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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Dec. 24, 2007 / 15 Teves 5768

No fury like a Zep fan scorned

By Diana West


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | "I don't like old people on a rock 'n' roll stage. What you're pretty much doing is imitating yourself at the age of 25, and there's basically nothing more pathetic." — Grace Slick


Finally found people even touchier than Islamic fanatics: Led Zeppelin fanatics. No kidding. I say this after receiving a pretty heavy mailbag on my recent column about the Zep reunion concert in London. It was the "worst" column, a work of "concentrated stupidity," I must have been "stoned" to have written it, my work should be "boycotted."


("Carry your (boycott West) signs on to the streets, hang them in windows and pin them up in your work place cubicle," commented one free-speech enthusiast at the conservative Web site townhall.com.)


You see, I had dared to go for a few laughs at the expense of aging (aged) rockers and their aging (aged) fans, most of whom believe you're just not living if you're not 14, or acting like it. And not only is my anti-establishment, alternative point of view verboten, there is also nothing funny about the aging (aged) concert scene, what with Led Zeppelin settling into its set, as one account reported, as "grown men in the mostly middle-aged and male audience began playing air guitar."


Nothing funny, that is, if you happen to be a middle-aged male who plays air guitar. I heard from several such air musicians, including the one who reminded me that "the Founding Fathers fought for our freedom to play air guitar at 50."


So no jokes.


That said, there remains the more serious punch line pertaining to the phenomenon I like to call "the death of the grown-up." In fact, as some readers know, I have even written a book by the same title devoted to exploring how and why we came to a place in the progression of the species where, quite suddenly, adolescence is no longer a phase to pass through, but, in many ways, the endpoint — the culmination — of our emotional and aesthetic development (and why this threatens our liberty).


A "heritage rock event" such as Led Zeppelin's onstage reunion is a good place to assess the phenomenon. Here, the erstwhile don't-trust-anyone-over-30 set gathers to retool its creed for its Golden Years: Don't trust anyone who acts over 30 — or worse, imagines there is something amiss in the pretense.


For pretense is the name of this game. As Zep fans explained to me, they have substantive jobs, they pay taxes, they hold marriages together, they raise kids. Nothing "adolescent" about such lives of responsibility and care — nothing, that is, except their own deeply ingrained, metaphysical aversion to seeing themselves as ... adults; as the very backbone of a hidebound "Establishment"; as, in the words of a 40ish attorney who reverently reviewed the Zep concert for The Washington Post, a bunch of "corporate stiffs."


What is ironic is that the rock 'n' roll soundtrack to which these 21st-century Babbitts live their lives came into existence as the martial music of a youth revolution to overturn the Establishment; to denigrate corporate stiffs; to smash monogamy and push promiscuity; and to mark middle-class duty, whether civilian or military, as a chump's game.


So what's it all about? According to my reader comments, there's only one alternative to Led Zeppelin et al: Death by "muzak." There's only one alternative to Robert Plant: Barry Manilow. There's only one alternative to rocking out: Being "a robot."


What a choice. But such is the truncated range of human possibility as whittled down in our post-grown-up era by the forces of Hollywood, the music biz and Madison Avenue. They have convinced us to see ourselves as either wild or boring; cool or uncool; unzipped or straitlaced; at least secretly licentious or just plain dull. Give me Zep or give me death! As one 48-year-old Zep fan commented: "I'm about as conservative as they come, but conservative doesn't translate to `Fuddy Duddy'!"


Oh yeah? A great irony here is that there is nothing more conventional — dare I say corny? — than, after all these post-adolescent decades, still running with the Zep-loving, air-guitar-playing masses. Mavericks by the tens of thousands, they now conform to the pose of the rebel just as Babbitt once conformed to role of civic booster. In other words, the Babbittry still exists, all right; but today's Babbitts simply pretend it doesn't. Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll rules, dude — even in the "work place cubicle" where my columns are now boycotted.

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