15. There were no recreational drugs ruining lives and changing society
The use of recreational drugs was widespread in the 1950s, as it had been in the 1940s, 1930s, 1920s, and even earlier than that. Marijuana use was common among musicians, artists, writers, and their fans. Frightened White adults blamed the use of marijuana, and other drugs, on Black musicians, another reason for banning the feared and hated music then becoming known as rock and roll. A group of writers, influenced by popular jazz music and the artists creating it became known among themselves as the Beats. Allen Ginsberg, Michael McLure, Jack Kerouac, and William S. Burroughs were among the most famous, and influential, of the writers who created the Beat Generation. Beats rejected materialism, defended sexual exploration, experimentation with drugs, and nearly all of the Beat writers consumed alcohol to excess. These values were exploited in their writings.
They produced novels, essays, short stories, and poetry. Reading their works became events, in coffee shops, theaters, and other venues, where their fans gathered to hear them. Their fans called themselves Beats, a harshly critical and often sneering mainstream press referred to them as Beatniks. The term came from its use by San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, who combined Beats with Sputnik to describe creatures outside of the mainstream, never seen before. It quickly became disparaging, creating the stereotype of a bongo-playing, goateed male, wearing a black turtleneck, a beret, and spouting nonsensical phrases and rhymes. Beatniks were associated with drugs and dissolute lifestyles throughout most of the decade, an entry to the wrong way of life. By decade’s end, they were parodied by Bob Denver as Maynard G. Krebs on the popular sitcom, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.
