudes trying to set land speed records, hoping their dicks would get bigger. It’s a another well known problem that Einstein started.
Edit: Martin, I hope physics doesn’t get in the way of my well crafted snark.
Janet Strange
@Ahasuerus: Math? Geez, I think you need to go back to 3rd or 4th grade or wherever subtraction is taught these days.
By your definition of 20-somethings between 1965 and 1975, someone 29 in 1965 is 75 now, if 20 in 1975 they’d be 56 now. So 56-75 by your definition. Not late 60s to early 80s as you said.
But really, there weren’t many 29 year old hippies in 1965. Hippieness was pretty much a rumor outside of Berkeley and the Haight at that point. By the late 60’s hippies were starting to be found elsewhere and included mostly I’d say 16-24 year olds. So, most old hippies are about 55-65.
Not the teabagger demographic at all. More liberal than the older folks definitely (that’s wtf we were rebelling against for crissakes) and that age range even votes more liberally than the folks just younger (Gen X, aka the Reagan youth).
Mostly white doubtless, but not entirely. Jimi Hendrix and Carlos Santana represented a real contingent. Privileged? Well, I grew up actually poor, but most of my friends came from middle class families so I guess they were “privileged” compared to some.
MagicPanda
@Martin: To be fair, general relativity includes gravitational time dilation…
Martin
BTW, isn’t Arcade Fire the poster child for hipster music right now?
Reality Check
@David in NY
Colleges today have turned out a bunch of coddled, spoiled, brainwashed unemployable brats with useless liberal arts degrees. Yes, Virginia, it’s true–if you get a degree in Queer Theory, or Women’s Studies, or Puppetry, or Art History, the best you’re going to do is be a substitute elementary school teacher, failing that, you’ll work at Starbucks until you’re 40 and live your mommy’s basement with your useless degree still paying off the loans you stupidly took out, with zero skills to show for it.
I bought my own house at 26. But you know what? I studied something that mattered and was marketable in college. These losers deserve what they get. They would have been better off becoming plumbers and electricians. If you don’t go to college to study STEM, don’t go at all. Or at least don’t expect to have a job when you get out!
Brachiator
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Hmm. I think that Cab Calloway and Lester Young were contemporaries (Calloway was two years older).
Cab was hip.
But Prez was supremely cool.
And, as always, the supreme tribute to Lester Young, Charles Mingus’ Goodbye, Pork Pie Hat.
Reality Check
You know who needs workers? Oil fields in North Dakota. But these little babies are so pampered they’d cry their eyes out after one hour on an oil rig. I’ve worked with Millenials–they’re totally and completely unemployable 9/10 times. They’re spoiled and indulged and want to be told their special without doing any real work. We as a society should be ashamed how we ifnantilized them.
goblue72
@Ahasuerus: I think your math is a litle off. Someone in their 80s today, would have been in their late 30s during the Summer of Love (’68). Your average 70-something teabagger with a Medicare scooter is member of the pre-Baby Boom war years of the 1930s and early 1940s.
Your Boomer who was a 20-something hippie during the Summer of Love is in their mid-60s and just hitting retirement age.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Yevgraf:
Co-signed.
The other thing is, the Hippies were hugely wrong about Communism, which was Fucking Evil with a capital-F, capital-E at a level that nobody (at least nobody whom I knew) on the Left back in the 1970s was willing to come to terms with. Certainly not before The Gulag Archipelago was published in English, and for 90% of them not afterwards either. Just because American militarism in SE Asia was evil, doesn’t mean that it was cool to play footsie with the spiritual heirs of Joseph Stalin. Kind of hard to trust the political instincts of folks who got something that basic that wrong.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@jake the snake:
I’d say that they’re two subsets that share some members. The earliest hippies were born before the Baby Boom started in 1946.
I really don’t blame the Boomers for much. I don’t give them as much credit as they give themselves (sorry, you didn’t end the Vietnam war- the Vietnamese did, and the oldest of you were 23 when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon), but most of the really nasty shit we experience seems to have come from the previous generation, from corporatism run amok to shopping malls, multiplex theaters and cable television, the things that keep us isolated from one another.
Reality Check
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ
You still see them doing this with Hugo Chavez.
WereBear
@Yevgraf: Unless, of course, you are the creator of the Muppets.
SectarianSofa
@MagicPanda:
I’m just channeling an arch-hipster. Exaggerating for effect. It doesn’t matter what the actual listed or mentioned groups are — you could fill in the blank with any group or person who has had more than a couple of shows. Whoever it is, they are not obscure and meritorious enough to deserve my (me being the arch-hipster, that is) attention.
Also, Brittany Spears’s stuff has an interesting dark side that twists the usual pop narrative back on itself. Did you see Bandon Javorksji’s piece in _The Brawn Pit_?
[*Note, I may have made up this last bit.]
Villago Delenda Est
@Reality Check:
And those are just the ones with degrees from the Bidness school!
I know the other services like people with specific degrees, but the Army isn’t too picky. The degree is the key thing…it indicates that you’ve put in some effort in a discipline and that suits the Army just fine for officer material. Technical degrees may in fact limit your career as an Army officer and impede your chance of attaining flag rank.
Reality Check
@WereBear
Henson had a B.S. in Home Economics, not a Puppetry MFA.
Ben Cisco
Damn, I love this blog.
Reality Check
@Villago Delenda Est
OWS Kiddez aren’t exactly army material. There’s the whole drug use thing, for one.
RossinDetroit
@Martin:
That was the point I was making, though Johnson links them through the argument that there was suddenly no absolute ‘universal’ standard any more according to the general public’s understanding of Einstein’s writings on Relativity. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Brachiator:
Calloway gained the spotlight much earlier. He was already huge when Lester and the rest of the Basie guys were in Kansas City.
Lester ended up as the King of the Hip, though. Dude coined at least half of Jive. And while Calloway had gone on to become a nostalgia act by the mid-’40s, Lester was still making very fresh, very relevant music.
Villago Delenda Est
@Reality Check:
Do you have any appreciation of logistics? Oil field workers have a specific skill set that isn’t taught in any trade school. And they don’t want noobies, they want skilled workers. Skilled workers do not materialize by snapping your fingers.
The cretinous stupid. It burns!
Paul in KY
@Martin: I saw them at Bonnaroo. One of the 3 best sets I saw there.
They are a hipster fav right now, I think. They are (IMO) way, way beyond hipster.
SectarianSofa
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Surrealists were too. Broke ’em up worse than Yoko Ono.
Dadaists were right about bullets though.
Villago Delenda Est
@Reality Check:
Assuming facts not in evidence, shitstain.
Chris
@Reality Check:
Ah, the inevitable next step.
“Only lazy suckers can’t find jobs.”
“There’s an entire generation that’s jobless.”
“Well, the ENTIRE GENERATION are lazy suckers then!”
Unimpeacheable logic. Others rant about how the American people as a whole are lazy pampered assholes, and they should aspire to be like the Chinese.
But really, if unemployment is all the fault of the unemployed, then I fail to see why conservatives keep trotting out Obama’s unemployment record as if it were his fault. After all, it’s not him. It’s all THEM who are too lazy or bad to work. Obama and Big Gub’mint have nothing to do with the state of the economy, and we should all lay off their backs and just accept that this is our just punishment for the fact that we suck.
Reality Check
@Chris
In a normal economy business could take and spend the extra capital to mold them into productive employees but with all the uncertainty out there in the Obama Economy, they just don’t have the money and don’t know what regulations and taxes they’ll be saddled with next. So its safer just to stay put.
Nevertheless, the truly skilled and motivated can find work in ANY economy. But we have an entire generation of college graduates with worthless liberal arts degrees for the most part.
And, yes, China emphasizes STEM and not rot like Queer Theory and Women’s Studies. I wonder who will end up with the more skilled workforce?
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
OT, but in international friendlies:
Slovenia 2-3 USA (Final)
Germany 2-0 Netherlands (29th minute)
Reality Check
Sometimes I think it’s intentional. Leftists took over our university system and started coming up with useless degrees, so that when kids graduate college they’ll be unemployable and dependent for their entire lives on government handouts.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@RossinDetroit:
Johnson has this whole argument backwards. Einstein’s theories became as popular as they did as quickly as they did because the contemporary culture was primed for relativistic thinking, both morally and in all sorts of other ways, before he published. Same thing with Darwin and The Origin of Species which exploded into a Victorian society which was undergoing very rapid overturn in the established social orders with the rise of industrial wealth, and looking for a good reason to justify what it was powerless to stop. Revolutionary new scientific ideas take off in spectacular fashion when they mesh with the prevailing Zeitgeist, and struggle to be accepted when they do not.
SectarianSofa
@soonergrunt:
Not to mention, one of them broke up not long after their first release, just 200 copies on red vinyl. The hand-made album covers were pretty amazing.
Reality Check
Still waiting for someone to tell me that taking out tens of thousands of dollars in loans to get a Puppetry MFA was totally the correct call and not stupid at all, and would be a perfectly rational decision if not for the Top One Percent(tm) and The Banksters(tm).
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Villago Delenda Est:
Funny, that: One of my younger cousins gave up the dream of being a chef and moved from Michigan to Texas about a year and a half ago, where they trained him to pour mud.
Ben Cisco
I’m genuinely curious now: why does anyone lower themselves to try to argue with UnReality BouncedCheck? S/he’s just a contrarian goober who wouldn’t know reality, common sense, or fact if it bit hir in hir naughty bits.
__
Sorry, just had to get that out there, carry on.
DougJ
@Suffern ACE:
Yes. Some of it is okay, like the Fleet Foxes and some other one I can’t remember the name of, but it’s pretty mind-numbing to me. Bear in mind, I listen to the Clash, Motown, and the Stones every day.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Reality Check:
Depends on whether the kid thinks he’s going to repay the loans by opening his own theater, or whether he’s actually pursuing a teaching role in some college drama department.
Reality Check
@Temporarily Max McGee
They’re taking even unskilled people with high school diplomas right now and training them up, but of course, you would be working for (wait for it)…HALLIBURTON! (bum bum buuuum) if you went to ND. That and you won’t get to discuss Queer Musicology over a bong at 3 am, no, you’ll actually be doing hard manual labor. You know…real work in the real world.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@DougJ:
This is our song, Doug.
Okay, not our song, but a song for those of us Gen-Xers from the cusp.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Reality Check:
Blind Pig: Look an ACORN! and I found ALL BY MYSELF! That make me TEH KING OF TEH PIGS!
Audience: d00d, you still stink to high heaven of shit. We don’t care about your stupid acorn. Go away and bother somebody else.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Reality Check:
.
Well, it often is a moral choice. Me, personally, I could ditch my sense of morals and ethics and got to work for Amway, in a cushier, better paying job than I have now, but I’d rather retain my values, work and sweat my ass off (46-years old, 140 lbs, in shape but for the smokes) at a job that I know pays far less than it should. Not that I’m satisfied with what my job pays…I retain the right to say that my job doesn’t pay what the work is worth.
So you can shove that smug FYIGM attitude up your ass, for all I care.
Reality Check
What kind of idiot compares working in the energy extraction business, where people can earn $70,000/year now in only slightly skilled labor, to an MLM where you’ll be lucky to make minimum wage? Answer: see above.
DFH no.6
So, some are wondering about “hippie-punching” and “hippie-hating”, when right here in this tiny, tiny microcosm of a BJ comment thread it’s prominently displayed, even by self-proclaimed “unabashed progressives”.
And what, specifically, is so hated here (with “fucking” and “white hot” as modifiers, even)?
Well, “weirdness”, I suppose. In the form of things like drum circles, and “overwhelming the radio with their music” and patchouli, and puppets, and beards, and “brain-addling psychedelics”, etc..
Anything that, by appearance, is out of the straight and narrow whitebread “norm”, it seems.
The things some people hate seem pretty odd to me, like the list above. Drum circles and puppets, really?
Not actually into those things myself (got nothing against patchouli or LSD, in moderation). But hate?
I hate fascists.
Chris
Yes, all those taxes and regulations. Beginning with the bailout that essentially assured the Brave Captains of Industry that no matter how hard they fucked up, the government would always be there to get them back on their feet, the stimulus whose single biggest piece was tax cuts right out of the Reagan playbook, the total absence of any tax increases or regulations in the last three years (and now that Republicans have retaken the House, the guarantee that the worst is passed).
Man, these guys just can’t get a break.
One wonders how they managed it in the 1990s, when the oppressive tax rate was – oh, exactly what Obama wants to return it to.
One wonders even more how they managed it in the 1950s.
Reality Check
@Chris
Repeal Dodd-Frank, repeal ObamaCare, make the Bush tax cuts permanentrate and watch the economy roar to life. Even the OWS Kiddie with his puppetry MFA may get a corporation to put out the time and money to transform him into a productive corporate worker.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Reality Check:
And what kind of
idiotsociopath doesn’t realize that money, in and of itself, cannot make one happy? See: A mirror.Brachiator
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Fair point.
In some ways, Cab was always a novelty act, but nonetheless very important to popular music. You see his influence in pop acts like Morris Day and the Time. Lester Young was a giant of jazz.
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Very interesting stuff. Makes a lot of sense. Reminds me of some of the stuff in the James Burke tv program Connections. Or even popular music, where the world didn’t know how much they wanted the Beatles and Motown, and yet soon said, “yeah, this is obviously just what we needed when we needed it.”
Chris
@Reality Check:
Yeah, cause the economy TOTALLY roared through the 2000s, when there was no Obamacare and the Bush tax cuts were in effect – oh, wait.
Chris
You people have been telling us the same time for decades: oh, just cut taxes a LITTLE more and the economy will roar to life. Honest Injun! Never mind that our greatest, longest economic boom took place at the time when our taxes were higher than they’d ever been. Never mind that you’ve been cutting taxes and regulations again and again and again for THIRTY FREAKING YEARS and you’ve got nothing to show for it.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Brachiator:
Undoubtedly. The Cotton Club: He made it acceptable by making it safe(r). The Jackson family are his heirs. Lester’s heirs are Parliament/Funkadelic.
DFH no.6
@Chris:
For your own sake, if nothing else, cease feeding the fascist troll.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Chris:
But we can’t raise taxes ever, that’s soshuilst! That’s evil! Only HIPPIES would dare be in support for that!!
Guh…as I try to reconcile this conversation with the original topic subject, it pains me when I find myself observing more and more that it’s virtually impossible to actually convince people leftward on any sort of political argument anymore, precisely because of this shit. People are so shit scared and full of contempt for mythical hippies that despite supporting wayward left things, they’re climbing over themselves to support rightward figures even as the right in this country hurries to mainstream its most extreme elements. Whereas stray too far from the center left and OMG FUCKING HIPPIE GET THE FUCK OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!!! You see it with the fucking taxes, the fucking economy, fucking national security, fucking war, etc. Social issues seem to be a lagging indicator, if only because it’s taking creative legislation of the right-wing tools in charge to get around the public willing to draw the line on the social issues stuff…but rest assured they’re getting there as well.
Everyone fucking hates hippies. Not everyone hates fucking Birchers. Thus, the right wing gets to fucking win every single time because most of us just can’t seem to get away from the hippies fast enough, even when the ‘hippies’ would’ve been called a staunch Republican 30-40 years ago.
maya
@Reality Check:
How much corporate time and money is needed to train someone to ask: “Do you want fries with that?”
Gex
@Yevgraf: I’ve had several boomers tell me that they paid their way through college. Then they proceeded to tell me that over summer they could earn enough money for the year. That most certainly is not the case now. That idea is laughable.
I just applied for some life insurance, and in order to plan for my neice’s college the company estimates that a four year program at the U of MN will be $250 mil in 18 years.
Gex
@Gex: Sorry, that’s quarter mil. Or $250,000. Time for a drink.
CaptainFwiffo
LOL, paying your way through college with a summer job. That’s a good one. When I was in college people worked summer jobs to pay for their books, and that was over a decade ago.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Brachiator:
And here’s a demonstration of that big difference between Cab and Lester: We the Cats Shall Hep Ya.
Cab went out of his way to explain hep/hip to the squares, Lester didn’t give a damn about explaining it: You were either hip- you got it- or you weren’t. Jive, the language, wasn’t the language of cool, necessarily, but the language of another culture so that it could communicate within it’s boundaries without being understood by the square culture. That Jive culture was, after all, involved in quite a few illicit dealings, no?
Larv
Does anyone really think Reality Check is for real? He seems like an obvious spoof to me. Things like this:
are just too silly even for a wingnut. And the line about becoming a “productive corporate worker” is a little heavy-handed as well. And then there was his constant redefining of VICTORY last week while the election results were coming in (no link, I can’t remember exactly what thread that was). A real rightie would’ve disappeared for the night while he drowned his sorrows in Cheetos and cheap beer, and then come back the next day and just pretended nothing ever happened. It’s pretty well done spoof, but he occasionally tips his hand and goes just a bit too far.
priscianusjr
@Shlemizel:
Southern Beale
Stupidity. I blame stupidity.
You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.
shortstop
@Larv:
He is a blindingly obvious (much of the time) spoof. And yes, plenty of people think he’s real.
cckids
@Reality Check: So, basically, rewind the clock to 2008 and the awesomeness of the economy run by all right-wing ideals? Yeah, you can live in that alternate reality, assclown. Have fun.
Brachiator
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Not just Jive culture. Part of the thrill of slumming (check out the audience in some of the YouTube clips) was not just watching the culture, but participating in it. And there were those, already doing their own illicit stuff, who would bring it to those in the Jive culture. The only difference, of course, were those hypocrites who either denied what they were doing, or claimed that they were seduced into it.
What’s the line in “Minnie the Moocher” about heroin?
He took her down to Chinatown,
And he showed her how to kick the gong around
AA+ Bonds
LOL, what the hell is “hipster music”, are you talking about independent rock? Because that’s not even a genre in the sense of the artists sounding anything alike and it definitely includes artists you like
AA+ Bonds
@Larv:
MY HEAVENS IT’S ENCYCLOPEDIA BROWN
AA+ Bonds
I’d say the majority of responses to trolls on BJ are people slowly coming to the realization that trolls exist
AA+ Bonds
@DFH no.6:
Well you can’t be politically serious unless you dress a certain way, we must all be mindful of how shallow and stupid our fellow Americans are (not us though) and so condescend to them at every opportunity
The real issue seems to be that a lot of liberals wish they themselves were
1) wealthy suit wearing executives
2) salt of the earth farmers and truckers
and so they’re terrified when the left shows up and it doesn’t look 100% like their wildest boner fantasies, as though OWS had to go change clothes before a majority of Americans expressed support for them.
AA+ Bonds
Look, the hippie thing clearly doesn’t work, because that was the FIRST line of attack on OWS from Fox and etc. and they keep hammering it, but the only people falling for it are their old reliable proto-fascist base and a tiny amount of really insecure liberals.
I think in the 1990s, when most people were getting poorer but being told they would get richer any day now, Americans got really antsy in that pilgrim Puritan appearances-first way about left-wing demonstrators who did not put on airs of wealth, or demonstrate the proper high-school paranoia about wearing the right brand.
But nowadays, everyone knows they’re poor as shit and getting fucked and they could really care less about who has dreds and wears what scent because it’s clearly 99% vs. 1%.
Kane
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/02/915
Chris
@DFH no.6:
Back late, but,
Sorry. I’ve been feeding an islamist troll on another thread, so I thought I’d throw in a fascist for diversity’s sake.
joeshabadoo
“Sometimes I wonder, though, who will be blamed for everything when no one can remember hippies anymore.”
They won’t be forgotten. Generations too young to have ever seen a real hippy hate them for no particular reason other than tv has always made fun of them. Drum circles are ridiculous. Why? A bunch of people playing drums together because they are bored from sitting in a park all day doesn’t exactly seem ridiculous, but it is told that way.
Look at South Park. While I haven’t seen it in many years it constantly made fun of hippies. Entire episodes were devoted to doing nothing but making fun of a stereotype that hasn’t existed in meaningful numbers for probably over thirty years. Do you think the kids and young adults who watch that show have ever even seen a hippy? They probably think of their stoner friend in high school and assume that’s a hippy then jump on the hate bandwagon.
PanurgeATL
Punk made it cool to bash hippies. That’s a major part of why I’ve never been down with punk. Punk/”alternative”/”new wave”/”indie”/”postmodern”/hipster culture to a large extent legitimizes hippie-bashing, thereby making the Oligarchy’s perspective actually hip, though some arms of the network have gone to some extent to embrace a sort of neo-hippie vibe (drum circles weren’t something the original hippies did, AIUI–and there wasn’t much in the way of dreadlocks or Hacky Sack, either).
What hippies got accomplished isn’t really the point. They’re an indicator. They mean, by their presence, to ask the question, “Do we really live in a free society?” It may not be about long hair, but it certainly is, among other things, about whether Penis People can have it with impunity. (And can you really deny that the return of conservative esthetics goes hand in hand with the rise of conservative politics?) Now, they had their shortcomings, and they should be called on them. But they (and they are out there) should also be (have been?) given the opportunity to address those shortcomings and, you know, fix them. But we can’t solve our problems if we can’t conceptualize the situation properly.
PanurgeATL
One more thing: Why all this talk that “hippie” is Just An Expression And No One’s Talking About Real Hippies, Which Are All Gone Forever when conservative commentator after conservative commentator has essentially said that, yes, they do mean real hippies? I mean, just look at the David Brooks column that started all these threads, no?
PanurgeATL
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
Again, hippie-bashing is a safe way of declaring your bold, rebellious independent-mindedness (in such a way as to mark you as a Real American Good Boy as well–the ultimate example of eating your cake and having it, too). I don’t think people really hate hippies that much–they just find bashing hippies socially useful. So there’s the question: What can we do to make it socially useless?
PanurgeATL
@Yevgraf:
You need to fucking get over it. It wasn’t that bad. (Disclaimer: I’m “post-Boom”, too, and I can see the good side of it and ditch the rest. For goodness sakes, it’s not that hard. And if you don’t like the music, try making better music.)
PanurgeATL
@CaptainFwiffo:
That’s the whole point. NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING is “hippie-punch-proof”. That is COMPLETELY FUTILE. The thing to do is to change the rules so that hippie-punching is ineffective. But we’ve got too many liberals who’ve drunk the right-wing Kool-Aid about hippies without even realizing it and are scared they’ll make us look bad, so it’s hard to make that happen.
SectarianSofa
@panurgeATL
Great comments.
burritoboy
@panurgeATL
Let’s not forget that the “commie” scapegoat (the predecessor scapegoat to the hippies) was perhaps even more ridiculously overused and broadly applied. The Birchers accused John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, of being a communist.
Let us unpack that: John Foster Dulles was a rabid anti-communist who advocated direct attack of the Soviet Union as opposed to containment. He overthrew at least two moderate liberal governments (Iran and Guatemala) because he worried they were too wishy-washy about opposing communism. Dulles was the architect of NATO.
John Foster Dulles was literally the guy who set up the vast majority of the Cold War institutions that fought the USSR. His brother opposed Lenin from before 1917 (before there was a single existing Communist country). He and his brother spent most of their professional lives opposing communism, sometimes in extreme and ill-advised ways (and were hardly liberal in most other matters either).
And he was called a communist.