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Clear Cut: The Story
of Philomath, Oregon
While the World War II generation might be the greatest generation, there are
ways that their grandchildren and great grandchildren are morally better. Some
of these young people today are truly exceptional human beings. As much as we
want to rub our hands together, lament how these kids with their cell phones,
midriffs showing, and pants down to their ankles are a bunch of heathen, it is
just not true. Young people need to know this. As much as we want to believe
that garbage about the greatest problem in school when I was a kid was chewing
gum, etc., it was not. Rub the nostalgia out of your eyes and read some
newspapers from the 1940s. They are filled with stories+ of sex, violence, and
parents worrying about the morality of their children. Now, as then, most
schools are violence free. Just like half a century ago, kids are safer at
school than at home. I think this generation of fathers is better than any
previous bunch that has ever come down the pike. They are hands on, often open
emotionally. They let their children know that they are loved. They are willing
to change diapers and do the grunt work of child rearing. There might be more
divorce, but those that stay in the game are better husbands and fathers. They
know that if their marriage is going to work they have to go the extra mile.
Violence towards women is no longer acceptable. A good husband is no longer
expected to correct his wife with the back of his hand. They are more likely to
talk with and listen to what their wives have to say than their fathers.
Faithfulness in marriage is stressed more today than ever better. The bigotry
and sexism that marked the World War II generation is almost wholly missing in
high schoolers today. Notions that you have the right to reserve service because
of a person’s skin color horrify teenagers. Girls can be doctors, lawyers, or
even stay at home moms if they want to be. The handicapped are treated better
than before. Children, who 30 or 40 years ago would have been sent to an
institution or become the Boo' Radley’s of their communities, are mainstreamed
into schools. Dime museums & freak shows, which were in almost every major city
in the 40s, are no longer with us today. Even though the right wing hates it,
tolerance towards homosexuality is greater in this younger generation than ever
before. Gay young people no longer have to live lives of fear of having others
discover who they really are. If any old geezer, Republican or fundamentalist,
can find a date when we were a better country morality wise, taking into account
what I have mentioned above, please correct me. While I am waiting for that, I
will also wait for a bus filled with Playboy playmates to break down in front of
my place. While they are not perfect and I often worry about their consumerism,
these are a great bunch of kids. Almost every survey and study done in recent
years confirms what I stated.
So why do we repeat this lie? Why do we go to such lengths to demonize the
younger generation? Wowsers and moral reformers have always known that it is big
political firewater to scare people, to get them to circle the wagons. You
cannot have a culture war unless you invent another side to fight against.
George W. Bush, in the height of irony, got elected and reelected running on
morality while running the most corrupt administration in modern times. (By the
way, the only thing overturning Roe v. Wade is going to change is a lot more
middle class girls are going to climb on Greyhounds to spend a long weekend in
New York or some other blue state and come home a few pounds lighter. Upper
class girls will continue to get their therapeutic abortions, and we will have a
lot more poor girls to bury.)
Clear Cut: The
Story of Philomath, Oregon is
a documentary about what some will see as part of the culture war. Philomath,
Oregon is small town of 3,838 people. It is a timber industry community in which
the leading family, the Clemens, decided over 45 years ago, in 1959, to give
back to the town that had been so good to them. Ray Clemens set up a scholarship
fund to provide free college tuition – no strings attached – to any child who
graduated from the local high school and wanted to attend Oregon State
University (OSU). Thousands of young people got to go to school that otherwise
probably would not have. In the late 1980s, a new head of the Foundation,
Clemens’ nephew, Steve Lowther, began to be alarmed by changes he saw happening
in the high school. There was a move to change the school’s nickname, the
Warriors, to something non-offensive to Native Americans in the area.
Environmentalist concepts, which he saw as anti-logging propaganda, were
starting to be taught and Lowther became alarmed by the lack of morals among
young people. Urban professionals without ties to the timber industry began
moving into the town, along with a Superintendent with new ideas. Mr. Lowther
decided to put strings on the money upon the death of Ray Clemens in 1985. He
wanted the liberal bias he saw as corrupting the school system to stop.
Director Peter Richardson details the knock down, drag-out fight between the
school board and Lowther and his allies. Richardson tries to weild an even
hand, trying not to tip his hat to where he stands on the issue. Yet, it is hard
at times to like the ditto-head Lowther who rages against the kids with strange
haircuts, openly gay students, the tree huggers, and the “Nazis” in charge of
the school board trying to push their agenda. Yet, if one takes a step back,
Lowther becomes a sympathetic, almost tragic, figure. The world he knew is
crumbling; Philomath is making the slow transition from a logging town to a
bedroom community. The profit margin in the timber trade is becoming smaller
with each day and maintaining the foundation’s funding is more difficult,
especially as tuition to OSU skyrockets. Instead of understanding the economic
realities and that it is the very power brokers he supports who are destroying
his way of life with their corporate greed, it is easier to blame the kids than
the middle-aged CEOs of the large companies he sells to. In the end, it is his
family’s money. If you’re going to dance with the devil, shouldn’t the devil get
to call the tune?
Lowther’s fear is the same fear I see in so many conservatives. The world is
changing so fast. Kids act strange, dressing in ways that seem so foreign,
listening to music that makes your ear bleed, and often doing things openly that
you disapprove of. It is so easy to want to put the brakes on it all, to go back
to a time that never was. A few months back I was playing cards with a couple of
old dudes, guys old enough to know God when He was a pup, when a woman in her
70s drove by, one of the moral leaders of the community and her church, a woman
I had heard lament the younger generation. One of the old men smiled and said,
“She was a party girl.” For the next hour, I heard story after story about what
a wild child she was in her youth, some so crude that I want to consult a
physician to see if they were physically possible. Long before Bill Clinton met
Monica, President Warren G. Harding was hiding in broom closets with his
mistresses, Thomas Jefferson was mixing it up with his slave, and U.S. Grant was
passing out drunk at his desk. It is doubtful a President could be elected today
with a secret love child and crowds chanting, “Ma, ma, where’s my pa?” There is
a reason that early on in our country’s history we got the nickname “the
alcoholic Republic.” Sin has always been in and chewing gum and dipping little
girl’s hair in ink wells were never the worst things that happened to children
in the dark corners of our communities. That is why I have such faith in these
young people, because we are going to need them.
Verdict: A Good Documentary