The '60s Fetish

THE '60s FETISH
[SOURCE: National Journal, AUTHOR: William Powers]
[Commentary] Some say that the media have fallen hard for Barack Obama. Others note that journalists once carried a torch for John McCain and may well do so again. Watch the coverage closely, however, and it turns out that the most powerful media bias in this campaign is not for a person but for a decade. The 1960s are alive all over again in the Baby Boomer-run media, as reporters and pundits try to make sense of this political moment by returning repeatedly to a moment four decades old. The'60s fetish has been with us for a long time and was a motif of the 2004 presidential campaign. But it's back now in a new and more powerful way, thanks in part to the rise of Obama. If the news outlets of the early '60s had been this backward-looking, JFK's candidacy would have been all about the 1920s. "Gosh, doesn't that young Kennedy fellow remind you of flappers, the Lost Generation, and Warren Harding?" But then, that would have been silly.
http://nationaljournal.com/powers.htm