I’m Not Making This Up
October 10, 2010
by
PaulM
Posted in Culture, Election 2010, History, Lowell, Poetry, Politics
2
Comments
The whole inside back page of the NYTimes Book Review today has an essay by Lee Siegel comparing the Tea Party with the Beats (Kerouac, Ginsberg, and the other Beat Generation writers of the 1950s and ’60s). The essay is a cultural stretch in many ways, but makes for surprising reading when you see how Siegel connects the two mindsets and social movements. Read the essay here, and get the NYT if you appreciate the thinking.
Siegel’s essay is absurd on a few levels. Not the least of which is the fact that the Beats were counterculturists against the very culture that the Tea Party wants to “restore.” Hence Glenn Beck’s “Rally to Restore Honor,” which is code for a return to nuclear family mindset, presumably one nurtured by a (white) conservative president.
I love it! anything that bends the mind. I can just see jack Kerouac, or Ginsbuurg, sitting down over a table in a coffee house or bar shooting the breeze with Sarah Palin, as they plot the overthrow of the existing order. On the other hand, she does “howl” – yes, another “obscenity” trial – just kidding.