Kenneth Heineman Speaks on 1960's Student Revolts on C-Span2 Tonight

C-Span2 BookTV | 11 May 2002 | Kenneth Heineman

[Intolerant in NJ]

Heineman discusses his new book Throw Your Bodies on the Wheel: Student Revolts of the 1960's in a repeat broadcast at 9:50 PM EDT on C-Span2. He debunks some of the myths of the student movement - for instance, although supposedly broadly based, at it's height the movement included only about fifteen percent of all college students in its ranks. At Columbia University where about one-third of the students were involved in the movement to occupy school buildings, two-thirds opposed the activity and many volunteered to New York City police to help go in and drive the protesters out. Heineman sees the protests as a function of both the radical left, which thought the government wasn't acting fast enough to end "injustice", and the libertarian right, which thought it was acting too aggressively. Interesting program.

[Intolerant in NJ]

Most of us who lived through the era already have a sense of most of what Heineman has to say, but it's nice to see that it's been coherently and explicitly documented for posterity...I liked Heineman particularly because he takes some swipes at the "closed" mainstream press and says he spends much of his media time watching Fox News...

[Mind-numbed Robot]

These leftists movements are always spearheaded by a few but made to look like a concensus by their media supporters. It is truly a tyranny of the minority.

[gitmogrunt]

Is this going to be a chance to re-barf the sixties?

[Fish out of Water]

Index Bump

[IronJack]

The same indictment of the protest movement in general can be applied to resistance against the Vietnam War. Although we "herald" that era as a time when "the people" came together to speak their minds, in fact the War, even at its nadir, had a majority of support among the citizenry. But nary a word of THAT sentiment reached the public, and as we Americans know, nothing succeeds like success.

It was in those days that I began to mistrust CBS News, even featuring the avuncular Walter Cronkite's comforting drone. As it turns out, my distrust was well founded, since they were the network champions of the anti-war movement.

It was also this era that destroyed American media credibility, a 30-year vacuum that Fox is just now beginning to fill.

[wardaddy]

Well said IJ!

[rohry]

I haven't heard Heineman speak nor have I read anything he has written, but another myth of the '60's is that these "demonstrations" were even organized by students. Most of them were organized by 26-30 year olds like Rene Davis, Dave Dillenger (actually 40), Tom Hayden, etc. These older non-students were professional organizers who worked to set up SDS organizations on-campus to put ideas in students' mushy little brains.

[Intolerant in NJ]

Correction - Correction...this program was originally on this morning and will be repeated tomorrow night Sunday May 12 at 9:50 PM EST (per latest announcement) - apologies!

[Intolerant in NJ]

You guys are good...Heineman touched on each of the points you made - he thought the protest movement would have never reached the intensity it did without the Vietnam war as a rallying point and seemed to see antiwar activity as the most dishonest of the various "movements". He implied Cronkite's comments were a disservice to the country (although he tried to provide some cover for Walter by saying that his criticism was about the wisdom of how we were involved rather than of the war itself). He spent some time talking about the "outside agitators" who weren't students but who whipped the mushy brains into supporting the cause dujour as needed, mentioning Hayden specifically...history as the man in the street knows it usually takes some time to catch up with reality, and Heineman's book should help the process along....