Bookends
The flag out in front of the station is at half-staff, in memory of President Gerald Ford, who died this week at the age of 93. But it could be lowered as well to commemorate the passing of a very different cultural icon, James Brown, who ascended to a higher stage this week at the age of 73 (or 146 in normal-tempo years). The two men--as wildly different as two can be--could be bookends for that peculiar blip in the American arc, the 1970s.
Ford is best remembered for his calm, stolid and avuncular style at a time when the country, on the one hand, was coping with the disastrous denouement of the Vietnam War, and on the other, with the executive overreaching that brought down the Nixon administration. Ford’s time in office also marked the end of the era when cultural and political moderates dominated the GOP. Republican leaders for the next thirty years would be conservatives empowered by the Reagan “Revolution.”
James Brown embodied everything that the cultural warriors who came after Ford decried. He gloried in the outrageous--celebrating sexuality and appetite. His freaky-deaky costume and makeup, the in-your-face steaminess of his performances, his celebration of racial identity, his chaotic personal and public life—all make him a poster-child for the exuberant iconoclasm that also marked the time.
Two Americans, two Americas—and so it remains.
Labels: 1970s
posted by Dale Hobson @ 10:21 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
"Two Americas" is a political and media construct used to further divide the country. There are 2 different Americas-- the one as seen by the media and the politicians who supposedly represent us in Washington and the one the rest of us actually live in.
Because the major news media doesn't understand the concept of shades of gray-- or maybe it's just that they're too lazy to present the shades of gray-- everything is present in black and white, wait, strike that-- not black and white but blue and red. The truth is that the blue and red are in the minority. Most Americans are Purple-- our beliefs are neither strictly conservative "red" nor are we strictly liberal "blue"-- we're moderate. We see some issues through a red lens and others through a blue one. The red and blue "absolutes" that the media and Washington have created is just an easy way to pigeon-hole and further divide and distract the American people.
After all if they keep us fighting amongst ourselves, who is going to notice that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes? Who will point out that these people we elect to serve us, to represent us are only serving themselves (and perhaps each others bank accounts)?
Last November America made a decision that we wanted our bank accounts raped then pillaged then plundered by Democrats as opposed to being plundered then pillaged then raped by Republicans. The end result is/will be the same. The only thing that will have changed are the mascots and the methods of those stealing our country from its people.
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