August 9, 2004
STUCK IN '68 CONTINUED
’60s activists emerge again from left field (Lisa Kocian, August 8, 2004, Boston Globe)
Jack Hoffman is wound up. At 64, he can hardly contain himself as he rails against the war in Iraq and frets over the presidential race. He hasn't felt this much fire in the belly, he said, since he shouted antiwar cries during the Vietnam War."I went to sleep for 32 years," said Hoffman, a Framingham resident and the younger brother of 1960s icon Abbie Hoffman.
If Jack Hoffman has been politically drowsy since he last participated in protests in the early 1970s, he could now be called something of a political insomniac: He is handing out leaflets, speaking to disciples of the left, participating in demonstrations -- anything to bash President Bush and what Hoffman describes as a wrong-headed war.
Hoffman is not the only aging Vietnam-era activist from the region agitating for Bush's ouster in November. For these veterans of political action, the consciousness of the late 1960s and early 1970s is seeing something of a revival: As they look to propel John Kerry to the White House, some say they haven't felt as driven since those heady days.
That generation just isn't ever going to grow up, is it? Posted by Orrin Judd at August 9, 2004 8:24 AM
We saw a lot of these people (well educated, upper middle-class, urban) over the weekend, ironically at a welcome home open house for a young Reservist just returned from Iraq. The Reservist has a friend in the regular Army also just returned.
We thanked his friend for his service and told him that, in our opinion, he took part in one of the great humanitarian efforts in history. We also told him that, maybe unlike some others in the room, that we are supporters of the President and the war. He just smiled.
He says that in his experience (convoy support)the Iraqis were very friendly to the troops. Many times they offered the troops refreshments and flowers.
Posted by: Rick T. at August 9, 2004 9:57 AMI'm sure Hoffmanites all see Kerry as their man ... one of them. Finally, he will vindicate them in history.
Posted by: genecis at August 9, 2004 10:27 AM"I went to sleep for 32 years".
He'd better gone to France forever.
Posted by: Peter at August 9, 2004 10:29 AMAnd the hippies got a revolution, Zelizer said-- it just turned out to have shifted the country to the right, not the left.
Ha ha ha! Viva La Regan Revolution!!!!!!!!!!!1
Posted by: Amos at August 9, 2004 11:37 AMBut to them, it's still 1968, JFK2 (genuflect and burn the pinch of incense before His image) is spending Xmas in Cambodia courtesy of those Evil Republicans, the acid is Owsley, the love is free, and they get to play Luke Skywalker leading The Good Guys (TM) against the Evil Empire (TM) of Emperor Bush and Darth Ashcroft...
"I don't wanna grow up,
I'm a Sixties kid..."
Do these geniuses that like to bash Bush on the Iraq war ever stop to ask themselves what is so horrible about kicking a ruthless dictator out of a country, killing terrorists and other losers by the thousands, establishing the rule of law with consent of the governed, and new luxuries like freedom of the press and cell phones? Hello?!
To be so stupid in such a public way .... it is truly stunning.
Posted by: Jeff Brokaw at August 9, 2004 4:50 PMRemember that War suddenly became "healthy for children and other growing things" the moment Baby Boomers were no longer in danger of being drafted and sent to The Nam.
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In Wild Cards, George RR Martin's shared-universe superhero novels, there is one minor character I found interesting, though we only see her three times in the series. She is the "unattainable female" pursued by "Captain Trips", the hallucinogen-fueled superhero:
1) We first see her as the object of the future Captain Trips' crush in high school in the very early Sixties -- she's a stuck-up cheerleader, with the latest bobby sox & poodle skirt, boinking all the football jocks and treating everybody else (including the future Capt Trips) like lower than dirt.
2) Capt Trips next runs into her in college circa 1968 -- shacking up with the local SDS radicals, completely into the People's Revolution Against The Pig Power Structure, mouthing the Dialectic, boinking all the Radical Intellectuals (you know they are Intellectuals because they are constantly reminding you of the fact) and treating all the straight world (including the future Capt Trips) as lower than dirt. "DOWN WITH THE PIG POWER STRUCTURE! START THE REVOLUTION!"
3) After a long hiatus, Captain Trips again crosses her path sometime in the Eighties. Now she's in her trendy Power Suit with an early celtel in her ear, making big-bucks Arbitrage deals as she weaves her top-of-the-line Beemer over three lanes with the Blaupunkt blaring. "GREED IS GOOD!"
Note the similarity -- each time, the center of a universe that has room for nobody else but herself.
And the difference -- the outer shell chameleoning into whatever is Trendy, whether that be Nifty Fifties Bobbysoxing, Sixties More Maoist-than-Mao radicalism, or Eighties Yuppie-ism.
Posted by: Ken at August 9, 2004 7:08 PMKen:
At this point, the only thing I want to hear about Martin is that he's finished "Feast for Crows"!
Posted by: David Cohen at August 9, 2004 11:27 PMWouldn't these activists be more effective if they went to a swing state to campaign for Kerry ?
It's always more fun to preach to the choir, but it's not as though Bush has any shot at winning Massachusetts.
So, all of the running around and printing pamphlets is, in the end, a waste of time, money, and energy.
It seems that Hoffman and his comrades are still asleep, at least mentally.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at August 10, 2004 12:26 AMSpeaking as a 30-something, won't they please just go now?
Posted by: jsmith at August 10, 2004 12:44 AMjsmith:
Speaking as a late-period Boomer, won't they pleast just go now?
As a 30-something, you will at least have some years remaining after the boa poops out the bulge; in your old age you will finally be free of having to kowtow constantly to the Gravitas of the Great Boom and its mythology of Vietnam! and Woodstock!
I'm 48; when the bulge clears the boa it's going to poop me out along with the rest. My future is a nursing home, with tubes coming out of me, unable to escape the continuous Alzheimer's monologues about How Groovy Woodstock Was! and Vietnam! Vietnam! Vietnam!
As a kid, I was a big fan of the future space program -- Moon by 1970, Mars by 1990, colonies up there by the 21st, and after that the starships...
Never forget:
We threw away the stars so we could screw in the mud at Woodstock.
We threw away the stars so we could masturbate endlessly over Vietnam.
Ken:
Unless your parents did ya dirty, genetically speaking, if you keep yourself in fighting trim you have another 40 good years in front of you, plenty of time for Woodstock and Vietnam to fade almost completely from cultural memory.
We didn't exactly "throw away the stars"...
I dunno if getting from the Moon to Mars in 35 years is a decent timeline or not, but from the Moon to Mars in twenty years would have been astonishing.
What we've postponed are Moonbases and Space Stations, and once Burt Rutan, Paul Allen & Crew start cranking out private space flitters, those will come.
You'll definitely see those, and if you save enough, you might even visit.
Starships may never come.
Posted by: Michael "The Man Who Sold the Moon" Herdegen at August 11, 2004 11:36 PM