The Pepsi Generation or something like that
It was 1963. America was A-OK. We were going into space. It was the Jet Age. Progress was non stop towards the New Frontier. And the Ad men of Madison Avenue wanted to cash in on the good feelings abroad in the land. Here was one innovation of the time:
1963: In one of the most significant demographic events in commercial history, the post-war baby boom emerges as a social and marketplace phenomenon. Pepsi recognizes the change and positions Pepsi as the brand belonging to the new generation – The Pepsi Generation. “Come Alive! You’re in the Pepsi Generation” makes advertising history. It is the first time a product is identified, not so much by its attributes, as by its consumers’ lifestyles and attitudes.
Flash forward 45 years. So many Americans are united in their victimhood. But they still want to feel that they’re the coolest, swingingest victims ever. And they’ve found a really hip new theme: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Andrew Ferguson discusses the matter:
What, after all, does “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” mean, precisely? My hunch is that the sentence is one of those things that no one will admit to being confused by, like the movies of Godard or the tenor-sax solos of John Coltrane, lest your peers think you’re a loser or a moron. Certainly Obama fans won’t admit how obscure the sentence is — though several have claimed that it’s lifted from a prophecy of the Tribal Elders of the Hopi Indians. Hopi prophecies are famously obscure.
But this is just wishful thinking. The origins of the phrase aren’t nearly so glamorous or exotic. Two years ago, before Obama even said he wanted to be president, the left wing radical feminist-lesbian novelist Alice Walker published a book of essays and called it We are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For. Believe me: If the line had come from the Tribal Elders of the Hopi nation, Alice Walker would have been more than happy to say so. Instead she said it came from a poem published in 1980 by the left wing radical-feminist-bisexual poet June Jordan. Neither Walker nor Jordan has said what the sentence means. But Walker did offer this hint in the introduction to her book of essays: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for because we are able to see what is happening with a much greater awareness than our parents or grandparents, our ancestors, could see.”
That’s a clue, anyway. The sentence may not have any positive content, Walker seems to be saying, but it does have an indirect meaning, an implication, as a kind of self-referential gesture for the people who claim it. When Obama’s supporters say “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” what they mean is that in the long roll call of history, from Aristotle and Heraclitus down through Augustine and Maimonides and Immanuel Kant and the fellows who wrote the Federalist Papers, we’re number one! We’re the smartest yet! Everybody — Mom, Dad, Gramps and Grandma, Great Grandpa and Great Grandma, maybe even the Tribal Elders — they’ve all been waiting for people as clued-in as us!
Is this what Obama means too? No one who’s wandered through an Obama rally and heard the war whoops and seen the cheerful, vacant gazes would come away thinking, “These are the smartest people ever.” I’m sorry, they just aren’t. What is unmistakable is the creepy kind of solipsism and the air of self-congratulation that clings to his campaign. “There is something happening,” he says in stump speeches. And what’s happening? “Change is happening.” How so? “The reason our campaign has been different is about what you, the people who love this country, can do to change it.”
And the way to change it is to join the campaign, which, once you join it, will change America. Because this is our moment. The time is now. Now is the time. Yes, we can. We bring change to the campaign because the campaign is about change. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. Obama and his followers are perfecting postmodern reflexivity. It’s a campaign that’s about itself. The point of the campaign is the campaign.
“The point of the campaign” — whether an ad campaign or a political campaign — is to sell the product. (Obama strategist David Alexrod is an advertising man.) However, Americans typically tire of their ad campaigns rather quickly. The Pepsi Generation came and went and was replaced by something else in short order. We’ll just have to see how long these ad campaign slogans (”Yes we can” and “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for”) stay at the top of the charts.