JIMI HENDRIX, PBS AND CORONAMANIA

Over the past few years, I’ve stumbled upon, and soon clicked away from, a few PBS retrospectives of famous 1960s musicians. The network turns these rockumentaries and folkumentaries into mawkish, hagiographic, pledge-break-punctuated fundraisers targeting those who were in their teens and twenties during that time. The formula must work, because PBS seems to replicate it. 

For several years before the Scamdemic, the young often expressed disdain for those over 55 by dismissively saying “OK, Boomer” to elders who had expressed some un-PC perspective. Yet, when the oldest Boomers—and those older than that—were said to be dying “from Covid,” Gen Z suddenly reversed course, revered the generic elder and scornfully labeled those who opposed lockdowns “Grandma killers.”

Hmmm…

In the decades since their teens and early twenties, many former Boomer hippies got various college degrees, changed their wardrobes and hairstyles and became members of the upper middle class. I’m talkin’ ‘bout My Generation; I know these people. They have nice houses, nice cars, nice clothes, vacation houses, cleaning people and equities portfolios and send their kids to private schools. They have jobs as public school teachers, Democratic political operatives (same thing), attorneys, government, college and hospital administrators, psychologists, Pharma reps, in IT or as consultants. Despite their favorable socioeconomic status, many still want to consider themselves iconoclasts and champions of the little person. Hey, they went to Woodstock. Or at least knew someone whose cousin did. Well, he woulda gone if he didn’t get stuck in traffic.

These now-affluent erstwhile rebels comprise a large share of PBS watchers and NPR listeners. The PBS website describes its listeners to advertisers by noting, inter alia, that the average PBS watcher takes three vacations/year. PBS and NPR-sponsoring “viewers like you—” sort of—have abundant disposable income that they’re willing to contribute to broadcasters that, while already government funded, routinely mis-portray society and events in a way that affirm donors’ monolithically “liberal” worldview. This demographic is willing to buy some fundraising concert DVD. And why not? Think of all that “rare concert footage.”

I recently saw a few minutes of one such PBS docu-fundraiser portraying sixties guitarist/vocalist Jimi Hendrix. I was too young to be a Hendrix devotee. His music was scarcely played on the radio. But I knew, from seeing his poster in some teen boutique, that he was a flamboyant, headbanded, big Afro-ed guitarist. Listening to his records was transgressive. Liking Hendrix connoted rebelliousness and sophistication.