Anti-hipster snark, 1967-style

With American Apparel on the way out, it’s worth remembering that all the anti-hipster sentiment unleashed in the western world by Gawker, Ad-busters et al was alive and kicking way back when Nick Denton was in nappies and the internet really was just a series of tubes. Voiced more eloquently than of late by none other than Alistair Cooke;

On hippies;

“The mystery, which no mere perambulating journalist should try to solve, is how it comes about that the rebel young appear, in East Berlin and East St Louis, in the same internatinoal uniform, that they profess that same half-baked ‘philosophies’ and rustle as indistinguishable as cockroaches over three or four continents.

The mass media take the blame for everything these days. And until a better theory comes along, it will have to do to wonder why the children of Nigeria have forgotten their native songs and echo the Beatles; why a sit-down in the London School of Economics is inspired by the same types as organized the shenanigans at Berkeley.”

Cockroaches! From ‘The Permissive Society’, originally 26 October 1967, read in Reporting America.

[Pic via LATFH.com]

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