1968: Still Awful Forty Years Later
Written by Chris C on December 10th, 2007
Every few years some prominent baby boomer cleans out their attic, finds some anti-war crap they didn’t know they still had and yearns for the better days. This time it was Tom Brokaw’s turn and his book ‘1968’ which also aired as a special on History Channel recently.
1968 was a time of free love, change, and great upheaval. Free love leads to free hair growth however and nothing is less attractive then women with armpit hair. But the worst is not trimming the hedges, as the kids like to say. The last thing I want to see is what looks like Chewbacca in a leg-lock below the waist. Call me old-fashioned but I am a firm believer in the wood floor or the landing strip thank you very little.
Times like these always bring back fun fashion icons like tie-dyed clothing. The tie dye shirt is a great symbol of how the Boomers screwed Generation X. But man, those seats I got for the Sound Tribe Sector Nine show are killer dude! I’m gonna sit in the parking lot and sell stir fry and beer to all my other deadhead jobless friends. It’s so gonna rock!
We are talking about clothing that has every conceivable color in nature, yet doesn’t go with anything. Look, I am not saying you need to be anal about your color matching, just that you don’t want to look like you got dressed in the dark or have an extra chromosome.
And the concerts, my God, play a song already. I’m tired of ten minutes of what amounts to the band warming up. Sure you can call it a ‘jam band’. I call it ‘let’s see how long I can string out this one because everyone is so fucked up on drugs they don’t even notice the same song has been playing for fourteen minutes’.
This is the contribution 1968 has given to the world: songs that never end, women that grow body hair like werewolves, and shitty fashion.
No thanks Tom, I like 2007 much better.
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11
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Hey! I was one in 1968! BTW, don’t you mean that tie-dye was LSD-inspired? :)
11
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Yeah, you’re right, 1968 wasn’t any good. Now 1969, on the other hand, brought the world some fabulous things: The first man on the moon and …moi. ;)
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@Howard: Dude how old are you? Yah, tie-dye would have to be inspired because there is no way a sober person makes up a fashion look like that.
@Theresa: Well, that depends on who you talk to. Some don’t believe we landed on the moon. How do you say idiots in spanish?
14
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Chris, there is nothing wrong with an extra chromosome. Rednecks have been using extra chrome for many generations and they turned out alright.
As for 1968, I am going to have to disagree with you completely. If you were a political activist, 1968 was the year that was. The racial equality movement was in full swing. Segregationists were so threatened that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated that year.
The anti-war movement grew so strong that Lyndon Johnson declined to run for re-election because he knew he would lose the Democratic nomination in a landslide.
Bobby Kennedy, who brought new hope to the hippie generation was also assassinated.
The anti-war movement produced such huge protests at the Chicago Democratic national convention that the Chicago police actually rioted in a backlash against the anti-war demonstrators. There was blood all over the streets of Chicago.
The trial of the Chicago 8, which became the Chicago 7, began in September and lasted through 1970. The Chicago 8 trial was a result of the riots during the Chicago Democratic national convention.
The entire concept of tie-dye clothing and long hair was part of a rebellion of the hippie generation against the values of the previous generation that felt that the war in Indo-China was acceptable.
I could go on and on for hours, but 1968 was the most incredible year of the 20th century. Anyone who thinks differently should crack a history book. 1968 changed this country politically, socially, and economically from top to bottom.
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Or so I’ve heard.
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I’d hardly call people like Abbie Hoffman heroes. He admitted he incited the DNC riots. People got injured and we spent thousands of dollars on trials and lawsuits because a few thought they would send a message. It was not this spur of the moment thing, this was a planned-out incident designed to cause chaos.
This is no different then terrorism. Why do you think they were ok with drugs? It was the only way people were going to go along with their bullshit.
The only reason why they changed things was the fact that their generation was about 1/3 of the population. Any group that large influences pretty much everything. But this is their last shot, the Boomers are all getting too old to influence things so this is their last grandiose push for one last bit of power and influence before they retire.
Just remember, whatever the Boomers do, the rest of us are going to have to live and deal with the consequences. Why should we have to make the dinner if we aren’t allowed to buy the groceries?
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I think I’d even take 1988 over 1968. I’m glad I wasn’t born yet in 68.
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I’m still impressed McCafferty dropped a 1,000-word reply on this subject.
15
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None of the Chicago 8 were heroes. They all had major character flaws and some were violent. They did incite a riot. Five of the defendants were convicted and two were acquited (Bobby Seale, the 8th, was dropped as a defendant almost immediately).
I am not defending them. I am only mentioning them because the events of that summer changed the anti-war movement. People who were apathetic finally took a stand. Some went anti-war and some went pro-war.
In fact, there were plenty of baby boomers who were pro war. Richard Nixon narrowly defeated Hubert Humphrey in the presidential election, and many political pundits claim that the Chicago riots influenced many who were of the pro-war sentimentality to go to the polls to support Nixon.
If there were no Chicago riots, Humphrey might very well have won the election, and the war might have ended much sooner than it did.
I did not see the documentary 1968. I was a sophomore in college in 1968, so I lived all of this stuff.
Chris, I am sorry you have negative feelings toward my generation, but every generation has to live with results of the previous one.
The reason there was a documentary called 1968 and that Tom Brokaw wrote a book entitled 1968 is because it was such a life changing year.
There are a lot of similarities between 1968 and 2007. Both years had a very polarized population politically. Both years had a war that seemed never ending.
I personally had a very negative feeling toward what the politicians were doing in 1968 and I have a very similar opinion this year.
I certainly do not applaud the events of 1968. The DNC riots and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr and Bobby Kennedy are nothing to be happy about.
But it was an exciting time to be alive. I am glad I lived through it, despite the negative outcome of many of the events of that year.
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The hippie movement was orchestrated and run by people who later started up Earth Day because people were losing interest in the anti-war movement. Hoffman and the other leaders needed to keep their power and the only way to do that was to keep giving the masses things to protest.
This is the hippie movement in its reality, not smoking pot and listening to Hendrix. People like Hoffman used people like you to get power and money, and they were smart. They picked the group least likely to get mad or feel betrayed or used.
Anyone in power, I don’t care who they are or what group they belong to, they want to hold onto that power and will not readily give it up.
Like Trent Reznor said “Anyone who says power does not corrupt hasn’t had enough of it.”
16
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Besides the stab at the DNC riots in the first picture, all I really did was make fun of people who pick garbage for food, which is unhealthy and classless, tie-dye clothing, and shaving below the waist. Oh, and jam bands too.
I don’t hate the boomers and even my comments above are not about hatred, they are about seriously questioning those that lead us, whether they are Hoffman or Bush. I also question the ideal that the hippie movement knows the best way to run things.
Isn’t that what you taught us, to question authority? You can’t have hippie movement leaders be off-limits, it doesn’t work that way.
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By all means question everything. I wish that more Senators and Congressmen had questioned the Executive branch more back in 2001 when the President asked for more authority from Congress. Maybe then, the US might have spent more time chasing Al Qaeda in Afganistan rather than in Iraq.
Maybe then we would not be in the quagmire we are in now with no apparent way to win and no easy way to get out.
As far as knowing the best way to run things, I think every 20-something kid feels that he knows a better way to run things. That is part of be being 20-something.
I learn more every day regardless of how old I am. Maybe I will actually know something by the time I am 75 or 80 years old. You live a lifetime learning things, and then you die. It would be nice if we had an easy way to pass on empirical knowledge to the next generation. Maybe then we might not be doomed to repeating the mistakes of the previous generation.
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Staying boldly apolitical, I am going to have to side with Theresea on this one. 1969 was the year with major contributions to the ranks of Tuna commenters.
That and Led Zeppelin
18
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@McCafferty: Well being that I am 38, I think I have a much better feel for how things should be run then a 20-something.
On a side note, making fun of something doesn’t mean I hate it. I just have the mindset that nothing is off-limits. I will pretty much make fun of anything. I’m good at it, what can I say. hehe
@Brent: I concur simply on the Led Zep part. People just have no idea how experimental their music was. #1 band of all-time, hands down. The Who come in #2.