Very good point:
So, folks, please– explain the things that were utterly well known when you were in college.
Everyone should know all about Goldwater, because it happened when you were 24? That was 1964. You might have grandkids that age; some of you are great grand parents.
Barry Goldwater ran for President four years before I was born, and I’m 41 years old. It is unreasonable to expect people in their twenties or thirties to know anything about the conservative movement of those days when all they know of WWII, the Korean, and the Vietnam war is what they saw in the movies. And half the time, those movies were shown in history class. Most of them probably could not name the combatants in WWI or explain why they were fighting. They think women’s suffrage is a Bad Thing which should be stopped immediately.
How can they not know about the suffragettes? Didn’t these people at least watch Mary Poppins? But details of a political movement half a century ago is quite beyond them.
Title win. ^.^ And than you for the link!
Of course, now I’m trying to remember the suffragettes being mentioned in Mary Poppins….
.-= Foxfier´s last blog ..You’re Not The Majority Culture Anymore- =-.
The mom was a suffragette and did this catchy musical number… some of the lyrics were “cast off the shackles of yesterday, shoulder to shoulder into the fray… our daughter’s daughters will adore us, and they’ll sing in grateful chorus, WELL DONE, sister suffragettes!”
It’s a crying shame that they – we – do not sing their praises. I’ve done the odd post on Susan B. Anthony’s birthday or some such, but really, they deserve better than to be forgotten after beatings, imprisonment, forced feeding during hunger strikes… too many girls today think the women’s rights movement started with the bra-burning 1970s.
I seem to remember they had some very, very harsh things to say about abortion– that it enabled men to use women and toss them aside without even a fear of a bastard following them home, etc. Their lack of modern popularity may be related to that.