"Daddy, something is wrong with these people."
Posted on 04/26/2005 3:06:35 PM PDT by Dave123
Revenge of the '60's Written by Jack Engelhard Monday, April 25, 2005
The 1960s just won't quit. Today, from the New York Times and elsewhere, we learn that Pope Benedict XVI was turned into a traditionalist when, back in the 1960s and serving as a professor at the University of Tubingen, he saw the face of Marxism and radical leftism and said, “no thank you.”
The 60s changed all of us, some for better, some for worse.
Jane Fonda is back and getting fairly good press. Ward Churchill keeps drawing big crowds, and of the three A-list authors we've lost over the past few months, Arthur Miller, Hunter S. Thompson, Saul Bellow -- Thompson appears to be getting most of the acclaim. Something is going on and I think it's less about a radical left-wing revolt and more about nostalgia for the 1960s.
Thompson (as seen by his contemporaries) left the room and turned off the lights. It's over? We're done? Can't be.
A generation goes, a generation comes, but we're not ready to go so fast. Yes, the 60s are still with us in newsrooms, on campus, and in spirit, and the children of that era have been grandfathered into editorial desks and faculty staffs. So conservatives may be correct. Between the media and academia, radical liberalism rules and the 60s are to blame.
But I would argue that it is not all about politics. It is about romance, the romance of a time when we were all so young and everything was possible. (I'm talking mostly about the first half.) We were subversive all right, we made trouble, but we were not political as politics is defined today.
Remember, for most of the 60s, during all those protests, sit-ins, love-ins and teach-ins, later the riots, we had two Democrat presidents, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. JFK encouraged us to express ourselves and 'let the chips fall where they may.' We loved JFK for what he was, youthful and vigorous, and for what he wasn't, Dwight Eisenhower.
We did not love LBJ, and that's when it got ugly, with LBJ, but not political. We simply wanted change, a better America for women and for African Americans and, of course, out of Vietnam. We were down on business and industry and up with song and poetry. We resented the Establishment - Democrat, Republican, no matter.
We simply wanted the ins to get out. Nothing personal, nothing political as to left versus right. I was there and never met a liberal or a conservative. There were no such people, not with those names. JUSTICE - that was the word going forth. Back then, Michael Moore would not have been making films. He'd be reading his poetry alongside Allen Ginsberg in Washington Square Park.
I did my 60s apprenticeship as a doorman at the Bitter End night spot on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, right alongside NYU, whose campus was also in an uproar, though not as big as Columbia's and Berkeley's. Activists like Mario Savio were not content with panty raids to express their civil rights.
So, from the doorpost of the Bitter End, I saw the 60s as a parade and I remember that cops were called fuzz or pigs, as they were the face of the Establishment. Remember also, that Eisenhower himself warned against the military/industrial complex, so that we were only doing what came naturally. We wanted change and we refused to take orders irrespective of the party in power.
Mostly - and I am sure to be hearing about this - it was about fun. We were on an extended spring break.
Two voices were most prominent - Jack Kerouac and Lenny Bruce. Make that three, Bob Dylan. Okay, make it three more, Peter, Paul and Mary, and, I almost forgot, Joan Baez. Since I'm on a roll, we must include Richard Pryor. These, and more, gave us the culture of the 60s, a culture still alive today.
But left-wing subversive? According to J. Edgar Hoover, yes, but he thought everybody was left-wing (communist) and subversive.
Read Kerouac carefully. He called for a free-spirited America, as did Emerson and Thoreau. Yes, read him carefully and you will find his rebelliousness shaped within the confines of big-hearted patriotism. Likewise Lenny Bruce. I caught his act numerous times and he was among the group around our table at the Hip Bagel, where we all gathered after-hours to gripe about everybody and everything - but what fun it was!
Lenny was in trouble with the courts for drugs and obscenity. Those Seven Forbidden words were his, not George Carlin's. I saw the fuzz go in alone, at the Café Au Go Go, and come out with Lenny Bruce, in shackles, for that language, and the drugs. Lenny was profane and political, but against any political party, the entire Establishment. Lenny Bruce loved America except for the rules.
So really, he was not political at all, as we know politics today, and the same goes for all the rest who are still here and want to do it all over again.
If they can't, in their fading years, they want the kids to take up the chant of mutiny. Call this an extended teach-in.
The difference? The activists of yesteryear sought change to build America. The activists of today seek reasons to destroy America. (Ward Churchill is not alone.) The Jane Fondas and the flag burners were the exception, and besides, these came later, when the true 1960s (the first half) were all done and all that innocence and idealism were dashed. They got it all wrong, those who sit in today's high places. They misunderstood and they misunderstand, and we can only pity, and fear, what Generation X will turn into from such false messiahs.
A few weeks back, in New York, I met up with a man who was a star-maker back there at the Bitter End. He is now a Hollywood producer. I asked him if he planned to make a movie (actually my movie) about that era, the idealism, the protesting, the counterculture. He is now an old man, naturally, and after giving it some reflection, he said, 'All I remember is getting laid.'
Maybe that's all there was, and that's all there is.
About the Writer: Jack Engelhard is the author of the bestseller "Indecent Proposal," the award-winning "Escape from Mount Moriah," and the novel "The Days of the Bitter End," which is being prepared for movie production. Jack receives e-mail at viewopinion@aol.com.
The world will be a better place when the '60s generation is dead and gone (and I say that as a Baby Boomer).
Amen
Translation: Kid is playing with matches, sets the house on
fire, almost destroys it. Thanks to swift and patriotic men
and women who recognized a fire when they saw it, and weren't
afraid to try and put it out, the house was saved.
Several years later, the kid says: "I was just playing. It was fun. It was my fault the carpet caught on fire. It was never about setting things on fire, it was just about igniting matches."
That should read "it wasn't my fault the carpet caught on fire." Dammit, why can't we edit our posts?
Well said.
Cheers,
knews hound
"Daddy, something is wrong with these people."
The music of the sixties is still the best ever, in my opinion, so at least something good came from it.
1967-68, best two years of rock music, ever. No question.
Thanks for the "amen." I usually get flamed by some well-meaning Baby Boomer for painting with too broad a brush when I impune the character of my own generation, but let's face it -- in the popular culture, the loonies have defined my generation, and I don't identify with them. In fact, when in high school (I was raised in the Bay Area in the middle of the hippy days), I rebelled, but it was against my own generation. I always thought the dopers, freaks and hippies were dumb.
*grumble* I guess that makes sense.
We.... we..... we..... me...... me..... me.... ad nauseum.
My own memories of (part of) the 60s are scant....
Things like playing in my sand box, in my wading pool, the Easter Bunny ....
CLUE! .... the whole world ain't part of the Loudest Generation!
We were born.....
Born in the.... 60s
[Not in the 50s, like people who write these sorts of narcisistic articles and certain song lyrics!]
;)
oh yeah ... fantastic.
Isn't about time for all the 60's flower children to report to their local disintegration station? In fact anyone of a certain age should have to be euthanized - just this once so we can rid ourselves of them. As a Gen X'r I've seen a lot of heinous things that were the direct effect of what these people have changed - And I among millions are not happy about it. Furthermore when they are in their dotage, I will be more than happy to make them miserable, in their last days.
You mean like the ones who attacked my kids history books?
It's quite different from the history I remember reading about.
The new millennium is about The BACKLASH.
We're not going back to those stinking days, its time for the hippies to take a shower, wash the stink off, hit rehab and GET OVER IT!!!!
Didn't sociologists recently determine that the baby-boomer generation should be divided into two separate and distinct groups based on each group's distinct value system?
Read Later
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