Joe Moody’s Web Adventures

A glistening new mall elevates atop what was once a corn field, and before that sacred native land.

Madonna slinks across the MTV screen, her dress looks like it cost a million bucks as she preaches the gospel of neo materialism as Material Girl.

Coke or Pepsi is the choice of the new generation, not political activism. Straight, pin-stripe lines are in and and straying from the course is out. Keggers have replaced demonstrations. Izods replaced peace symbols.

How does Alex on Family ties rebell against his aging hippie parents? He idolizes money and Richard Nixon.

The new rebellion is a kind of reverse rebellion.

The hippies are now the parents, and taking positions of authority. For them to go against “the system” would be to go against themselves. They are the system now, and in turn they become the ruling authority to a new generation of wild youth.

It’s a long bus trip from shabby downtown to the new mall sparkling in suburbia. Stores with carpet as new as the clothes on the rack hold America’s new status symbols: Polo, Jordache, Gucci and the infamous smiling alligator.