The National Journal’s William Powers took note (as Dan and I did) of the recent New York Times article promoting paranoid fears that Barack Obama could be assassinated. Powers attributes it to the Baby Boomers’ fixation on the 1960s:
This has been happening for months and will likely continue through November. Sometimes the ’60s lens is highly relevant: Obama’s rhetoric unquestionably owes a lot to King. And sometimes the echoes are a bit absurd. A few weeks ago, there was a flurry of media interest in a professor named William Ayers, a former member of the radical Weather Underground (technically an early-’70s collective, but in spirit a ’60s hangover), who once served on the board of an anti-poverty group with Obama and donated $200 to his campaign. Had Ayers been a 98-year-old former anarchist from the 1930s who wrote a check to the Obama campaign for the same amount, I guarantee that we would have never heard about him. Wrong decade.
If the race turns out to be Obama versus McCain, the obsession will only grow. Where Obama represents the RFK/MLK side of ’60s culture, McCain, the former Vietnam POW, will become the embodiment of the anti-communist, warrior strain. America’s Boomercentric newsrooms will churn out endless stories about the great dichotomy that supposedly lives on today. But does it really? The present is messy and complicated, hard to make sense of. Why not Google the world of 40 years ago and say it’s all a rerun?
To the extent Powers is suggesting that his fellow journalists are lazy, he may have a point. But in his haste to downplay Obama’s relatinshhip with Ayers, he is quite sloppy himself in describing the 1960s dichotomy.
As noted here previously:
The Narrativeâ„¢ regards the right half of this picture  particularly its coarser elements  as “reactionary.â€Â The Narrativeâ„¢ generally does not consider that a reaction necessarily implies an action. When it is considered, The Narrativeâ„¢ dictates that this was a reaction against the civil rights struggle, the feminist movement, etc. so the reaction can be dismissed as beyond the realm of conventional political discourse. Moreover, The Narrativeâ„¢ on this point endures because there is a kernel of truth to it.
What The Narrative™ attempts to airbrush from the national memory is that the backlash was also against the New Left. It is fair to say that a movement born from Khrushchev’s criticism of Stalin is going to be fairly extreme, and the the New Left does what it can to meet that expectation. In the US during the 1960s, it shattered the the traditional notion that policy disagreements stop at the water’s edge. The New Left characterized our troops in Vietnam as crazed killers; its celebrities openly supported the enemy. A minority movement, but large enough in the context of a difficult war to drive LBJ from seeking reelection, and to move the Democratic party from nominating Hubert Humphrey in 1968 to the the dovish George McGovern in 1972 and the batty Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Powers dismisses Obama’s association with a Weatherman because it does not fit into his Narrativeâ„¢-driven view, in which the left half of the picture is limited to MLK and the Kennedys. It is a variation on the equally bogus, Narrativeâ„¢-driven view that only Southern white men left the Democratic Party in the past few decades, in reaction to the civil rights movement. It is a Narrativeâ„¢ which allows the Left and liberals to feel virtuous about their decline, instead of having to face up to the possibility that people left the Democrats because they were seen as increasingly under the influence of its ugly fringe elements.
Moreover, Ayers did a bit more than serve on the board of an anti-poverty group with Obama and donate $200 to his campaign. Ayers helped launch Obama’s political career. And while the two served together, the Woods Fund reportedly gave a $40,000 grant to an Arab group co-founded by Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi – a director of the official PLO press agency during the time when the US State Department considered the PLO a terrorist organization and the PLO was involved with terrorist attacks.ÂÂ
Furthermore, this particular confessed domestic terrorist was quoted as saying ”I don’t regret setting bombs… I feel we didn’t do enough”… on September 11, 2001. Boomers may have a 60s fixation, but that sort of timing is irresistible, even if Ayers had been that hypothetical 98-year-old.
The Weathermen were WARRIORS man! He’s just getting his right wing WARRIOR bonafides out there. For America. An America that looks just like you and me.
But, uh, some obscure wacko preacher in Texas said something nice about McCain, right?
Where’s the OUTRAGE?!!!1!one!
During his fugitive years, Mr. Ayers said, he lived in 15 states… He describes the typical Obama Campaign Office: there were usually books by Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara’s picture
~ NYT ~
All this boomer fixation: like it’s multigenerational, man. I suspect most PW’ers are in the Me Generation, unlike the Peace and Freedom 60’s generation. A big difference.
How many people here even have heard of C. Wright Mills?
“The New Left”tm never was near a majority even within the 60’s bunch and I suspect the derailing of the “Greening of America” happened due to economic consequences of Vietnam war, higher oil prices and a very shitty job market in the 70s. And “poof” most of the Brady Bunch hightailed it to Law School, Medical School, or Business School, and/or just got insurance jobs if they couldn’t get into college. And the Blue Collar Heroes with their long hair got hammered. Then we entered the 40 years of Conservatism that I’ve been yammering about…oh, I still have my teeth, thanks to expensive dental care.
I am just surprised to see that Conservatives think they lost that cultural war, when with Reagan’s deregulation and Conservative dominance in the Power Elite and the prior marginalization of McGovern and Carter, they were the winners of that war of the 70s and 80s…but did lose the 60s Civil Right’s battle as William F. Buckley said, “I am glad we lost that one.”
Now that the economic consequences of conservatism are coming home to roost maybe Obama or Clinton could even up the keel a bit? http://www.npr.org/blogs/talk/2008/02/economic_plan_b_1.html
or
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/business/02jobs.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
that last article hits it right-on as seeing the jobless recovery in Philly a few weeks back with it’s many beggars and street vendors of color (and very friendly and considerate) who aren’t counted as “unemployed” but haven’t jobs either).
America’s vaunted low unemployment rate is also a fraudelant statistic as it doesn’t count people who were self employed and not working. Or those run out of unemployment benefits.
Conservatives are about family values: the need for all of the family to work for the equivalent of what a 1960s single man could make on average.
Ya know, there’s quite a few self employed people who are not unemployed. Am I missing something?
Great piece, Karl.
data2dave: the 60s are over, dude. So are the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Sorry to break the news to you.
Why do you suppose that they don’t get a job, dave?
These are memes and ideas that datadave trots out on nearly every topic.
Since when does a street vendor not have a job?
Dave, you’re buying into The Man’s corporo-fascist System, man!
Hey, hey, datadave, I thought you folks were the ones claiming that feelings trump facts. I mean, if the boss compliments a woman on wearing a pretty dress, and she feels “threatened” by that, the right thing to do is hang the Patriarch-wannabee and give the girl a couple million bucks, right?
Christians did lose the culture wars, and you could make a strong argument that they should have. The problem, from their point of view, is that the winners were having so much fun that they kept going long after the decision was in. As the BOFH says, when they’re down is the right time to kick ’em, eh?
And whether or not that’s true is irrelevant; I’ll guarandamntee you that that’s how they feel, and they’re acting on their feelings precisely the way Progressives specify. That is, they’re rejecting or de-emphasizing the old forms of organization and replacing or supplementing them with new ones they consider more apt to current conditions, disengaging to the extent possible while strengthening the mutual ties with like-minded others, and inventing a mythology-and-ethos that explains it all in terms of their own virtue and heroism and the perfidy of their oppressors.
Sound familiar?
And instead of working to defuse and derail that, the entire Progressive movement and a good chunk of Conservatism/Republicanism is working its butt off to reinforce it. Yeah, I know, that’s not the intent, but that’s how they feel. Consider, for example, the volumes of enraged indignance on the subject of gay marriage, coupled with indulgent tolerance of people who routinely stone homosexuals.
They have their own publishing houses. They have their own news organizations. They’re in the process of building their own school systems and goods-distribution networks. They have code words and code-phrases they can put in ads to allow them to do business only with one another when possible, and they have financial networks (currently mostly in a primitive state, but growing) to increase the size of the network. (The right people can finance a fifty-million-dollar megachurch building and associated infrastructure without ever exchanging a word with anybody connected to Citibank, and it’s a natural to extend that to people who want to put up a Christian-oriented machine shop or manufacturing facility.) And your response is to push them further out of the mainstream? Nishi says they’re crazy. She may be right, but it doesn’t leave many words to characterize your response.
Regards,
Ric
oh christ. Keep throwing shit against the wall, eventually something will stick. For this one – nobody gives two shits about your opinions on some washed up hippies. Obama has knows people who are considered big awful terr’ists by some bitter culture warriors. Big whoop. No amount of “strong denunciation and renouncing” will ever satisfy you guys, and nobody cares.
heet’s skull has convinced me that nature really doesn’t abhor a vacuum. If it hasn’t collected anything of substance by now, it ain’t gonna.
[…] Karl’s post this […]
Nobody gives two shits about your opinion, heet. You could have just gone with the last two words of your post, and you’d have been spot on. Now wind yourself back up and spin on down the road.
Another 60’s/Boomer/Vietnam/Culture War election?
Barf.
I’d rather watch Nancy Grace reporting on Natalie Holloway.
Fine, lock up your daughters from the scourge that is an Obama led Weather Underground onslaught. And keep hittin’ the keyboards, ever on the lookout for new outrage.
It will be for the next dozen years Jason.
After that we can get on with putting them into the ground.
You denigrate outrage, heet?
But that’s all you ever had.
RACIST!!!
One reason I enjoy posts like this is that people like dd and heet (and nishi) show up to show their great compassion for the families of those killed by the Weathermen and related terror groups.
Does the Republican Party pay you directly to play this absurd “Obama’s career was launched by a terrorist” campagn, or do they send the checks to Jeff and you get a cut?
“Launched” – and with that link as evidence. How dishonest.
How’s about helped? Nudged? What’s your point?
“When I first met Barack Obama, he was giving a standard, innocuous little talk in the living room of those two legends-in-their-own-minds, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn,†Warren wrote on her blog in 2005. “They were launching him  introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread.â€Â
That is from the link steve.
That is from the link steve.
But steve doesn’t feel right about that.
While listening to some Pete Seeger, I thought I’d look him up in Wikipedia: Whoa! Didn’t know he was such a hero. He never endorsed Stalinism but considered himself a small ‘c’ communist. But during the Red Scare of the ’50s, he was forced to face the irrate Fascistic Congressmen and to name names and give Moscow show trial type statements of patriotic piety or get locked up for being a traitor. He could’ve invoked the 5th Amendment and as just an entertainer just get a slap on the wrist. Instead he invoked the 1st Amendment saying that the govt. didn’t have a right to curtail his right of association with anyone he pleased. He was in jail for a year, one of the few to face such a trial even though he wasn’t a national security risk.
What you are trying to do is similar…attack a man for his passing associations or deny his right to associate with whom he feels. Since there isn’t even a threat to the Republic from the Left, contrary, the threat has always been from the Right. Again to restrict Obama’s right of association is a violation of the First Amendment.
You are joining the antiAmerican ranks of Eldridge Cleaver and David Horowitz. Maybe the Dept. of Homeland security is also AntiAmerican too. I think so. Anyone who suscribes to anything like Homeland security has to be a fascist. The use of names like “homeland”, ‘fatherland’ or ‘motherland’ is always suspect for a freedom-loving American like Seeger. All for the Motherland! Who is the Stalinist here?
Who’s restricting? Questioning why someone hangs with terrorists and black supremacists is hardly forcing him to no longer associate with them. Aren’t we all known by the company we keep?
Huh. I seem to remember the pols who clamored for that organization had “D” behind their names. Even attacked Bush for not wanting to create it, and then again when he didn’t want to give them civil-service protections.
Interesting admission there, davey.
Karl, you’re right. Some compassion is due to the victims of the idiots called the WeatherUnderground. But numbers are important unlike what Stalin said, paraphrase;”One man’s death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic.” It’s like equating the Unibomber with Timothy McVie. Unibomber was pigeonholed as a radical Environmentalist and thus approx. a quarter of the FBI was out looking for him, but meanwhile bigger threats from conservative militias, religionists (including mujhahideenists like 9/11 terrorists) were ignored due to political expediancy(spell check not avail.sorry.) The victims of the Left in the USA are so few it’s hard to notice. Left wing terrorists are just plain ineffective and tried their best to avoid deathes. I think they blew more of themselves up than anyone else. And very few in number. Again a tragedy, but hardly a meaningful statistic.
I think the topic here is 60s flashback so that’s why Folks I let my freakflag fly for a few minutes on the keyboard. Sorry, if the old timey shit got you down. As for Obama, at this point barely electable, but who knows? I’ll stand back and let the new generation take over. Can’t say that for McCain though. It’s all about proving the Vietnam war is good. Seems like Vietnam is one of our best allies at the moment…keeping China in balance. So what good was that war anyway?
rob, yeah, I like Freedom matter of fact. I must be a conservative eh? No, but we agree on many things probably more than not. (I am willing to think maybe keeping the commies at bay was good for something…i hope because we sure paid a lot for it..)
You’ve never noticed refugees from Southeast Asia? I used to live next door to a family of former boat people.
“The victims of the Left in the USA are so few it’s hard to notice.”
Yup. And if you force yourself really hard, you’ll never have to! Good job!!
My former girlfriend’s father did 25 years in Red Chinese prison because his cousin was in General Kai-Sheck(sp?)’s army. She’s really touchy on that Communism subject.
“Left wing terrorists are just plain ineffective and tried their best to avoid deathes.”
That’s right. Red Army Faction, Baader-Meinhof, Action Directe, Red Brigades, Khmer Rouge, FARC, M-19, November 17, Japanese Red Army…just a bunch of pussycats.
USA! McGhee. in the USA. Red Dawn was a movie.
Pablo, hey, as a white guy with a college education I could fly to the moon before I’d ever get a job from Monster.com. I’d have to have a perfect 800+ credit report and have an esoteric computer skill and maybe I’d get a job. I did see one job maybe entry level in the suburbs perhaps. Trust me, the Philly paper had one column of job classified…Syracuse, NY’s got a hell of a lot more. That’s a small city compared to the 6th largest in USA.
Ric Locke, that’s damn good reportage on the alleged “culture wars”. Thank you, man. I read it with interest. And can see that maybe Obama and/or McCain have some good qualities in regards to mitigating the fear that motivates such organization. Christian groups by their emphasis upon communial beliefs over that of individual liberties can really build up treasuries with hard work and saving and tithing. I mentioned Eldridge Cleaver above as he of all people became a Mormon shortly before he died. He was a serial rapist, but because he turned to the right all his sins were forgiven. (but that’s just an aside…even though like-minded turn-coats like David Horowitz play much on keeping up the heat on these aging mild-mannered, peace-loving and employed former ‘terrorists’ who in their short quiver of offense against the ‘System’ avoided loss of innocent life as much as possible..unlike the terrorists on the right.
Hell, even if Hillary gets in there I don’t think she’s going to take on the Christians.
Who is the Stalinist here?
I vote heet.
Although there are still a few questions I’d like ‘feets to answer;
But during the Red Scare of the ’50s,
datadave, in addition to the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s being over, so is the Cold War.
Hint: your side lost.
dave, go to http://www.philly.com, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s website. Then click on “Jobs” and see where it takes you. Then report back to us.
techi…too bad. He was lucky to be alive. But “commies” didn’t survive in Chiang’s ‘prisons’. (They mostly didn’t survive South Vietnamese prisons either) That’s just the way it is in China for the last 3000 years. Better than getting sliced and neutered. That was the custom in Confucian China.
eh, link didn’t work. I’ll check Jobs.com whatever.
…attack a man for his passing associations or deny his right to associate with whom he feels.
His associates are his choice.
My vote is mine.
Again to restrict Obama’s right of association is a violation of the First Amendment.
Again. No denial. No restrictions. His choice of associates.
And he’s welcome to them.
Pablo, careerbuilder.com seems to have more jobs than anyone else. Not much in Philly but lots in south Jersey, but not much entry level. Craig’s list has some lowpaid one usually too.
Dave, you’re so delusional I don’t know where to start.
That’s because of the comma at the end of it. Try again: http://www.philly.com
I love how “American exceptionalism” has its uses for some people.
I tried it again, Pablo. Just to please you and my curiosity. Something about Monster makes it a sinkhole of jobs that no one’s going to fill. To focus I tried construction and got a shitload of highly skilled types. CAD designers and such. I know that there is a huge demand of electricians and such but that takes 4 years of training which isn’t likely with guys w/o cars in problematic neighborhoods. Walking to work don’t cut it in the trades. Only 4 fuck’n carpenter jobs within 20 miles of Philly. That tells me a lot about demand for labor. Not much there.
You seem to be really good at coming up with excuses to not work, dave.
b moe, it’s not about me…I’ve got work. About the economy in Philly and most other places. I’ve got as much work as I want. Admittedly some I don’t want. And pay sucks. Hey, that was Sunday. Now off to play and work. later.
Maybe online isn’t the best place to find openings for unskilled labor?
If you are looking for grunt work, you pick out a couple places that look promising, and show up every morning on time, awake, with a lunch packed and any tools you might need. Sooner or later someone is going to be late one time to many and you will get hired on the spot. It has never taken me more than two weeks.
There’s over 5000 jobs listed there, dave.
Yes, b, been there, done that. I think Pablo was on this thing about how easy it would be for the street people of Philly to find work. I don’t think so but he kept giving me Monster dot com ad listings. I like the idea of fluidly finding work whenever or whereever..but Gary Snyder for example said those days are gone (when he could hitchhike the west and get easy jobs bucking hay or other day by day work..that’s not affordable for a modern day “On the Road” trip…..esp. when places like Home Depot want your credit score as a testamount of character (to see if you’re a good lemming)and the many illegals living in 6 pack appartments…6 beds to a room. I’ll grant you that many of the people who are not working also get SSI payments. A whole new thread could be developed on that alone and how “welfare as we know it” was diverted into a huge SSI population of allegedly ‘sick’ people who are able to work but can’t find work as they are too crazy, too frail, too unemployable. Probably a lot of the street people get a check from the govt. one way or another…but it’s not ‘welfare’, it’s something else.
Obama did touch on some sort of works project for innercity populations that might just bring the dignity of work to the so-called ‘unemployables’. The WPA comes to mind as a successful and low-cost model.
My other point was that unemployment rates in the USA haven’t really quantified the real numbers of unemployed. Those too discouraged from finding employment are not counted for example.
yeah, Rob that’s true. Ads are very expensive and I found the loser employers who have to advertize aren’t the best places to work anyway… but I did it anyway, three jobs in a row over a few years. An interesting experiment though.
I shouldn’t say they are all loser employers…some very nice jobs but, man, the competition was great. Even when I am happy at my work in the small business sector where benefits are rare, I check on the good companies just in case.
Pablo, I couldn’t read ’em all but they are 90 percent very experienced, trained or very suspect…sales jobs. And in our area a lot are for jobs in Iraq fixing small arms and stuff. Interesting jobs I am sure. But not the ones that a poor street person in the innercity could get? The radius of 50 miles includes a lot in NJ and so far out, you need a car and transportation which around Philly is prohibitive with the traffic jams I encountered. But there is a lively night and resturant scene so I am sure help in kitchens is a possibility. And there most be for the carpenters out there a bit of work in renovating the old buildings near the river where they’re is a artsy scene brewing. 600K condos and such.
Now, engineers are in great demand. I know of a lady engineer who was in the Air Force in Alaska, her husband is shipping off to Afghanistan but the marriage is breaking up. She’s Cornell trained and she had a job waiting when she left the service. People are begging for engineers everywhere. Odd thing, her sister is a interior designer in Conn. and became a conservative Republican while her experiences in the military turned her into a liberal Democrat. Both in their twenties. And gorgeous. So they don’t have trouble finding jobs…but I was thinking of the average smoe riding that underground train down in Philly.
You miss my point, dataless dave. I wouldn’t expect to find ads for unskilled labor on an online service because, in all likelihood, the number of unskilled laborers looking for work online is very small.
There are plenty of jobs out there — that you continually redefine the parameters to exclude the ones pointed out doesn’t change that.