Monday, November 26, 2007

Tom Brokaw doesn't get it

Tom Brokaw's new book, Boom, examines the influence the baby boomers have had on our society and culture, and he includes a wide variety of well-known and non-celebrity persons born in that era. Listening to him being interviewed on Laura Ingraham this morning and then reading some excerpts from the web, I was left with the impression conservatives know a lot more about how liberals think and react than the other way around. (Just as a quick aside: the only way they know how to have an interesting conservative character on a TV series is to afflict him with dementia--Boston Legal.) Laura pointed out that the single most important boomer to impact our culture, love him or hate him, is Rush Limbaugh, who got a quick mention in a section about drugs and not the media (I'm assuming his prescription drug addiction). Brokaw defended himself, not by addressing Rush's influence on millions, but by decrying the influence of talk radio in general--that it isn't balanced, and Rush mocks people. The Democrats when in power, will continue to harp on that.

He doesn't get it. Rush (and Medved, and Hewitt, and Ingraham, etc.) ARE the balance. The radio airways are open to the liberals, but they haven't succeeded in drawing an audience that will hold the sponsors. People don't listen to talk radio because there is nothing else--they listen because they want to hear another view that they can't get on broadcast news and cable news, where liberals have a lock. During one of the news breaks on a conservative show, I get to hear Anderson Cooper, a Vanderbilt/Whitney descendant, go on and on about global warming (guilt?). Many conservatives interview people who disagree with them, and usually make them look weak. Laura nailed Tom on this point, and he wandered off into the swamp of "we're never going to resolve this. . . .so why belabor the point."

Here's something else he doesn't quite grasp--the women's movement. In writing about the women's movement that evolved at the same time his daughters were growing up, he says, "One of our daughters is now a physician; another is a vice president of a major entertainment company; and the third is a clinical therapist. They place no limits on their ambitions, but for them, those ambitions also have had to fit within the context of having children. For all the gains made by women, and the recognition within society of how important that is to a healthy body politic, we have not satisfactorily resolved the workplace consequences of having children."

Why not say, "We have not satisfactorily resolved the family and parenting consequences created by women going off to work 10-12 hours a day."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm with you, Norma. First they start reading, then voting. Soon all them ladies start worryin' their pretty little minds about all kinds of stuff.

Norma said...

I see you don't get it either. Worry about the workplace and not the children.

Anonymous said...

Hi Norma, Great Blog.You can say it like it is.
I want to start my blog soon as I am about to retire.
You have great insight and commentary.
I agree that women rushing to the workforce have left thousands of lost children in their wake.
I question how much that phenom actually grew the economy vs how much damage it created.
Nothing against working if one must but to satisfy one's narcisstic greed by sacrificing the needs of children is a devastating price to pay. I regret that I did it.
I found your blog by googling my family name and there were folks mentioned in your blog with my last name but I can not find them now in your pages.
It must be Providence, though. I have bookmarked your blog and will return soon.
God Bless.
(I have a minor blog at www.disablethenavbar.blogspot.com)
FTGF!
Mary

Norma said...

Mary--I know many people with your surname in the town where I grew up, so if you stop back to check this, use the e-mail posted under my photo.