A Lifetime of Violence: Terrorism, Rates of Information Flow and Baby Boomers

One of the trends that distinguishes Baby Boomers, especially the later born Boomers, from other cohorts is the unique role senseless violence, in general, and terrorism, in particular, played in the development of our psyches. People born in the late 50s and early 60s grew up with an intimate, personal relationship with violence that was blessedly unavailable to former generations. National televised news expanded to 30 minutes from 15 minutes when we were very young. It then brought a host of real crime and horror, in living color, directly into our homes and our still forming worldviews. These experiences have colored the lenses through which we interpret the world. But they have not made us callus or accepting of such violence. Instead it readies us to respond with a just determination that indeed the whole of the United States of America, and perhaps most of the free world, now shares.

Most Americans when asked about terrorism before the September 11, 2001 bombings, would have mentioned Pan Am Flight 103, Atlanta's Olympic Park bombing, the Uni-Bomber and of course the Federal building in Oklahoma City. But these are only the recent wounds... We cannot forget the specific events etched on our impressionable minds: 1972 Munich Olympic games terrorist attack and abduction lead to the death of 11 Israeli athletes before our eyes, Carlos the Jackal, Entebbe, Black September and Abu Nidal ring clearly in our minds.

The oldest of the later born Boomers came of age - in US culture that meant getting a driver's license - during gasoline rationing and the oil crisis. Middle Eastern conflict didn't seem remote to us when it impacted our contemporary rites of passage. Skyjacking entered our minds as a possibility before we ever flew. Our cohort went on our first dates with knowledge of the likes of the Zodiac Killer, we saw war on the TV every night as we grew up. Those of us fortunate enough to grow up in circumstances that allowed European backpacking trips left our country to visit countries where terrorist acts were common. Is it any wonder our generation was noted to have remarkably high rates of depressive disorders by the late 1970s?

At Late-Boomers.com we hope all the generalized angst we have sheltered inside ourselves, for most of our lives, can emerge from the vague shadows, dust, and debris of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States of America and take concrete form against which we can fight.

We've lived with such vague enemies throughout our lives. While some of our country has had some difficulty with the concept of not have a geographic enemy to fight, we Boomers have never seen a concrete sustained enemy. Not that we haven't paid attention to and even lost members of our cohort in specific battles fought around the globe during our lifetimes. But there has been no coherent enemy for most of our lives, the enemies change with frequency, only a generalized dread of nuclear war, communism or capitalism (take your pick), environmental degradation, and political corruption have remained constant. Even the death of JFK remains clouded in suspicion that the Warren Commission covered up something, but what? While most of us do not delve into the world of paranoid conspiracy theories, there is a part of most of us that processes far beyond our control rules our lives. In fact we may be the first generation for quite some time to understand that we cannot control the world. Processes of life and earth far beyond our scale of understanding are at work, it doesn't require conspiracy or dalliance with schizophrenic ideology to accept that we have tried to control a system of which we are a mere part.

This vague understanding has probably readied us to respond to an amorphous enemy. I believe we will rise to the challenge and will in fact emerge strengthened and revitalized when we realize that our generational perception that the world was harboring unseen enemies of an unknown form was real. We no longer have to try to blame the CIA or the KGB. It was both and none, in fact human culture was simply growing new cancers, in response to the unchecked, not extremely well thought out, interaction of all the mixed signals that was the political context of our childhood and youth -- the same context that allows former CIA operatives to attack the financial heart and hiding in the country during which the KGB spent much of its resources during its war with Afghanistan and sees those enemies banding together against it -- hopefully we now understand that just like cancer cells that could ultimately destroy the entire world will be formed when there are errors in replication, when deceit clogs informational channels.

The world that created the terrorist cells that changed our world forever this past Tuesday is the same world in which we grew up. Many of us have wondered many times along the way to the present what the 21st Century would be like. Wondered what the world would be as we became its leaders. We now know. It is a world where the machinations of the KGB and CIA of our youth have come back to bite us. Where we will see the two former opponents and their intelligence communities working together sharing information, and the people of most of the world will support that union. This may be very good if honesty and integrity can be restored to the governments of the world.

Perhaps this will finally allow the people of the world to see that with the increased pace of information flow and the much faster rate at which the entire world system interacts that we cannot live with the delusion that the world is a predictable place and that any one group can beat the system and manipulate outcomes. Impacts and effects of political, financial, social tinkering once took generations to play out. We can no longer pretend we are outside the equation. We are a variable in the equation. We now see those responses and consequences within a lifetime. The nature of the world is not changing but response time that allows us to view cause and effect has sped up dramatically.
The opportunity to act and react without attempts to control or expectations that we will know the consequences is here. Of course we will react to remove the cancer that attacks us. We also now know enough to know that we cannot predict whether the excision will allow us continued life. Certainly life for us all will change.

SOME SELECTED REFERENCES RELATED TO TERRORISM AND HISTORY
NOTE: Many of these sites, in fact most sites with the word terrorism associated with them, will log your IP address and such when you visit. If you have privacy concerns about this procedure, then don't go to these.

For information on basic systems concepts, click here to go to an article I wrote on the subject.

Probably the best place to start a net search on terrorism: http://www.terrorism.com/index.shtml

An extensive site with excellent information on various types of potential emergency, crisis, and terrorist situations, current situational analyses, and accounts of recent events. http://www.emergency.com/cntrterr.ht

Interested in what the US government has funded per counter terrorist programs and initiatives in the last few years? Check out this site for an accounting. http://www.cns.miis.edu/research/cbw/terfund.htm

Abstracted information of the nightly news broadcast stories starting in the late 60s. Looking for a date for a particular hijacking or incident. Check here. Great for understanding the context of an event through other news stories of the day. http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/search.html

Federation of American Scientists site containing papers on government intelligence. No oxymoron jokes, please. One paper that really caught my attention was the analysis of the terrorist attack on the Munich Olympics. http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/index.html

Gilda's Gift of Laughter

Gilda Radner would have been 55 years old on the day I wrote this article, June 28 2001. In a retrospective piece we stroll back to the rich, dynamic and rapidly evolving world of the comedy of women in 1970s television that she and a select group of comediennes created for us before our very eyes. Laugher shapes a generation and these were the women who shaped our generational concept of humor.

Happy Birthday Gilda!
Gilda Radner would have celebrated her 55th birthday this week. Ovarian cancer took her from us at far too early an age. Born June 28, 1946, she was one of the oldest boomers and had a tremendous influence on the wealth of female comedic talent that burst onto the comedy club seen in the 80s and 90s. So, today I'm meandering down memory lane of women's humor in the 70s in honor of the wonderful woman who taught a generation of women that riotous free spirited laughter was a "good thing." Just think of the fun she'd have had goofing on Martha Stewart!
"Well it just goes to show you, if it"s not one thing, it's another." To put the comedy of the women, women who actively created comedy and did not just interpret scripts, of Saturday Night Live were doing in perspective is to remember the wasteland into which Jane Curtain, Lorraine Newman, and Gilda Radner ventured. Less than ten years before SNL, Phyllis Diller and Mary Tyler Moore displayed the entire range of the repertoire allowed to women in televised comedy. You could play off a man by being a dingy helpless creature a la Mary Tyler More on the Dick Van Dyke Show, or you could be the ugly witch a la Phyllis Diller (and I have to confess that I absolutely loved her as she was right at the edge of the PC filter.) By the 70s the sterotypes had gained a significant bit of breadth with the good girl Mary Tyler Moore being showcased in her own show that featured several other comediennes such as Betty White, Valerie Harper, Cloris Leachmanand Georgia Engel.
Lily Tomlin broke ground on Laugh In1968-73 than did Ruth Buzzy, Judy Carne or Joanne Worley, or even Goldie Hawn who eventually dwarfed the others mentioned her with her comedic, dramatic and production success. Tomlin's character that allowed women a wry, nonconformist voice through a little girl persona of Edith Ann that probably wouldn't have been tolerated from an adult character. But the success of the wacky comedy show was built on predictable characters in predictable situations. The comedic element of the show that is often overlooked in retrospective analysis is its incorporation of a significant number of comediennes in a day where "variety" televisions shows at best featured one female comic. The Smother's Brothers Comedy Hour, while groundbreaking in the depths to which it took political humor, primarily showcased male talent.
The realm of political comedy and satire was not long left to the men once the ball got rolling. Eventually SNL filled the bill in sketch comedy, but before that was Maude, starring Beatrice Arthur, was a groundbreaking sitcom for women which dealt with the issues of divorce, abortion, and a host of other politico-religious issues. This show was also significant in that it gave Esther Rolle a platform to give a woman of color voice to some knee jerk, but fairly well rounded pronouncements on the issues of social idiocy, race and class. And it acted as a stepping stone for Rolle to get her own show in the late 70s. Maude spun off from All in the Family with Jean Stapleton and Sally Struthers playing fairly predictable stereotypic roles but with some of the the best sitcom casting ever done. Other shows that show cased great talent and writing but were not necessarily the offspring of women's creativity included Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman in which the dysfunction of the world of the 70s was charicatured in Fernwood by Louise Lasser and crew. And perhaps no sitcom character's growth illustrates the changes in women's roles in comedy and television better than looking at the transformation of Loretta Switt's character Hotlips into Margaret on M*A*S*H* (1973-1983). Gilda wasn't alone in her expansion of women's comedic presence in television, but she certainly personified the integration of a woman comic into the total fabric of televised comedy. She wasn't just in front of the camera, she was the first ensemble cast member selected for the show, so in many ways the selection of the now classic team of The Not Ready for Prime Time Players cast for the original Saturday Night Live were anchored on Gilda's talent. Women focused sketch comedy of the 60s often centered on sex roles or gender based expectations as in Ruth Buzzy's spinster hitting Artie Johnson with a purse, or Lily Tomlin's gossipy phone operator. Gilda's characters, such as Emily Latela or Roseanne Roseanna Danna, were female, sure, but their comedic essence lay in their humanity not in their femininity.
Women's comedy of the late middle 20th century, of course, could not have existed without the classic work of Lucillie Ball and Carol Burnette. These groundbreaking comediennes, really the grandmother and mother of the comedy of the early 70s continued doing comedy through the rapidly changing 70s. In a 1980 article in People Magazine Lucille mentions Carol Burnette, Goldie Hawn, and Bette Midler as being among her favorite comediennes of the day. Lucille Ball's mention of Bette Midler makes the point that women who could stand a life of constant travel did find venues prior to the 1970s. During the 70s, the queen of the well established nightclub circuit, the venue for comics before the days of comedy clubs, was undoubtedly Bette. In the 70s she took live, adult-oriented comedy out of the clubs and brought it to the attention of a much larger audience, while she in no way submitted to domestication. No discussion of comedy in the 70s would be complete without her. She stretched some very traditional schitck and formats to new limits.
Stretch marks are largely women's territory and our generation certainly enjoyed the liberating mindset of broad ranging comedy that was a trademark of the 70s. Without these great ladies contemporary comedy of Ellen Degeneres, Elayne Boosler, Paula Paundstone, Rita Rudner, Sandra Bernhard and many many other funny women would not have found as many doors open to them as they have. Without Gilda we wouldn't have Rosie O'Donnell who first ventured into stand-up after doing a magnificent impression of Gilda Radner's Rosanne Rosannadana in a high school follies production. Thank you Gilda, your legacy continues to bring us laughter and joy.


Gilda links: If you haven't had enough of memory land those of us that spent most saturday nights at home in the 70s, can read an interview with Gilda from Crawdaddy's pages, or buy her autobiography It's Always Something or find out more about Gilda's battle with ovarian cancer Gilda's Disease listen to her work on cd Live from New York, or watch a video Gilda Live (1980).

Children of the 60s

I used to say, "If I see another Boomer web page with "psychedelic" or swirly pastel backgrounds, a lava lamp, or a cartoonish hippie, I'm gonna lose it!" Now I have to include the "shaggy headed clean-cut boy next door" in the instant trigger for a gut churning response. I swear... "I'm gonna hurl!" as my daughter says, if this 70s retro sentimentality doesn't get more realistic. Oh sure "That 70s Show" is cute, but it isn't quite there. Although the nondescript name of the show does illustrate the fact that there isn't a name for us or our times.

Now one part of me is gagging and retching at the blatant mis-packaging (anything familiar here?) of our generation into a distilled sticky sweet pabulum. While sex and drugs and rock and roll are mentioned, it's all squeaky-clean sex and drugs and rock and roll. Where are herpes, overdoses, and Sid and Nancy? I tell ya, WE are the ones who have to do something about this. We are the only ones who CAN do anything about this. There has never been any balance in our culture's perception of us, the Late Boomers...

But for the moment I just want to wander down memory lane and digress (something I do very well, if I do say so myself) about what I remember as really happening, as opposed to what society is collectively choosing to remember about being a kid back then.

The term "hippie" was buried (I saw it, on TV!, they had a coffin and everything) during the "Summer of Love." I was ten years old that summer. I never was and never will be a hippie. I hate to admit it, but my memories of "the 60s" are mainly from television. I have personal memories of things like reading Nancy Drew books with my best friend, and the like, but those are memories of my life, my memories of "the 60s" really do seem to have come from news broadcasts! People who know me have heard the story about me seeing my brother, the Marine, on the 6 o'clock news when he was in Vietnam, but this goes beyond that to something we all experienced. Well maybe not all, but many of us. While my growing up in a fairly rural not-much-going-on area could explain this "televised" view, it could also be that by the time we were kids, everyone had a television (which wasn't the case in the 50s) and it was still a relatively safe form of entertainment. We were allowed to watch most of what we wanted to see when we wanted to see it -- there was no 24 hour a day Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, or Disney Channel. Parents didn't have to "police" our viewing. Maybe they should have... all the trends we now collectively wonder about got started during our youth.

My childhood wasn't exactly the "Wonder Years," but I didn't live in suburbia either. I remember "Dark Shadows" coming on in the afternoon, just after school let out. I swear this directly translates to some of the vampire/Anne Rice success/Victorian romance novel success the western world is experiencing. Girls thought Quentin was sexy! And "Gilligan's Island" was a hit for similar reasons... Ginger and Maryanne fueled young male fantasy. TV even entered into my non-TV playtime.
I remember closing my toy box lid to get a better view of the Beatles waving and smiling as they came down those plane steps to set foot on American soil for the first time. And my favorite "Barbie" type dolls included a Twiggy doll and a Samantha (Bewitched) doll. Does this relate to the popularity of Wiccan practices today? And then there was H.R. Puffinstuff (actually spelled Pufnstuf) -- wowsa. Was that trippy silliness or what? And for kiddie consumption, no less! The sixties psychedelic life for us was experienced through a children's eyes. Did it set us up for acceptance of giant talking mushrooms? Oh, never mind. I think the biggest single influence of the 60s on me was Rocket J. Squirrel. Bullwinkle and Rocky shaped my political views, my sense of humor, and even my fascination with archetypes in fairy tales.

I doubt that I'm the only one who remembers much of the 60s through television's filter. Now I know at least one person my age who actually went to Woodstock as a child/young teen, but for most of us that was a world away. I think we should get our stories straight and market our memories ourselves rather than letting mass market culture try to reinvent the various stages of our lives.

Enough for now...

I promise that next time's rant will be more "mature."