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Popular Culture Review
This manipulation led to an interesting statistic during the Clinton-Lewinsky
scandal. When Bridgets were asked how they felt about the sex part of the Chnton
story and his lying about it, they didn’t particularly care. When Boomers and former
generations cried, “Where’s the shame?!” Bridgets responded with, “Like you were
any better!” That was the attitude expressed in a Letter to the Editor by one Bridget
in response to a Boomer named Mrs. Fields:
Mrs. Fields states, “The unmasked private man of sordid tastes cannot
be a good public man with credibihty.” Does she mean the “unmasked
private man” who is in office? I hope so, because history has unmasked
many seemingly good public men with credibility as quite sordid
characters.. .Thus, if one is well acquainted with history and contemporary
sociology, he or she is not shocked by this “current event.” I am of the
opinion that the same internal forces that drive elected men to great acts
of leadership, drive them in other, less moral directions. They have
tremendous strengths and equally powerful weaknesses. The same holds
true for many of our great artists, athletes, writers and thinkers: Pablo
Picasso, Ernest Hemingway and Martin Luther King to name a few.
When I hear a disgusted pohtical pundit such as Mrs. Fields ask, “Is
a president who degrades the dignity of the (Oval) office fit to be
president?” I am equally disgusted —not at the president, but at such an
asinine question coming from a pundit’s ostensibly partisan ignorance of
history and truth. I think Mrs. Fields should be more careful when writing
what amounts to an “in it, but not of it” inside-the-Beltway commentary.
(EberhardtA14)
Succeeding revelations proved that this writer was very astute pohtically, as
senators and representatives were ousted for their own personal troubles and
consequent hypocrisy. This “Do As I Say Not As I Do” parenting style is clearly
evident in modern life when politicians such as former House Speaker Newt
Gingrich championed absolutist moral standards and “family values.” When
questioned about his own extramarital affairs, divorce, and failure to support his
children, Gingrich asserts “a clear distinction between my private life.” When
President Clinton was confronted by the press (not to mention his daughter Chelsea)
on the bad example his cigar smoking set for his anti-youth-smoking-crusade,
Clinton replied, “I don’t think that’s the point. The issue is whether children are
smoking cigarettes” (Males 268).
The disillusionment with authority, both pohtical and rehgious, extends as
well for Bridgers into the family. With good reason:
If boomers once boasted of never trusting anyone over 30, Xers have