There's a Reason Today's Not the 60's: It's no longer LIVE.

Where do we go from here?
The words are coming out all weird...

I wish it was the sixties, I wish I could be happy

I wish, I wish, I wish that something would happen.......

                                       --Radiohead, "The Bends"

My first instinct is to get all pissy and condescending about this subject.  The 60s. Its romance, seduction, which I know is somewhat of an illusion. But I am recognizing that this  pov is not in the least bit interesting.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti said:

Don’t wait for the Revolution
or it’ll happen without you...
  

But there was a scariness about actually being in the 60's.  No one was sure what would happen; it all felt so uncertain.  That's what the distance forgets.   Men were landing on the Moon!  You could watch real-live soldiers wading chest deep in rice paddies, looking for real live Asians to shoot. They found  Soviet missiles in Cuba. Glass plate windows were being shattered with baseball bats,  fires were lit in cities, firehoses were aimed at people rather than buildings, tear gas canisters were being set off in crowds, people on streets were being pushed, shoved and arrested in numbers, billy clubs were raised,  college campuses ricocheted with gunshots. 3 major assassinations. Weird cults were rising up and killing people, and the music, the soundtrack to this all was never-before -heard, kind-of strange.   We knew ALL of this was real--as Gil-Scott Heron said, "The Revolution Will Be Live"--!!  Even if he was wrong about it not being Televised.
MTV's Real World had nothing on this.

Let's just put it this way:  if the world had ended by 1970, I think not a few of us then would have opened our eyes wide and said--yeah, I thought so. It was an intense time to go through--at least compared to anything else I've experienced since. (But I'm sure WWII was pretty hot to live through...))

But even now "the 60's" seduces, and seduces me, too.  Even if I was there, I was only a child, not a 20 year old in the midst of all the foaming, freaky color.  My smaller world, sheltered from the wars and culture clashes, then was every bit as bland as  today's strip mall culture, only minus the internet.  Even if Madmen now makes my skort look cool and retro.  We had the TV eyeball conducting us through life instead. Pacifying us--there may be burnt bodies on TV, but, look,  next to me on the couch, my soft, familiar pillow.  And after the news, The Beverly Hillbillies.

 It wasn't that different without internet,  just more directed and focused.  The way it made you avoid real life experiences was pretty much the same as cyberspace: the difference was that everyone was tuning into the same simulacra, and having conversations about THOSE.  Did you see The Kinks on Ed Sullivan--weren't they amazing?  Ha,ha,  Gilligan is so smart-stupid!  Did you really think M*A*S*H would end that way?  (Well, M*A*S*H actually missed the 60's by 25 days, but was an analogy to what was going on out of country).  But, we may have been somewhat numb to napalmed children in Vietnam.  Every night.  Okay-- I admit: I did other things, outdoor things, read books, listened to and played music...[but there was a lot of TV watching happening in those days by some people].  The point is, that's how most of us "experienced" the iconic moments of the 60s, not in the middle of the flame.

Now, with internet access, we have the opportunity to find odd bits at the edges of human experiences, which is better, no?

Never mind that most people still only get absorbed in the same group pools of memes, Facebook pages, celebrity gossip, etc.  

A very nice thing, regardless of what the eggheads might think, is I don't think everyone today believes so much what they see, read, watch.  The Revolution is No Longer Live.  They may SEEM to believe it, give the appearance, seem in some suspended state of disbelief,  because in a second's conversation, one must choose to repeat the mundane meme or not, and if you repeat it you give the appearance of believing.  Am I making sense?  I mean, if you say, like all the others,  Miley Cyrus wore an offensive dress, your audience gets a frozen idea of your opinions, your amusements, the narrowness of your mind. Odd that I said audience rather than friends.   But look closely at everyone's eyes as they speak---do you see the doubt?  The wavering notion that perhaps the image was photoshopped, that the video was set up, not live, the moment was a stunt for publicity or attention,  that the model's waist doesn't really curve in that flawless,  alluring way. Not Live.

One thing --how did Andy Warhol get it so right about the 15 minutes of fame?

Coleridge and Wordsworth coined the phrase: "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" in the 19th Century.  It feels like life in the 21st Century requires this WSOD state of mind perpetually, if one is to make it down even the shortest block of any millennium day.  Sure, I'll listen to that athlete's account of why he wasn't really hitting his wife.  Ok, Putin, you didn't send a tank to Ukraine, how can I know, I wasn't there, or care--maybe the tank was photoshopped.  Yeah, Israel, I didn't actually see that  borderline move.  Somebody thinks 50 Shades of Gray is sexist.  Someone else thinks it's groundbreaking.   I hear yesterday was the hottest day on record?...

So, here's the thing.  I think we all feel this fondness for the 60's because most of us, whether a child like me, or Thom Yorke and his fans, we all experienced it more or less in the same way--in the comfort and safety of our living rooms/bedrooms.  We lay sprawled on our soft shag carpet, elbows up in TV- viewing mode.  We were in absolutely no danger when we saw these images (me  and my parents, grandparents) on TV or in the glossy pages of Life or Look Magazine: you, later, on a digital screen:

• 18 Year Old National Guard soldiers having daisies put in their guns by a doe-eyed, raven haired hippie girl  (check out the above image--which proves how faulty memory can be, how things can be romanticized to the somethingth degree).  Never mind four ordinary college students got shot by their own confused contemporaries.
• Janis Joplin in rose-colored, oversized wire-rims, dripping beads down her au natural breasts
• Psychedelic album art--Cream Disraeli Gears or The Hendrix Experience Axis:Bold As Love , as two cases in  point... Acid Art!  It's in the water!
• Kids in the rain and mud, smiling and chanting at Woodstock
• Firehoses washing rioters down the streets in Watts
• Che on that Black and red poster
• protest posters on a stick--"I AM A MAN"
• The Washington Mall, covered in Youth, Abbie Hoffman wearing the flag wrong, inciting riot
• Vietnam soldier with a peace symbol crudely sketched on his Government Issue helmet, with a pack of Luckies (ironic target logo?) strapped in next to it.
• Morrison is sweaty leather,  маги eyes rolled up in his head, about to be arrested in Miami 

Just to name a few.  Seeing is not being.

None of that was you or me.   I'm speculating.  We were too busy in our living rooms, watching.

If you had lived in the 60's, would you have turned off your computer (?? anachronism, sorry!!)) dropped everything, hitched to San Francisco, hung out at Haight and Ashbury, and for how long?  You might have had great times for maybe a week or two, until your money ran out and you had to start stealing or begging?  Until you realized many of the kids on the streets there had a 1000 mad problems, were runaways, had drug problems, smelled horrid,  knew people like Manson, were not all brilliant musicians and artists...

And that mainstream America actively hated them then, unlike now. They look so pretty, now.

Well, this is where my mind takes me, anyway.  It's just one side. This does not eliminate the seduction.  

If the 60s, in spirit, is going to revive, we all --the ones who sigh for it, have to be willing to stop being comfortable and cozy.  We have to go get in the line of fire of the bullets, think about and produce something that has not made it before.  The people who had real 60s experiences, not vicarious ones, lived dangerous lives..and I sometimes wonder if that is even still possible.  We would have to be willing to be hated.

Here are some things that will not bring the 60's back.  They are all too safe. I say this knowing full well I am guilty of almost all these behaviors myself..

• Listening to, and learning how to play classic 60's songs on guitar, or singing them.  (My latest is The Byrds' "Eight Miles High".)
• Writing songs that sound like sixties songs (guilty..)
• Reading all the counterculture literature (Pynchon, Kesey, Kerouac, Robert Bly, Hunter S. Thompson, Aldous Huxley, Marx and Mao, et al...)
• Favoring jeans, bellbottoms, hip-huggers, Indian shirts with open necks, long hair, boots...(g)
• saying, "man" "righteous", etc.
• Being in a protest--I know this sounds close to the real thing, but ones I've been involved in seemed remarkably useless and flaccid--why is that?  The world is no longer watching.  At least not in the same concentrated way. Addendum: I suppose being at a Trump rally may be dangerous.
• Knowing ridiculous details about American history post WWII
• Watching the quintessential 60's movies, like Easy Rider, One Flew Over Cuckoo's Nest, etc.
• Declaring yourself a Marxist, anti-establishment, anti-capitalist whatever
• Getting supremely overeducated
• Contrary to popular belief, taking LSD will not change your life.  Say! "Are You Experienced?"

So, if none of this makes one feel as if he/she has had a true 60's experience, what will?  Although I don't have the answer, I do know it requires danger, noncompliance with the present culture in a bold way, and discomfort.  This is something to think about long and hard.  

Whining about it ala Thom Yorke doesn't work.  But what?

Oh, yeah--never considered this--were Guns 'N' Roses really in tune enough to pick their name as a tribute to this image?  I don't actually think so--I hear it was just a mashing together of the group L.A. Guns and Axl Rose's band/last name.  Too bad they didn't think of that. Nah...Daisies were the hippie flower.

Then, of course, it would be stupid to be dangerous for no particular reason.  That just makes you like a criminal: you need to have some higher purpose.  Does it have to be political?  EHhhhhhhh. I don't like that, somehow.  I'm sort of into the old idea of passive resistance , however, the way old MLK and Gandhi's followers did --just refuse to play.  How?  Well it's important, I think not to be seduced by the mainstream--for commerce, for ideas, for political points of view.  This is so difficult, given the state of media--so many agendas, so much conflicting and reinforcing information.  It's back to the old existential dilemma--angst overload---TILT!!--One needs to have particularly fine radar for truth these days..

And then walk it.  Maybe spread it by action?  Is this really dangerous?  It can be when certain folks catch on.  Your employer, for example.

One big mistaken notion Thom Yorke has-- waiting for something to happen, not making it happen.  AND, associating the 60's with happiness.  (Is he parodying?) C'mon, dudes, you know how the media makes everything look through those retro rose glasses.

  Yes, there were cool clothes then.  Yes, they were better made, better quality (and, ironically, more likely to be made in America by union shops, but that's beside the point.--or is it?)  It is a fact that my jeans back then, lasted probably ten-twelve years--you had to buy them big-- "shrink-to-fit" was the term.  When you bought them, they felt like you could block a Lake Michigan windstorm with them, the weave and seams was so tight and heavy--the dye almost black--very uncool. You put them through the washer/dryer for 4-5 cycles before they were even wearable, but then they lasted!!  My problem with classic Levis--the back stood out from my small waist like 4-5 inches. it looked really ugly.  I had to learn how to sew darts.

 In the mid-70's we had this thing where we bought "painter's pants" at the hardware store--real proletariat working man's clothes.  Again you had to soften them up.  We had a farmer's supply store in Quincy--tractor parts, field implements,  wading boots and Doc Martin workboots (punk), and real farmer's Osh-Gosh overalls and coveralls.  I got a pair there--they were huge, and if I wasn't so short and long-haired, I doubt you coulda told my gender.  (In the 80's we did the same thing with Dickie's work clothes.)

This decade I have bought at least 4-5 pairs of jeans ("built to last") that didn't last two years.  (I bought them at thrift stores, which doesn't help, but it's part of my passive resistance to the prevailing culture--I can't go naked, and I can't afford expensive, hand-made clothes.  It's not true that making your own is cheaper--I've tried--cloth itself is expensive..)

I'm not at all deceiving myself that this is in any way dangerous behavior.  Add it to things that won't bring the 60's back. It's just ingrained in me through  20 year's habit for buying things from alternative and local sources, avoiding corporate profit.    It is very easy for me to do these things and they've become acceptable: even my family has stopped giving me the fish eye about my buying habits.  No one's going to throw me in jail, fire me, or uninvite me to events because of this.

  I think it just explains where the 60's/70's 80's nostalgia comes from, for "retro" things--there once was more sense of pride in craftsmanship, attention to detail and quality, and it shows when you compare the old with new knockoffs.  "Look for, the Union Label..."This is an unspoken form of passive resistance, but not nearly enough.  I probably have 5-6 actual shirts from the 60's and 70's in my wardrobe--they've lasted 40+ years.  I doubt my new Gap shirt will last--it already has little pinholes in it in front.

Maybe one of the things that irritates me about this Radiohead song is how apathetic its point of view is.  Maybe it's intended to be social commentary, ironic, a criticism of self and the others , but it does seem to encapsulate the behavior of the millennial generation.  As the messenger of bad news, I declare that I think I still carry the 60's around with me.  And the 80's--never really gave up those joint mindsets.  Now this is dangerous,  a little, because just having that in my heart makes it come out at odd moments, in my interactions with others.  60s/80s me is still a little angry, and it just makes me more angry that no one else really seems to be.  Snarky, ironic, apathetic, tolerant--but not really angry with this ugly world.  Are you just going to let this happen to you?

School puts me on the front line here.  One of my insightful, less conformist ex-students once told me I have a sort of reputation:  many of them don't like me because of my weird personality. My random confrontations.  I don't let them just go along with the latest fad. I guess  I'm supposed to be bothered by my student's opinions- I was, maybe a little, at first, but not enough to make me cry, or change! In fact, I sort of enjoy having this effect, sorry!!))))

A recent example--all my little girls and their boyfriends are all atwitter about the extremely poorly written 50 Shades of Gray and its recent movie.  Naughty naughty Hollywood for putting this trash out on Valentine's Day!   It seems some of the girls have actually got some of their non-reading boyfriends to read this clap-trap.  There seems something awful about this to me--not because I think this will cause legions of kiddies to become BDSM lovers.  People's sexual preferences are their business, to me--and I doubt if it's nothing more than a fad. It's the twitter-pation of the whole thing, and how poorly done it is to appeal to --non readers...non-thinkers(( I said--if you wanna read that subject, why not go the whole way and read Marquis de Sade, Anne Rice, or Anais Nin--at least it's well-written, why play with this watered down mess?   Well, of course the response is confusion--they have no idea what I'm talking about, they just know instinctively I am criticizing them--they may even think I'm being prudish, but they aren't sure.  Did I mention that in book 3 or 4 (I am told) the dominated girl pulls some sort of Disney princess act, and the guy breaks down and marries her??

Hah!  Sometimes being more well-read keeps you safe.  Misunderstood, but safe.

Ok, I broke down and looked it up--they don't get married (I don't think), but start a family--same difference.  It sounds like there's all sorts of pseudo-psychoanalysis about why Christian, the man, became deviant because of some evil older woman in his younger days.  Damaged goods--love will out!  Of, course--ultimately this behavior is so wrong!  (Even though lottsa people seem to like it...) To mangle a phrase--kinks just keep getting harder to find...

60's revolutionaries would be more open-minded.....

I feel sorry for all the little boys who will get mistaken notions that they will cause a positive effect in the girls they want. By being aggressive, a man. It's your standard low-grade fantasy-porn crap. The man doesn't exist, isn't patterned on  anyone's reality.   By being "strong and assertive"--Hah! If they do it like everything else they do, in their half-assed, half-understanding way-- The birth-rate will go down.  More girls will become lesbians.  And now Donald Trump's revelations, how very sexy. (Not).  That's enough to wreck your libido for life.

I'm sorta wondering--gonna go where I shouldn't, but---writers should do that.  These days I feel more like a writer, my days as a schoolteacher are numbered.  What are they really thinking?  Hey!  Sex has games!!  Wanna play a game! ??  Could be fun...But are you good at it?  Well, seems the 50-Shades writer wasn't.  ***** Enter the ham-handed Donald T.****

Later-Don't even know what to make of this! On the news: 100 underage teenage persons storm an Orlando mall theater to break into a showing of 50 Shades of Gray.  Apparently 911 was called several times over. Some insisted on getting in for free!  Viva la revolucion!

Next week: bring on the sheeep. ??

Now, what happened to my focus on the 60s?  I got distracted by people being distracted.

I was just reminded.  What was the real importance of the 60s. Why we miss the 60s.  It was when America died.  The dream of America.  "Bye-Bye, Miss American Pie..." Yeah, think of it this way.
America Died.  It was the joint combination of the Kennedies' and MLKing's assassinations, plus the icing of the Gulf of Tonkin and Vietnam and the Civil Rights' Wars. Watergate and all the other gates that followed.   How tiring.  It was when we stopped being good, the shining beacon on the hill--the hope of the world.  It finally became just plain obvious that our experiment failed, and we were as corrupt  a people as any that went before us.  We have this in common with 1990's Russia, I think.  Hmm.  Interesting to think on.

It's been nice reliving the 60's by watching MadMen--I think my all time favorite TV show--which is sadly about to end.

April 19:  I said this elsewhere, and I feel it's fitting to repeat here:  radical thinking essayist/environmentalist/thinker Naomi Klein has made the suggestion that we should all go back to the living standards of the 1970s.  Regardless of anything I've said here that might suggest I disagree, I say, right on.

October 26:  I'm about 3/4 of the way through a book I got for free--It's a non-fiction itemization of all things Doors.  I was kinda hoping it would break me out of my starry dark romance with Jim Morrison--see him from a more reality based perspective.  I think it kinda has helped actually.  But really it sent me off to look up a lot of things I didn't know about, or knew but never got motivated to investigate--odd influences,  under-hyped elements of the 60's/70's like the band Love, or the underground counter-culture movie Zabriskie Point, which didn't excite me all that much except it really put me back in the world of 1969/70--the only slightly long over the ears and bangs hairstyles, the understated version of hippie clothes that still pissed normal people off was clear in the movie (the lead guy mostly wore white jeans/khakis, normal leather shoes and a button up the front shirt, that would be considered  fairly dressy today. The girl had straight hair that went to her bottom, but wore a sort of bland sporty olive green mini-dress that buttoned at the neck, and a somewhat colorful tiny little woven belt--wouldn't win any 60's halloween costume prizes today).

I'm realizing that long bangs were probably what really torked the "Establishment" about hippie boys' hair.  If you look at the conventional hairstyles of the day, they were either military short, or, if a little long on top, they were greased back with Brill cream or whatever was that awful stuff that men wore on their hair then.  And the hippies were accused of being disgusting..  Me, I realize that's actually my favorite hairstyle on men --all those shaggy-long, thick beatles' bangs are pretty sexy.Ahh, my childhood.
The lead singer of Love claims Hendrix stole his style.

But, I'm glad I saw the movie because of the absolutely spectacular ending--it saved the whole thing! Explosions detonated in slo-motion to an obscure Pink Floyd song.  Also the movie message was pretty subversive, so Tom, time to act, not borrow the show.


December 12: Is the revolution done or going underground or experiencing complete ennui?

This is what I mean.  In the last elections, the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, I mean, I made a game of keeping track of bumper stickers on cars as an informal way of  gauging the outcome of the election--whether it was a good method or not, it seemed to bear out:  Obama beat Hillary in the Dem primary, and then Obama  won both elections.  Bumper stickers were everywhere!!  I had one on my bike even!

Cut to this year.....December 2015.  The Dem and Rep primaries are in 3 months, in March, 2016.  The election is less than a year away.  We've already had a bunch of completely absurd,  fallacy filled debates.

But last night I was stuck in a long traffic jam in Tampa--one of those big truck dudes caught his on fire near the Howard Frankenstein (as we call it locally).   Then another jam at Malfunction Junction. I was stuck for close to two  hours with the  top movers of the Tampa Bay area.  So here's something interesting:

No bumperstickers.  Hardly none.  Definitely none for the top Republican Donald Trump.  Maybe he isn't bothering to play that game?  The other Republicans?  Not a one.  And I was heading into deep Republican land--Pasco County.  Dems?   I only saw one sticker for Bernie Sanders.

Isn't that interesting?

I would never vote for a blowhard like Donald Trump, but I sure am glad he is in this race, short-circuiting everything!    In a way , it's exactly what American politics need to throw it all off balance. It's really the first time I just plain feel like NOT voting, since its so meaningless--might vote for old Trump as some sort of protest of the whole debasement of the democratic process.  How bad could it get if he were president?  LATER:  BAD!!
LATER STILL: DIRE.
Dec 21:
One of my theories about America's problems is that it really needs to go to the nadir, the bottom of the bottom, before it can recover.  I think Donald's the one to do that for us--I'm still not convinced he might not just quit in the middle of his term in some sort of strange fit.   So the whole trick is who does he pick for a running mate--he's pissed off most of the Reps.  Or tried to.   I half suspect he wants to pick Hillary, but that's not really possible, is it?

So, a few nights ago I watched this old documentary about the '68 presidential race--probably the first one I ever got emotionally involved in and became at all able to understand what was happening.

 I was nine-ten?  Really?  That's hard to believe that I was that young and understood even some of what was a stake between the two sides. Shows what crazy times it was.  I remember we had a mock debate in Catholic school:  Rich Kinney played Hubert Humphrey, the Dem, or did he play George McGovern?  Rich was extremely liberal--he had wire-rimmed aviator glasses and a big bushy white boy 'fro.  Glenn Smith played Nixon; he still wore Brill creme--the only one that did in our class--like a complete 50's throwback. Whose family was extremely religious and wanted Glenn to be a priest (he wanted to be a doctor, and defied his family by joining the Navy to do so--go Glenn!)    I was sort of a grudging friend of Glenn, just because he was pretty intelligent, a Bible and philosophy expert, but I totally disagreed with his politics.   (Our friendship was partially based on the fact that his friend Mark had a crush on my friend Barb).  

Did someone play the third party guy--the southern governor who got shot: George Wallace?  Maybe Glenn's friend Mark..  see, I really was into it!

Really these school arguments between Glenn and Rich probably  upped my pre-teen IQ quite a bit--we were the class that all the other grades hated at St. Ambrose, because we were so smart the nuns kept making comparisons to us.  I know the class ahead of us (HS grad class of 1976) were always held out as the ultimate losers because they skipped school a lot, got caught drinking and smoking in 8th grade!!  This is yet again one of the ways the stars lined up right for me, to be a part of this interesting class, even if my school was less than intellectual.

Anyway, this I did not know then, although I may have passed my mother watching it on our black and white TV in '68:  the William F. Buckley/Gore Vidal Debates.  Apparently, this was the beginning of our fall from grace in American politics.  (BTW, my mother and father were both pro-union, fully invested Democrats in these days.  My mother told me she voted for Hubert Humphrey, for some reason her favorite politician, after JFK.  I bet my dad voted for Nixon--if not in this race than in 1972-- actually, '72 was more likely, since the war was a Dem problem then. )   I doubt if my mother would have voted for McGovern..maybe.  She was, when my dad wasn't around, against the Vietnam War, even though she was from a family full of veterans--.  She was probably worrying about her favorite cousin Mike who was planning an Army career --but got lucky that Vietnam ended before he had to go "in-country".

So back to Buckley/Vidal.  Very interesting divide.   They were similar in that they were both white, gave the impression of privileged, patrician and snotty voiced, prep-schooled intellectuals--writers  of the type 'Merica usually hates (but less then, in the suave, Madmen days)..Buckley was a married Christian, deemed far right conservative, family man who was pushing what has since been the Republican far right agenda these last 40-50 years:  smaller government, pro military,  business and law and order.   He wrote for The National Review.

Gore Vidal, amazingly, was a self acknowledged homosexual, red leaning, social cause fighting, anti-War man.  It was interesting that he considered himself farther left than Bobby Kennedy--who he fought publicly with  until Bobby's assassination earlier that year.  Gore wrote for lots of intellectual magazines,  The Nation and  Esquire, plus he wrote the scandalous Myra Breckenridge (I've never seen the movie version starring Rachel Welch-it was rated X when I was a kid!  But so was Midnight Cowboy, then--homosexual themes, both).  Myra Breckenridge was a metaphoric feast about power in politics--Myra was a a transgender politician who used her fluid sexuality to gain power over other politicians--I know no details except the clips I've seen--in one scene she takes off all her clothes to disarm and flatten her opponents--shows her junk, whatever state it was in at that point--shown off-camera. After his nonacceptance in politics (he ran for office) Vidal moved to Italy, an ex-pat.

Both of these men had quite distinctive, celebrity voices that were recognizable in the rooms  where you kept your television.  They were on The Tonight Show , Dick Cavett, and other things.  Bill Buckley was even lampooned in cartoons, he was such a prig--in fact, I believe, that was supposed to be him in Aladdin, you know when the genie says, "Ah, ah, we'll need, some uh, quid pro quos, uh, some.."

Wait!  I was right--just found the dialogue online and even the script says it's Buckley:

Genie: So, what'll it be, Master?
Aladdin: You're gonna grant me any three wishes I want, right?
Genie: [as William F. Buckley] Uh, almost. There are a few, uh, provisos, a, a couple of quid pro quos.
Aladdin: Like?


I also speculate that Dean Stockwell is doing a veiled Buckley imitation during his scene with Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet. That creepy scene where he sings the Roy Orbison song about the Sandman? And he keeps opening his eyes extremely wide for 2-3 seconds in a way that looks like gay flirting..this was a Buckley trademark.

So, it seems it was standard that the big networks then : NBC and CBS just ran the cameras all day and night at both conventions, cheap, I suppose but very boring and hard to follow.  We  kids hated when this cancelled our favorite programs for days on end--but that happened fairly regularly  in those days for big events:  political races, space coverage, various news events like the many political assassinations that happened in the 60s.  Big war coverage--TV was not so much in the hands of the people then, which perhaps was better in its way--more unified and dare I say patriotic? Intellectual, even in a historic sense.  The networks seemed to feel some sort of responsibility to record history then, unlike now where they actually seem to obfuscate it in a fog of money driven bullshit.

ABC, the third network, was making a poor showing--so it chose to do something different.  Nightly debates with Wm F. Buckley and Gore Vidal commenting on what was happening at the conventions, or on the race, or the state of the US of A.  So if you hate how politics is covered now, blame Buckley, Vidal, and ABC, looking for whorish ratings!

Myra Breckenridge was more often the topic than Vietnam or the race problem.  Because, even though these two were supposed to be incredible debaters--Vidal in particular, full of facts : they both let the thing just degenerate into a name-calling ad hominem attack of the sort Fox News and Keith Obermann became famed for.

Hot.  And stupid.

The bottom came when  Buckley called Gore a "queer" live on camera--something he regretted obviously the rest of his life.  It was in retaliation for Vidal calling him a fascist.  Politics on T.V.  have never been the same again.  Soon after Vidal published a story that more than implied that Buckley's gaff was just a bit of self-loathing, saying he was a closet queer if ever there was one,  and this accusation hit its target squarely, since the rest of America basically said--yeah, I believe he's right--just look at how he talks...

I'm not sure what to make of all this, except it once again shows, the seeds of the "non-60s"were sowed in the 60s themselves.  So stop whining for them, maybe? Or learn from them?

April 21:  Bumper stickers still few and far between, even though the New York primaries were yesterday--everyone's bitching about everything, super-delegates, primary voting rules-Independent Brooklynites, I feel ya: we have the same problems in  gerrymandered FLA.   Maybe the revolution isn't live, but it seems to be ginning up.  Bernie's not going to win, but he's doing it for the right reasons--winning is not enough these days, this is a battle for souls.


America is dying, a slow, painful death.


May 2:   Ha!  I just read this article from Slate, connecting Donald Trump with the 60s generation.  The writer is Stephen Metcalf. It says:

"Donald Trump the baby boomer.

Here is what I am not arguing: I am not arguing that Trump turned on, tuned in, and dropped out, that he stuck it to the man, that he smoked a skunky kush and freely loved. (Or whatever, pick your own cliché.) It is only one lamentable aftereffect of the ’60s that they cast their paisley mythomania on all related topics, not least upon the demographic journey of the baby boomers. One did not have to be at Berkeley, baiting the pigs on the steps of Sproul Hall, or even, really, to touch upon the counterculture at any of its points, to experience the deepest and most formative aspects of being a baby boomer. To understand how, it will help to pause for a moment and meditate on the idea of a generation."

More about this this afternoon.  Here's the link to the article, which is interesting, and dovetails with some of my ideas here:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/05/donald_trump_baby_boomer_how_the_candidate_was_shaped_by_his_generation.html


This is another article with related interesting ideas to think about:


http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html#

October 16, 2016---------------The 60s--Part Two:

Well, aggravated with myself that I didn't continue my thoughts in May, for posterity, and my own lack of memory for..my own memory..but what's changed?  Nothing, only much, much deeper.

I came back here because I've been binge watching Tom Hanks' The 60s.  Reliving without the danger, but still the emotion.  I teared up again today to see Kennedy #1 shot.  My central thought is that we are today  failing, making some sort of Bizarro World mirror image of the 6os.  So here's the thing if Boomers (et. al.) want to  >>>>>>>>>>>>>>

>>Make America Great Again.

I'm pretty sure what they are after is that cohesive feel of the Sixties, made universal by our joint TV experiences(pre-Kennedy assassination, of course, because the 60s assassinations were at the center of the shattering of the American psyche).   The first episode of The Sixties brought this all back so clearly, the beauty of that time, the Zeitgeist.  The core of that experience, really,  was only 4 years--1960 to November 22, 1963.  At the end, I was 4.

 Then, we immediately were allowed to forget our troubles (multiple assassinations, riots, wars, et. al.)  by nostalgicizing our modern world with reruns, good TV comedy, Ed Sullivan, the Beatles.  I think all the Trump boomers and other followers are really wanting a return to that:  the TVLand of The Dick Van Dyke Show, Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, The Beverly Hillbillies, Ed Sullivan and his cast of multiethnic characters, Carol Burnett,I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched,Gilligan's Island, I Spy, Julia,  Green Acres, Leave It To Beaver.  The comaraderie and bonding we felt by all being at the same place, at the same time, tuned into the same frequency.   That alone made us think we were sensible and tolerant (even of witches and genies), non-racist to root for a black nurse or spy, that we could marry country  to city, and believed women were smart enough to carry a comedy show...

But it was TV.   (TV isn't REAL!!   Hello, Boomers!???)
 Holy shit, how weird and cold-war-ish was it that the guy who owned the genie bottle was an astronaut??? Who dreamed that up!!!

The narrator of that first 60s episode made some great points about what was so magic about that time.  After WWII we were booming, on top of the world, in a creative burst.  The shows of the time (like the music) reflected our optimism, our belief in our unlimited capabilities and ideas.  Of course some of the shows were absurd--The Professor on Gilligan's Island was brilliant, could make a radio out of coconuts but couldn't make a boat or raft? We suspended disbelief and enjoyed the ride for what it was.   Genies and good witches who would rather have a husband than use their powers on themselves: there were shoe phones, telephones on top of poles, and Cones of Silence, Star Trek aliens and stupid, sophisticated  dumb-blonde dancing girls who made bad , but politically sharp, puns on Laugh-In.  (God, I can relive  telling my mother that Goldie Hawn was my favorite! on Laugh-In!)  Boy we were sophisticated, and in the know, so much like Don Draper and company.  And, although there were undercurrents, on the surface everyone was polite.  Ladies and Gentlemen.  There was no cursing or name-calling or uncivilized behavior during Prime Time. It was a good place to be.  Unlike outside in the riots and all.

Jeannie and Ginger ( Ginger an intentional parody, of a MM sex-bomb, Jeannie a male platonic fantasy)aside, it's rather amazing how many entertainers in those days were quite ordinary looking, with obvious talent and natural charisma, unlike our  interchangeable photoshopped "stars"  now.  Then they all looked like they were actually having fun making art of various kinds-it showed!!  No wonder it was good!  Now we have Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable.

But that zeitgeist was short-lived.   November 22, 1963 did it in.  The beginning of our need to Make America Great Again.  Does Trump realize he's only talking about four years?  And does he realize how far removed  his own conduct is from that America of yesteryear?  How he is an alternate,  bozo, Bizarro World  miscopy of Don Draper?  Because with all his flaws, Don Draper still has managed to hang onto his integrity somehow. He is not vulgar.  Don Trump is vulgar, and does not embody the spirit of that time.  Shall I count the ways they are different?

1) Lets' face it, DD get away with it mostly because he's handsome.  DT- is a wart.  Even young DT.

2)  You can call them both womanizers for serially cheating on their wives.  But you can feel DD actually trying to find the right woman who fits.  He's not randomly groping only the models and Ms. USA in elevators.  He is not predatory. His weirdly brotherly relationship with Anna, Peggy and Joan?  Betty he married too young and he subsequently always went for more intellectual, less shallow women afterwards. (Greenwich Village artist, owner of a big Jewish Department store?) He was initially attracted to Megan when she showed off her professional prowess, seemed like she would be his equal, with similar interests. but again he made an impulsive choice.   He started losing interest in her when she started doing TV soaps, and even when they broke up it was mutual and you sensed they would remain respectful, even close.  You always felt Don was actually in love in his affairs, even the raciest ones, even  if it was tearing him up inside.  DT has none of these positive qualities--he appears to choose women for their looks only, and seems to almost ignore the fact they are sentient beings.  He seems to have 0 remorse or regret for his behavior.  So gross.

3)Technique-DD is smooth, and has a way of seducing them--he projects what women want: romance, depth, insight---he makes a woman want to know what he's hiding. He sings that irresistible Siren Song--"You,you, you.  Only you can maybe save me...." He's done some rather unscrupulous acts--mile highing stewardesses, getting so drunk he bangs a waitress, coveting his neighbor's wife in an elevator, etc., but there was always a hint of romance, (and usually love!) there.  Even with Bobby Barrett, who he did grab rather vulgarly, she was every bit as predatory herself , and when he did it I admit to feeling she deserved that.  DT?  No romance, no technique, no foreplay, certainly no love.  Just a spoiled, puffy brat grabbing with his fat hands whatever he wants with no regard for humanity. He musta been an awful baby. Does he have the slightest idea how disgusting he looks from the outside?  He must, because why else does he have to resort to predatory grabs and gropes in the first place?  The women who have turned him down, even for money(like #12) ought to have given him a clue.

4) Relationship with Daughters-- For DD: Sally grew up to be good-looking, smart, but onto her father's failings.  They fight and bond, like normal people. There is absolutely nothing oedipal about them.  DT:  Come on, that's just off the charts bizarre.  It has nothing to do with being modern, cosmopolitan, or a man.