It’s No Fun Living in the ‘No Decade’

The way David Seeley tells it in Texas Monthly, he realized he was living in the “No Decade” while shopping for a pack of condoms in a Dallas supermarket.

The 1980s--when “drugs are taboo, drinking is illegal and sex is out of the question”--started innocently enough, Seeley says in his refreshingly iconoclastic dissection of our increasingly sober age.

No sugar in your gum. No caffeine in your cola--that kind of thing. Then came no-smoking zones. Then alcohol became a no-no, especially for people under 21. Then smoking a joint became a veritable war crime. Urine police were everywhere. And freshly straightened-out rock stars started showing up on MTV, telling you to “Just say no.”

And sex. Spectators saw Playboy banned from 7-Elevens. Participants were attacked by herpes. Then AIDS hit, and Seeley says we learned sex with strangers could be fatal--which is what forced him to go condom shopping.

Seeley is an only slightly reformed fun-monger who grew up in the self-fulfilling, Pill-popping ‘70s, when the cultural byword was Yes --”Yes, yes, yes--it’s a free country. Have a good time; enjoy yourself.” He’s only partly kidding when he says that all these no-nos of the 1980s seem to add up to “some ominous conspiracy” that “has tried to make Americans behave, to homogenize our actions and morals, to make sure nobody has fun anymore.”

Noting the absence of any sustained protest from civil libertarians, he theorizes that maybe, like children who complain but still rely on a strict father to keep them from hurting themselves, Americans really wanted a No Decade to happen.

Seeley didn’t, however. Denying rebellious souls the character-strengthening experience of growing up is bad enough, he says. But the worst aspect of the No Decade is that “Being told what to do at every turn robs us of our right to choose--to decide when we want to say no for ourselves.”

His Private Passion

GQ, which is celebrating its 30th year this issue, didn’t put Tom Hayden on its cover. The new James Bond, Timothy Dalton, is there in an $835 linen sport coat by Gianni Versace.

But the California’s most famous three-term assemblyman gets a whole page and a third inside to model his nifty, cap-to-spikes baseball uniform, which, according to Stanley Cloud’s friendly article on the 47-year-old ex-radical, Hayden apparently hardly ever takes off.

Electoral politics and issues such as toxics and tour-bus safety are still important to Hayden, but baseball apparently is his obsession: He goes to the Dodgers fantasy camp each November, plays on two hardball teams on weekends and spends hours alone hitting against the treasured pitching machine wife Jane Fonda bought him.

Despite much cooling of his red-hot left-wing politics and having long ago settled into a life of middle-class respectability, says Cloud, Hayden’s anti-Vietnam War past haunts him, greatly impairing his chances of ever winning a higher office.

“I think I was overly romantic about the North Vietnamese,” Hayden admits, “but not wrong about the war. I think I was insensitive about American families, but I think I was right to demonstrate. I think getting arrested for my beliefs was justified, and trying to open up lines of communication and contact with Vietnam and Cambodia was justified.” That might sound like a pretty strong mea culpa, suggests Cloud, but “it’ll never--ever--wash in the laundries of the far right” where “invoking the Fonda-Hayden ‘threat’ is a very good fund-raising technique.”

The Boss Elite

Want junior or sis to grow up to be a powerful capitalist?

Forbes magazine--wearing a cover parodying its arch-nemesis Business Week--offers some tips and much inspiration in “The Boss,” a roster and ranking of corporate America’s 797 most powerful men and three most powerful women.

Cumulatively, this important but mostly unknown and decentralized Gang of 800 capitalists control 22.7 million of America’s 110 million or so employees. Their publicly held companies account for $2.8 trillion of the country’s $4.2 trillion gross national product.

But who are these 800 elite?

Their median age, says Forbes, is 58. The youngest is Microsoft founder William H. Gates III, 30, who made a measly $160,000 last year. The oldest is Occidental Petroleum’s Armand Hammer, 89, who made $1.23 million. Most are college educated (302 hold graduate degrees), but 76 never got a college diploma. Besides maleness, the most telling characteristic of these power-wielders, Forbes says, is patience: Only 125 of the 800 have been with their companies less than 10 years and 328 have served 30 years or more.

From among the sea of names and numbers in a massive 38-page table, Forbes’ editors fished out 25 executives for their special influence within and beyond their own industries--from IBM’s John Akers and Disney’s Michael Eisner to News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch and CBS’ Laurence Tisch. The only woman in the Top 25 is Katharine Graham, 70, chairman of the small but mighty Washington Post Co. She grossed $807,000 last year, which puts her at No. 332 among the 800. (Lee Iacocca of Chrysler took No. 1 with $20,578,000 in salary, bonuses and stock options.)

The median 1986 income of the Power 800 was $706,000, a 14% improvement over ‘85, Forbes says. While their firms profited to the collective tune of $139 billion, the bosses split $808 million in total compensation. Which Forbes--ever the happy defender of the ways of capitalism--pointedly points out, comes to about a paltry 0.6% of their companies’ profits.

Bits and Pieces

There’s help for those who can’t afford to invest either the money ($18.95) or the time on Dave Marsh’s “Glory Days: Bruce Springsteen in the 1980s.” Musician magazine is offering two excerpts of Marsh’s new book (which was knocked in a recent Rolling Stone review for being too long, too idolizing and too tainted by Marsh’s cozy relationship with the Boss). June’s offering reveals how Springsteen worked through a “dark night of the soul--a period of intense professional and personal reassessment” in 1983. Chip Stern, meanwhile, drops in on ex-Cream drummer Ginger Baker, the former “world’s greatest drummer.” Baker, 47, says he has always considered himself primarily a jazz drummer. Now spending most of his time growing olives in Italy, he is highly critical of the quality of his work with the mid-’60s supergroup and has some nasty things to say about fellow Creamsters Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton, whom many consider the best rock guitarist ever. Clapton, Baker says in hindsight, is “very rhythmically limited--he has to have a drummer who plays really straight time.” . . . You say the King of Greece wants to drop by for dinner some day this month but you’re afraid of scheduling conflicts? For $120 a year, L.A. Master Planner (Box 69713, Los Angeles 90069) will appear monthly in your mailbox to keep you well apprised of the major cultural, political, civic and philanthropic happenings in Los Angeles. With the comprehensive listings information comes “Mastering Planning,” a monthly column in which famous L.A. restaurateur and caterer-to-the-stars Patrick Terrail shares his party-planning expertise. . . .

Sports History, a new bimonthly, does a good job of fulfilling its pledge to make the great events and heroes of the past live again in old photos and fresh prose. “Gentleman Don’t Steal Bases” is a 100-year-ago look at pro baseball’s formative years (which struggled with such contemporary-sounding problems as rowdy fans, gambling, indulgent players and greedy, star-nabbing team owners). “Fire in the Court” replays the excitement of the 1970 NBA Championship, when the New York Knicks bumped off the Lakers and Wilt Chamberlain and helped elevate pro basketball into the American big time with baseball and football. . . .