Sunday, May 01, 2011

Generation gap: Bin Laden and the Chatterbox cafe

After seeing The King's Speech at the local discount theater, I'm showing Emily 'Triumph of The Will' on my iPhone over beer and hard cider at the Chatterbox Cafe. Leni Riefenstahl, that monster of Will, did love clouds.

We'd just gotten to Hitler's drive along the rows of adoring blond women and children when our waitress says bin Laden is on TV.

It's the run up to Obama's speech ...

We watch the speech - alone. The Chatterbox is pretty busy, lots of 20 somethings. The Karaoke bar is particularly rowdy. One young woman comes over, she is mildly interested. The staff are curious too, but busy. That's about it though. We're the only ones to watch the speech.

They are young. They have grown up with the Forever Wars. As adults, they've mostly known the Great Recession.

They don't remember the way we do. For them it's all very far away, and not all that interesting. They don't remember the world we lost, a much better world than the one we have now ...

No comments:

Post a Comment