disagree. there were no wide spread drug usage until the mid, late sixties. black and white hipsters had grass and H, read Norman Mailer's The White Negro, but it didn't spread into the upper class, leading edge taste shapers until then. From there it spread to the middle-class. same with coke.
cocaine first came on in the very early 70's in the educated classes and spread from there. i remember an article in the NY Review of Books where it claimed cocaine was not addicting.
ha/ha. watched it destroy many of my friends in the 80's.
point is drugs, sexual deviancy, whatever cultural change, starts among the upper-class, educated, media types, and if accepted there spreads out and down.
Blacks I knew in the 50's were family oriented and took care of their kids, in spite of racism. Rejection of marriage started in the upper classes in the mid-60's, hey, it's cool to have children outside of wedlock, and that attitude spread out into the white middle-class and from there into the black community.
same with coke when it went from free basing to rock, and was taken up by African-Americans. Wiped out whoever got involved, white of black, but esp. black. Very addicting.
Cultural changes always start with the upper class because they are the educated ones, and the taste makers. stop deviancy there and you'll stop it's spread throughout the culture.
The web may be changing this. this happened because of the elites control of the media. It's getting harder for the media to control the culture, otherwise George Clooney's movie would have opened #1.
Any one notice that Hollywood can't seem to make stars anymore? |
