All In All, You're Just Another Depends In The Wall......

Glenn Reynolds had this post, linking to a Don Surber post, about the failure of Live Earth to generate much interest. Puts things in perspective for me, as The Wall is pretty much my favorite album of all time.

But I think the point he is making is a good one. The Boomers believe that music, their music, changed the world. It did, but not in the way they think it did. (It gave us the Bee Gee's and Pol Pot. And in the plus column, Ronald Reagan.) Some Boomers seem to believe that if they go back to their '69 playbook they can do it all over again. We have a war, they reason, an evil Republican President, and global calamity just around the corner. (In 1969 it was the "population explosion") Well folks, this ain't 1969. We have more TV channels than many Boomers have hairs on their heads. People are applauding soldiers in airports, not spitting on them, and we know that Paul Ehrlich's theories were a joke. The kids these days are tuning in to their own iTunes playlists, turning on their computers, and dropping out of the New Establishment paradigm. Yes, Boomers, you are now the New Establishment. (Hurts, don't it.) You are not young, hip, and "with it" anymore. (Do the words "Al Gore" and "hip, cool dude" go together? Didn't think so.) So act your age, fer Chrissakes. A few more people might take you seriously.

(Since I was born int 1959, I guess that makes me a Boomer, too. But I came of age politically in the late 1970's / early 80's, and from that perspective I saw the 60's as a path to disco and the killing fields, not a heroic experiment. Plus, in 1983 I visited East Germany - the 1984 world to which many 60's folks romantically aspired - and it made me ever thankful that <queue Riddley Scott commercial> our 1984 was not like 1984.)