Umar Lee

A Very White Middle-class Take On The Nineties

Revisado: 02-10-22

This book started rough for me. Chuck Klosterman spoke of the nineties being easy times and right then I knew exactly what the perspective was going to be- a telling of the decade from an exclusively white American middle-class lense. After all the nineties began with off the charts levels of violence in many of our cities as the Crack Epidemic was still raging and gang-banging was at an all time high (and responding to this mass incarceration bills were passed). This climate gave birth to classic films of the era such as Boys in The Hood and Menace II Society. The nineties certainly weren't carefree if you were living in Compton or North St. Louis. Nor were they easy if you were in Rwanda or Bosnia facing genocide or a woman in Afghanistan living under Taliban rule. So, point taken, this book is about a white American middle-class look at the decade, and it was fun at times.

Like a lot of white dudes Klosterman has a fixation on Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. Regarding Cobain I'll share this- when he died it was announced on TV and I looked at a friend and asked "who the f*%# is Curt Kobain?". I was born in 1974 and I'm part of "Gen X", a term I've always hated, and I didn't have any friends who listened to Nirvana. In fact I couldn't name one grunge song from any band so a lot of this obsessing over Cobain and Radiohead was lost on me. I just remember thinking the grunge movement was ridiculous at the time and asking why these rich suburban white kids are dressing like my grandpa and trying to look like disheveled construction workers when they haven't done a day of hard work in their lives?

Tupac and Biggie got shortchanged as did almost everything Black. No Million Man March, no discussion of the popularity of Louis Farrakhan during that decade, no talk of the popularity of the Malcolm X biopic from Spike Lee, no Martin, no A Different World, no Def Comedy Jam. The killing of Tupac, and Biggie the following year, were huge cultural events and the pain was felt globally.

The generation is presented by Klosterman as one of slackers not concerned about traditional metrics of success or the opinions of others. I get that opinion is widely shared; but I sure remember an awful lot of kids my age going to college and getting degrees, beginning blue-collar careers, joining the military, and finding paths to entrepreneurship.

Two things Klosterman brings up are important. We're the last generation that grew-up before the internet. We didn't have cellphones until well into adulthood. So we have knowledge of a previous way of living: sitting by phones and waiting on calls, finding numbers in the yellow pages, arguing for hours about things Siri can give you the answer to in seconds now, and more. Klosterman points out that Napster was one of the first disruptive technologies as it changed the music industry. He mentions Alanis Morissette and Liz Phair. I never listened to Phair, but had I known she was singing songs about giving blow jobs, as I learned in this book, I may have become a fan.

Klosterman does a pretty good job illustrating how huge Michael Jordan was and not just on the basketball court. Everyone in the nineties loved Jordan,and as with Oprah Winfrey, there was some discussion he may run for president. Something Klosterman doesn't mention is Jordan was even interviewed on Meet the Press by Tim Russert. In a similar manner Klosterman notes how, while America couldn't get enough of him, the nineties were a horrifically bad decade for Mike Tyson. As a St Louis Cardinals baseball fan I thoroughly enjoyed the home run race between Marc Mcguire and Sammy Sosa. Did we all know they were juiced? Did we all know baseball was falling from its status as our favorite pastime? I think so. Juiced up home run hitters are like breast implants. People say they only want the real thing while enjoying the fake.

"It was difficult for crazy people to meet " is an excellent line. The nineties, and the internet, was really the beginning of the polarized lunacy we see today, simply because prior to technological advances it was difficult for conspiracy nuts and extremists to meet and talk. Now, when half of America has their own podcast, not so much.

The cultural impact of Seinfeld was discussed and he did a good job with this. The show was big in the culture and impossible to replicate as no one else possessed the comedic genius of Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld. It's important to note that Seinfeld was widely popular, even outside of white audiences, unlike Friends which was exclusively popular among white viewers .

There were several films mentioned in this book I've either never seen or heard of; but for younger people I can assure you hitting up Blockbuster or Hollywood video and looking for a movie was a real treat. However, I'll unashamedly mention I loved both Titanic and Pulp Fiction, but hated the Matrix.

Near the end of the book Klosterman discusses two of the difficult men of the decade: Bill Clinton and OJ Simpson and then mentions a show about difficult men that began in the decade (The Sopranos).

Of course with both men time has changed views. Bill Clinton appeared to be a cool and hip president, the first Black president as coined by Toni Morrison, and was widely popular, the economy was good, and a sense of optimism existed. His sex scandal with White House intern Monica Lewinsky was also viewed skeptically. Many people, including myself, looked at the affair as much ado about nothing, and just the result of a partisan Republican witch hunt and sexually up-tight and puritanical conservatives. In hindsight the predatory sexual behaviors of Clinton are unacceptable, he certainly wasn't the first Black president, and his neoliberal policies, trade deals, and politics had a long term damaging effect on working Americans.

Regarding OJ, Klosterman does a good job of explaining why the event was huge in the culture. OJ had been a huge crossover star and his chase, arrest, and trial were not only widely televised they were also inescapable as everyone was talking about. The racial division was real, and a majority of Black Americans thought OJ didn't do it while most White Americans think he did, but as Klosterman points out that has faded with time and the majority of Black Americans now think OJ was guilty.

The book closes out with the contested 2000 presidential election ( who can forget the hanging chads in Florida?) and 9-11 because, as Klosterman correctly notes, decades don't really start and end within an exact order. He argues that 2000 was really the beginning of the scorched Earth politics we see today and that 9-11 kinda formally ended the decade. I would argue that Klosterman could've made a time line from the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas to the Oklahoma City bombing to 9-11 showing how each uniquely impacted the culture. Prior to 9-11 most Americans paid very little attention to the Middle East and the defining moments with regards to the region, from an American perspective, was the relatively smooth first Gulf War and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shaking the hand of Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn. The American public seemingly checked out after the assassination of Rabin by Jewish extremist Yigal Amir, the beginning of the "Al Aqsa Intifada", the unpopularity of American-backed autocrats, and the spread of AQ in the region prior to 9-11. This helps explain how the Bush Administration could sell their bumbling and disastrous reaction to the American public. They were busy watching Friends and obsessing over Kurt Cobain.

What else did Klosterman miss? A lot. As I previously stated this is a very white middle-class look at the nineties. Klosterman misses most things that were important to Black America in the decade, but he does mention several things that were important. Latinos and Asians made basically no appearance in this book and this includes huge cultural events such as the murder of the famous Mexican-American singer Selena.

Overall this was a fairly enjoyable read. I was young in the nineties and remember all of these things and most importantly it made me remember the people I was with at the time- many who are no longer here.


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Find An Arabic Speaker

Revisado: 06-23-19

The narrator butchers even the most basic Arabic words. Publishers should've really tried to have found someone who is either an Arabic speaker or familiar with Islamic terminology. the story itself is interesting, but with a little non useful CT speak. I'd reccomend buying the print copy.

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