The last year this woman was allowed to celebrate a birthday.
Posted on 12/08/2007 2:58:10 PM PST by mdittmar
Tom Brokaw's two-hour flashback to 1968 is refreshingly far more complex than simply one of those groovy nostalgia pieces on those wacky days of sex love and rock 'n' roll.
Viewers will get the good, the bad and the cultural confusion of the time in the compelling History Channel special "1968 with Tom Brokaw" (9 p.m. Sunday). Brokaw connects the period to the present - "1968" becomes a kind of Rorschach test for one's current political and social values.
"I think 1968 was probably the worst year in this nation's history," conservative Pat Buchanan says in the film.
On the other hand: "It was a lot of fun," says Michelle Phillips, the former member of the Mamas and the Papas, who adds, "I had a very good relationship with drugs. I used them; I had fun with them."
The documentary plays as a sort of Cliff Notes to Brokaw's new book memoir, "Boom! Voices of the Sixties," in which he defines the decade as starting with the assassination of John Kennedy and ending with the resignation of Richard Nixon. In the middle is 1968, which Brokaw calls "the nerve center of the '60s."
The year began with the Tet Offensive that shattered many Americans' faith that the Vietnam War could ever be "won." It ended with the Apollo 8 mission that sent three Americans orbiting around the moon and inspired a nation that badly needed it.
In between: The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy; riots in cities and uprisings on campuses; violence at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago; the war claiming the lives of 16,500 U.S. troops (twice as many as the previous year); Nixon narrowly winning the presidency.
"I remember thinking that I was living in so many Americas," Brokaw confesses, marveling that, when his journalism career brought him to Los Angeles' KNBC-TV in 1965, "I saw Reagan get elected (governor) on the one hand, the counterculture rising on the other hand."
Brokaw is, indeed, part of this story. He stands on a corner in present-day Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco - with archival footage showing an out-of-place neatly groomed young correspondent reporting from the same intersection in 1968. He visits the grave of a boyhood friend killed in Vietnam. Brokaw joins former anti-war radical Mark Rudd at Columbia University, where students led by Rudd occupied the administration building and, Rudd fondly recalls, the Grateful Dead were on the quad, rocking out.
What lifts the film to a truly engaging work is its attempt to connect to the present day - on both serious issues and pop culture. The Smothers Brothers lead to a Jon Stewart; Brokaw argues the Vietnam War was far more graphically and comprehensively covered by TV reporters than Iraq is today.
Stewart speaks volumes about the '60s' anti-war movement and opposition to the Iraq war today when he says: "If there was a draft, this would be a whole different game. And they (the government) know that. That's why there is no draft."
There are also interviews with Bruce Springsteen, Arlo Guthrie and James Taylor. Springsteen, an 18-year-old in 1968 growing up in small town New Jersey, reminds us the vast majority of America's youth were not protesting. He confesses, "I was sort of what we might call a faux hippie, and I always had one leg deeply rooted in my little town. I'm the guy who wrote 'Born to Run' and never really left New Jersey."
Springsteen also notes, though, that it was impossible to come of age at the time and not be touched. As he describes the legacy, "You could be someone, an individual, the '60s made room for outsiders and their ideas."
Brokaw's film shows us that cultural histories should be full of gray areas. But it is also optimistic. After all, the nation survived 1968. "This is a pretty resilient country," Brokaw says, but it's one with "lots of vexing hangover issues."
Yeah, such as people like you who feel nostalgic for the worst year in American history.
I admit to a certain nostalgia for Mayor Daley Sr.’s police force.
And through it all, in the end the “silent majority” ended up voting in Nixon.
A fellow passes by, looks back.. offers Brokaw twenty dollars.
Brokaw accepts, and the scene fades out...
Also liberal lie alert, since the article implies that the Tet Offensive was a military victory for the communists.
Somehow, our treasonous media managed to turn a military defeat for the communists into a propaganda victory for them.
If you think 1968 was bad for politics and the country,.....it was worse for me personally.
I got married for the first time and 18 months later was out on my ass and broke. Do you know how cold it is in New York City in January?
The good news: Apollo 8!
I’m sure they will also ignore the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
If someone had told me in 1968 that I would live to 2007, I would have rolled my eyes at them...
Barf Alert is right!
More Boomer “self-love.”
Was Brokaw in the service ? Does anyone know?
I will be so glad when the 60’s hippie freaks are too old to be involved in our country’s politics. Unfortunately, that means I will be gone and won’t be able to enjoy the times. Well, it’s a sacrifice I am willing to make for the younger generation to be free of them.
Not my worst year. I was 22. I actually used to get out of bed without noise. You are correct, though. Self-delusion was rampant.
I was 10. I thought the hippies were dirty and stupid.
Now I’m 49. Good to know I was smart back then, too!
Compared to this, 1968 seems pretty nice.
Brokaw’s bio doesn’t’ show any military service although (as he was shown as born in 1940) he certainly was “of age” in 1965, when the VN buildup began. I assume he doesn’t mention this in “1968”.
Worse year in this country’s history? You have to be kidding me. Doesn’t anyone read their history books anymore?
And the Tigers winning the World Series!
I could not get out of *there* quick enough and won’t be going back. Ever.
Right, Larry. We elected a dark, sinister, conniving, totally untrustworthy liar as our president.
Seems to me we’re fixin’ to do the same thing 50 years later.
HILLARY MILHOUS CLINTON FOR PRESIDENT.
I graduated from HS and started college in 1968. I wasn’t much in tune with alot of the goings-on as I was rather naive (altho I was by sheer coincidence in downtown Chicago during the riot) but the music was great (Mony Mony, The Good Bad Ugle, Hey Jude, McArthur Park, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown “You’re gonna burn”) and so were the movies (Thomas Crown Affair, Bonnie & Clyde, The Graduate).
I’ve read alot about how 1968 was such a pivotal year in history. Alot of bad . . .Tet, King, Kennedy . .alot of good . . .Nixon, college, coming of age. A year I’ll never forget, and if I could go back in time, it was be to then.
Damn straight! I wouldn’t have minded bashing a few hippie heads myself when I saw what they did to my city. But then it was all the fault of the cops, right? I’ve never been a Democrat or voted for one but Mayor Daley had it right.
I left Chicago the next year and moved to a state where nobody was ashamed to be a patriot.
The last year this woman was allowed to celebrate a birthday.
I graduated from HS in Indiana in the year 1966, and in 1968 found myself living in London, England.
Everything about our society back then was much kinder and gentler than it is these days. I’m so sick of Xer’s whining about Boomers, calling us hippies. Let me tell you right now that the Pied Pipers for the hippie crowd were born pre-WWII, not Boomers themselves. Yes, a lot of left wing Boomers “followed” these socialists, but a whole lot more did not.
I never did drugs, and I did not know anyone who did drugs that were part of my social circle, which was fairly broad.
What is he talking about, we won the TET offensive.
I am just as disgusted with liberal baby boomers now as I was back in 1968. Most of them have ridiculously selective memories and inflated self opinions of themselves and the times. The pretend that all their political activities were so altruistic, when in reality they were just fear based, fear of the draft. Sure, most of the civil rights legislation that JFK signed was still only a paper tiger, but most of the hard work had already been done, and it took NIXON to put any real power into the law.
Brokaw and the rest of his ilk were noting but a bunch of pseudo-intellectual, self-absorbed, spoiled brats, who thought that running around protesting for other people’s rights and “peace” would cover up the fact that they were really not very brave and couldn’t relate to JFK’s statement about asking not what your country can do for you.
Brokaw’s just another leftitst, elitist turd who can’t shut up in retirement...ike a couple of failed RAT presidents I can think of. The media have invested him with the mantle of “gravitas” and he’s managed to convince himself that he deserves it.
Brokaw argues the Vietnam War was far more graphically and comprehensively covered by TV reporters than Iraq is today.
Because we are winning this one, of course we were winning
in Nam too, till the media perpetrated the “Tet” defeat.
I guess it depends on how you look at it. In terms of lives lost, the Civil War, the World Wars, etc. were worse. The depths of the depression were worse in terms of economic suffering. There are many ways of looking at it.
Historians will likely look back upon the sixties, and 1968 in particular, as the beginning of the end for the West. We can survive economic downturns and come back stronger than ever. We can suffer massive loss of life and rebound. We can do those things as long as there’s a sense that our civilization deserves to live. The sixties imprinted the idea throughout much of the West that our civilization is nothing special, perhaps is even evil, and that it would be better if it just ceased to exist. That’s particularly true among the elite and influential classes. Ever since, we’ve been wallowing in guilt, conceding our culture and lands to others, seeking to undo that which the founding fathers gave us, tossing aside the Judeo-Christian morality that spawned our liberty.
It’s the same in much of the West. 1968 was the year Enoch Powell was politically destroyed in Britain for a speech which prior generations of Englishmen would have taken as inherent truth. A case can be made that it was the beginning of the end, and like all such beginnings it wasn’t a bad time for most people to live. Life in 1968 for most people was the culmination of centuries of policies that were the opposite of those ideologies that took root that year.
‘The year began with the Tet Offensive that shattered many Americans’ faith that the Vietnam War could ever be “won.”’
What!? The Tet Offensive was shattered! It was the MSM that lied and said the war couldn’t be won!
It's the influence of that year. That year, Marxism became identified with "social justice" and the Democratic Party began to turn into the specifically Marxist organization that is has become today.
What? Nothing about the Tigers and the Packers.
Likewise
I would agree that 1968 was the worst year in U.S. History. I think 1969, 1974 and 1979 were no picnic either...
When are the baby-boomers going to finally get over themselves?
Hugh characterized the personal sketches in Tom’s book on the 60s as being sketches of 56 liberals and 12 conservatives. According to the book, conservative positions are “anti” and liberal positions are “pro.” Hugh suggested that Tom had a NY NY view of the country.
I think the interview demonstrated what many of us suspected. Tom Brokaw is liberal. He sees nothing wrong with a news industry that is roughly centered on Tom. There is no bias that he can see as being very important.
As far as I am concerned, the sixties sucked. Don’t get me wrong, I had a great life through them.
But I will tell you, as a kid, the Sixties terrified me. I was a military dependent, and spent 1967 through 1972 overseas in Japan and the Philippines. All I saw of the USA was demonstrations, cities burning and storied of kids getting their lunch spiked with LSD.
The anti-military sentiment you heard in the news reports enraged me. The things they were saying about men like my dad just pissed me off. I remember thinking “How can they say those kinds of things about my dad and men like him, without knowing anything about them?”
When my dad’s tours of duty were up, I really didn’t want to go back to the states. Of course, when I came back, I was plunked right in a school down in Maryland that had started busing kids that year to meet racial quotas, and I can tell you, there was a lot of tension and it was pretty unpleasant.
There are a lot of leftists who look fondly back on the sixties “when they meant something”. I simply don’t like what they “meant”.
Grow up!! Not all boomers were hippies. Some of us were in 'Nam fighting for our country - NOT doing drugs or running rampant through the streets fighting the police.
Don’t take it too personally...I suspect the sentiment is a targeted one, not a generalized one.
It is kind of the same thing for residents of Massachusetts or San Francisco who are conservative...you end up being the baby in the bath water with all the scum...
This isn't about baby-boomers, you moron, it's about LIBERALS!!!! Not all boomers are liberals, hippies, druggies or are aging badly in the Pacific Northwest!
GROW UP!!!
This is an EXCELLENT discussion of how the media "won' the Tet Offensive for the North Vietnamese Communists. A MUST see.
What the left has largely ignored about the 60s is that we were fighting 2 wars then, NOT just one. Everyone knows about 'Nam, most don't recognize that we also fought a minor civil war at home on college campuses across the US.
The aging hippy morons and dumbed down generations romanticize the 60s without realizing that the 60s laid the foundation for the splintering and fracturing of what used to be the "world's melting pot".
DustyMoment, you said it in that last paragraph better than I ever could have.
Nice job.
I corrected your post. The Viet Cong were never really an effective fighting force after the Tet Offensive (not that they were particularly effective before). They lost, IIRC, almost 70,000 men.
Dusty,
Sadly, fine men like yourself were/are the minority in your generation. While not ALL Baby Boomers fit that stereotype, a far greater percentage do than any American generation before or after.
As much as I know it is a terrible insult to fine people like yourself, and the millions of other outstanding Americans in your age group, it will be a happy day for this nation when the last of the Baby Boomers is put in the ground.
No generation has ever done SO MUCH to damage the short term and long term position of this nation.
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