Posted on 08/25/2009 8:15:37 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Ah, the ‘60s, the hippie-drenched era recently dredged up as part of the Woodstock 40th anniversary news coverage.
What a shame that so much of what the public knows of the turbulent decade is either an exaggeration or outright falsehood.
Enter The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Sixties by Jonathan Leaf. The author debunks much of the conventional wisdom regarding the decade, from the culture at play to the Vietnam War.
It’s easy to blame psychedelics abuse for the mass hypnosis regarding such an important chapter in American history. But Leaf calmly shares some cold, hard facts concerning the era.
Sixties kicks off with the student radicals, the young men and women who protested until their lungs gave out about the evil Vietnam War, capitalism’s social disparities and other hard-left causes.
Turns out the protestors didn’t reflect the vast majority of students. Most pursued the typical college pursuits -- academic excellence and some harmless extracurricular activities. Hard to believe conservative icon Barry Goldwater was the most requested campus speaker in the early 1960s, but it‘s true.
Meanwhile, the vocal minority weren’t just trying to speak out against injustices, they were very often Communists opposed to virtually everything the United States stands for.
Free love ruled during the 1960s -- or did it? While the culture celebrated the dawn of Cosmopolitan magazine and the birth of the Pill, the real sexual revolution (think “key parties” and orgies) blossomed during the 1970s.
Civil rights took center stage during the era, and icons like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X addressed the racial inequalities swirling through the still young nation. But while conscious-raising speeches pushed the country forward to a more enlightened state, blacks actually suffered during the latter portion of the decade, financially speaking, courtesy of the well intentioned Great Society programs.
In fact, the dawn the ‘60s marked significant progress for black Americans. The average income of a skilled black worker doubled relative to whites from 1936 to 1960, adjusting for inflation.
Historians eagerly strip away some of Malcolm X less savory actions, but they also neglect to mention how a liberal hero like Cesar Chavez stood for the government deporting illegal aliens.
Sixties disassembles other personalities from the era, including author Norman Mailer and environmentalist Rachel Carson.
Mailer saluted the societal criminal as a figure artists need to emulate and called Fidel Castro “the greatest hero to appear in the Americas,” among his many irrational statements. Carson’s alarmism regarding the use of DDT had disastrous consequence in Africa, a continent ravaged by a malaria outbreak the pesticide could have helped contain.
Perhaps the most eye-opening chapter involves the era’s musical legacy. Leaf takes the time to strip away the musical shortcomings of the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan -- the latter‘s simplistic three-chord progressions could be easily mastered by a beginner, he notes. But it’s the raw sales figures from the era that truly shock.
Bobby Vinton scored four number one singles during the decade, while The Who didn’t have one. Other less hip chart toppers included Johnny Mathis, Dean Martin, Conway Twitty and Henry Mancini. And movie musical soundtracks like “The Sound of Music” and “Camelot” stood tall next to album hits by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
Even the era’s movie classics tend to be ignored in favor of films like “Easy Rider” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” Meanwhile, sturdier films like “The Sound of Music” and “My Fair Lady” endure without seeming so dated, Leaf argues.
The beloved television shows of the time, like “Gunsmoke,” “The Andy Griffith Show” and “My Three Sons,” reflected traditional values.
The book’s political section deconstructs the Warren Court, a body which helped break down existing rules without the encouragement of the public. Seems legislating from the bench is hardly a modern convention.
Leaf sprinkles his book with colorful asides, like a sidebar mocking the objectivity of New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan who went from hard news scribe to author of a 700-page assault on the Vietnam War.
“Camelot as it Really Was” reveals the truth behind the late President John F. Kennedy’s time in office, a period marked not just by Kennedy’s flagrant infidelities but also the kind of serious medical ailments which could have forced him out of office had he lived long enough to serve two terms.
Camelot even started out as a fraud, as election day shenanigans helped Kennedy beat Richard Nixon by the narrowest of margins.
The Vietnam War chapter reveals the true nature of the enemy U.S. soldiers were up against, the corrupt news report by Walter Cronkite that led to a major shift in public opinion regarding the war and how U.S. soldiers were far more likely to help villagers than commit the kinds of atrocities so eagerly reported then -- and now.
The 1960s truly were remarkable time for this nation, but it’s best to read The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Sixties before attempting to put it in its proper context.
-- Christian Toto is a freelance entertainment writer and contributing film critic for The Washington Times. His work has appeared in People magazine, MovieMaker Magazine, The Denver Post, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and Scripps Howard News Service. He also provides movie radio commentary to three stations as well as the nationally syndicated Dennis Miller Show and runs the blog What Would Toto Watch?
Wow, and they said it couldn’t be done! (weaving Malcolm X, Rachel Carson, Bobby Vinton and Conway Twitty all into one article, that is....)
Forget Dylan and the Rolling Stones! Give me Motown any day, especially the Temptations!
Anybody but an idiot knows the "early 60s" were just an extension of the 50s.
The real 60s (as a sociological period) didn't get going till 1964 at the earliest. They then lasted till at least 72, possibly 74 or 75.
The best part of that is that Dylan has the good $en$e to let them think what they want to about him while he laughs all the way to the bank!
A doctor told me (at the time) there were some communicable diseases going around with ‘hippies’ which the world had not seen since the Middle Ages and which were mostly avoidable with regular, simple soap and water washing.
I went to school with people who did not bathe, or do any personal hygiene... they thought it was cool.
Vinton may have sold more records, but I’ll listen to “The Who” any time. Actually, Pete Townsend realized early on what a farce it all was. “We Don’t Get Fooled Again.”
And he did throw Abbie Hoffman off the stage at Woodstock.
Yeah, the 60s had a big consequences. America is changing... And I don't think there is any going back.
Somehow, all that rings true.
henkster wrote: “And he (Pete Townsend) did throw Abbie Hoffman off the stage at Woodstock.”
..... That, of course, will NOT appear in the movie.
I love Bobby V, the Polish Prince. He performed several times at a smalltown civic center I worked at as a teenager (in the late 90s). He still puts on a great show.
The Civil Rights movement was well under way in the 1950s. It CULMINATED in the 1960s but it was not started by this generation.
And in short order, the Democrats who'd opposed the civil rights act came to co-opt the black vote they'd sought to suppress.
There are plenty of transgressions to criticize about the 60’s, but the music is not one of them. The 60’s saw an epic blossoming of American musical genres from folk to blues to jazz, not to mention an explosion of true creativity in genuine rock and roll. By attempting to argue that bobby Vinton and the Archies really had the ear of American youth in the 60’s is patently ridiculous. Mr Leaf does himself and his argument a real disservice by attempting to paint the 60’s music scene as part of the problem.
all of this changed in the 1970s after the release of the Woodstock movie.
Bobby Vinton didn’t have the ears of the yutes. Neither did Henry Mancini. They had the sales figures that were built up by adults.
The culture was not homogenously into the “legendary” baby boom lifestyle of peace love dope.
Ken Kesey and Timothy Leary were both experimenting with LSD in their own ways in 1962.
What the world sees as "hippiedom" doesn't really come about until 1967 when SF is marketed to the masses (and those who lived it said the lifestyle all went to s*** because of too many flooding what'd "been cool" and sustainable).
Largely what was going on before that was an extension of the Beats (direct lineage). But it'd be in error to say it was just an extension of the 1950s.
And even then Jack Kerouac didn't side politically with the Leftists in the movement.
And after Woodstock, the music (and marketing) totally changed.
A decade is a decade. A movement is a movement. The Reds of the 1960s and 1970s were ideologically the same as the Reds of the 1950s and the 1980s and today.
And for all the talk of the Weather Underground being "1960s radicals", they were 1970s TERRORISTS. Their 1960s history is being formed in late 1969 and having a riot in November (Days of Rage at the Chicago 7 trial). The actions they are famous for are from the 1970s. When Barry Obama was much older than 8 years old. They were robbing banks into the 1980s.
All I can say is Joe Mccarthy was right in the 50s. The red scare was real and we are living it now.. It didn’t happen over night but it is here. The KGB did its job getting into the Universities and colleges. Now we are stuck with nothing but socialist crap. We are ready though. I am at least. Where is Tail gunner Joe when we need him.
simplistic three-chord progressions could be easily mastered by a beginner...
Whatever. I’ve heard the same things said about the Beatles music. Music is music whether it’s complex or simplistic.
Inaccurate. The Reds of the 50s were old-line Stalinists or their dupes. They worked directly for the Soviet government.
The New Left of the late 50s and the 60s were quite different, although at least equally misguided. They weren't controlled by anybody, least of all themselves, although the Soviets were of course happy to finance and support them.
David Horowitz, who lived through this period in the belly of the beast, is very good on this subject.
While all leftists have certain broad beliefs in common, they are not all "the same."
The real turning point was 1968. The cultural and sexual revolutions began about then, and ran rampant through most of the 70s.
And, of course, they seized the levers of power and are still basically running things—in Hollywood, academia, and the cultural establishment.
But the radical left did triumph and achieved all of its political objectives on November 4, 2008.
Now these wackos are running the country.
I feel like Captain von Trapp but there is no Switzerland to flee to this time.
Having lived through it on the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison, I am glad the truth is finally coming out!
a fool in paradise wrote: “The culture was not homogenously into the “legendary” baby boom lifestyle of peace love dope.”
..... Absolutely correct IMO. Nixon was quite correct when he spoke of the “Silent Majority”.
Paisan wrote: “simplistic three-chord progressions could be easily mastered by a beginner...
Whatever. I’ve heard the same things said about the Beatles music. Music is music whether it’s complex or simplistic.”
..... Too true. Although I have my doubts about the works pf Wild Man Fischer and Captain Beefheart ;-) .
Yeah, the ‘sixties’ should really be called the ‘seventies’ because the so-called sixties culture didn’t really start until the last part of the 60’s decade.
“Forget Dylan and the Rolling Stones! Give me Motown any day, especially the Temptations!”
The music was one of the most memorable things about the sixties and it was late in the decade before the protest songs appeared. I would have walked from Columbia (where I was going to school at the time) to Atlanta for Brenda Lee but a list of period artists wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the black artists.... that would be Fats Domino, Sam Cooke, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Otis Redding and Ray Charles.
Yeah... Strawberry Fields Forever and Norwegian Wood... simplistic 3 chord progressions.
Pete Seeger is still a lousy Red and he’s been along side the “newbies” at ever step since the 1940s.
The 1960s college Reds were dupes too. Stalinist stooges. Doesn’t matter that Stalin was dead, they still served their master without knowing it.
When the baby boomers (born 1945) came of age.
America is the last best hope. So goes America, so goes the world.
Jerry Rubin met with Che and was encouraged in his revolution in America. But don't call him an old line Commie?
Then the world is in deep caca.
Interesting how China is embracing capitalism as fast as we are embracing socialism.
Weird times indeed.
Maybe not the Woodstock ones. But the silly, teenage girls? They loved him.
The author has a great point. People don't think of "The Sound of Music" as 60's music. But it WAS!
One thing you must admit about the old-time commies, they were disciplined. The New Left wasn’t disciplined at all, a major reason they didn’t really accomplish all that much.
Of course the old-line commies encouraged them. The enemy of my enemy and all that. But the New Left would have been among the first to go in a true communist revolution.
We may have some misunderstanding with regard to whether they were the “same as” the old-line commies. What I mean in disagreeing with this is that they rejected subservience to the Soviet Union and its affiliates, even though they had essentially the same theoretical goals. In reading accounts of their years in hiding, it’s pretty clear they got no material support from the USSR or anybody else. They dang near starved to death.
Pinkos like Jimmy Carter saw no possibility in defeating the Soviet Union and pushed for co-existence.
Red sympathizers like Barack Obama are now apologizing for the US victory in the Cold War.
I don’t see this rejection of the Soviet system.
John Kerry was part of the New Left. He negotiated with the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. He was a tool too.
Jane Fonda wanted us to submit to Communism. Told us we’d all love it if we only knew what Communism really was.
The Greens love being a part of the INTERNATIONAL Green Party. There is no “isolationism” in Socialism. They support Castro and Chavez. They even think that Boosh was mucking around with North Korea unfairly.
Same as it ever was.
He also told a reporter at the height of the Vietnam War, “What makes you so sure I am against the war?”
The sixties died with Altamont and the Tate/LaBianca murders.
Good riddance.
Good someone finally dares to tell the truth. I was a child wathing this on TV from my livingroom and even I knew that they were not what I saw everday.
The left wasn't happy until it destroyed Nixon over Watergate, won the 74 congressional elections, and then pulled the plug on South Vietnam to let their commie friends finally win in 1975. None of it during the 1960s. Nam was lost in the Watergate building, and then in congressional committees that turned down Ford's pleas for air power in 1975. The left then consigned the entire 10 years from 1965 to 1975 to a memory hole and pretended they had been against the war, and also popular and in charge, throughout. Which was and remains revisionist nonsense.
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It was 1950s music actually which was when the Broadway musical debuted.
It was the movie in the next decade that popularized the Sound of Music and made the tunes the enormous success that they were and still are.
It was a popular show on stage but it was the highest grossing film of all time (up until ‘The Godfather’ seven years later). It’s hard to say it made any impact musically. None of the songs made the Top 40 at the time. Supposedly when it was being filmed the younger girls all listened to the Beatles in between takes.
Right, no impact at all on the American public. No one ever sings "Raindrops on Roses" or "Doe a Deer" or "You Are Sixteen" or "Climb Every Mountain" or "The Sound of Music". Never.
No one ever heard of those songs then and no one knows any of those songs now.
I meant at the time. You got three of those song titles wrong btw.
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Yes, I knew I would not get the titles correct. But the songs are/were so popular that huge numbers of people in the US would know now and would have known then exactly what songs I was referring to.
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