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.
I was raised off of Rural Route Three,
Out where the blacktop ends.
We'd walk to Church on Sunday mornings,
Race barefoot back to Johnson's fence.
That's where I first saw Mary,
On that roadside pickin' blackberries.
That summer I turned a corner in my soul,
Down that red dirt road.
It's where I drank my first beer.
It's where I found Jesus.
Where I wrecked my first car:
I tore it all to pieces.
I learned the path to Heaven,
Is full of sinners an' believers.
Learned that happiness on earth,
Ain't just for high achievers.
I've learned; I come to know,
There's life at both ends,
Of that red dirt road.
Her Daddy didn't like me much,
In my shackled up GTO.
Oh, I'd sneak out in the middle of the night,
Throw rocks at her bedroom window.
We'd turn out the headlights,
Drive by the moonlight.
Talk about what the future might hold,
Down that red dirt road.
It's where I drank my first beer.
It's where I found Jesus.
Where I wrecked my first car:
I tore it all to pieces.
I learned the path to Heaven,
Is full of sinners an' believers.
Learned that happiness on earth,
Ain't just for high achievers.
I've learned; I come to know,
There's life at both ends,
Of that red dirt road.
I went out into the world,
An' I came back in.
I lost Mary:
Oh, I got her back again.
An' drivin' home tonight,
Feels like I've found a long-lost friend.
It's where I drank my first beer.
It's where I found Jesus.
Where I wrecked my first car:
I tore it all to pieces.
I learned the path to Heaven,
Is full of sinners an' believers.
Learned that happiness on earth,
Ain't just for high achievers.
I've learned; I come to know,
There's life at both ends,
Of that red dirt road.
Most of what the nation saw as hippie-crazed youth was generated and conducted on the coasts. Most of the midwestern kids I knew just wanted to drink beer, find girls, fish, hunt, play sports, drive fast cars, join the military, and listen to rock music...just like many do today. I didn't know any hippies then, and I don't know any now.
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations (i.e. The Baby Boomers) are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
On college campuses, about 90% of the demonstrations were over issues like dormitory curfew hours or campus dress codes (still had 'em back then. My first year in college, women were not allowed on campus wearing pants, or anything other than a dress.)
As far as influencing the public against the war, the hippies actually had a negative influence. They were colorful and produced most of the good music of the time, but they were also a laughingstock, the butt of jokes of Rowan and Martin. No one took them seriously.
Public opinion turned against the war as a direct result of LBJ dropping out of politics after the Tet Offensive. He announced troop withdrawals and peace negotiations, an unmistakable admission of failure. Even Nixon ran on a 'secret plan to end the war'. Note, not a plan to WIN the war, just a plan to end it. That's what the public wanted. That's what they got. When funding was cut off, nobody even cared about Vietnam anymore. The 'ME' generation was getting in gear, and hippies were dropping back in to society in droves.
My summation: the 'mass' demonstrations, the hippie thing, violent campus unrest all PERPETUATED public support for the war effort, galvanizing the hard hats and uncorrupted sons and daughters all across America. But leadership at the very top failed. First they ask you to risk your life for a cause, then suddenly that cause is 'negotiable', and there's still a draft. So Kissinger takes over, for all intents and purposes, the management of the war effort. He invades Cambodia, inflames the situation there to the point of driving Prince Sihanouk from office while utterly failing to cut the Ho Chi Minh trail. Then he tries to invade the DMZ, another dismal failure. Then prolongs the war with mass bombings that almost make Hanoi cry 'uncle', but stops short, caves in to every NV demand, and gets a Noble Peace Prize for his valiant efforts. That's how the war was lost. Not Joan Baez, not even Jane Fonda. Just bad leadership. Hippies on the street? Yeah, real influential, very well financed, lots of media access... what I mean is, are all you hippie-bashers serious?
LOL!!
60's baby ping.
"And now the stupid idiotic liberal Boomers are advocating euthenasia, mercy-killing, etc. They are signing their own death warrants."
And the paper they sign it on will be filed by me, while they are led down the hallway by a Gen Y'r to be evacuated.
Interesting post.
In the words of my mother, a baby boomer, "The rich kids were hippies. I couldn't afford to be a hippie."
Even if they wern't political (as he claims) they were useful idiots for the left.
You forgot one major item...The drug culture. In 1955 I graduated from the 3rd largest 3 year high school in the country and I had never even heard of drugs.
He's kidding, right? He thinks our generation treats Jane Fonda's crowd like messiahs? Puh-leeeze!
I hate hippies, said in my best Cartman voice.
Thanks for asking how Generation X felt about things and how they were affected by all your 'free love' crap, you stupid pig (I'm aiming that comment at the author, not you Dave123 :D )
I'll call those Free Love People what they are : PIGS. They were PIGS and the policemen PROTECTED their right to be pigs.
If its 'bad' things you fear from us, you have only yourselves to blame. Where were you? What did you do when we needed you? Why didnt you teach us if you thought it so important. Just like that man said "[it was all about] getting laid". Hope it was a good lay for you, Free Love People, cause that's all WE'RE going to remember you guys by.
We have watched.
We have recorded.
WE will teach...and there's NOTHING you Pig Hippie people can do about it.
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