The Hippies Were Right!

Thanks to my Uncle Alfred for sending this great piece to me. The fact that this is a column in a web-based publication reminds me how silly it is to talk about the liberal bias in the media. Morford has a valid point, but you'll never hear this presented in the MSM. It would be laughable, especially in our current everything-conservative-is-good and they're the only ones with "values" political climate, to suggest that "hippies" had any kind of positive impact on American culture. Below is an excerpt, follow the link to read the whole column.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?

Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
The Hippies Were Right!
Green homes? Organic food? Nature is good?
Time to give the ol' tie-dyers some respect.

Go ahead, name your movement. Name something good and positive and pro-environment and eco-friendly that's happening right now in the newly "greening" America. I'm talking about, say, energy-efficient light bulbs. I'm looking at organic foods going mainstream. I mean chemical-free cleaning products widely available at Target and I'm talking saving the whales and protecting the dolphins and I mean yoga studios flourishing in every small town, giant boxes of organic cereal at Costco and the Toyota Prius becoming the nation's oddest status symbol. You know, good things.

Look around: we have entire industries devoted to recycled paper, a new generation of cheap solar-power technology and an Oscar for "An Inconvenient Truth" and even the soulless corporate monsters over at famously heartless joints like Wal-Mart are now claiming that they really, really care about saving the environment because, well, "it's the right thing to do" (read: It's purely economic and all about their bottom line because if they don't start caring they'll soon be totally screwed on manufacturing and shipping costs at/from all their brutal Chinese sweatshops).

There is but one conclusion you can draw from the astonishing (albeit fitful, bittersweet) pro-environment sea change now happening in the culture and (reluctantly, nervously) in the halls of power in D.C., one thing we must all acknowledge in our wary, jaded, globally warmed universe: The hippies had it right all along.