“Rock The Vote Debate”—That 70s Show
It started sometime in the late 1960s. This was the beginning of the end
of America as we knew it. Up until the ‘Summer of Love’, there were children
and then there were adults. The adults ran things, acted responsibly and were
respected by children who obeyed and tried to emulate them.
This was before the ‘Generation Gap’ replaced the bridge which had
connected the old and the young, resulting in a devastating case of
role-reversal. Faced with the admonition that no one over 30 was to be trusted,
parents ceded their roles as leaders and shapers of opinion to their children,
and donned the love beads of same.
Nearly everyone’s family album contains some embarrassing photo of Aunt
Josie with a peace medallion or Uncle Harry with a Nehru jacket. Older
celebrities also did not want to be on the wrong side of the Gap, and they began
popping up everywhere on ‘cool’ TV shows like Laugh-In, dressed in fab gear
and spouting hip lines like; “You bet your sweet bippy!” and “Here comes
da judge.” Who can forget presidential candidate Richard Nixon nervously
asking, “Sock it to me?” Some, like Phyllis Diller even made a career out of
this cringe-inducing shtick, but most adults, excepting liberals, soon regained
their senses and returned to acting their ages.
I was reminded of this phenomenon last week while watching the “Rock the
Vote” Democratic presidential debate. Deep in the heart of Liberal Land, eight
candidates fell all over each other trying to look, act and respond to the
questions of the Harvard crowd in the coolest of fashions. The result was what
one would expect, only more so.
Like the 70s themselves, the experience was an equal mix of comedy and
pathos. The only thing keeping it from total farce was the absence of Dick
Gephardt, the only man in America who actually admits to being the son of the
proverbial milkman. He would have been as out of place with this audience as was
Rueben on the Partridge Family bus. Not that any of the rest of them didn’t
remind you of that middle-aged, female teacher who tried to do the funky chicken
at your sophomore hop.
First there were the clothes. This was Hah-vad after all, so five of the
eight men wore suits but removed the jackets to demonstrate their willingness to
take a walk on the wild side. The other two, Dennis Kucinich and Wesley Clark,
wore black turtlenecks in a defiant tribute to that avant guarde moment in the
60s (think Illya Kuryakin in “The Man From U.N.C.L.E”) when that attire was
deemed acceptable in lieu of suit and tie. The look made Kucinich appear even
more insignificant than usual while it seemed to render Clark amorphous.
The debate itself was surprisingly animated while the videos from the each of
the candidates’ camps were excruciatingly bad, especially those that attempted
to pander woefully to the hip-hop set, recalling memories of Sebastian Cabot
(Mr. French) singing “It Ain’t Me Babe” in the 60s.
The questions that got the most press coverage concerned
reefer madness, binge drinking and casual-sex hookups—just what the parents of
a Harvard undergrad might expect for the $150,000 price tag. One such question
from an Ivy League coed was:
I'd be curious to find out, if you could pick one of your
fellow candidates to party with, which you would choose. But keeping in mind,
partying isn't just, you know, who do you think can shake their groove thing. I
mean, we're talking, who's going to be loyal to you? Who is going to stand by
your side? If you get sick, who's going to hold your hair back? There's more.
There's more to it. Who's going to be a team player, you know, if you —
imagine if you were single again. If you see a cutie across the room... who's
going to be your wing man? Who's going to take one for the team?
Replying in what can only
be described as a “Mr. Furley” moment, holy Joe Lieberman said, “I hope my
wife understands this. I'd like to party with the young lady who asked that
question.” The camera did not record the young lady’s reaction but if it was
anything akin to mine, it wasn’t pretty.
Next came a question via email that was eagerly anticipated by the
audience—and please note the wording; "Which of you are ready to admit to
having used marijuana in the past?" The results? Yes: Dean, Edwards and
Kerry. No: Kucinich, Lieberman and Sharpton with Carol Moseley Braun abstaining,
so to speak. Clearly this is not your father’s presidential campaign.
Truly representative of the throwback quality of the whole
evening though, was this from the Peter Pan-ish Dennis Kucinich:
The question that was asked earlier by the young woman
about why would young people want to pick any particular candidate, and in my
case it's because the same passion that I felt at age 20 about changing the
world, that fire in the heart, that fire in the spirit, that same willingness to
try to change it all resides in me right now. It's that rebellious spirit that
doesn't accept the status quo, that's ready to take a vision and take it to the
farthest place.
In the case of these Democratic presidential candidates,
that place would appear to be Never Never Land. Right on, dude.
