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1970's or 1950's?
Feb. 24th, 2005 07:01 amI had a nice walk over to the van this morning. Of course, it meant leaving the house at 5:40 a.m., which is entirely too early-bird, even for me. It also proved to be rather earlier than it needed to be, to the point where I stopped to pick up coffee, walked extra distance to make sure I had 2 miles in on the morning, and still had plenty of time to scrape all the ice of the van windows and get the engine nicely warmed before pulling out. I could probably get away with leaving the house as late as 6 a.m. on frost-free mornings with no worries, but being me, I wanted to make sure I had plenty of time and didn't have to hustle. It will be much more pleasant when it's a little lighter out. There was plenty of light from the street lights, the full moon, and the false dawn to the east, but it still felt like crack o' dawn and slightly insane.
On the plus side, at that hour I could hear lots of birds chirping, thanks to a dearth of auto traffic. It also gave me plenty of time to think.
My subject of musing this morning was inspired by a trite, stupid commercial I saw yesterday for a piece of Betty Crocker cookware that enables the Mom so fortunate as to own this wonder device (and yes, it was definitely for MOM, not Dad, or random individual of whatever gender and marital status) to make half-dome shaped cakes with a hollow inside for whatever filling of choice. Now, setting aside the fact that this is a perfectly unnecessary kitchen doohickey (I distinctly remember my mother making all kinds of fancy cakes during her cake-decorating phase without recourse to such pans, just a lot of cake-cutting - and I really doubt a professional chef would even touch such a dubious device), the attitude of the commercial really disturbed me. Specifically, all the built-in assumptions. That Mom was staying at home and baking special cakes for multitudinous special occasions. That her "baseball champion" birthday child for whom she just had to make a half-baseball shaped-and-decorated ice-cream-filled cake was naturally an eight-year-old boy. That all her neighbors were just waiting to judge her on whether her backyard party featured a half-watermelon-shaped cake complete with a pink filling. In a word, UGH! The immediate words that popped out of my mouth were: "What is this, the 1950's?" I then laughed and forgot about it, until walking along this morning.
You see, I've been assuming that if we're recycling any particular era it's the 1970's. The current fashion trends certainly seem to suggest as much, or at least lean that way, although a recent trip by a Gap store suggests we're starting to make our way to recycling the early 1980's. But the more I thought about current sociological trends and world events, the more I became convinced that these past few years have had much more in common with what I know of the 1950's than the 1970's. This does not reassure me. The main events I remember from school about America in the 1950's are McCarthyism, the Korean War, Jim Crow laws, and a general conformist repressive culture that did its best to shoo women back out of the workplace and into their "proper" place as domestic mothers and homemakers. You know, Leave it to Beaver and all that - and I never liked that show, not even a little bit. But think about it. Substitute "terrorist" for "communist", and you could make a good argument for modern McCarthyism, right down to the flagrant violation of laws and rights of individuals (guilty until proven innocent, the abuse of our own US citizens, violation of international laws, and a long so on.) The current conflict in Iraq and ongoing messiness in Afghanistan, and our nation's attitude towards the same, seems to my admittedly inexpert eye to be much closer to the Korean conflict than the Vietnam war. (I'm sure my sister can and will put me straight on this if I'm really off base.) And Jim Crow...well, you only have to look at the multitude of states passing laws prohibiting segment X of their population from enjoying the basic rights of the rest of the population to know where that's going. Not to mention the whole government-sponsored blurring of the constitutionally required separation of Church and State. The 1950's saw the addition of "Under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance; the past few years have seen an incredible encroachment of religious initiatives receiving Federal funding and the like.
Hmmm....
Okay, editing in the interest of fairness to add that I grew up in the 1970's, which featured such fine defining moments as Watergate, the Energy Crisis, a big recession, and the whole Iran Hostage Mess. And yet I remember the 70's as a pretty happy time, and I turned out okay. Which just goes to show you.
On the plus side, at that hour I could hear lots of birds chirping, thanks to a dearth of auto traffic. It also gave me plenty of time to think.
My subject of musing this morning was inspired by a trite, stupid commercial I saw yesterday for a piece of Betty Crocker cookware that enables the Mom so fortunate as to own this wonder device (and yes, it was definitely for MOM, not Dad, or random individual of whatever gender and marital status) to make half-dome shaped cakes with a hollow inside for whatever filling of choice. Now, setting aside the fact that this is a perfectly unnecessary kitchen doohickey (I distinctly remember my mother making all kinds of fancy cakes during her cake-decorating phase without recourse to such pans, just a lot of cake-cutting - and I really doubt a professional chef would even touch such a dubious device), the attitude of the commercial really disturbed me. Specifically, all the built-in assumptions. That Mom was staying at home and baking special cakes for multitudinous special occasions. That her "baseball champion" birthday child for whom she just had to make a half-baseball shaped-and-decorated ice-cream-filled cake was naturally an eight-year-old boy. That all her neighbors were just waiting to judge her on whether her backyard party featured a half-watermelon-shaped cake complete with a pink filling. In a word, UGH! The immediate words that popped out of my mouth were: "What is this, the 1950's?" I then laughed and forgot about it, until walking along this morning.
You see, I've been assuming that if we're recycling any particular era it's the 1970's. The current fashion trends certainly seem to suggest as much, or at least lean that way, although a recent trip by a Gap store suggests we're starting to make our way to recycling the early 1980's. But the more I thought about current sociological trends and world events, the more I became convinced that these past few years have had much more in common with what I know of the 1950's than the 1970's. This does not reassure me. The main events I remember from school about America in the 1950's are McCarthyism, the Korean War, Jim Crow laws, and a general conformist repressive culture that did its best to shoo women back out of the workplace and into their "proper" place as domestic mothers and homemakers. You know, Leave it to Beaver and all that - and I never liked that show, not even a little bit. But think about it. Substitute "terrorist" for "communist", and you could make a good argument for modern McCarthyism, right down to the flagrant violation of laws and rights of individuals (guilty until proven innocent, the abuse of our own US citizens, violation of international laws, and a long so on.) The current conflict in Iraq and ongoing messiness in Afghanistan, and our nation's attitude towards the same, seems to my admittedly inexpert eye to be much closer to the Korean conflict than the Vietnam war. (I'm sure my sister can and will put me straight on this if I'm really off base.) And Jim Crow...well, you only have to look at the multitude of states passing laws prohibiting segment X of their population from enjoying the basic rights of the rest of the population to know where that's going. Not to mention the whole government-sponsored blurring of the constitutionally required separation of Church and State. The 1950's saw the addition of "Under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance; the past few years have seen an incredible encroachment of religious initiatives receiving Federal funding and the like.
Hmmm....
Okay, editing in the interest of fairness to add that I grew up in the 1970's, which featured such fine defining moments as Watergate, the Energy Crisis, a big recession, and the whole Iran Hostage Mess. And yet I remember the 70's as a pretty happy time, and I turned out okay. Which just goes to show you.
