Some say it started with rock’n’roll. Others blame Dr. Spock. Me, I think it goes back to Sam Peckinpah’s 1972 movie The Getaway, one of the first mass market films to glorify and glamorize criminal behavior.
Saturday morning we rode our bicycles down to Tucson’s 4th Avenue. It was our weekly ride and coffee-shop run, and I particularly wanted to go because a local hot rod club was putting on a show that day. What could be more fun than a good bike ride with friends, a cup of coffee at an outdoor cafe, and hot rods to gawk at?
At some point I noticed the two gentlemen walking ahead of us. I took a not-very-good photo with my cell phone. You may just be able to make out the logos on the backs of the vests: the guys are members of something called the “Hate Fuckers.”
This was not a late night rock concert with an adult audience. It was a Saturday morning family event (and indeed you can see a family in the photo). Hate Fuckers? Really? It’s okay to walk down a public street wearing clothing decorated with the word fuckers in big block letters? In the morning? With families all around?
I shouldn’t have been shocked, but I was. I still am.
Oh, you old softie, you. I guess you were flying jets when good manners went out the window. They got replaced by a nasty new regime of “political correctness,” which was supposed to be good manners but pretty much deteriorated into the extremes of free speech. That happened along with the shocking rise of racism, bigotry, religious fanaticism, and hysterical talk shows on radio and TV. To say nothing of the new national pasttime of lying. But I wrote a whole set of lyrics about that, so we won’t go into it. Face it, we’re seeing the rise of the hatred class or the bigot class or the just plain stupid class. Somehow, since the time when we were growing up, being smart, educated, and well mannered have gone out of style, with a vengeance. But there’s hope. Some school district (not, I suspect, in California) has started a program in which unemployed parents attend school with their children, ostensibly so they can help them with their homeework, but I think actually to educate the parents at the same time and teach them and their children to respect teachers and education. That’s cause for hope, isn’t it?
And regarding the rise of the stupid class, David heard on the radio last night that there’s a new crime wave in LA (actually Santa Barbara; I had to track down the source first): using electric drills to siphon gas from the gas tank. Hmmmm. Gas, metal, electric drills, sparks. . . The first one who dies gets a Darwin Award from removing his DNA from the gene pool.