Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.
Apologies for my drift into rare nostalgia on Saturday. I know you agreed with me, but it is an easy, lazy habit to get into to believe that all our yesterdays were better. I am talking about the small things here — grace notes like music and TV programmes, football and sweets, haircuts and clothes, not big things like our education system, or the NHS — or food, obviously.
I tried over the weekend, I really tried to show the sceptical teens why the Beastie Boys mattered to a previous generation; I battled in vain to explain the significance of MTV; why it was so iconoclastic and became the descriptor that defined a generation. I failed miserably. The real problem being the moment we clicked on a video of "(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)".
Adam Yauch was a genuinely extraordinary man, much greater than his considerable achievements with the Beasties, but, all they saw was an old, naff video.
We do all turn into our parents, even we who are part of the first generation of parents to care what our children think of us — one of the greatest changes of my lifetime. We feel that by being conscious of this we can modify our behaviour to avoid the natural order of things: the young rising up to eat its old.
Why do we care? We must look at the twin influencing factors of our exponentially lengthening life expectancy plus that ever-greater self-reflection we embrace through our ever-more-invasive media. For a while we even thought we were "cooler" than our diligent, socially aware young (think geeky Saffy in Absolutely Fabulous), but...
If I look at many of my friends' relationships with their children, the parents all seem so relatively youthful. But that's because I am subconsciously looking for my youthful self reflected back in my friends. What is different without doubt is that we are so much more "friendly" with our children than our parents were. Is that a good thing? Oh, where do we start?
twitter.com/stefanohat
Follow @stefanohat
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments