46
Popular Culture Review
into the flaky radicalism of Woodstock hippies, into the dissolute
narcissism o f Travolta disco dancers, into the sharper image of
consumerism of brie-and-chablis yuppies, into the smug pomposity of
today’s politically correct neopuritans. Thirteens see Boomers as the most
colossally manipulative hypocrites in the milhon-year history of Homo
sapiens. (Howe 48)
No issue illustrates the tension between Boomers and Bridgers more than the
issue of teen prohibition. Mike Males takes an extensive look at the hypocrisy of
Boomers in “Two-Fisted Double Standards.” Males tracks the record of teenage
drunkenness arrests and traffic violations. What he finds is that teenage prohibition
laws were enacted during the seventies when, for the first time, arrests and accidents
were actually on the decline. Why at this point? Simple profit. Creating such an
issue would profit and advance the agencies and programs that arose in the 1970s
and "80s to address alcohol, safety, and youth issues. Males tracks how agencies
used teens in the "80s and "90s as scapegoats, seeing them as easy prey, since
increasingly fragile fam ilies turned to government, laws, programs, and
professionals to fill in where parents were opting out to focus on their own careers
and needs. Such duplicity had nothing to do with some massive highway carnage
resulting from teenagers, or any “national desire” to protect the young, and
apparently not any genuine increase in alcohol damage in general. Nor did raising
the drinking age produce any noteworthy benefit in any of these areas.
The principal benefits accrued? Adult economic advantage, public morahzing
while privately protectin g adult alcohol access, and invoking governmental controls
on the young to make up for rising family instabihty — in other words, more
evidence of Boomer hypocrisy. If the adult motive in removing teen drinking rights
was a benign one to protect youth, as many advocates claimed, it is curious that
such protection did not extend into areas such as military combat, where youth
participation might have resulted in increased adult risk, exposure, and obhgation.
This “we don’t care” contradiction was most evident in the fury expressed by
Candy Lightner, witness for MADD, who told lawmakers she was “sick and tired”
of hearing the complaint that youths were old enough to be sent to war but not to
drink (Males 201).
Lightner was motivated to organize MADD because her daughter was killed
by a drunk driver - an adult drunk driver. MADD’s newsletter printed the ages of
drunk drivers only when they were under 21. In fact, Lightner ended up on the
payroll of the brewery industry opposing efforts to toughen laws against adult
drunk driving (Males 201). Such an attitude towards teen drinking seems even
more hypocritical when we examine the statistics of who is driving drunk. The
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Traffic Safety Facts show that