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Re: The most honest three and a half minutes of television, EVER...
Too bad it's for a fictional show.... -
Re: The most honest three and a half minutes of television, EVER...
Too bad fiction reflects reality.
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Re: The most honest three and a half minutes of television, EVER...
However, we used to be the greatest country in the world before the government/FIRE economy complex started in 1981.Comment
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Re: The most honest three and a half minutes of television, EVER...
The real question is: what is the best path back to the top of the pile?Originally posted by vt View PostComment
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Re: The most honest three and a half minutes of television, EVER...
about this clip, a very different spin from neil howe http://blog.lifecourse.com/
I’ve run a few posts recently on older generations running down Millennials, so I thought—before moving on—that I ought to add this clip. It’s from the new HBO series, “The Newsroom,” written by Aaron Sorkin (first-wave Xer, born 1961, creator of “West Wing”) and starring Jeff Daniels (Boomer, born 1955) as the cynical yet philosophical news anchor. In this clip, Millennials are portrayed as callow, shallow, and out of their depth. The starring Boomer, on the other hand, comes across as deep, passionate, heartfelt—and the flagrant insults he flings at his Millennial audience (e.g., “if you ever wandered into a voting booth”) would be rude only if he weren’t speaking truth to power, which in the Boomer mind justifies any manner of offensive behavior.
One complaint about Sorkin as a screen writer is that he loves to create set-piece dialogue situations which sets up his favorite character to rhetorically vanquish an opponent, sometimes lending his shows a preachy tone. That certainly happens here. I’ve never in my life heard a Millennial ask a Boomer a question like, “Could you say why America is the greatest country in the world?” That’s like pitching underhand to Ty Cobb. As one might expect, it triggers this Boomer to unload a truckload of venom. (His initial reluctance, I guess, makes his explosion seem more authentic.) Did you feel you were on the side of the preacher? Or did you feel preached at in this scene?And what about the substance of his remarks? Are they on target? Here’s a Boomer who no doubt recollects America’s First Turning greatness in the 1950s with the rising G.I. Generation at the helm–when we were “number one” in everything because the rest of the world was staggering among the rubble of WWII. But, as I recall, it was the explicit intention of the leaders of that era to raise the rest of the world up to our level of productivity, affluence, and education precisely because we thought this would make the world a safer and better place. Among other things, we thought it would foster liberal and democratic values worldwide. That’s why we funded the Marshall Plan and created the UN, IMF, World Bank, Bretton Woods, etc. In terms of geopolitical power, we remain the global hegemon. But in other respects, we are merely one of many. Would this result have really disappointed the leaders of the American High? Does it bother Millennials today?One last point. Jeff Daniels (as anchorman Will McAvoy) does not talk so much about what his own generation has done that embodies a “greater” America (though he does talk about how we once did things for “moral reasons”). Rather, he talks mostly about what he recalls of greatness from the elders of his youth. Here, he epitomizes the Prophet Archetype, which seldom moralizes by invoking its own deeds—but rather by invoking memories of the Heroes it recalls from childhood....
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my own comment
the "great society," like the marshall plan, the apollo missions, the civil rights movement, and so on, were not the creations of the boomers, but the ideals they looked up to as children. [lbj, born 1908; mlk jr born 1929; jfk born 1917]. daniels' character is nostalgic for his world as a child. he grew up full of himself and his sense of nobility because as a child he shared such big dreams. and being a child while he had those dreams, he was unaware of the compromises and the work and the sacrifices that had to go into creating realities. thus, as an adolescent he was disgusted by those compromises, and was all the more noble in his own mind because of his disgust. and he could explore his own consciousness much more easily that engage in a complex and compromised reality. and then self-actualization turned into self-gratification in the name of self-actualization, at least for most. not for jeff daniels' character of course, who remains pure and noble. and thus, still, disgusted.
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Re: The most honest three and a half minutes of television, EVER...
It's a very bizarre rant for the reasons listed above. He blames problems that have been developing for decades on a generation who has voted in maybe a handful of elections? Also, since when do liberals always lose?Comment
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