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Where Are the Cockeyed Optimists?
A pitiful Wall Street parody of 1960s populist protests is a reminder of what has changed in American life over half a century. The hippie trappings are there, but the joyous anarchy and hope back then are nowhere to be seen in today’s crybaby culture.
More real passion was generated by a recent increase in Netflix prices than “Occupy Wall Street,” a diffuse demonstration against corporate greed that started a week ago with street-theater demonstrations by a few hundred activists and dwindled into handfuls being pepper-sprayed by New York Police.
We are deeper into culture than politics here when such a fiasco is seen against the uprising over inequalities against others by race and gender during the 1960s, which is being mirrored now only by Tea Party rage over perceived injustice to themselves by aging Boomers and their political heirs.
Political megatrends aside, this is a significant shift in American values from ideals of fairness and justice for all to rage over being victimized by efforts to care for the poor, the aged and helpless.
After World War II, a wildly successful Broadway musical and movie, “South Pacific,” captured the national imagination with an Army nurse singing of herself as “A Cockeyed Optimist”:
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4 Responses to “Where Are the Cockeyed Optimists?”
Buy your own pepper spray and fight back.
Pick on the girls? What pansy field did they pick these cops out of?
So where the hell is Bloomberg??? The world wonders.
That protest really should have gotten more support. Our generation isn’t much for actual protesting. Sure, they ignorant hippes get together to hate on G8 summits, those who have no idea who business works, but this was a good protest. Too bad people are too busy trying to find a job to go protest.
The people who have already managed to rake in their pile don’t care about what goes on outside their neighborhoods and those who are scrabbling to survive on minimum wages and high prices are too worn out to march in the streets. Good post though Robert. There would be more outrage and groundswelling if America hadn’t traded it’s real values for worship of money and consumerism.
Hippies?
lol…haven’t seen a hippie since the early 70′s…and then they were rare.