Word: moderns
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...cite many pre-industrial and impoverished societies in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere that seem to exhibit low levels of teen pathologies-but so what? Many teens are also starving in these places. I'm sure they don't have time to be delinquent. A defining feature of modern society is that we don't need our young to work, so of course they will screw up more...
Times change, violence gets more explicit, yet the MPAA ratings system still operates under an anachronistic assumption: that modern parents can control what their children see. Junior can buy a ticket for a PG-13 film and stroll into an auditorium showing an R. Or a few months later, he and his friends can rent it from a video store, where kids are rarely carded. Or they go to Wal-Mart and buy the even grottier "unrated" version. (Wal-Mart won't sell R-rated movies to kids under 17, but it will sell unrated ones. Hostel...
FamilyMart, the 7-Eleven of Japan (which is confusing, since 7-Eleven Inc. is now owned by a Japanese company), has opened 12 stores in California under the excessively excited name Famima!! Its vision of America is pretty complimentary: we're an upscale!!, modern!!, clean!!, cheery!! bunch. Although it has plenty of Asian items, the chain pushes its prepackaged but fresh-pressed panini as well as microwavable pastas. And damn if it didn't improve on the Twinkie: its packaged dessert with a chocolate-covered banana topped with whipped cream and rolled in a vanilla cake is perfect convenience-store...
...Reagan is the more obvious case. In the pantheon of modern Republican heroes, he stands alone. The G.O.P. has produced seven Presidents in the past 70 years. But I'd bet that in the stump speeches of today's G.O.P. contenders, Reagan is cited, invoked and appealed to more than the other six combined. As he should be. As President (so Republicans tell it), he got the economy going again, restored American confidence and won the cold war. As a Republican, he both sharpened the party's message and broadened its appeal. He won two landslide elections and then...
...Democrats' situation is different. For them, recent history does not feature a grand triumph (Reagan) preceded and followed by mixed results (Nixon and the Bushes) - a narrative that yields the hope of reliving the moment of success. The modern Democrats are more a party of tragedy than of triumph: John F. Kennedy assassinated; Lyndon Johnson's Presidency wrecked on the shoals of the Great Society and Vietnam; electoral defeats in the '70s and '80s interrupted only by the (failed) Carter Administration; Clinton's victories in the '90s accompanied by the Republican takeover of Congress. And at the heart...