We Must Repeat
Tristero has a great post up about Nixonland where he also talks about the dramatic shift upwards in the quality of pop culture in the 60s. I'm linking it, because one of my favorite pieces of rock and roll trivia to banter with is about my favorite band Devo and the Kent State shootings. The band was actually formed by a bunch of Kent State students who befriended each other in the late 60s/early 70s, and the bassist Jerry Casale was actually witness to the shootings. Legend has it that it was the critical moment when the band moved from being an airy joke to a blackly comic multi-decade art music project both denouncing and celebrating "devolution".
VR: You said that the Kent State shooting sort of served as a catalyst for your theory of Devolution, which spawned Devo.JC: Absolutely. Until then I was a hippie. I thought that the world is essentially good. If people were evil, there was justice and that the law mattered. All of those silly naïve things. I saw the depths of the horrors and lies and the evil.
In the paper that evening, the Akron Beacon Journal, said that students were running around armed and that officers had been hurt. So deputy sheriffs went out and deputized citizens. They drove around with shotguns and there was martial law for ten days. 7 PM curfew. It was open season the students. We lived in fear. Helicopters surrounding the city with hourly rotating runs out to the West Side and back downtown. All first amendment rights are suspended at the instance when the governor gives the order. All of the class action suits by the parents of the slain students were all dismissed out of court because once the governor announced martial law, they had no right to assemble.
You can read the five tenets at the link. Most are flat contradictions. I had always thought I got it, but I think reading this book and Rick's well-written account of the social madness that led to the shooting really added another layer to my understanding. The big hippie credo was to "heighten the contradictions", and when that sort of strategy just collapsed because there's no way for people to resolve all of the contradictions in society, all we were left with was absurdity. Which Devo then embraced, and devolution is all about embracing the contradictions.
One other thing I really loved in the book (amongst many things) was the examination of those culture touchstones---"All in the Family", Spiro Agnew wristwatches, "Patton"---that managed to satirize the Silent Majority and also were beloved by the same Silent Majority who didn't see the satire. I don't think that sort of thing is possible on the same level anymore (though when I mentioned this to my boyfriend, he suggested that reality TV shows function like that nowadays). People have become more self-referential, in part because of pop bands like Devo that made arty-farty post-modernism the lingua franca of our era. (Devo is particularly useful---it might have puzzled Norman Lear to have people love his show for both sending up and celebrating the Archie Bunkers of the world, but Devo, which cartoonishly loves and loathes the Silent Majority culture, would have been thrilled for such mixed reactions.) Conservatives who go on "The Colbert Report" know they're being lampooned; they just hope that it manages to sell a few books anyway.
Self-referentiality may make us smarter, but it has an ugly downside, which Devo predicted by making "We must repeat" the 5th plank in their platform. The thing that's made me alternately panic and laugh darkly during the whole Iraq war debacle is how the memory of the 60s dominated people's behavior. We romanticize the 60s, and thus people snapped right into the roles written for us in the past: The liberal hawks hiding behind reasonableness, bloodthirsty conservatives who get teary-eyed at patriotic displays, leftist wanks who think protest is a chance at self-expression and can't stay focused on the topic at hand (bringing "Free Mumia" signs to war protests), and then of course the larger, dare I say silent, majority of war opponents who do stay on message but can't seem to catch a break to be heard.
The good news is that because it was a tired song we'd all heard played before, mimicked to death, and rolled out yet again in another miniseries featuring Buffalo Springfield songs, we couldn't even get the energy together to really create "Nixonland II". Or maybe we did---aren't sequels usually weaker? But it's good in this case, because as Tristero notes:
[C]ontrary to much popular opinion amongst liberals and lefties, the sixties were a terrible time. If the regular reports of bombs and riots didn't scare you, then the hopelessly out of touch politicians and newspapers certainly would.
It's good we didn't have the energy to really play our roles to the hilt, because skulls would have been cracked and buildings bombed, and really all for nothing. And it's good because war supporters seem tired of themselves now, unable to really work themselves into a Nixonland level amount of righteous indignation, and are stuck examining Dunkin Donuts commercials for hints of anti-American treachery.
Much of the stereotypical "60's" that most people recall (and that many who don't recall refer to) are really events (particularly culturally speaking)that occured in the 1970's or that may have begun in the 60's but came to fruition in the 70's. It gets all mixed up because of the idiotic use of decades to define eras in our history which is, of course, totally inappropriate in almost every instance.
The network tv version of what America was like during the VietNam era is woefully inadequate. The VietName era is, in my opinion, a far more accurate label than referring to a decade as though it had any meaning or defined anything in and of itself when it did not. The Civil Rights movement which began earlier than VietNam was also in full swing during much of the period. This time period was a time of great ferment up and down the line which means if anyone tells you it was all one way or another, they are almost certainly wrong. The nation morphed dramatically during that period for a whole host of reasons that simply cannot either be explained or understood without a great deal of study.
Much of the ferment was the direct result of forces put into play at the opening of the 20th Century and even prior to that. The ferment was by no means unique to America though our self absorbed nation often seems to believe this to be the case. The societal clashes that occured during that time mingled issues in the society as they had not been mingled before. The pointless imperialist war in Indochina was the focal point for much because of the number of dead young Americans it produced (around 54,000 all tolled)and secondarily the number of dead Indochinese it produced(something on the order of 6 million I believe). There was a great deal of drama being played out in those days in significant part because of the major role and flamboyance of the young people at the time who chose to rebel whether against the war, mass conformity, in sexual terms, religiously, drug use, rock and roll music and so on.
Focusing specifically on the war, it is absolutely clear that the political outcome of the war----American military withdrawal from Indochina---was hastened by the massive and sustained protests that took place all across the nation for a long period of time. Even then, long after the majority of Americans were against the war it continued for years---until 1975!
The antiwar movement continued to highlight the atrocity of the war in human, economic, and political terms. It kept the war on the front page (unlike what has happened with Iraq) and forced people to continue to focus on the moral crisis, the moral emergency our nation needed to attend to. The lack of protests and pressure today allows our ruling class and our citizens to ignore the moral emergency and crisis that is occuring in Iraq. Had those protests agasint the VietNam War not occured and not been sustained, you can be absolutely sure we would still be in VietNam today in some military capacity and continuing to drain the lifeblood from the south for our own political, economic, and strategic advantage. Though it took a long time and it took a massive effort, it was the protests and active, vocal, visible opposition to the war that brought it at long last to a conclusion.
I assume your age accounts for some of your perspective including saying "It's good we didn't have the energy to really play our roles to the hilt, because skulls would have been cracked and buildings bombed, and really all for nothing."
First, I do believe that the people of this nation played similar roles to those of the vast majority of people in the 60's which was to live in their own Private Idaho and not to care about the war unless they were personally and directly affected. The average American, I'm very sad to say, doesn't give two shits about how many innocent civilians our military kills in our name overseas. Didn't then and don't now. The moral indifference of our rulers and our citizenry is genuinely shocking. The hypocrisy of the boomers who protested then, but were and are a-okay with the illegal immoral invasion of Iraq is deplorable of course, but not entirely unexpected because the vast legion of those who opposed the war in VietNam who were young then were not opposed at all to war, they only opposed themselves going to war and so adopted the language and positions of the antiwar movement at that time. That is the sad truth of the matter.
Nonetheless, an important and large minority of many of the folks who were young during that period actually were and are opposed to war and could see quite clearly just what was coming about Iraq and how hollow and absurd it was in terms of the campaign of lies and propaganda that got us entangled in that no win, moral atrocity.
Sadly, in middle age and not being at risk themselves and in most cases with their kids not being at risk, it just wasn't and isn't important enough for most of those folks to get off their fat asses and demonstrate their opposition to the ongoing crimes being committed in the name of the United States and her people in Iraq. The popular refrain from those who know the war is wrong and who understand it must come to an end is that such things don't work and are passe, but that is utterly false. It's like saying the law of gravity doesn't apply. Protest works everywhere on earth to pressure rulers to comply with the demands of the governed, but we are to believe it won't work here in America because such demonstrations are no longer effective. Indeed! Tell that to the people of the Phillipines, to those who supported the Orange Revolution, etc...
Our entire system is predicated on the consent of the governed and just writing posts on the net is not the same as showing up and physically demonstrating one's opposition to the criminal policies of the Bush regime and their co-conspirators in Congress (of both parties). One of the most critical reasons we are likely to remain in Iraq for decades regardless of who becomes President next year, is because our corrupt ruling classes feel quite comfortable that there will be no meaningful revolt if they continue to pursue their grotesque, morally indefensible and counterproductive policy of pacifying Iraq in order to maintain a huge military presence there to project our military might at any time for the protection of what they see as "our" oil. Never mind that we could have bought all the oil we ever needed cheaper from our worst enemies compared to the price we already have paid to kill hundreds of thousands of innocents, thousands of our own young people, and to blast most of Iraq to Kingdom Come and still "lose" the war!
The blood spilled and heads cracked in the VietNam era were not for nothing. Far from it. The efforts that went along with all that head cracking achieved a much quicker end to the war than would otherwise have been the case and it prevented another extended idiotic case of American military agression in the third world for a long, long time. As a result of ending the war our nation eventually enjoyed unprecedented prosperity, particularly as the Cold War ended and we began to spend less on waging war. It was the war in VietNam that started stagflation back in the 70's and why it took so long to recover from it. This current obscene hoax of a "war on terror" has reasserted the military industrial complexes hold on our nation's treasure, hijacked our future and is undermining the hopes of the world on every major issue facing our planet most particularly climate change, but a whole hose of other major but less profound difficulties such as disease and hunger which come and go comparatively speaking.
Our military budget now consumes more of the nations wealth than we put toward the military at the height of WW II! The regular military budget excluding the two wars and expenses for nuclear weapons exceeds the military spending of all the other nations on earth combined! It is extraordinary how they continue to literally rob, rape and plunder and make the regular citizens foot the bill and do without. And sadly, most of our Democratic "leaders" are utterly complicit in all of this. Until our party becomes the party of dismantling the permanent war economy in favor of healthcare, education, and housing for all then we will continue to see things get worse and worse and worse for regular schmoes in the United States.
It is time for our people to rise up and demand this of our government. Their legitimacy is dependent upon our consent. Nothing they do gets done if we don't tell them it's okay. We can achieve anything we want to achieve and easily pay for it if we simply dismantle the permanent entitlement of the Pentagon and the merchants of death to the wealth and talent of the people of the United States.
May 30, 2008 5:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not saying that resistance is completely useless. But I am saying that playing into the roles laid out for us by the legend of the 60s didn't do us any favors. It was only after embracing more modern forms of resistance---including blogging---that the anti-war movement in this country got any traction with the public.
More sad for me are the liberal hawks whose main lesson from Vietnam was, well, nothing. The unliveable contradiction between liberal beliefs and imperialist war-mongering will hopefully be learned this time out.
May 30, 2008 7:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Blogging allows folks like us to talk to eachother and it's a great fundraising tool. It is, however, not much of a catalyst for action of any kind. If it were, the streets would be filled and last time I looked, no I take that back, just about every time I look nobody is in the street. On occasion a handful of people gather almost just for the record to prove that there is/was opposition. But most who do oppose the war have never and will never lift a finger to do anything to stop it.
Our ruling class is well aware of this and ignores the will of the vast majority because they believe (with some justification) that the majority will never "do" anything to stop them or even complain really. What they fear is that people will become so angry they take to the streets. Thus far, however, the powerful have seen that simply by suppressing media coverage of a few intitial demonstrations in the beginning, the opposition was discouraged and quashed.
You're right about the liberal hawks but that's no revelation. Phil Ochs wrote the line "And when it comes to times like Korea, there's no one more red, white and blue.. So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal!" They haven't changed. He also wrote: "I'll send all the money you ask for, but don't ask me to come on along..."
What is sad is that the liberals who know and comprehend just how immoral and criminal and illegal the war is have, but for posting on the net, remained nearly silent. Most notably and infamously of course, our elected representatives have been woefully amiss in their duty to oppose the war and to lead the opposition to it. Nearly all of them leapt on board the warwagon before it even left the station with a few exceptions like Senator Graham of Florida, Ted Kennedy, etc... Our nation's sense of moral obligation to stop senseless slaughter is all but gone.
We would have been better off had people assumed the roles the scenario you described would have called for us to fill. More people would actually have "done" something and made some real noise in protest. Instead, most people were apathetic and most of those who clearly understood what was at stake and what was coming did nothing.
May 30, 2008 8:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
I strongly disagree. The whole point of hitting the streets is to influence public opinion.
Liberals fetishize outdoors protest, because it feels like you're doing something, but it's all for naught if you don't get media attention or worse, you do but it's all focused on the assholes with "Free Mumia" signs. The protests in the street against the Iraq war actually set records in sheer numbers of people who showed up. So tut-tutting people for being lazy is incorrect on various levels. We perceive street protest as absent, but really it was just ineffective.
Blogs are not nearly as reliant on mainstream media as street protests for being effective. That's why the MSM hates blogs so much, because we basically overrule their right to control the conversation. It wouldn't be so bad if the media wasn't in the thrall of the right in this country, but as it is, the blogs are our best bet for getting our message out.
We will never progress unless we can unstick ourselves from romanticizing the 60s.
May 30, 2008 9:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
The most successful protests in American history, those of women's suffrage, and black civil rights, were more solemn events, and the bar to protesting far higher, which conveyed a message of seriousness, calm, and gravity.
In some cases the systematic and brutal responses to protesters made clear who occupied the high ground, and the cost they were willing to pay, with dignity and nonviolently, for their cause.
Protest is now common and popular enough, relative to 50s, or early 2oth century, that absolute numbers mean far less. Adjusting for "protest inflation" the marches of those eras were perhaps much larger.
By the 1970s too many protesters had become hippies and postmodern hipsters, pretentious, and obnoxious. Their motivation was in part idealistic, in part simply razzing the opposition, and in part just enjoying the party.
Some protesters, like Code Pink, are like mardi gras revelers. It may be more fun but it doesn't convey seriousness or help sway public opinion favorably, and may provoke reactionaries. It makes them look like idiots and hurts the issues more than it helps.
Also, protest is very regional, and can be divisive culturally, especially when protesters are clearly not concerned with the sensitivities of other regions. Which is also counter productive as it seems more like picking regional fights than attempting to seriously redress issues and convince others.
Those factors diminish the effectiveness of protests enormously in swaying the opinions of people elsewhere, physically and politically, and may even further partisanship and entrenching.
May 30, 2008 9:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Your lack of experience is showing.
I think you miss the point, but it isn't surprising given you've grown up in an atmosphere where PR is often the means and the end. Public opinion is important, but power is what counts.
The power of the people rarely is demonstrated and scares the living hell out of those who run this or any country. The point of hitting the streets is to put pressure on the powerful and to demonstrate the mass power of the people. A secondary effect of demonstrations is to influence other citizens. Whether the media covers it or not is not a measure of the effectiveness of mass protest. The powerful know this but you have yet to learn it.
The reason the record setting protests at the outset of the war failed is because they did not continue, not because the powerful were not influenced by them. Their response was to cut off coverage and make people like yourself believe that means they are having no effect and that is absolutely incorrect. Read any account of what was going on inside Nixon's White House during the moratorium days protests. The official line was the President was enjoying Redskins football, but the truth was he was wringing his hands and feeling the pressure as hundreds of thousands filed by his residence and marched on the Pentagon, etc... The reason protests are notable is not because of their media coverage. Media coverage only defines things if you think it does. They know this and so easily duped many into believing that if it didn't show up on tv then it didn't count. By being so easily persuaded to give up, the people only emboldene the criminals in charge of the immoral enterprise as is very clear by developments since. Had the announcement of the "surge" been met with sustained protest it would either be over by now or never have happened. But, of course, the smartty pants generation knows better and realizes that what works everywhere else no earth doesn't work in America unless it gets good coverage. How much "cpverage" do ya think the protests in Tien an Mien Square got in China? But that didn't stop the ostensibly unsuccessful takeover of the square from being ultimately successful did it? No, it didn't. Why? Because the Chinese rulers in this case understood what those protests represented and could see that the willingness of the people to openly defy them meant danger for them. In the short run they suppressed the protests. In the long run China is much better off today because the protests in the streets that were sustained and cluminated at Tien an Mien forced the rulers to change. That's the way it works. You can influence opinion to the point where massive majorities disagree with the rulers of a country (as they do in America right now) and because the rulers know and understand the people will do absolutely nothing to stop them, they will do as they please anyway.
Also, "liberals" do not "fetishize" protest. I'd say it is the run ofthe mill "liberals" who keep standing in the way and saying it won't work. "But don't ask me to come on along..."
Priveleged young people who haven't experienced effective protest and thus don'tget it, and some of the lazier older people who just don't want to be bothered and prefer posting on a blog just like to claim that the few people who say it would be useful today are fetishizing protest so they don'thave to actually take action or take any risk. Blogs have their place, but they don't move people to action and they don't replace action. Until some risks are taken on a large scale, as you will sadly see, we will remain in Iraq no matter who the President is. Only when the people have gotten fed up an demonstrate to the powers that be that they will no longer consent to their immoral and illegal actions in their name will the moral atrocities come to an end. That's the way it has always been and nothing has changed that dynamic.
May 30, 2008 10:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
This argument about whether or not protest is effective or desirable predates the sixties by a long, long time. Similar objections to action and protest were offere for decades to try and blunt or dissuade the abolitionists and while protest often is divisive it is sometime necessary to cause conflict and make the lines clear for all to see by offending the delicate sensibilities of some. Frederick Douglass put it well in my opinion:
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake."
May 30, 2008 10:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fredrick Douglass had literally been a slave and was a proponent of civil war to remedy slavery.
The quote you cited is making two points:
1) for the need of determination and sacrifice to achieve goals.
2) for the need or armed revolution if need be.
While #1 is timeless, #2 is totally inappropriate and was already inappropriate by the time of MLK and Malcolm X.
Only a minuscule fringe of war protesters are advocating for militancy or civil war to end the Iraq war.
Protesting in the manner that MLK advocated, or Gandhi advocated, in a disciplined manner, nonviolently, and staying focused on the common issue without dragging other politics into it, and doing so with a sincere effort to convince and not just offend, is far harder, requires far more personal sacrifice, and far more successful.
Obama has also called for people to "elevate" themselves to participate in the movement for reform and change, and to work hard to accomplish goals, but do so in a determined and honorable way. Basically to take the high road and not quit.
He and his campaign have specifically asked supporters NOT to protest the dispute over the Democratic nomination for example, because he doesn't want to stir up hostility and divisiveness.
That is leadership.
May 30, 2008 10:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
clarify:
The quote you cited is making two points:
1) for the need of determination and sacrifice to achieve goals.
2) for armed revolution if need be.
While #1 is timeless, #2 is totally inappropriate now and was already inappropriate by the time of MLK and Malcolm X.
May 30, 2008 10:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
I would disagree somewhat here. Depends upon what you think armed revolution means. There has been no chance of anything like armed revolution in America for a long time. One might talk about the possibility of it between the wars as people lost everything, and indeed America looked a bit too ripe for some kind of upheaval from the left, though it never would have happened.
There are other kinds of armed revolution. When union strikers and civil rights workers took up arms against police and threatened back when their peers were beaten or killed, well this is certainly "armed revolution."
The history of the civil rights movement has been distorted to some extent by the mythologizing of MLK and the role of non-violence as the only "force" in that time. When you say that armed revolution was totally inappropriate by the time of MLK and Malcom X, you will find many from that time or have studied that time who disagree with your sense of that history.
Your own philosophy may be straight on, but that is not history merely opinion. And it may be that what you are expressing here is only your opinion which is fine and thoughtful.
June 1, 2008 1:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
To clarify my remarks, the first paragraph should have explained "armed revolution" in the big sense, an attempt to overthrow a government. Later on I argue for another type --smaller perhaps, but revolutionary and armed just the same.
June 1, 2008 1:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well put Mrs No Pic!
I would also offer this quote from MLK:
"If a man hasn't found something he will die for, he isn't fit to live."
I think that clearly articulates the level of committment and sacrifice MLK and many, many others had.
June 2, 2008 11:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think the quote really is referring to armed revolution. It is in response to those who say not to be too militant. It is an exhortation to protest, to militancy, to forcing the issue. It could be applicable to civil war, but that is not the context in which the comment was given though he naturally supported using military force to smash the slave power once and for all. His position on both agitation and the civil war were correct I think.
May 31, 2008 7:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
How thoughtful of you to talk about the need to de-romanticize the 60's. I would suggest something opposite. Radicals died in the 60's. They were beaten and brutalized in the South. It didn't "feel good." Truth is that people then were willing to die for a cause. I looking hard these days for those on the Left with such belief.
Nowhere to be found in America. But on the Right, plenty of soldiers, fundamentalists, etc. The life and death energy of political change has moved to the Right. That leaves a Left for whom politics is a kind of spread-sheet thing, something done with new "skill sets" and academic constructs.
And as for the music, talk about romanticizing ! History as the experience of the rise in the level of popular culture! How is this relevant?
The music you talk about came from popular culture --unless you are suggesting that black music in its many forms in the 20th century were somehow lower than this new musical enlightenment of which you write.
It never felt good to beaten --trust me. And songs were a thing that made us brave, not some feel-good muzak of the personal life.
June 1, 2008 4:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Of course, the media focuses on "Free Mumia" signs at protests. This is to discredit the protest. In the sixties the media would focus on "the crazies" at protests. This was also done to discredit protest. Of course, the fact that many of "the crazies" were FBI agents, agent provocateurs, didn't get reported at the time.
June 2, 2008 8:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
There were massive public demonstrations for peace in the weeks and months before the invasion of Iraq. They don't seem to have accomplished anything at all. It's not that people don't want to act. It's that they have very good reason to think that getting out in the street is useless.
May 31, 2008 12:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Had the protesters in the mid-sixties given up they would have gotten the same result. It isn't about coverage and it isn't about having one or two or even a bunch of big rallies. It is about ongoing pressure in the form of public protests. It isn't like you have one rally and the tyrants say "oh I guess we better change". They are tenacious and determined to carry out their plans. Their tenacity must be met by similarly tenacious protest that continues despite all their efforts to discourage it and make it go away. In the case of the Iraq war, the tyrants were victorious because the protests ceased very quickly after about 1 round.
The important point here is that it must be sustained over time as were the ongoing protests for civil rights and against the VietNam war. Look, for example at the reaction the muted protests in Myanmar were met by the dictatorship. Do you think they would have reacted as they did if they were not afraid of the consequences of ongoing protest? Here in America our dictatorial rulers are more subtle and sophisticated but no less terrified of public protests that they cannot manage and manipulate.
It's almost as though the tyrants running our government know the public suffers from collective ADD and won't have the willpower to keep protesting so they just make sure the media ignores some large demonstrations and that is enough to make people who should know better that it doesn't matter.
May 31, 2008 1:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
oleeb,
I think your analysis is wrong. Demonstrations have become a completely outdated and ineffective political strategy in enforcing citizens rights. They don't move minds. They don't scare politicians. They don't end wars. And then there is the blow back. These demonstrations tend to mobilize your political enemies and they provide ample negative images and statements to further undermine what you are trying to achieve.
If we could have top hat parades like they did in the 1850s then maybe, but that time is long past.
And speaking of the abolitionists and the foundation of the Republican Party in the 1850s, I think you can see the outlines of what really works, of where your energy and your focus should be if you want to achieve something, and that is within the American electoral process at all levels, be it local, state or federal.
It took a political party and electoral victory to make Douglass' dream come true. We should not forget that in the quest to design a better protest march.
May 31, 2008 10:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Once again the argument comes that gravity does not apply in the United States. What works all over the world does not work here. To prove it, you cite the relative handful of times that any significant demonstrations occured which is no proof at all. It takes sustained opposition that takes action, not just posting on blogs, but yours (like Ms. Marcotte's argument is typical of liberal thinking).
The sneering contempt that tyrants like Bush continue to dole out to the vast majority of citizens is proof that they are quite pleased with their tactic of suppressing coverage of demonstrations. They banked on the opposition wimping out and being discouraged after that. It is the mentality you are representing that gives them the confidence to continue sneering because they know that despite their lack of popular support no real opposition exists to their criminal enterprises.
I have cited Phil Ochs' song Love Me I'm a Liberal above, but I think all the lyrics are called for to more clearly draw the parrellel between this belief you and many others hold that demonstrations are passe. It was the wonderful "liberals" who made the same argument in the sixties. Luckily, millions broke from that defeatist and weak thinking and did hit the pavement. So those who sit comfortably in their affluent neighborhoods and contribute frequently to all the "right" causes and candidates continue to hold back advancing the cause of democracy and equality as they always have even while professing to support it.
Here are the lyrics. I invite you and others to read them and apply them to today's situation. I find the parrellels striking even with the one or two dated references. The dynamics remain the same and the "liberals" still argue that demonstrations won't work when what they really mean is that they are willing to actually do nothing about the present situation.
Love Me, I'm A Liberal
by Phil Ochs
I cried when they shot Medgar Evers
Tears ran down my spine
I cried when they shot Mr. Kennedy
As though I'd lost a father of mine
But Malcolm X got what was coming
He got what he asked for this time
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
I go to civil rights rallies
And I put down the old D.A.R.
I love Harry and Sidney and Sammy
I hope every colored boy becomes a star
But don't talk about revolution
That's going a little bit too far
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
I cheered when Humphrey was chosen
My faith in the system restored
I'm glad the commies were thrown out
of the A.F.L. C.I.O. board
I love Puerto Ricans and Negros
as long as they don't move next door
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
The people of old Mississippi
Should all hang their heads in shame
I can't understand how their minds work
What's the matter don't they watch Les Crain?
But if you ask me to bus my children
I hope the cops take down your name
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
I read New republic and Nation
I've learned to take every view
You know, I've memorized Lerner and Golden
I feel like I'm almost a Jew
But when it comes to times like Korea
There's no one more red, white and blue
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
I vote for the democratic party
They want the U.N. to be strong
I go to all the Pete Seeger concerts
He sure gets me singing those songs
I'll send all the money you ask for
But don't ask me to come on along
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
Once I was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to the socialist meetings
Learned all the old union hymns
But I've grown older and wiser
And that's why I'm turning you in
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal
June 2, 2008 11:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Only want to add that Ochs moved out of the left trying to follow Dylan. He was an artist that was as much offended when people didn't like his stuff as a thinker blazing new paths. A good song though. But he did kill himself a bit later.
June 5, 2008 4:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ronald Reagan is the one who started unraveling the well-learned lesson known as "Vietnam syndrome". By getting away with claiming Vietnam was a noble adventure Reagan started the conning of young Americans so that when W wanted to use them as cannon fodder in Iraq they wouldn't complain.
June 2, 2008 8:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Except U.S. involvement in Vietnam (i.e. our direct military involvement) ended 2 years before then, in early 1973 shortly after the Paris Peace accords were signed on January 27, 1973, and we had already stopped offensive military operations 12 days prior to that, on January 15 and all all U.S. military personnel were ordered to leave South Vietnam by March 29 (save Embassy security personal).
May 30, 2008 8:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
This post by Marcotte is interesting and revealing.
Marcotte was born in Sept, 1977. Marcotte claims Devo as her "favorite band." Devo was formed several years earlier and reached the height of popularity in 1980 with "Whip It."
In the interview Marcotte quotes, Devo band members claim the Kent State shootings as the "catalyst for [their] theory of Devolution, which spawned Devo." Having gone from "hippies" to "post modernists" through the experience.
How much of that is truth, how much pretentious backfill, can Marcotte tell the difference, and why does it matter?
Devo, while a great commercial pop band, was never particularly original. A decade earlier in the 60's German university students had been experimenting with "Krautrock" from which bands such as Can and Kraftwerk emerged. By the early 70's synthpop/industrial had emerged and been popularized by bands including Kraftwerk and the associated postmodern rationale.
Devo's implicit claim to be an artistic movement by virtue of deliberate ironic commercialism and pop appeal (as opposed to deliberate un-ironic commercialism and pop appeal?) is rather dubious in my opinion. Still a great band, but spare me the pretentious rationalizations.
Postmodernism, the serious intellectual movement, emerged in a post WWII Europe fatigued by war, having gladly moved beyond fuedal and imperial classicisim, but was still struggling with modern ideologies most personified by Cold War propaganda promising two mutually exclusive modern utopias. Postmodernism is essentially an attempt to deconstruct the nature of ideology, both classical and modern. But it's still constructive deconstruction, understanding not destruction. Any appearance of a paradox, or nihilism, is simply a misunderstanding.
Which gets to a problem with "Post Modernism(TM)" the popular identity brand, and any perceived differences between hippies and hipsters.
It's embrace of "devolution" as somehow ironic and tragically hip, the embrace of paradox and perpetual irony, is just a cognitive dissonance, incredibly pretentious, and has become cliched and even orthodox.
It's always in style and never in style, because it's always ahead of itself and too cool for itself. It's always ironic, even when it's not, ironically. It's not pretentious, fraudulent, or clinched, because everything is pretentious, fraudulent, and clinched. The shallower something is, the more profound it is. Everybody trying their hardest to be apathetic. Obsessive trendiness masquerading as compulsive disaffection.
It's not postmodernism so much as a complete failure to understand postmodernism. Sophistic, pretentious, hollow. A classical and postmodern example of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing.
May 30, 2008 5:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
God, it must be exhausting to live solely on bitterness and contempt for anyone else. I suggest maybe cultivating a personality of your own instead of just wasting all your time hating on everyone else? Just a thought.
May 30, 2008 7:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, nice try. I'm actually pretty cheerful.
But I do admit, I hold pundits like you in "contempt" for what I think are good reasons. I think you have a lot more Ann Coulter in you than you'd like to admit.
Also, aren't you projecting?
Haven't you made you blog career as a rather obnoxious posester known for inflammatory comments and snide pretentiousness? Weren't you canned from the Edwards campaign for making exactly the sort of obnoxious, pandering, and divisive comments on wedge issues that you're now supposedly above?
Maybe you're improving. It's possible. I hope so. But I don't see it yet.
May 30, 2008 9:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
kozmik,
I suggest that if you hate Amanda so bloody much, you either (a) briefly explain your problem in an adult way, or (b) at least hate her in silence and stop trying to hurt her emotionally.
A lot of your behaviour is actually uglier than her infamous comments.
Cheers.
June 1, 2008 5:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
I get a chuckle at his attempt to dispense with "postmodernism" in one passionate outburst.
The opening sentence of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry for "postmodernism" says
"That postmodernism is indefinable is a truism
Then the entry spends about sixteen pages with about thirty references attempting to give the flavor of the term. But Kozmik is fearless in his anger and indignation.
I think some postmodernist or other explains this kind of anger that plagues modern man as a result of the dissolution of the "I" in modern mass culture. Might be wrong about it, but sounds plausible enough don't you think?
June 1, 2008 8:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not "dismissing" postmodernism or defining it narrowly. The definition I gave was short, but pretty general, and I did say it's a legitimate movement.
I'm dismissive towards pretentious phonies posing at a "postmodernism" which is really just pop art. And a little Warhol goes a long way.
"Postmodern" hipsters are just hippies. No substance. Marcotte fits the definition and that's her audience.
A Wes Anderson film minus the creativity and charm, with just the pretense, cliches and angst.
June 3, 2008 1:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
By the way, if your intention in looking up my age (I was also born in El Paso, TX---more details for all your stalker needs) was to come across as a creepy basement dweller, you succeeded admirably. I was reaching for my pepper spray and everything.
May 30, 2008 7:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Stalking?
You were making a cultural reference to the early 1970s, and to your "favorite band" that peaked in popularity in 1980. Age is relevant, and yours in on your wiki page.
How does that qualify as "stalking" exactly?
Aren't you just being hysterical again? Isn't that a problem you have?
May 30, 2008 9:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Your obsession is creepy. Seriously. If you really think you're clever by knowing who Can or Kraftwerk is---or by calling me by my last name---or because you are crazy enough to think 30 is young---that alone is somewhere on the sad to creepy scale. But taken altogether, along with a heavy dose of very personal and inexplicable obsession, it's like super stalker creepy.
May 30, 2008 9:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Responding to your post is "like super stalker creepy" in your view? No, you just don't like it, and when you hear things you don't like you throw around hyperbolic statements.
I didn't claim to be "clever" for knowing those bands. Lots of people do. I was citing them to make a point.
Calling you by your last name is my attempt to be clever? Do you often imagine people referring to you by your last name are attempting to be clever? Do you imagine when people refer to other people by their last names they're trying to be clever? That's really interesting.
I also didn't call you "young" anywhere. I pointed out your age in regard to a specific era and band you were referencing. Any other insecurities you want to announce?
May 30, 2008 10:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Project much?
May 30, 2008 10:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Amanda,
I wouldn't waste my time responding to kozmik.
June 2, 2008 9:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
We repeat because we're the same human animals (pretty much) as the ancient Greeks (or other old culture example).
What is new is our technological skill and experience, our capability of crunching large databases, and our always-surprising capability of learning how to do new cool stuff.
As to 60s vs 70s, I would argue that music was hugely more creative in the 60s (I was following in those footsteps in the 70s). The flowering of soul, rock, and psychedelic, along with Miles Davis in jazz and Frank Zappa in art rock, makes that time a dominating influence. FM radio helped, as did multi-track recording, and the LP came into its own then. Digital computation began to spread into business, and TV blossomed.
It was a huge bump upward in change of all kinds. It saw the deployment of intercontinetal-range missiles, and we entered space in person. The 70s was just coasting, since we were exhausted by Vietnam and Watergate. Didn't help to get hammered by oil, either.
A good roundup of the way the world is not the same, in terms of people-power politics or armed conflict, is Jonathan Schell's "The Unconquerable World". Best example--the spread of portable and powerful weapons along with cell phones and laptops.
May 30, 2008 8:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
. . . the ongoing crimes being committed in the name of the United States . . . .
But, you see, in the '60s America was still an idea; today, it's only a place. And the "United States"? Merely, an adjective to be attached to the current GDP number.
May 30, 2008 8:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Which, of course, is why the U.S. Constitution which previously embodied the dream of the United States is currently under attack from the right, an attack essentially ignored and often even justified by almost everyone that who claims to be American.
Kosmic understands this. Amanda doesn't seem to, but may when she grows up. The most enduring characteristic of human beings in mass is narcissism and corruption. Give them a stable, predictable society and most of those those with the wherewithal to actually effect society will protect it at all costs, no matter how corrupt and unfair it is.
May 30, 2008 9:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
"an attack essentially ignored and often even justified by almost everyone that who claims to be American."
Not true, Ricardxx
June 2, 2008 9:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
. . . my favorite pieces of rock and roll trivia to banter . . . . Amanda Marcotte
It may be trivia but it's hard -- still hard after all these years -- to banter about this one.
May 30, 2008 9:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
I will see your Jose F., and raise you one Jimi H.
May 31, 2008 7:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
For star spangled banners, of course, it's hard to beat the G-Dub Remix:
G-Dub's Anthem
Oh, say, Francis Scott Key
Do you like what you see?
See the bodies piled so high?
See the kids without eyes?
By the dawn's early light
Once we knew what was right
Now the world hides in fright
Now the noose grows so tight
What so proudly we hailed
What was clean now has failed
We have gone off the rails
Strike the wind from our sails
By the twilight's last gleaming
From our eyes tears are streaming
Once our faces were beaming
Now remorse fills our dreaming
And the rockets' red glare
Lays all our crimes bare
Yet we have not a care
"It's a price we can bear"
The bombs bursting in air
Childrens' heads without hair
Those shell casings--Beware!
There's uranium there
Gave proof through the night
Oh, hideous sight
Bush thinks might makes him right
Darkness blots out the light.
Can our flag still be there?
Oh Lord, hear our prayer
Send this beast to his lair
Return us to what's fair
Oh please let that star spangled banner yet wave
Make us once again free
Make us once again brave
For his high crimes and grave
Send to hell the foul knave
May 31, 2008 7:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, but I can't help laughing myself silly at the irony of this, given the fact that real, significant issues aren't considered important enough by Amanda Marcotte.
May 31, 2008 10:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
On the other hand these Nixonland threads have invited a discussion of the question, in Joseph Loundes' words, of whether the '60s left was responsible for its own demise.
The establishment's (rabid?) rejection of leftist art and culture is demonstrative of the political climate the left was up against. It may be mere iconography, now; then, it was blood and bone on the barricades.*
* The difference between the reception of Jimi Hendrick's SSB (more artistic but seen originally by a bunch of stoned party-on dudes and dudesses) and the reaction to Jose Feliciano's (seen by millions of regular-guy World Series watching members of the "silent majority").
May 31, 2008 1:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not sure when being "self-referential" has EVER made anyone "smarter". In fact, the weaknesses of "'60s" movements were perhaps related to that very problem, as you seem to indicate Ms Marcotte.
History is complex. No less near history. '60s movements are increasingly being reduced to silliness, drugs and selfishness by commentators who don't care to do the hard work required if they care to be accurate and helpful historical analysts. And if that's not what you want to be, it's better to say nothing, since what you do say is horribly simplistic and reductionist.
Yup, lots of drugged up, dropped out hippies in the '60s. Also, some of the most intellectually rigorous and politically committed people the US has ever known. Not all of whom were finally co-opted. You would not have a LANGUAGE for protest and dissent today were it not for those people, some of whom gave their lives in one way or another. I'm sure, however, that you can and will do much better!
May 31, 2008 4:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
All I can say is, after taking a break from DEVO at the end of the '80s, they became my favorite band to revisit in the '00.
This has been an era of dark absurdity and devolution.
May 31, 2008 9:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Absolutely. Finally someone who gets it...
Anyone who's enjoyed Devo enough to evaluate the lyrics for a deeper context generally finds a pretty scathing commentary on what I like to call 'an American dependence on domestically produced BS'. I'm sure that Mark and Gerry each have another name for it, but the underlying concept that most people seem to prefer to be lied to remains the same. One look at the poster in the 'New Traditionalists' LP shows this pretty clearly. Punkers and Preachers are both sent up as being different flavors of the same BS.
People say they don't want to be lied to, but their actions often demonstrate the opposite. Devo has always been one of the best bands that I'm aware of to present this reality and concern in an entertaining, subtle and artistic way.
Good on ya, Amanda! Nice article.
June 1, 2008 2:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bat Guano, I say this with the deepest respect. I've heard of Divo
and probably have heard them also but can't remember them. That's a matter of taste, but I'm going to take a listen again
But on another matter, my nephew is trying to come up with a name for his soccer-team/band of 13 year olds. I liked the "Armpits from Hell" and the many variations on socks that smell, but Bat Guano rocks. Really. Not kiddin'. Have you registered www.batguano.com? I'm spending the ten bucks right now. But its' yours for the asking.
June 1, 2008 3:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
SHAMELESS PLUG: Bat Guano is host of SwaG! on 89.1 WIDR FM, Kalamazoo, Mich. All the SwaG you need and a few recorded broadcasts are here.
And here is an early DEVO video, probably from around 1976. It's an acquired taste, I'll admit.
June 1, 2008 3:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Listening, my Bat friend. Shameless plugging is how artists make a living. Shame on.
I like German techno a lot. Will this help me?
June 1, 2008 4:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
German techno is a gateway drug.
Beware!
June 1, 2008 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
As someone who actually lived during what is called "the sixties," I find this post glib and hopelessly "self-referential." I have no idea who might think these years were not a "terrible time" in terms of historical events. Individuals had good times and happy moments, and events like the moon landing were positive. But in terms of the kind of events that brought out protestors, the good news was only in the results: the passage of civil rights legislation, the enforcement of that legislation, often with the support of federal troops; the eventual winding down of a war that grew to include all of Southeast Asia. But a look at the following list suggests the price that was paid by people both ordinary and famous:
1961: The failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Freedom riders trying to desegregate bus stations are beaten in Alabama and arrested in Mississippi. In Georgia, 700 people are arrested for protesting segregation.
1962: The confrontation in Mississippi over the admission of James Meredith to the University of Mississippi. A mob attacks federal marshals on the UM campus. Kennedy federalizes the Mississippi National Guard.
1963: Sit-ins protest segregation in Alabama; Martin Luther King is arrested in Birmingham. Bull Connor (public safety commissioner) orders police to use fire hoses and dogs against high school students marching in protest. KKK sets off two bombs in Birmingham. Medgar Evers is assassinated. On Sept. 15, four girls are killed when a black church is bombed. John Kennedy is assassinated on Nov. 22.
1964: Three civil rights workers come to Mississippi to register black voters. Three are murdered and buried near Philadelphia, Mississippi. The Gulf of Tonkin incident sets stage for ground troops to be sent to Vietnam.
1965: 34 killed in 5 days of rioting in Watts. Malcolm X is assassinated. Ground troops are sent to Vietnam. 1,863 are killed.
1966: Mass protests of the U.S. draft. Hundreds of marchers are beaten and tear-gassed during first attempt at voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery. Federal troops protect marchers in second attempt; march ends with rally attended by 25,000 people. 6,144 troops are killed in Vietnam.
1967: July Riots in Newark and Detroit kill 23 and 43 people. The murders of 1964 civil rights workers go on trial in Mississippi. 11,153 American troops are killed in Vietnam.
1968: 16,589 Americans killed in Vietnam. Martin Luther King assassinated. 46 die and millions of dollars of damage is done as riots erupt in cities across the country: Washington, Chicago, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Kansas City and others. Protestors build a “Resurrection City” on the Washington mall. Robert Kennedy is assassinated. Protestors beaten by police on national television during 1968 Democratic convention. Nixon is elected president.
1969: 11,614 American troops killed in Vietnam; James Earl Ray pleads guilty (and later retracts his plea) to assassinating Martin Luther King. The secret bombing of Cambodia begins. Ted Kennedy drives off a bridge at Chappaquiddick. His passenger dies in the accident. Nixon starts “Vietnamization” of the war. The Manson cult murders 7 people in August. . Woodstock. The Chicago * (or 7) go on trial for their involvement in the 1968 demonstrations at the Democratic convention.
1970: My Lai massacre. U.S. invasion of Cambodia spark massive antiwar protests. 5 students killed by Ohio National Guard on Kent State campus. 6,083 Americans killed in Southeast Asia.
During these years, there was no alternative to protesting in the streets. An average city had 3 or 4 TV stations, if the family antenna could pull them all in. There were 1 or 2 newspapers in cities; rural readers did not have access to the NY Times or Washington Post. There was no cable, no internet, no cellphone video to post on a Youtube site. We got the information that we got. And so when the country was told that we were "attacked" in the Gulf of Tonkin and we needed to send troops to Vietnam, ordinary people actually had no idea whether that was true or not.
Thousands marched and protested to make it so that blacks could sit down and eat in restaurants, sit on a bus beside white people, sleep in hotels, attend college. The people who worked and fought and risked and sometimes died to make these changes happen were not playing roles. Neither were most of those who protested the draft and the war. Many of those who protested the war didn't have an ideology; they wanted the war to be over or they didn't want to be drafted.
Without the people who got their heads cracked, who went to jail, who got their names on FBI lists, or were set on by dogs and fire hoses, who got themselves murdered and assassinated, we would still be living in Jim Crow America. You might well be living in a country with a true "imperial presidency," because the civil discord of the 1960s and early 70s led to Watergate and the resignation of Nixon. What happened this time is that the Nixonians (Rumsfeld and Cheney, with Rove as theorist) decided that the way to prevent protests was to control the information. Hence, no coverage of American dead on the ground in Iraq, no coverage of flag-draped caskets, no funerals. There was no draft to protest, and so no mass uprising. But the counterpunch also came through media, with films by Michael Moore and Robert Greenwald, with books, with articles posting and shared online, with blogs and web communities. Many of these people have been vilified in both the mainstream media and the conservative noise machine, the media equivalent of getting knocked on the head.
We fight the battle with the weapons we have.
May 31, 2008 9:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Amen.
June 2, 2008 9:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have no idea what movie you were watching, but PATTON isn't a satire. It's a fairly accurate docu-drama of the famed general. It's also a fairly accurate representation of the moral dilemmas of what it means to "go to war". To see it as a blanket condemnation of war is a total misreading of the movie -- and history. To see it as a satire on the "Great Silent Majority" implies you've picked up on a lot of pop culture without any gravitas.
For the record, George C. Scott, who played Patton, was an ex-marine and certainly knew better than most what war was about.
May 31, 2008 10:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think you could add that it's most unlikely that even the great unwashed didn't know that "All in the Family" was a satire. Indeed, I suspect the vast majority of viewers recognized the principals as caricatures of media promoted cultural types.
There was, however, frequently a kernel of truth underlying Archie's lunatic diatribes which doubtless appealed to our less (and more?) enlightened fellow TV viewers.
June 1, 2008 12:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
"the dramatic shift upwards in the quality of pop culture in the 60s."
As opposed to what... Ellington?
The level of self-absorption is stunning.
History is another country, viewed from the suburbs by an adolescent mind
June 1, 2008 12:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dig it. As the Duke said in response to what style music was proper or "popular" --"If it sounds good, it is good."
June 1, 2008 2:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Music has many powers, one of which is as an emotional construct for a life. This has always been true.
What happened in the 60's and 70's had a newness of sorts. A A reason sensed in this discussion highlighted recounts the passage of various kinds of popular black musical traditions
into what then was a white sensibility. The emerging mass media played an important role. Good to remember that all many types of early blues and rock were called simply called "Race Music."
One could argue that with this explosion of popular music had political sensibility --Dylan, Phil Ochs, Peter, Paul and Mary by example--but this time is also marked by a divorce between popular music from life and death politics.
Music became associated with a life-style. Not a bad thing, but a "thing" more unrelated to politics in my view. A song was about a cat or cause. Cats became a cause after all but I don't want to rile up cat people. (Wasn't there a cat on the "Tapestry" cover?)
A story about Phil Ochs will make part of my point:
Ochs wrote "I Ain't Marching Anymore" --An anthem for the anti-war movement. With the emergence of the inward looking Bob Dylan who could write a "protest song" and delve into the personal at the same time, Ochs, a competitive artist, faced something new that he had take on. He began a Dylan-like exploration-- very Greenwich Village but was Dylan.
In 1964 many celebrity musicians headed to Mississippi to help out musically for the movement. A common performance would
be some kind of repertoire of movement songs, sung especially for black kids.
Ochs showed up with such a group. The place was a Freedom School in Canton Mississippi. The audience -- 20 or so black kids 10 to 12. Kids whose families risked safety to show up at these schools. They were in black churches which were often bombed.
The first performer lead the kids in Freedom songs. When it came time for Phil Ochs, he started singing his New York diary of fake Dylan songs. Wasn't exactly the kind of thing that made sense to the kids. Sure wasn't political.
When asked politely to lead the kids in Freedom Songs, Ochs reply was, "I only do my own material." I wasn't surprised that Ochs committed suicide. Artists who think of themselves in that way might be prone to it. Ochs tried an Elvis-style transformation also, appearing in a golden suit. I think he left the world soon after, bless him. "Only doing his own material" wasn't enough for him because the material wasn't good. IN a world passing into music as "material" a sad fellow could lose his way. A more grounded and honest and perhaps average musician would have made it though as I see it.
The true story of Ochs in Mississippi was offered to his biographer who said even as he heard it that he didn't want ro know it. He left it out of his book. Wrong material I guess.
This story about Phil Ochs shows the passage of useful music for important political action to what is merely personal. Not that music for our life diaries isn't important or often wonderful.
But it cannot carry any weight of grander movements within a civilization. The music that can is greater by far and the musicians who make it, grounded in something not about celebrity.
Music's inclusion in this discussion mirrors the passage of life and death politics on the left --in music and action --to a culture in which self-gratification as a life style trumped political action. The passage from risking one's life to a life-style.
The passage from singing to cause a revolution to performing as a celebrity for the experience of this self-gratifying sense of the world.
Everything has its proper place though. Some might remember Pete Seeger's fine song on that theme.
I still couldn't get through life without Joni Mitchell and many others from the "new" music, but I can't and didn't get through life without Pete Seeger, the Weavers, Josh White, Fanny Lou Hammer, to name a few, either. "Many thousand gone" as the old spiritual says -- the magnificent music of ordinary folks but heros --names unknown and forgotten.
June 1, 2008 2:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not correcting typos, etc. Apologies. I think the material works at some level, however sloppy.
June 1, 2008 2:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
where's that copy editor?
June 1, 2008 2:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
If the "great unwashed" did not see it as satire then guess what? It was not satire for them. They got a different message from it than you might. But how many hours did YOU spend watching that soap opera?
The script and the cinematography did not have "satire" sprinkled in it like some magic supernatural dust. If the intention was satirical, then those producers where rather naive, unless they wanted to spoof the great unwashed for fun. Did the great unwashed learn anything? Yes they learned that denigrating blacks, homosexuals, war protesters, etc. was ok. They had their prejudices validated and even reinforced by Archie Bunker.
But we the intellectual left can't even connect those simple dots.
The producers had it both ways. They winked at us and said "satire" and they fed hate and jingoism to the “Orthogonians”. M.A.S.H. was similar with its jocular trivialization of war. All fun and games donchaknow “wink, wink”.
They pull this stuff all the time. It is a good way to market a product--in this case a cultural product--without offending anyone. But actually we all lose. They sell soap
June 1, 2008 8:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Response to oleeb's post at the top:
1. Six million is a really high estimate for Vietnamese deaths. 2 to 3 million is the estimate I've seen repeatedly over the years. Horrifyingly high but not six million.
2. The majority of protestors I see at anti-Iraq rallies and vigils are boomers. No hypocrisy there.
3. The cease-fire in Vietnam was in 1973, although it is true that we did not leave (flee?) until 1975.
4. Chalmers Johnson's latest work does an excellent job of showing the military-industrial-complex and military Keynesianism is ruining the USA.
June 2, 2008 8:50 PM | Reply | Permalink