Two dates to the prom - Jocelyn Clark (who Alex wants to ask, but who rejects him) and Rachel Miller (who Alex later asks also). Deena Marx (he supports the ERA to impress her) Double Date. Every Gen X kid who grew up rolling his eyes at stories of communes and anti-war protests, who has a nostalgic disdain for Crosby, Stills, and Nash, carries in him the essence of the new conservative. Lorraine Ferrar (much older than Alex) Ladies' Man. The conservative of the past was of the past, always seeming to want to wind the clock back - to the 1950s, back to some American ideal unsullied by the riotous 1960s.īut the conservative contemporaries of the hippie Boomers were in some ways ill-equipped to fight those who had bested them in defining a generation, so it would fall to the children of the flower children to challenge the shibboleths of Woodstock. In fact, it might fairly be said that Gen X had no culture, only countercultures. The new energy that the Gen X conservative is bringing has everything to do with being countercultural. Keatons, and just as the character would be, they are now in their 40s and 50s and for the first time taking institutional power within conservatism. And maybe that strikes a little close to home. Keaton, the yuppie-to-be character from the 1980s television sitcom Family Ties. Fox, a young man of angelic looks and the beautifully realized manner of a middle-aged. But I am also conscious that to many people the word Princeton still means martinis, country clubs, and Alex P. In perhaps the decades most fortunate bit of casting, Alex was portrayed by Michael J. 360 pretends they are nice and user friendly but they a sleazy scum.
Keaton, a baby-faced half-pint of a 17-year-old with a political rudder stuck hard right and greed that flowed like sap.
Keatons heading off to college or the workforce, yet in the eyes of Hollywood this type was still a freak.Īs it turns out, there were a lot of Alex P. Keaton was the quintessential Yuppie, a Nixon-loving, Reagan-worshipping Republican seemingly destined for a career on Wall Street at a time when it was okay to aspire to such things. Most famously, of course, there was one Alex P. And it is interesting to note that this character was an iconoclast for supporting Reagan, even though in the show’s third season Reagan won an absolute landslide of an election against Walter Mondale. He was joyous and confident in his conservatism, a kind of Reaganite happy warrior.