`ME FIRST' GENERATION INSPIRED OUR DRUG WOES

THE FOURTH installment of HBO's "The Corner" -- the six-part miniseries
directed by Baltimore's own Charles Dutton -- aired Sunday night. Some
charge that the drama paints a picture of Baltimore that is too grim and
gritty.

There are lessons to be learned from it, nonetheless. The most obvious
lesson is that the baby boomer generation is almost solely responsible for
America's drug nightmare.

"The Corner" follows the addiction of Gary McCullough and his ex-wife, Fran
Boyd, and shows how their plight affects their 15-year-old son, DeAndre
McCullough. Gary McCullough and Boyd grew up in the 1950s and 1960s. In one
scene, Boyd reminisces about the get-high parties she attended in the early
1970s. Years later, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Boyd and her friends
and siblings are still getting high. That's inevitable when a generation
elevates taking drugs to a near cultural imperative.

Yes, we did it. With our music, with our literature and with our movies. We
did it at our campus parties in the late '60s and early '70s, when someone
inevitably broke out a joint.

Most of us tried the joint and then went on with our lives. But the Fran
Boyds of the world, seeking a better high, moved on to harder drugs. As a
group, we may have been the most hedonistic generation this country has
ever had the misfortune of spawning. The leadership of the country is now
in our hands. If the nation survives us, it will be a miracle.

Look at America's first baby boomer president. It's significant that we had
no one better to offer than William Jefferson Clinton. He's conducted
himself like a true boomer. Others in his generation heeded the call to get
high. Clinton has never failed to heed the screeching of his loins. He had
a White House intern perform sex acts on him on our time, in
our White House, and then misled the country about it. After
he was impeached amid accusations of perjury and obstruction of justice, he
didn't even have the decency to resign. He stayed in office, assuring us
his conduct was no big deal.

Boomers, true to our calling, embraced the idiot. What Clinton did with
Monica Lewinsky, we insisted, was his own business. Once again, we boomers
genuflected at the altar of Epicurean revelry.

Compare Clinton's conduct to that of an earlier president from a different
generation -- the one that grew up during the Depression and went through
World War II. Richard Nixon's sins have been well documented. But when a
constitutional crisis loomed and impeachment was imminent, Nixon refused to
let the country go through it. He resigned. He did what was best for the
country. Clinton has never failed to do what's best for Bill Clinton.

David Simon and Edward Burns, in their book "The Corner," which inspired
the HBO special, tell the tale of yet another man who came of age during
the Depression and World War II. The story of Gary McCullough's father,
William M. "W.M." McCullough, may or may not be told in the miniseries. But
it is instructive. The elder McCullough came to Baltimore at the age of 14
with only $1.40 in his pocket. Within a day, he had a job at an iron
foundry on South Charles Street. That was in 1942.

W.M. stayed 12 years at the foundry before landing a better job at American
Standard, a plumbing fixture manufacturer. Soon, he and his wife, Roberta,
bought a house on Vine Street, where they raised 15 children. The ravages
of the Depression didn't defeat W.M., nor did the backbreaking work he did
at the foundry and American Standard. He saved his money and steered clear
of drugs and booze while building a stable home life for his family.

It was some of his children, like all too many in their generation, who
took to drugs. William Jr. got hooked in the early 1970s. Gary, after some
success as a businessman, fell in the mid-1980s.

The generation that came after W.M. McCullough faced no Depression -- and
racism and other social oppressions are no excuse for self-destruction. We
lived in relatively prosperous times, which may have spoiled us. We became
the country's premier "Me First" generation, devoted to the joy of pleasing
ourselves.

"Can the war on drugs be won?" Dutton asks a cop in a scene from "The
Corner."

"No comment," the officer answers. A better answer might have been this:
"Only if we place all baby boomers under house arrest."