Bonnie and Clyde

The mother of a young woman I dated in 1969 said, apropos of I don’t remember what, “You know, Bonnie and Clyde didn’t do half the things people accused them of doing. They were just young people in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

I didn’t make any kind of reply. There was nothing to say that would have changed her mind, and the young woman and I were in the early dating stage, meaning I really didn't want to anything that would have PO'd her parents.

Some things you just nod your head and continue the march.

I have never seen the movie Bonnie and Clyde. I will not see the movie, unless someone ties me to a chair and forces me to watch. I knew from other people’s comments and from trailers that the movie was historically inaccurate and it made heroes of two hot-blooded killers.

What I did not consider over the years was the liberal politics of the movie.

Ed Driscoll quotes Rick Perlstein, promoting his book Nixonland:

“My theory is that Bonnie and Clyde was the most important text of the New Left ... It made an argument about vitality and virtue vs. staidness and morality that was completely new, that resonated with young people in a way that made no sense to old people. Just the idea that the outlaws were the good guys and the bourgeois householders were the bad guys—you cannot underestimate [sic] how strange and fresh that was.”

http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2012/03/26/kill-em-all-let-pauline-kael-sort-it-out/

Wait a minute, wait a minute. “Virtue” vs. “morality?” Perlstein should have studied at least a little political history before subectifying virtue and morality. Before the “important text of the New Left,” virtue and morality were the same.

Driscoll’s piece is good writing and good argument about an industry that has taken unto itself the determination of what we should believe, and the industry's definition of morality.

Driscoll’s piece is linked from maggiesfarm.