TD1_01: Generation Gap
LegendarySurfer
Along with having its own music, its own radio stations and a
marketplace bending over backwards to make money off of it, the youth
of the 1950's began to grow more independent.
Scoop Nisker, freeform newsman for KSAN-FM during its freeform
heyday wrote in his book If You Don't Like the News - Go Out and Make
Some of Your Own that "In the mid-1950's, a crack began to appear in
the landscape of America, a crack that would eventually widen and
deepen and split the nation apart - not North from South, or even so
much liberal from conservative, but young from old. This rift would
come to be known as the generation gap.
"To some degree, each generation has a collective personality;
who we become in life is strongly influenced by the dominant cultural
milieu. For the most part, the parents of the baby boomers grew up in
the lean and fearful period of the Great Depression, and then lived
through the horrors of World War II. As a result, they were obsessed
with security - physical, financial, and political. Their children, on
the other hand, were far more likely to have been born into relative
affluence, their physical security and human rights guaranteed - at
least if they were white and middle class. America was the world's new
superpower superstar, and my generation's birthright included the
promise of continued freedom and prosperity, as well as the
opportunity to pursue any career, to reach any heights of achievement.
Much to our parents' chagrin, most of us decided to have a party
first."
"We grew up with great expectations," explained Nisker, "our
fantasies shaped by the unbridled optimism that characterized America
in the 1950s. Life was guaranteed to get bigger and better, more
spectacular and more fun... that postwar decade saw the transformation
of capitalism into consumerism. The newly powerful medium of
television promoted not only products, but a basic belief in material
goods as the key to happiness. Jesus may have said, 'Give up all you
own and follow me,' but American free enterprise was saying, 'Get
everything you can and you will be among the blessed.' Almost every
advertisement, whether for Bendix carpet sweepers, Bayer aspirin, or
Buick automobiles, also sold the fantasy of the perfect family in
their own home among many possessions, living happily ever after. Such
great expectations could only lead to disappointment. Idealism slips
too easily into cynicism.
"At the same time, however, we were also constantly aware of a
dark shadow on the horizon. Growing up with the atomic bomb almost
literally hanging over our heads gave a fatalistic edge to our lives..."