 The Old Man

It was with the group that calls itself The Greatest Generation that “our men in uniform” became “our boys.” In earlier generations, a guy did not go out to fight so people would call him “a boy.” But back then being a man was a good thing.

The self-styled Greatest Generation did the only thing it would ever do when it was young. It wants to be seen as young forever. Tom Brokaw is now cashing in on another group that is doddering but wants to be called “children,” the 60s generation.

Brokaw is of course pandering to those who want to be know as the 60s generation, the spoiled children whom the “Greatest Generation,” with its demand for total entitlement, produced in its own image.

But the fact is that the REAL generation of the 1960s was comparatively conservative. The “Greatest Generation” was the ONLY cadre in which a majority of whit men were liberal.

I was driving a young English girl around the Southland on a vacation at the end of the 60s and we were watching a TV program where the moderator asked live young people what they thought of long hair. She laughed at the question, since everybody who watched American TV knew that young people were all for long hair on boys. I told her this was not he case.

She was astounded. Almost every teenager and young adult on there went YUCCH! at long hair on males! But today, all we know is what TV tells us.

When I say I’m old, I get the usual required “Oh, Bob, you’re still YOUNG!” In our age, after two generations of the “our boys in uniform” now dying of old age and the “Don’t trust anyone over 30” crowd on its walkers, the fact that I consider maturity a VIRTUE is like a message from Mars.