'68, Recreated

Ed Driscoll.com ^ | July 02, 2008 | Ed Driscoll

[Uncle Ralph]

[Click through to article to view interview with author James Piereson.]

The central thesis of James Piereson's Camelot and the Cultural Revolution was that JFK's assassination was the key moment that caused a large portion of once sensible liberals to begin to tilt to the far, far left, and for lack of better word, become Unhinged.

Like this calm, rational fan of the New Frontier!

In the (admittedly totally tasteless) formulation of a friend of mine, the best thing that ever happened to civil rights in this country was the bullet through JFK's head.

Along the way, as I wrote three and half years ago on the after-effects of that sharp left turn:

You could make a pretty good argument (as I'm about to attempt) that "Radical Chic" was the most influential, or at least most significant, magazine article of the past forty years--and that it foreshadowed the next 34 years of American politics.

It helped that the timing of Wolfe's article and book was exquisite. 1970 was the apex between two key presidential election years: two years after far left anti-war protestors attempted to disrupt the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and two years before its 1972 equivalent, where, as Ben Wattenberg said back then, "there won't be any riots in Miami because the people who tried to riot in Chicago are on the Platform Committee."

And these days, serving on charitable funds with future presidential candidates, while new, experimental improvisations on that staid, old, National Anthem are being invented in yet another attempt to recreate the perigee of the year that refuses to die.

(And speaking of the afore mentioned Wattenberg, my PJM Political interview with him is online here.)

[angelsonmyside]

Bump

[Ben Ficklin]

As Bork and many others have pointed out, the Port Huron Statement was a seminal document of the New Left and it was published in 1962.

[Fiji Hill]

Tom Wolfe's Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flakcatchers (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1970) has long been one of my favorite social commentaries.

[newheart]

Excellent Post. br>
"Radical chic and punitive liberalism became the norm, to the point where McGovern compared Ho Chi Minh to George Washington in a Playboy interview, and his aides took to wearing upside down flag pins on their lapels."

Wolfe has always been America's most perspicacious cultural observer. I suspect though, that Obama and his handlers are a little smarter than McGovern and his team. While they hold the same values as the McGovernites, they are much more savvy (usually) and a little less likely to pull stunts like wearing the flag pin upside down. At least they finally convinced Obie to put his back on. Despite a few gaffes that, to those of us who love to watch this game, clearly reveal their intentions, they are managing to effectively portray their guy as your basic well-intended centrist.

At least in Chicago you had the combined idiocy of the farther left protesters and Mayor Daley's storm troopers to paint the Democrat party as the party of chaos in the mind of the voters. Regrettably, the event in Denver will probably be much more controlled and the chaos will more likely follow the election than precede the convention.

[decimon]

Tom Wolfe's Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flakcatchers (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1970) has long been one of my favorite social commentaries.

Everything he wrote in that period is good. Anyone who's been on flattops (not me) should read 'Jousting with Charlie.'

[Tammy8]

I personally think many on the far left are a perfect example of what happens when you do too many drugs. These folks seem pretty brain fried to me.

[BILL_C]

Neither the left nor the right realize that JFK was killed by Lyndon B. Johnson, a murder that is now transparent to the most casual observer.

BUT we have liberals like Vince Bugliosi still selling the big lie. Watch HBO in the next few months as Bugliosi, Tom Hanks etc. try to sell the lie that Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots to kill Kennedy. Sorry, it didn’t happen that way.

Over 2/3 of the American public still say conspiracy, sometimes it’s 80%. LBJ and Hoover killed him in a story that’s better than any fiction book you’ve ever read.