26 10 1775 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/452f0fe05e924e1a7221f51da635fbd2.jpg 8271af811647c16d2b6b6b9162071982 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/08465f1a4d3db4bce08cd1cc191cf17a.mp3 a83e1374ece0de7d8e4a0435b73cce42 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2009-10-10 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Rennie Davis Language English Biographical Text Rennie Davis (1940-2021) was a spiritual lecturer and an activist. Davis was an American anti-Vietnam war protest leader of the 1960s. He was one of the Chicago Seven defendants. He appeared on several shows, including <em>Larry King Live</em> and <em>Barbara Walters</em>, and provided business advice for Fortune 500 companies. Davis was an alumnus of Oberlin College. Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MicroCassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 125:41 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Voting rights; Drug culture; Baby boom generation;Healing; Vietnam Memorial; Hippies; Yippies; Peace Corps; Trust; Mistrust of government; Kent State; Watergate; Richard Nixon; Democratic Convention; Weathermen; Students for a Democratic Society; Vietnam Veterans; Eugene McCarthy; George McGovern; Lyndon Johnson; John F. Kennedy; Robert F. Kennedy; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Malcolm X.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:13228792}}">Voting rights; Drug culture; Baby boom generation;Healing; Vietnam Memorial; Hippies; Yippies; Peace Corps; Trust; Mistrust of government; Kent State; Watergate; Richard Nixon; Democratic Convention; Weathermen; Students for a Democratic Society; Vietnam Veterans; Eugene McCarthy; George McGovern; Lyndon Johnson; John F. Kennedy; Robert F. Kennedy; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Malcolm X.</span> Subject LCSH Chicago Seven Trial, Chicago, Ill., 1969-1970; Political activists--United States; Davis, Rennie--Interviews Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Rennie Davis Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: Carrie Blabac-Myers Date of interview: 10 October 2009 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) 0:02 RD: That is probably worse than what happened to [inaudible] finding, you know, Christianity as a religion that did not really make any sense at all, so Tom kind of went through, what in the world? I mean, it was just, you know, I was viewed by myself too. I was a self-image, but other people too, just so stable in my politics and my consistency, what I believed and what I would do, you could count on me you know, and it was nice to have. Then all of a sudden you could not count on me anymore and I thought, oh what happened? 0:44 SM: How did you used to be for the record questions? I answered? How did you become who you became? 0:50 RD: In the (19)60s? 0:51 SM: In other words, experience? Yeah, when we when and when students on college campuses saw you and Tom. You know, a lot of us knew about Tom because of the Free Speech Movement and, and the poor Iran statement, and we were reading about that young man from Michigan. But where did you come from? How did you get? How did you get the 1968? Chicago? I mean? 1:16 RD: Well, my dad was the Chief of Staff of Truman's Council of Economic Advisers, and was a, had left University teaching when Roosevelt came in, you know, and but basically saw himself as supporting a government trying to do recovery with stimulation. And so he was pro Liberal government, you know, Liberal Democrat, I would say that it risen to the highest level of his profession. And I grew up in an environment, a climate, I mean, he lost a job when Eisenhower was elected president. 2:10 SM: Definitely a democrat. 2:12 RD: He had purchased this 500-acre farm about seventy miles west of Washington and decided because he had himself grown up on a farm in Sao Paulo, Ohio that he was, you know, from his perspective, black balled and Washington, he could not get a job, you know, in his profession, at least for a while. So he decided to make a go of it on the farm. It was the greatest thing that ever happened to us, you know. At first we were kicking and screaming, but so we all moved out to the farm and it looked like we were farmers. I mean, you know, the nearest neighbor was almost a half a mile away, it was a very isolated place, but beautiful place, but, and I went to, you know, a local high school and I guess I found myself about a year ahead of everybody, academically, just coming from the Washington School to a rural country Virginia School. But right away, started making good grades for me, you know? And then I got active in activities in the in the school too. I was president the student body, I was editor in chief of the school newspaper. I became kind of um, I won the state championship in 4H, poultry judging. I won the eastern United States poultry judging contest. Then I had a stolen from me in Chicago. That was my view, but it was not really. So I had the farming thing and I was, I suppose you could say I was high school activism and I was doing a lot of things in high school. 4:03 Unnamed speaker: You were telling me about a rally that you did in high school, didn’t you? 4:07 RD: Valley? 4:08 Unnamed speaker: A rally did not you do a rally in high school or something like a demonstration? 4:13 RD: Well, we had a dance thing that we moved off, you know, we rented a place I had a band, I played the piano, and we had a nightclub type of thing, you know, but there were not any chaperones. We were just doing it on our own, you know, and it was became a big controversial thing with the principle of the school. I would not call it too political but anyway, during this period, I asked my dad, you know, I had a worldview and thinking about issues I sort of you know, I was I went to an all-white high school. You know, I did not really fully glock segregation when I was in high school. I had a very high-grade point average, which, you know, I fortunately, got me into a decent undergraduate school, I went to Oberlin College in Ohio. And I, in the first year was terror of trying to catch up with everybody and then by the second year, I became roommate with a guy named Paul Potter, who was, who knew Tom. Tom was at the University of Michigan, we were at Oberlin. And it was it was very interesting. I mean, you were in January 1960, you really could not tell that it was not still the 1950s. There was no signs of anything really. It was my first intuitive moment, I would say, you know, I knew in January 1960, something immense and huge was about to happen. And I could not really say what it was other than it felt like the entire generation was going to come together and really make a difference in the world, you know, but there was there was zero, so I mean, there was nothing going on. I mean, before Kennedy was elected. Well, yeah, this would be maybe with Kennedy. Kennedy, what would have been a January 20, 1960. So the election was happening. I mean, you could say also the, you know, I mean, I watched the Stevenson campaign with Eisenhower. And we were drawn to the elegance of Stephenson, and his family and so on. But there was no civil rights movement. I mean, there were there were things let you know about now, historically, but not in the media. But it was just it was just entertaining. There was just like a vibration or something. I do not know that is probably not the right word, it was a knowingness that, that I was a part of something that was huge, you know. And I knew that really before the, right there at the end of (19)59, very early (19)60. And then, for me, the thing that launched everything was February 4, 1960. When four students that A&T college, you know, sat down in Greensboro. And you know, we watched this thing through the media. Now, Life magazine came out with this picture book story and it was mostly it was just shocking, you know, I mean, I mean, I grew up in an all-white school. And yet, for me, the idea that blacks had no justice, they could not have a hamburger, you know, there were two whites and negro toilets. And they, you know, it was just like, I did not know where I was, I mean, I did not get it, you know, before, but now I could see, you know. So it was a little bit of my father's values about justice, fair play and equality and you know, those kind of principles. Yet, you know, beating reality that was like, shocking and like oh, my God, you know. So, it was by February, early March, and by February, I would say we were full tilt 100 percent into a movement that really technically did not even exist, but talented kids, it was like, wow, here we go, you know? And from that day forward, I would say it was pretty much nonstop, twenty-four seven for thirteen years, was the only thing that was really our focus. Tom showed up. Well, I wound up organizing a political convention in Oberlin College, where students nominated a mock convention, you know, you nominate a presidential candidate. I was the campaign manager for Hubert Humphrey, who at that moment was considered kind of a liberal. 5:52 SM: Yeah. That must have been a great experience. 9:22 RD: Yeah, and then Tom showed up, you know, one spring day at school and basically, oh, and we from there we formed the political party called the Progressive Student League. And these are all unheard of concepts. Yeah. I mean, they were just seemed like we were ingrained with this or something it was weird, because nothing was telling us to do any of this was sort of natural. You know? So we so we ran up a slate of candidates for student government. I was the chairman of the party; I did not run as a candidate, but our slate swept the whole thing. So, we controlled every single seat on Student Government [laughter] Like all at one time. Now I was really powerful. 10:17 SM: You were empowered. 10:18 RD: I was empowered, yeah. 10:19 SM: Tom talks about them, you know, when he came to our campus, that our students were having a hard time. [inaudible] When you hear, when do you think the (19)60s and the (19)70s began? What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of that period? 10:47 RD: Well, that was what I was just sharing. I would say the sense of the (19)60s started around December 1959 and January (19)60. There were some events like Kennedy running for president. But quite honestly, what I said was not apparent. And what it was, was a sense of a generation, young people generation, who was going to make the world a better place? Really make a difference. And there really was not any objective, tangible evidence that I can, you know, that I noticed anyway, for that, it was just an internal sense. Then the external event for me was the February fourth sit in. 11:45 SM: Okay. 11:46 RD: So that launched me into a full time into a campaign to you know, the (19)60s movement. 11:56 SM: That would be, that was my next question here. Is there one specific event that shaped your life when you were young? What was that event? 12:02 RD: Well, that was the event that triggered everything, yeah. 12:08 SM: When did you sense that, not only within your group, but within the boomer generation and again, when we define the boomer generation now, because there have been books written about, they kind of define those individuals born between 1946 and 1964. And we know that a lot of people that were leaders in the anti-war, movement, civil rights, and a lot of these other movements were older than that. But when did you start sensing that the boomer generation, this post-war generation was- 12:44 RD: January 1960. 12:46 SM: That very same period. 12:47 RD: That is what I am talking about. That sense that there was a new generation that was going to change the world was internally sensed. Then the external launch was February 4th but they, you could say, well, that the SDS has not really got started, or there was not that much activity going on. But the mood shifted, the climate changed. I mean, the media was driving the sit-ins, and, you know, that was all happening, but to say that by - we organized this mock political convention, and it had the quality of the movement already, you know, occurring. And then then we formed the political party and it caught on. I mean it was, unheard of you know, probably, I do not know if any university ever really did that. I mean, maybe they did, but, you know, to us for the (19)50s. I mean, that was just, you know, I mean, we were you ran for student government over, you know, the right that visit women's dorms or things, you know, I mean, it was social issues locally. I mean, we were on it, we ran on our campaign of recognizing China as a government! Okay, that was one of our platform, plans, you know, civil rights for black people. It was all political. That was in the fall that was in the spring of well, I guess that would be (19)60. January (19)60? Yeah. Spring of (19)60. Then Tom Hayden shows up and basically is promoting a student organization nationwide. And he has already formed a political party in Michigan at the University of Michigan. It is almost identical, in concept of what we have just done at Oberlin, and we never talked about it, there was no communication about it. We just like, obvious to do this. And it had never been obvious before, you know. And so we were all excited. Yeah, let us go National and get things going and we were sending, you know, we were sending money, and support to students that were then forming themselves in, in the south. And so SDS emerged, Students for a Democratic Society and simultaneously at the same time, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee emerged. All of this, you know, in the spring of (19)60 and SDS was now a support system and a fan club for SNCC. You know, then basically, from there, we were starting to recognize that there was a national, I guess, you could say, leadership group sort of forming and we came together to produce a kind of a Tom Payne common sense pamphlet for the present time. And that became known as the Fourth Huron Statement. I mean Tom did, you know, a very elegant first draft, but a lot of people were involved in the writing of that, you know, quite a few. It was a group of people that, you know, emerged, Todd Giblin and, 16:29 SM: I did interview Todd. 16:30 RD: Yeah, yeah, I mean, there is a lot of people that, you know, contributed, Al Heber, myself, to the writing of that, you know, then that sort of caught on like wildfire on the campus, the Fourth Huron statement, and then we were looking for what are our next steps, and we felt like the next steps for us was to organize in communities, black communities, with a focus on voting rights, and also poor white communities with a focus on economic issues. And so, I became the director of something called the Economic Research and Action Project or ERAP in, let us see, I think we, we formalized that in the fall of (19)63 at a meeting in New York. Bob Dylan actually came to that meeting, sat in the back, you know, he was, and, you know, we were all thrilled with Bob Dylan you know! I mean, the immediate, he was similar, you know, he was just out of nowhere comes this voice that seems to be expressing something that we all, you know, aligned with, it was just like, it was all happening naturally. Without, I mean, there was a lot of work and organizing. But the thing that I do not think has ever been talked about, from anything I have ever read, was how self-organizing, it occurred. How the mood of young people just changed kind of overnight, in a flash and there was suddenly a base, where, you know, everywhere you went, there were people, you know, it is like two societies emerging, you know, a new nation just appearing overnight with I mean, yeah, it was organized to death and that made all the difference, ultimately, but what never really been understood or explained or talked about from, from what I have seen out there, maybe it has been, I just do not read everything, but just how this thing appeared kind of out of nowhere, you know, if you wanted to believe that human beings exist, after they die, or come in, you know, with a plan, not that you need to do that but just to be hypothetical for a minute, it was almost as if an entire generation chose to come in and do something. It was. It was just, it was weird, almost, you know. It was not, it was as, as if something had been pre-planned, you know, they all show up to be in this huge experiment of love and democracy and, you know, personal experimentation and breaking from society. Or it was it was just like a new culture, suddenly appeared overnight. And there were clearly two cultures, there was cultures of the fifties that still continued right into the (19)60s that was, you know, normal Americans, adults, you know. And then there was young people. And so, you know, you could, I did this many times I mean, I would just get a whim to go, I mean, I might be living here in Washington and decide to go to San Francisco. And so, you know, I would, you know, have a coat, I mean usually an army fatigue and put a toothbrush in my pocket, and probably nothing more, you know, and then just walk out onto the street, right in front of my house, and you did not have to be a main thoroughfare or anything. I would just stick out my thumb and the chance, I mean, within five minutes, there would be this painted van coming along, you know. 20:32 SM: I remember that. 20:33 RD: I mean, this was happening very quickly, you know. It is just like, suddenly we were everywhere. And it seemed like everywhere you turn around there was, you know, like minded people. I do not know how to describe them, free spirits, um, certainly doing some experimentation with pot. Yeah, you know, dressing you know, you know, not in a conventional way. I mean, not too careful. I mean, colorful and long hair. I mean the whole culture started to appear, you know, and appeared very quickly is what I am saying, you know. So we went into, from there, we went into community organizing and then I finally we worked with Bob Moses at a time later, Bob Harris, you know, and his project in Mississippi. And then, you know, we had a similar projects 150 students in ERAP that went into ten communities in the north. That was launched in 1965. The summer of (19)64 - (19)65 which is how it all started. 21:48 SM: How do you respond to in 1994, when Newt Gingrich came to power, he loved to make comments about the boomer generation and George Willis continued to do so with a lot of his writing and other political commentators, that the, the reason for the breakdown of American society goes back to that boomer generation: the reason why we had the divorce rate, the reason why we do not trust leaders, the reason why we have divisions between black and white, those who voted for the troops and against the troops, it was all for and against, for and against, and it created an environment that we have today where nobody talks to each other. They do not trust anybody. And Newt Gingrich and George Will, are two of the people that have written a lot on this. And actually, you know, Newt is a boomer, a lot of people think he is from Georgia, he is from Pennsylvania, born in Pennsylvania, until the age of twelve and of course, Ronald Reagan, when he became president, he made also comments: "We are back", you know, "We are back". You know, "America is back, love America", it was really a condemnation putting blame on that generation or those people that were linked to that generation, how do you respond to that? To those commentators? 23:12 RD: I think evolution, is, I can appreciate that. That point of view. I really can. But on the other side, would be on the other side. You know, taking the kind of shots at, I think maybe the better sociological study on this question with Paul Ray. With just doing a massive, one of the large probably the largest survey that has ever been done, recent, sort of recently about this society is Paul Ray's work where you know, it is, it is statistically scientific and try to actually measure the values of the whole society. And so, he finds that the smallest segment is the is the group that that Newt is talking about, that he describes this traditionalist, small town, rural, local, America first right or wrong, homespun values, you know, you, you trust the people you know, you do not trust, big government, Washington, farming roots, you know, agricultural roots, that sort of thing. And I forget the percentages, I mean, you can look those up. But then there was the rationalist which basically tended to include the modern big city, financially oriented. Rationalist meant that there really was not a guiding set of principles the way traditionalists had, they were more, doing what is practical. They were, you know, cosmopolitan and smart and, you know, they would, you know, they could create derivatives in a nanosecond, you know, or whatever was coming up, you know, that that kind of idea. They were not necessarily Democratic or Republican, but probably more democrats in general. They were not really that political, they were more practical, you know, pragmatist, that sort of idea, you know. And they were the dominant result in the study. But then there was this third group. That was actually this was the new emerging group, because the rationalists and the traditionalists had defined this country, historically, all through every generation. Now, suddenly, there was this new group that had this set of values that had reached critical mass. And they clearly had their roots in the (19)60s. They were oriented to environmentalism; they were curious about world events. They could take a position and study the point of view of another country about this country. And it was not America, right or wrong, it was like, they could see an international perspective. They tended to you know, favor participatory democracy kind of idea. And there was also within them, although they favored women, they favored blacks, they had all those kinds of things, but there was also within them a, an interest in spirituality, and not religion. But something else, you know, that never got clearly defined but it was more open ended, you know, seeking the truth, you know, answering the question, who am I, you know? Sitting quietly in nature, and just musing with yourself a little bit. Some of the things that happened after the drug explosion, when people went into nature and just tried to find themselves a little bit, and, you know, just be beautiful, and you know, love life, and that sort of thing, you know, kind of weird thing. I mean, if you are a farmer, where I grew up, you know, go and sit on a rock, and just adore of the sunset, I mean, he kind of do, but not really, you know, you work up until it is time to go to sleep, and then you get up and you work some more. And then you die, you know? It is a little more like that, where this idea of leisure time and introspection and finding out who I am, you got, a wa-wa things that I am putting into the rubric of spirituality. This was discovered by Paul Ray too, you know, that this was one of the components of this group, you know. And that this group was redefining the political landscape of this country. Now, all groups want to blame each other for you know, their misery and their problems. And that until human being changed their awareness stage and realize a little more about how the world really works, you know, that is going to be a natural thing. So people, people think that, you know, the republicans are doing it to me, I would say, though, that, that we live in the moment right now, where this basic, you could call it a fissure or separation is now intensifying, and peaking potentially, to the potential ending of the human species. Whether the human race will actually survive or kill itself off. This, the seeds of that question are planted right now in what we were seeing when you just turn on the television watching a talk show. I mean, all conflict is intensifying, all blame is intensified. I am not talking about which side to be on I am just talking about side-taking itself. Okay. So side-taking itself is intensifying, no one can hear anybody. And, you know, I mean, you can be Keith Oberlin or you can be Glenn Beck. You know, the point is that I am trying to make is that neither one can hear each other. They are both demonizing the other side, no one sees human beings anymore. They just see hatred for the opposition and blame everything that is wrong with, on the other side. We are actually moving now into a moment of the first what I would call the first stage of hysteria, the same kind of hysteria that is always been behind all wars. Okay. So war has officially ben the historic byproduct of this kind of hysteria. And what I just said, I do not see, I do not see in the right or the left, any understanding of this, okay. Everybody was so immersed in their position that the idea that you are attacking humanity itself, that it is not about which side you are on, it is about side kicking itself. Okay. It is reaching a level where this leads to war. Okay, civil war or international war? But that is where it ultimately goes. And then nobody say that everybody, you know, buttons down. 31:17 SM: Very good. Paul Ray. How do you spell that last name? 31:21 RD: R. A. Y. 31:23 SM: Has he written a book? 31:25 RD: Yeah, he wrote, he calls this third group Cultural Creative. It would be good for you to look at it because a lot of good, you know, statistical information about the very subject that we are talking about here. I think it is the best study so far really. 31:47 SM: If you look at the boomer generation, now, the seventy to seventy-five million, what would be some of the strengths of that group and what will be some of their weaknesses? As someone who not only worked with many of them, and inspired many of them, and I am sure you got frustrated with many of them, and as you look at them when you were younger, and when they were younger, and how you look at them now is there; now, first group has now reached I think sixty-two or sixty-three? Social Security, I think is the first group now right now, the sixty-two-year-olds. 32:22 RD: Uh huh. 32:24 SM: What do you see as their strengths and weaknesses, if you were to describe them as a group? 32:36 RD: I look at strengths and weaknesses, through the eyes of evolution. What furthers the growth of humanity? What allows humanity to come out of a very immature stage of awareness into a more mature stage of awareness, not, not as a judgment, but just as a trend, you know, where, and so from that point of view, humanity at an immature stage of awareness, has some of these qualities. They are very closed. Okay, their bodies are closed, their, their thoughts are closed, they are very, they have identities that protect whatever their belief system is. It is a little bit my way or highway kind of thing. And for humanity to mature, humanity needs to open and open is tied also to respect. When you disrespect, especially life, you close. You make judgments, you close, you do not really, you are not aware, you do not really see nuances or subtleties. So, from an evolutionary point of view of how the human race might survive, grow, and one day evolve into the magnificence that it actually could be, I am looking for human beings that can listen, human beings that can be rather than just be so caught up in their thoughts that they cannot really hear anything. The human being that is open, respectful of life, you know, recognizes that nature is living, not just an inanimate object, so you know that the only thing that is on this planet is human, and nothing else is really that important, really. So from that point of view, these guys have evolution. I would say that the boomer generation was on the whole, hopeful. The drug part of it is sort of good news and bad news in a way. I mean, the, what the, what the drugs did was to essentially remove inhibitors between the brain and the mind. You know, we all have inhibitors. We have inhibitors about sex, we have inhibitors about pretty much everything really, you know. So, you remove some of those inhibitors and if you are in a kind of a beautiful setting, you know, you might see your future, you might see a big picture, you know, you might get a little glimpse of how just beautiful you really are, you know. You might see yourself, as not just the human body, just things like that. So, the LSD, the peyote, though, you know, the hallucinogenic drug part of this, you know, caused many people do have an altering perspective on things, you know, that, you know, I am not defending drugs, I am just saying this was not a bad, you know, that did come out of this. Now, Newt Gingrich would be all upset that this happened, but it was expansive on the whole, there was also though a, the roots of, of humanity itself, were there too. And so, if you looked at the, say, the drug experience, you really could see, there were two levels. You know, there was the- what today would be the rave party experience, you know, just, you know party, you have no respect for anybody's space, while you are on this journey is there is no such thing as a sacred journey, you know. You know, you do not care about the clutter in the room as you do your trip. And, and out of that, inevitably really would have come bad trips, you know, you could actually scar your mind you, I mean, you see some things that you have repressed that, you know were sort of dark and upsetting, you know. Then there were those that, you know, went into nature and, you know, really cared about their environment and saw it as a sacred thing, and would set their intentions for what they hope would come out of. And you know, would actually have a pretty beautiful, expanded experience from it, you know, so within the drug experience, you had both groups going on within the boomer broad, broadly speaking. And you saw the same thing, too. I mean, there was a period in the (19)60s, where you really could just jump in a car, as a woman, travel across the country and feel really safe. I mean, you know, hitchhiking be safe, you know, you were not going to be raped, attacked, or anything you were really love, you know, happening, you know, for a little period of time, you know. You know, then you had, you know, the call the dark side, whatever were things that sort of, you know people turned on each other, you know, it was not safe anymore. And you know, and so, we kind of lost that innocence, you know. But there was a little moment of innocence in the cultural part of this equation, not so much the anti-war movement part, but in the cultural part. There was an innocence and that from an evolutionary, human evolutionary point of view, that is precious. That is very precious, you know, and so that was there. So within the strengths and the weaknesses, we brought as a group, our own strengths and weaknesses of humanity. And you know, the dark side came up, that repression came up, the hateful things came up, but also the innocence and the beauty and trust and the respect for life. And so there were there both things were present no different than the people themselves. Now, you know, when the whole thing closed, and everybody moved on, you know, then people when you know started or you know, money became important again, and having a household and, you know, family and children, you were going to pay rent now, and you know, it was not such a free carefree world anymore. The, sense is, though, that people were nevertheless affected by whatever it was, you know, there was an underlying beat river, to the whole thing. And it may be that that deep river appears again, you know, in another time, maybe this time, but not so much from the sixty-year-old but from younger people. It was, it was a life changing event. That would be really hard to find in this country's history any parallel. 40:08 SM: Good that brings me right into my next question and that is when I was on college campus there was this feeling of oneness even if you did not know a lot of the people there was a feeling. You hit it right on the point there about this innocence. Because I can remember specifically, because I did a lot of hitchhiking. Hitchhiked to Boston. Hitchhiked with my friends. I never was worried about it ever. And I remember some of the girls on the college campuses at that time were hitchhiking too then something happened in 1970-(19)71 school year, then all of a sudden, if the girls, the women are going into Binghamton you need if you have accompaniment, (19)71, (19)72, (19)73 things started change then. But the question that I want to ask is, there was this feeling that we were the most unique generation in American history. A lot of boomers felt they were very unique, because they wanted to change the world, they bring peace, that all kind of this utopia kind of feeling. And just you are thoughts on, on that. Just this feeling. And some a lot of boomers still feel it as sixty-year-olds despite all the criticisms, just your thoughts on whether they were the most unique or? 41:35 RD: Well, I would like to not turn it into self-aggrandizement for the generation you know, but you if you can kind of get out of self-importance about it because you happen to be one or something, I would say that I do not, the only generation that either remotely comes close would be the founding fathers. There you had a more of a leadership group, maybe similar to some of the people that were around SDS, and so on, that really carried an incredible legacy from kind of a controlling institutional world, whether it was a monarchy or a church institution. But all over the news, force and torture and so forth, to maintain a power base. Life was not safe, life was not really, you did not feel excited, you did not feel open, you watched your back, you know, your womb. And then coming into Europe comes so called enlightenment philosophers, John Locke, Descartes, you know, different, different writers who, you know, kind of set the stage. And the stage is all read by these founding fathers who follow what they were called. They, they envision, a- you know, a government that is really a new concept in the world, you know, it is it is very similar to SDS. It is not called participatory democracy. But it is democracy, you know, and it is, and it checks and balances over the excesses of egos of human beings. There is a lot of wisdom, you know, being expressed. And there is a country that, you know, has always been fine with Great Britain, that for a variety of reasons shifts and, gets motivated and inspired by philosophical visions. Especially the reading of Common Sense of Tom Payne. So suddenly, you have got a popular base that is buying very visionary concepts for that time you know. Well, when you look at all the other generations, Roosevelt, certainly, you know, had a had a gift for words and holding people together, not unlike Obama now, although Obama has his critics, Roosevelt did too, but it just was not the same. It is hard to see a group of people, creating a new vision, like a new humanity, a new vision of humanity with a mass base behind it that is trying to act and live and walk its talk as best it can and except for the founding time of the country, which is even there, it is a little bit of a stretch, I mean, you got certain elements to it. This, the (19)60s generation just is pretty unique. You know. From a point of view of personal growth, from the point of view of social change, from the point of view of freedom from stereotypes, moving away from racism, moving away from women oppression, you know, equality of all people, the very themes that the founding fathers are trying to say. I would say the (19)60s, grasped the vision, and had a mass constituency, attempting to do it. 45:51 SM: Hold on a second, make sure I turn this tape. Okay, its going. 46:02 RD: Ok, for a lot of people, and by a lot I mean, millions of people, it was the defining event of their life. It defined who they were as a person and it might spill in today into being a democrat rather than a republican or something but that kind of misses the point. It was more like founding father time, you know. Big, big thinking, big philosophy, inspiring humanity to its greatest potential. Freedom as an individual, not buying into authority concepts anymore. You know, society be damned! We are forming a new society! You know, we are democrat! We are a democratic society, you know, kind of thing. You had a mass base, that divided into two elements. One was sort of the political side, the other was the cultural side although they overlapped a lot. And taken together, they made for a time and a people that, you know, can have no parallels in American history. 47:20 SM: Very well put very well put. I wish I knew it Newt was here. 47:28 RD: I do not know; we might not be able to have our conversation then. 47:32 SM: I want to I am going to read this part here. Do you feel that boomers are still having problems with healing from the divisions that tore the nation apart in their youth? Divisions between black and white divisions between those who support authority and those who criticize. Division between those who supported the troops and those who did not. How has the wall, the Vietnam Memorial wall play in healing the divisions? Not just for veterans but beyond the veterans and their families. And do you feel that the boomer generation will go to its grave like senator Edmund Muskie said to our students, when we met with him before he passed away, that they will be like the Civil War generation not truly healing? Am I wrong in thinking this or has forty years made the statement "time heals all wounds" truthful? Just your thoughts about, have we healed as a nation since all the divisions back in the (19)60s, early (19)70s? 48:35 RD: Well, you know, healing like everything else is in the eye of the beholder. Do people who are baby boomers taken as an aggregate, walk around with a lot of hurt and scars over the divisions of the country that Newt Gingrich might say were caused by the baby boomers? Do they really have that sense of they really, you know, the divisions were there? You know, something that weighs heavy on them. Do the Traditionalists feel so deeply like Newt was expressing that the country is forever scarred and ruined by the (19)60s Boomer world? And so they can never go to the grave feeling they never healed the country back to the Reagan vision or something like that. Well, I, I think that if I you know, I do not know you maybe probably know that better than I do, really. But I would say for my main point is that I do not think the baby boomers have a lot of hurt and things to heal in themselves relative to this question. I really do not. I think that they may be disappointed that they did not achieve their agenda. They may wish they could go further. They may look to Obama as the current modern expression of what this is all led to. But they may be frustrated by, you know, the prejudice and the separation and the traditionalist value thinking but I do not think they are going to the grave hurt. I mean, Vietnam veterans coming back maybe pain our pain, many of them. There may be elements like that there might be somebody that had a bad trip that has psyche scars that, but I think those are the minority. I mean, I do not think those is defined the whole baby boomer world, you know. I think the baby boomers are kind of healthy on the whole, you know, relative this question. If, if there had to be an evaluation between the traditionalist and the baby boomers, it might be that the traditionalist is more hurting about this than the baby boomers. But I do not know that that is so deep, either. I mean, I think that they reject what is happening in the modern world, if you want to call baby boomers the modern world. They do not buy into it. But I do not think that they are hurt by it. I think what you have is two cultures, you know that and then in a certain way, Newt is on to something, you know, what you have got is a country that has really divided into segments, you know, two different cultures. The (19)60s certainly example of it had the stick, you know, the normal culture, and then you had the weirdos the (19)60s, hippies, yippies. You, you know, and but if you were a hippie, you did not, you were not upset about it. I mean, this was your life. I mean, this was great. This is far out. And this was American flag and apple pie and America right or wrong. That was fine, too. They were two different worlds. And they were not really exchanging ideas, interfacing with each other. They did not see each other as all human beings, it was very rare to see, in this modern time, a true coming together as humanity. The maybe the last time he saw it at all was the night of the millennium. In a very unexpected way, where all of humanity kind of came off without anybody blowing anybody up, killing anybody. Everybody just yeah, big time, you know, that, you know, the Olympics is it occasionally. But still the leading light, I would say in the world relative to seeing something that is, all humanity is participating in a great competitive sport. But it all comes together at the end, and we are all human beings. So, the thing that has been lost by the process that we are in apparently, it is too early to tell the outcome, is our humanity. So, baby boomers do not see humanity in traditionalists. They do not. They do not see humanity when they look at George Bush, they do not see humanity when they see Newt Gingrich, they do not see humanity when they hear Glenn Beck. They do not. And the same is true the other way you know, there is no humanity being felt for Obama. There is no humanity being felt for Rachel Maddow. You know, probably from the whether you call it the right or traditional equivalent, I call it you know, there are two cultures in this country. And the, the biggest group, which is the rationalist, but just make money, let us be smart, savvy, and sophisticated and all mature and grown up, do not really think deeply. You know, they are not really into philosophy, they do not really grasp the big picture. You know, they are more about the short-term gain that and those games get shorter and shorter and shorter. It used to be a quarter focus. Now it is daily, hourly, you know, kind of thing. It is very self-aggrandizement in its orientation. It is not really worried about global warming. Or, you know, the world situation. Or I mean, yeah, a little bit but, but that is still the dominant group. So yeah, Paul Ray was right, you still have these three major groups, the biggest group being the rationalist of the pragmatists in the middle, are almost tuned out to the main events that are going on all around them. And the main bent is basically the right wing and the left wing. Okay, the baby boomer thing, the left and the and the traditionalist and the Republican Party being the right. 55:38 SM: How do you deal with another criticism is given to the boomers. And that is that, again, oftentimes, I have read this, ah jeeze, there is seventy-five million people only 15 percent, were ever really involved in any kind of an activism. So that is, you know, for them 85 percent of seventy-five million, that is not, you know, that is not, that means a lot of people did not care, a lot of people were not involved in the generation. 56:06 RD: The baby boomers? 56:06 SM: The baby boomers. 56:07 RD: Uh huh. 56:08 SM: But the common I have always said, you need to talk about 15 percent of seventy to seventy-five million, that is a hell of a lot of people. 56:15 RD: Yeah. 56:15 SM: And secondly, I just like your thoughts, because it seems to me that the subconscious is just as important as the conscience here. And so, we might say that 15 percent were involved in activism, but the other 85 percent had to be affective somewhat because they were part of something. Unless they were closed in a room someplace away from, it really had to affect them in some way. 56:41 RD: Yeah. 56:41 SM: And, and, and I think, so I liked your thoughts on that. That is another criticism given to the boomers. And secondly, the influence of boomers have had on their kids, and now grandkids in terms of passing on this sense of activism, or lack thereof, just your thoughts on a two part question there. 56:59 RD: I agree with what you are saying, you know, 15 percent of a society is a huge number, quite honestly, 2 percent of a society produces critical mass. Critical mass starts to develop this mysterious thing that our science as an "envi" is the Hundredth Monkey Effect. I say our science because they, you know, it was WWII you know, they went on to an island where no human beings have been and monkeys watched, you know, the Americans doing their thing and pretty soon the monkey started washing their hands and peeling the bananas like humans did. And that was, you know, observed scientifically and noted. But then islands that were nearby that had no contact at all, the monkeys started to peel their bananas and wash their hands, as well. And so, there is a transfer of some, some mechanism is occurring, or at least it theorizes by the Hundredth Monkey Effect, that a small group of people reaching a certain critical mass can profoundly affect the entirety of humanity. And, you know, I could give you my own science on that, but that is not necessarily for this purpose, you know. You would have to come tonight for that. 58:26 SM: Right. 58:27 RD: But, you know, there is a science to it, there really is and so you are on to it, you know. 58:33 SM: Right. 58:35 RD: A relatively small group of people still reaching critical mass, but changing their awareness changing how they see the world, changing their perception can have a positive or a negative effect, depending on what the change is. 58:51 SM: Is not that was the Peace Corps was about? 58:53 RD: Well, I guess so, you know, that is the that is the vision of going out and, you know, creating examples and being an example of bringing your enthusiasm into an area where basically is- a little drudgery and hard work and suddenly, you have got creativity and excitement and new and a helping hand carrying some water buckets too. It is certainly the concept. The thing is, though, that what the baby boomers seem unable to see in their expanded awareness, is that the people that are opposed to them. Let me see if I can explain this. A lot of baby boomers today have moved from politics and the (19)60s into more of personal growth. They are still political, they still vote, they still do things. But when it really comes down to what they are doing, they are a little more aligned, many of them okay, to the works of Deepak Chopra, or Wayne Dyer. They would go to a workshop that proposes the concept that you create your own reality. You are not a victim in the world, you can get back your life, you can take the reins of your life and there is, you want a positive attitude. Taking care of your health is an individual responsibility, not a governmental responsibility. You know, let us, let us stop the blame a little bit and work on ourselves. Okay, so I would say there is a progression going on in the baby boomers from the (19)60s into the you saw it at the end of the (19)60s and the early seventies. I mean, John Lennon goes to India, you know, sits with Mahatma, you know, the transcendental meditation guy. 1:01:10 SM: He just died last year. 1:01:13 RD: Yeah. You know, you had you know, a spiritual thing occurring kind of you know, gurus, you know, it was not so much the gurus, it was just looking for a new spirituality and the inner world. Well, that now we are all grown up, and we all have jobs, and we can put on suits. And we can talk a little more so that people can hear us. But if we are doing something, somewhere, as a baby boomer, if you were really to look at it, there is one group of activity that is raising money for health care, supporting the Al Gore campaign in some manner. There is that side, but there is also a huge side in personal growth, personal development, Tony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, I mean, Wayne Dyer, you know make some amazing statements, when you think about it, and he is on NPR, or PBS or whatever, you know, he is a national 1:02:15 SM: Right. 1:02:15 RD: Speaker, you know, saying that, basically, if you want to change the experiences of your life, you have to change yourself. So, in the (19)60s, most people that were activists never thought about Mahatma Gandhi. If you want change the world, you have to change yourself. Okay. But John Lennon when he came into the movement, that is what he thought he did. He was coming into that and what I am trying to say is that there is a deep river underneath the baby boomers that you might want to take note of, okay, which is about, if you want to change the world, you have to change yourself. That is the concept. Now, it turns out, going way into the future, which is, you know, probably, uniquely, something I would do, but I do not know others will really want to do that. I would say that the greatest discovery in the history of the world, which is yet to be made, but it is still it right in front of us. It is not way off either. It is not, it could come from the cultural creatives, but maybe more likely, it is going to come from the field of particle physics, especially this new particle collider outside of Geneva. Okay, so what it is, is that here is the commonsense opinion of everybody on Earth, whether you are a cultural creative, a baby boomer, or a traditionalist okay? Bad things happen for no reason at all. Okay? Things outside myself are real. 1:03:51 SM: Right? 1:03:52 RD: The world outside myself is solid, objective, and independent of myself. This is the everybody okay? I do not care who you are. I mean, everybody operates as if that was the truth or the, the physics let us call it the physics of this world. Well, it turns out that that is not the physics of this world at all, is completely misinformed. The only comparison historically that you could find, I think, is in the sixteenth century. I mean, you got the earth is stable in space, and the sun orbits the Earth. And what I mean, just look out the window, those clouds are slow moving, the idea that the earth is hurtling through space at 67,000 miles an hour around the Sun is absurd. And you know, and then one man Nicholas Copernicus makes the argument that sorry, but everybody on earth is completely misinformed. Well, it is very similar today to the greatest discovery ever is that this world and this can come from a true understanding of the atom, The atom is operating on a mirror principle. It is simply reflecting back to you your own residual self-image. No one is doing anything to you. No one has ever done anything to you. The origin of everything you are experiencing is coming from 60,000 thoughts across your brain every twenty-four hours. That is the origin of everything. Now the baby boomers do not know that. And the traditionalists do not do that, and no human being on earth really understands that. But the baby boomers, especially this underlying river, about personal growth, you know, that sort of thing, are in a direction that is very similar to the field of particle physics. So, who is going to win the Nobel Prize for making the world's greatest discovery could be particle physics, understanding the mystery of the atom, or could be cultural creatives understanding the mystery of their self? Okay, either both basically produce the same discovery that it is all coming from you. Now, this is a devastating concept to every political system on Earth. That is that absolutely is rooted in the blame game. And, and it now makes mincemeat of Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann, there is no, I mean what can you say. 1:06:21 SM: Did you go on TV and talk about this? 1:06:23 RD: No. 1:06:23 SM: Have you been invited? 1:06:25 RD: I do not know, I do not really seek out an invitation to this thing that I am doing right here today is a completely brand-new thing for me, you know, I mean, I am writing a book, is what I am doing, you know, and the book will, is profound for me just completely profound, and many, many subjects are addressed. And that is really my focus right now that would be my legacy. I would like to look, look away in the future and bring it right back to the present. But I do that, I mean, if you were to come tomorrow at the workshop, now, this is not an encouragement to come. 1:07:10 SM: Cannot go I have two winter meetings. 1:07:12 RD: What you will see is, not many people will come, you know, a few people will show up, but it will be the most impactful life changing event that they have ever had. I mean, they will feel like, their whole life has been waiting for this moment, that pretty much you know, if I do anything that is, and people can hang in there, you know, that is usually what it does. 1:07:35 SM: Right. 1:07:35 RD: It is quite a big deal, you know. But anyway, I see the baby boomers as being the seeds for a change of awareness. Ultimately, you know, starting with the (19)60s, going into nature, returning to the world, wanting to make the world a better place, environment, that sort of thing, keeping the spiritual side. And then the work to the extent that, you know, for a lot of people, Wayne Dyer, you know, he paused. It is a- it is not, I am just using them as archetypes. Not that they are the all that important. But inner work. You know, meditation is not weird or funny to a lot of these baby boomers, they may not talk about it. And they definitely think they are the only one who thinks this way. They do not recognize the collective, you know. I mean, they still think they are all by themselves. And it just even though there is 30 percent of the country is now makes up this group. They still think they are- no one thinks like me. But they are, they are the best possibility. Because what I understand is what is about to happen on earth. And what is about to happen on earth is you will never understand it unless you can understand evolution. So evolution is where an awareness change changes, okay? That- It is unheard of. We have no knowledge of it as a human race, okay? Because it is never here is the beginning of human, human there was there was something before human and then it was human. And then humans Marshall long. And now, this is the generation where human’s kind of come to a place where they are either going to evolve or they are not. 1:09:30 SM: Yeah, there is no. 1:09:32 RD: Right or wrong about it. There is just evolution is coming through with you or without you basically, yeah, so the, the baby boomers are, you know, may not make this jump. They may not, you know, because they fund the fundamental jump is partly even contemplated, or even considered by anybody, except those that are doing this inner work. They do not live it, but they understand it. They have been exposed to it; you know. So the awareness is that I mean, here would be the short version. The only power tool that you have as a human being is perception. So, the whole world, reflects your own perception. So how you see others is how you see yourself. How you see yourself is how you experience the world. This is not a philosophy, this is a physics, this is how it works. Okay? Now, it these details, a lot of information will defend that position, but I am able to defend it in detail to a science. Completely, you know, to the point where people will either think I am a great theoretician or run out of the room. But perception, it is all coming from ourselves from inside the world is not objective, real or solid. The world is a psychological construct whose origin is yourself. And the case is made by understanding the atom. 1:11:05 SM: That is going to be in that is going to be in your book. 1:11:07 RD: Yeah. 1:11:07 SM: When is the book supposed to be out? Are you going to go on college campuses? Because I think you need to. 1:11:13 RD: I would like to, you know, if I had good speaker’s bureau, and somebody who can you know, gets what I am a little bit. I think going back on campuses, which would be cool. You know, I am dabbling with that I have been, I kind of dropped out for fifteen years, I have not really talked to anybody you know. 1:11:28 SM: I think it would be really good on college campuses, there is just this whole- 1:11:34 RD: My answer to that, you know, the choice of birth, who chooses the parent? Does the child choose the parents or whose parents choose the child? The answer is the child chooses the parent every time to choose is the death? The Mack truck that runs out of control comes across the divide and is heading right your way. And the truck drivers little drunk to boot, you know? Is that the accident that was completely? Or are you yourself creating this whole experience? Meaning the truck coming right at you okay, or her? Okay? Well, it is, it is very challenging at this stage of awareness to even hear it, you know, because the fact is, is that she created her own timing her own death, her own way of going out. It was probably created before she was born. By herself. 1:12:29 SM: The drunk driver that killed her. 1:12:30 RD: I am sure there was, but I know. So, what I am saying is that the entire world of victim is self-inflicted. No one is doing anything to you. Therefore, everything I did in the (19)60s was a misunderstanding. As soon as you blame anyone for anything in your life, you turn your power over. And this is a huge, this is huge and you know. 1:13:03 SM: This is the change that Tom was asking you about? Right. Tom was? 1:13:07 RD: Yeah. I mean, Tom does not know about this but yeah, I mean, it was. So, you know, I have been on my own journey to kind of come around slowly to a point of view. And I have been the beneficiary of a lot of understanding not unlike Einstein got his information in waking dreams. You know, Einstein did not figure out the speed of light all by himself without any scientific instrumentation any more than Mozart wrote a perfect Sonata at age six. first draft and no changes, you know. He had help, you know. So I have help too you know. And that is fine. You know, I am not trying to be anything with it. You know, I have messenger. So to speak. 1:13:50 SM: I have a couple more questions that I just had some names here. Would you like to have some coffee now? 1:13:56 RD: I do not know. I am pretty good, actually. 1:13:59 SM: Sure, you do not want coffee? 1:14:01 RD: What time are we getting to here, ten to four. I do need a little bit of time to you know, get oriented. 1:14:07 SM: We have got about another twenty minutes. 1:14:09 RD: Okay, that sounds good. Yeah. 1:14:10 SM: I want to ask you, when did the (19)60s end, in your opinion when did the (19)60s end and what was the watershed moment that made it end? 1:14:19 RD: Well, for me, it is more how I would answer it, then some sociological understanding. You know, the big blowout event was the student strike in the spring of 1970 over Cambodia and Kent State right. Then comes Time magazine with the cover story "The Cooling of America" and basically for some people they would say that was the end right there. I mean, you could not get any you could not get SDS. SDS was now down to the hardcore was not like a big mass thing anymore. Nobody came. I wanted to go to Washington to do civil disobedience at that time. And I was the coordinator of the antiwar coalition at that time. And the coalition rejected my proposal, because they just did not see how it was possible and that it would fail. And so I actually went out on my own. Now, when I went on to a campus, everybody was still right there, everyone wanted to know what was happening, and personality showing up brought I mean, you know, the smallest group I had was 10,000 people anywhere I went, you know. Nobody could get twenty-five people in a room, but they would all come and hear me. And so, I realized, so when the- we had the opening day of the demonstration, I have 350,000 people, and one week later getting ready to be arrested 100,000 people. So then at that point when that was over, I thought, okay, this, it is over. You know, I mean, whatever that magic was, it is over. But then I was watching television and on comes John Lennon and Yoko Ono, okay, sitting in a bed in Canada, somewhere and they are clearly I mean, it is a little strange press conference, but I realized they are coming into the movement. And so pretty soon I am you know, I am in John Lennon's apartment, and we are planning to bring a million people to the republican convention. And our first we are going to tour the country. John's going to play. I am going to speak we will all have speakers and entertain, you know, we will have guests, entertainers and now we have gone to Ann Arbor first 25,000 seat venue, the show sells out in forty-five minutes. Stevie Wonder is the unannounced guest entertainer, my guest speakers of the Chicago Seven, you know, and we are High Five, you know this. So suddenly, John Lennon basically, individually breathes life right back into the whole thing again. And then Nixon comes down on Lennon and basically pulls the plug and starts deportation proceedings, and John has pull out. And so, I for me, that is where I was. Now I kept doing things I went to, the republicans changed their convention site to Miami, I went there. But you know, we had like, 10,000 people, we did not have a million people. I did a forty-two-day water fast to try to give a little, you know, oomph to the whole thing, you know, then, when Nixon was inaugurated, we did put 100,000 people on the ellipse or whatever, that the White House area. And then I went to Paris to be a part of the peace talks, or the signing of the Peace Accord. And I would say, I mean, to me when John Lennon left, that was it. We had 100,000 people at Nixon's inauguration. That was a little last fling, you know, and after that for me personally, it was over. I mean, there were subtle stuff going on things but not, you know, whatever it was, it was done. 1:18:31 SM: Just you are, this does not have to be an in-depth response. But all of those movements that happen that the antiwar movement, obviously in the civil rights movement, the women's movement, Chicano gay, and lesbian, environmental movement, they all came about around that time, how important were boomers and all those movements? 1:18:48 RD: Totally important. 1:18:49 SM: Because some people say, criticized the boomers as not being that important in the civil rights movement, because basically, it was already done, by the time they were eighteen years old. 1:18:59 RD: Yeah. Okay. Maybe? Well, it is true, maybe from a definitional point of view, see, I just see it all as one continuous thing. And I am not so fixated on these ages, the fact that people were in high school, when, you know, I was doing, you know, Cambodia stuff. You know, I just saw that whole spectrum as the same thing. You know, the, the civil rights movement had gone on for a long time. But it was the popular base, it was the country and that is now what do we want to call these? I mean, do you want to call the (19)60s generation the boomers? I mean, to me, 1960 up to 1973 is the period that we are talking about here. And for me, it was all one thing you know, now you are trying to do a book on the boomers and maybe the boomers are a more specialized element or component within that spectrum. And that is for you to sort out, you know, but for me, the sense that we are together, the sense that we are changing, the sense that we are experimenting, that we were open, we were, were exploring big picture thinking much like the founding fathers, were, we were about changing ourselves to change the world, we were going to change the world, we are going to make the world a better place. That was a thirteen-year window. That for me was one thing, the group that came in, you know, and did all this did not seem to quite fit the boomer age requirements or something, you know. It was 1960 college students, 1973, which included boomers, adults, you know, all kinds of people all through society, they've been brought along by that whole momentum, that entire constituency, is what turned on and then turned off. 1:21:06 SM: What do you think? You told me your story about with your dad and the farm and so forth in the 1960s but what happened in the 1950s, to these children during their elementary school years and beginning of junior high? They were given everything by their parents. Well, you know, of course, you are talking about, you know, you can talk about economics, that you talked about poor whites, and Appalachia talk about African Americans, the United States, their story, obviously, is quite different. But a lot of white students at that particular time were given a lot by their parents, because they've been through the Depression. Why did these young people who basically had everything rebel against like, I always think of that IBM image of five people of walking out of a house with a hat and going to work and everything. The IBM image. 1:22:00 RD: Yeah, well. 1:22:02 SM: They went to the university, and they, the multiversity. 1:22:06 RD: Well in, in the way that what you have been calling the baby boomers created a cushion and popular climate for black people, women and all these political movements to get a get a footing and get things going. The parents of the students, that it created a certain economic security, middle class life, that sort of thing. So that money, was not worried about, you know, money was not something, you grow up, just, you know, you know, you start farming when you are eight years old, and you know, it is day and night day and night. That, that sense of survival was removed. Thank you, Mom and Dad. And, and so it became possible to have a mindset in the, as a student, and particularly in the (19)60s, where you did not worry about it, you know. And you criticized the parents for being you, whatever, you know, put a spin on it. But the fact is, it created a base for. It is very similar to any society that begins to create a little bit of leisure, a little bit of relax. Time for a vacation, you know, an opportunity to go on a sabbatical and a retreat, you know. I think it can go degrade but also it goes creative, into philosophy and reflection and big picture thinking and, you know, positive human things. So, I, I do not see it as a negative at all, I see it as a steppingstone of evolution, I see humanity through the eyes of evolution. And I see that this whole (19)60s period as a precursor to something else that is coming. Call it change of awareness. 1:24:10 SM: One or two more questions that I just had and just quick responses, and we will finish here. This is the issue of trust, because you got into the issue of healing. One of the things I found in the, from the time I first interviewed Eugene McCarthy, just about every interview for Vietnam vets and activists like Tom Hayden is this issue of trust is something or lack thereof, many of the boomers had. Trust of leaders 1:24:35 RD: Of leaders yeah. 1:24:36 SM: And I say this because it is not just Lyndon Johnson in the Gulf of Tonkin. It is Richard Nixon and Watergate. It is as we bring you read and even the time we have learned about John Kennedy and what happened the Diem. We have learned we saw on national television, U2 the lie that Eisenhower. I mean, he lied to the American public on TV in 1959. And I know he went to his grave regretting it. But this ongoing there is no trust in religious leaders, no trust in university presidents, I know in our campus any administrator, no trusted anybody a position of responsibility no matter what they were, the question I am asking you basically is, is this a characteristic that has gotten within this group? And has this been passed on to their kids and their grandkids now? So that we have now three generations with lack of trust. And I can remember a psychology professor and my 101 class in college saying in the very beginning doctor Price at Binghamton he said, if you do not trust in your life, somebody, then you are going to have a pretty miserable life. You have got to be able to trust somebody. Just your thought on this trust businesses, even part of what we have been talking about here today. 1:25:55 RD: I do not think so, you know, I went to Vietnam, I saw Hanoi being bombed every day, I came back and made statements to the press about what I saw, the Pentagon came out and said, I had been brainwashed. And I was in shock, because I realized that this is a government agency, communicating to the public something that I absolutely know, from my own direct experiences is, is a lie. It is not, you know, there is a manipulation going on a public opinion, that I found at that stage of my life to be, you know, shocking, and startling, you know, because I did not think that really existed that way, you know. And so, there were many things like that that occurred in the (19)60s that sort of deepened that. I would say, though, that distrust of big government is also, you know, what you are seeing a lot with Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Tea Parties. You know, it is, it is all over the place. The real question is, does a president let us say, if you do not trust the president or the government, that you elected, okay, is, what is the real relationship here? Is the is the trust inside yourself? That basically all that is really happening is you do not really trust yourself therefore, the, the government that represents you, you do not trust that either. It is a mirror principle; it is mirroring back to your own lack of trust. Now, lack of trust, from that perspective, seems to define every single generation of this country. It is hard to find a single generation that had trust, I mean, maybe periods somewhat better, but or, for that matter, the entire human condition of the whole of humanity has been. Here is the belief: bad things happen for no reason at all. If one thing does not get me something else will. And victim is the nature of this world. Bad things happen for no reason at all. And is this really the nature of our world? Well, the answer is, of course, it is the nature of this world, as long as this is our own residual self-image. Because the world reflects back to us whatever we however, we see ourselves as a physics principle. So will humanity at this stage of evolution run off the cliff and kill herself off? Maybe, you know, maybe, and will those contributing to it be the traditionalists are the baby boomer? Both. It is not about which side you are on. It is about side taking itself. It is about the attack of whatever you condemn is what you are going to experience. Let us put it that way. Whatever you fear is what you are going to attract. Let us put it that way. So this does not, this understanding does not presently exists in human awareness. You know, there has been little philosophy, seeds drop from time to time, but I am saying that this is the way it works. Okay. And that this will be discovered. And will the baby boomers be able to get it. Those that are basically doing this reflective work this inner work as personal growth would be the place that I would put my best hope right now, for a group of people being able to heroes. Oh, I will lay this out tonight. And this group will, you know, they will have a few people might have a problem because they came to hear about the (19)60s. But for the most part, even if it is a small group, everybody will be there. What they will appreciate is that I am so thorough, and I have such a commanding understanding of it. And I am so formidable in the details that it is a breath of fresh air. But the big thing is I create my own reality. If you want to change the world, you have to change yourself these themes, okay, are already there. They are very small. They are an underlying river of the group that we are talking about here. And this is really where humanity is going. Okay, one day, there will be no judgement at all of anybody. Humanity is currently in a stage of awareness that I would call the journey of good and evil. I am right, and you are wrong. ok? As opposed to whatever I am experiencing, I am creating myself, I do not like it, I change myself. That is a completely different way of thinking. A million years in the future, everybody will understand what I am talking about. 1:26:17 SM: I think a lot of people fear what is upcoming. 1:31:13 RD: Yeah, and the fear brings it off. 1:31:15 SM: I think, for example, last night on the news, because of the situation in Iran, and nuclear, ok? They are talking about another cold war now. I am saying another fifty years of Cold War [inaudible] Iran out because [inaudible] of course if they do, then who knows what could happen? So, we are really heading into a really. 1:31:38 RD: Absolutely. We are going into hysteria. That leads to war, that is the current direction. What I am trying to say to you, which if you will, really 1:31:52 SM: Testing 123 testing. 1:32:03 RD: This is a very, very- 1:32:05 SM: I have some questions for you to kind of respond, just insert responses and just your feelings. What does the wall mean to you? What does the Vietnam Memorial mean to you? And when you went to the Wall for the first time, what kind of effect would that have on you? 1:32:22 RD: Well, you know, I did not quite get caught up in the emotions, probably of the family that lost their son, or, you know, that that sort of thing. I have just as much regard for the, the, you know, the Vietnamese that lost their lives by maybe 1000 to one over with the Americans, I do not know what the ratio is, but you know, it was a lot, you know, so, you know. It was a tragedy, you know, there was no doubt about it. And to remember the fallen and those that died and sacrificed their lives, you know, seems to be, you know, appropriate. Quite honestly, in my picture, though, it is, I would, I would feel the same way about the wall that I would feel about all the monuments of World War II all the monuments in World War I, all the monuments of everybody that died in inquisitions in the Middle Ages, and all the way back. I mean, we are a warring species. I also know that people choose their own time of death. Okay, and so therefore, I do not get all guilt ridden and blame oriented over any death. Okay. In the history of the universe, no one has died so far. Which is quite a statement, you know, and so, so I do not really quiet, I do not mean to see callous, because I am not, you know, I would like to end the dead zone entirely. I think. Death is a human creation. You know, death is the issue, that humans have created that as a collective. And so what we need to do is to get out of our anti- life strategies in thinking and into a pro-life strategy. And I do not mean the life thing of the portion move right at all, you know, I mean, to the abortion people, I would say that all abortions are chosen by the child, not the mother. I mean, that would be blasphemy, you know, and there is reasons for it, you know, so the, the morality of the thing is just confused. People do not even understand the fundamentals of death and what happens, no one knows what happens when you die. Or the idea that the soldier chooses his own time of death, goes to Vietnam to do it is just wow, you know. 1:34:40 SM: I remember, Elisabeth Kubler Ross is the one that was very popular talking about death. 1:34:45 RD: Yeah. 1:34:46 SM: Then she finally died. 1:34:47 RD: Right. Yeah. That seems to happen everywhere. 1:34:50 SM: Yep. 1:34:50 RD: So, I have a little different thing with it, I guess. 1:34:52 SM: I guess. What does Kent State and Jackson State mean to you? 1:34:56 RD: Well, I mean, it was a trigger point, and it was shocking, you know, American citizens being shot by National Guard troops was amazing and Jackson State was another trigger point. So, I do not know, I do not really have much of a story about it. I mean, I was a part of the Chicago seven, we call for a nationwide student strike in response at Kent State and 90 percent of the universities in this country walked out of school. So I could say I was, I was involved. I remember it. But right now, what I care about is how can humanity survive? You know, so going down memory lane, okay, over a bunch of misunderstandings in the first place, you know, does not really draw me in, you know, I mean, it is, it is all fine. But 1:35:49 SM: What does Watergate mean to you? 1:35:51 RD: [laughs] Well, it is back to that trust issue, I suppose or back to, you know, my coming back from Vietnam being horrified that, you know, the Pentagon would actually issue misstatements about, you know, things that I knew better. It is, it is very easy to keep the blame on Nixon. Okay, and basically, that Nixon was a control freak, who abused his power as a president, and, you know, ruined the legitimacy of the office, by senseless act of burglary, you know, against the opposition party, is one of the great stains on the democratic tradition. I mean, everybody would probably say something along those lines, you know. I would say that Nixon was a reflection of the American people. The things that Nixon was doing, was basically being represented by the aggregate of thoughts inside the country. If you wanted to understand the petty theft, the burglary, the disrespect for other people's personal property, the horrors that you want to push on the Nixon, then just look at yourself, because the American people are the origin of Watergate. Nixon is merely a mirror. Nixon is merely a reason I am not, you know, saying he did not do it. I am not saying anything like that. I am just saying, what is the origin of the things that we get so upset about? Watergate - the origin is ourselves. So, and now, if we could ever understand that, that is a future world. Okay, that is what is going to transform this planet. And it is pretty hard to imagine, but one day, it will happen. Well, I 1:37:53 SM: Have right here because I know your name the year 1968. Yeah, just that whole year, and of course, the Democratic Convention and then, of course, Chicago eight and Chicago seven, could you reflect on what happened in Chicago that year and then the trial? How do you look at it now? 1:38:15 RD: Like a past life! I would say that, you know, I like the fact that when I go speak, I would get a large turnout, because people sort of thought that I was important to hear or something like that. And I had that pretty much from the get-go in the (19)60s. But then when Chicago started, everything was transformed. I mean, I was on I was doing a press conference, it was carried by all three networks, pretty much every single day from mid-July, through the convention. And then after that, I was indicted. And after that, I was, I was in a presidential size press conference for six months. And so that changed my relationship to the public. You know, when I came to Washington, DC, like we are right now, I would, you know, I could not really sit here like this. I mean, people would come up, you know, like, like a celebrity, like a Hollywood type of thing, you know, what my autograph or have something mean to say! Or, you know, everybody, I was a recognizable figure and that for me personally, that was more how things changed, okay for the trial and Chicago you know. And then May Day too. After that things sort of wore down a little bit and I like that, you know, looking back now it is interesting. You know, it is it is a part of my life, I grew from it and so forth. But I so love where I am now. And, and everything for me has been a steppingstone to right now. And so I feel I finally have maybe something to actually contribute for the first time in my whole life right now. So it is not so much. I look back and you know, get all teary eyed or, you know or nostalgia about how the great days in the past. 1:40:08 SM: I have always wondered how a person like you and Tom Hayden and a lot of the other, a lot of my friends were arrested too in smaller protests but, feelings of being arrested, going to jail, and you ever thought, even when you were young, this is going to have a negative effect on me when I am fifty? 1:40:30 RD: Yeah 1:40:30 SM: Which is what a lot of people are writing about today that the reason why young people are not like, people, the (19)60s or the boomers is that they want, they do not want anything on their record, and it will be on the record, and they will never be hired. 1:40:44 RD: Yeah, right. I can, I can understand how the nature of social consciousness sets in and so forth. It was just a different time. And especially for someone like myself, I mean, a lot of people went to jail, and you know, if some got beaten up and tortured, you know, for their protest against discrimination or racism. It was, was not that way with me. But when I went to jail after the trial, we went to jail for two weeks, basically, until we raised money for appeal got out on bond. I mean, the, that night, there were 30,000 people outside the jail. When I went in, it would be like being Al Capone. Okay. I mean, in a positive way, to me, the inmates saw me as a hero, you know, for standing up to the judge. It was not like it was some oppressive, terrible. I mean, no, I was like, they were the whole prison was a fan club. You know, it was the largest riot in American history. The night I went to jail. I mean, more people rioted okay. I mean, burned down banks. And you know, I am not saying that is a greatest thing. I am just saying, we produced the largest riot in American history. But when we look at it, you felt before and whenever I have gone to jail, it was more, theatrics and support, you know, it was not like, the way everybody else goes to jail. You know, it was not so I cannot really have I do not have any complaints about the times I have gone to jail. You know, it was all kind of cool. Really. 1:42:22 SM: Just real quick thoughts here. Your thoughts on hippies and yippies. Just a, because you knew Abbie, and you knew Jerry, just your thought on the whole yippie group. 1:42:34 RD: Well, there was a cultural phenomena going on, you know, dress, love, trust, you know, probably some pot in there too. You know, it was a cultural thing, young people. And you know, Abby and Jerry were a little bit more like me. They were political but their base was more the culture. And so, what they were trying to do is to politicize the culture a little bit, get them a little more into the issues, but at the same time, give voice and expression to the culture. And so, you know, I am sure in a drug induced night, you know, they came up with youth international party. And then they called it 'yippie' you know. 1:43:27 SM: Jerry Rubin in his book, "Do it." Remember that? 1:43:29 RD: Yeah. Yeah. 1:43:30 SM: He said that. They were they did not know what the name their group, and then somebody was yelling in the background, "yippie" and he was like, there is, the- we will name it the yippies. You know it is interesting. this is just an anecdote. If you knew Abbie. A lot of people make fun of him. And that really upsets me because I remember when he passed away, he committed suicide and it was over in Bucks County now apart from Philadelphia. And I remember they did a bigger article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about him. And he had left the note when he killed himself, and he supposedly had only $2,000 in the bank. And in the note that he left was "no one is listening to me anymore." How sad. Because when you, because I remember when you came on the Phil Donahue show, after he came out of hiding and changed his nose or whatever. He had been working on the Hudson River, saving the Hudson River for years, unbeknownst to the American public. And a lot of people said that worthless son-of-a-gun. You know, he just a, but in reality was a person of substance. I felt- 1:44:35 RD: Yeah. 1:44:36 SM: And it was sad that he killed himself. 1:44:38 RD: Well, I do not know. Sad, I mean, maybe. We create our own experiences out of, out of. So, you know, basically, his ego got inflated in the (19)60s and then when it went down to being a normal person again, his ego could not handle it. So let us check out. I do not have a judgment about it. I do not call it sad, but I do not call it egotistical either. I you know, it just the way he chose to unfold himself. What I would say about Abby that I truly appreciated it was that Abbie taught me the great value of humor. And I saw I mean, we were, he came out and supported me during the May Day demonstrations when no one else did in the coalition. And as a result of his support, it was the two of us that got indicted for that. And we got off, they dropped the charges, but we are facing twenty years in jail. And on the day of the big arrest, you know, I mean, it is the biggest arrest in American history. We were arrested and we were being taken into the Justice Department, by the FBI, a large number of the maybe twenty men, okay, and Abbie was behind me, and I was in front, and we were marching down this empty corridor. And I would say, it was a fearful environment where the, the level of seriousness and hatred for us, okay, although professional, okay, was just, you know, I mean, it was not time to crack jokes, okay. It was, it was more like being in a concentration camp. I mean, it was a pretty serious moment, we are facing twenty years, we have no idea what is going to be dropped or anything like that. It was a very serious moment, I thought. And Abby just started making jokes with the guys that were with him. And, and he was just, it was breathtaking. I mean, in no time at all, he had the entire group of FBI agents, just friendly, laughing. Just, I mean, he just disarmed the whole mood and tenor of the whole thing, you know. And I saw him do that quite a few occasions. And I, I found that part of him to be totally inspiring. I mean, I tried to do better in that department myself, but I could not I could never compete with him. He was the best. He was, he was great. He was funny. He was a funny guy. And he was full of love and life and joy. 1:47:19 SM: "Steal this book" 1:47:20 RD: Yeah, Steal this Book. 1:47:21 SM: A lot of people stole it! 1:47:22 RD: Yeah, I am sure they did! 1:47:25 SM: The Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the Young Americans for Freedom, which were conservative, just your thoughts on those groups. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War kind of took over for SDS because SDS was waning, and they kind of took over the antiwar movement in those early seventies. 1:47:43 RD: I do not know, SDS was more to me, taken over by The Weathermen. 1:47:47 SM: Oh, yeah well, they kind of, violence. 1:47:50 RD: The vets, you know, the vets um, you know, everything kind of sort of went downhill a little bit as the ending occurred, you know. The, I mean, you had the John Kerry event, at the May Day demonstration with veterans to turning in their medals. You know, it was a pretty, you know, in a way, their way, a high minded thing, and bitterness and anger and that sort of thing, you know, as the dominant theme that came a little later, you know. And the Young Americans for Freedom was, you know, the current, I mean, sort of, you know, it was just a right wing group that, you know, were trying to hold on to traditional values. And, you know, use attack, and defend mode, it was a local thing, I do not really have a comment about that just side taking again you know. 1:48:44 SM: I am going to throw names, and then real quick responses and then, that is it. I am going start with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubins. 1:48:52 RD: Well, I told you about Abby, I think Abbie was pretty cool. And, you know, and I know, he checked out and they went that way. You know, I guess, you know, would have been nice if I could have talked to him before that. But I did not so you know, it is what it is. I do not have any judgment about it. You know, Jerry, same thing he checked out, you know. I mean, Jerry went into trying to make some money, you know, and, you know, network marketing. He was kind of cool, but he fought a lot. Very analytical thinking, pretty intense, you know, this is broke, something was wrong. 1:49:26 SM: He was killed jaywalking. 1:49:28 RD: But he just, you know, he was not paying attention to the world that he was in and he- But, you know, it did not mean that he was wrong. It did not mean that he did not choose to die in that way. That is how he chose to leave. So that is fine. 1:49:43 SM: How about Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda? RD: Well, I went on to a military base, I think it was in North Carolina, we had a coffee shop that I had helped organize to support GI's called SOS, Support our Soldiers. Jane came down and you know, came to the coffee house. She was with Tom at this point. I mean, and Jane said, well, let us go on to the base. And so, we went on to the base, and you know, and in a second, we were surrounded by 20,000 troops. And it was, it gave me an appreciation but I thought it took a lot of courage. You know, I mean, I, I had a lot of courage too but I never expected it from anybody else. Jane Fonda I mean you could have lost your life right there. You know, he was very intense. And so I like Jane, and I thought she stood her ground. And she was, you know, spoke what she believed and, you know, she has moved on like everybody else now. I tip my hat to her for her courage and courage is what stands out for me about Jane Fonda. Tom is a friend, you know, Tom, and I were partners all the way. You know, I, I know I disappointed him when I kind of took a turn on the road went inward. And that even today, and it is not really, you know, understood, you know what happened. And I do not understand it really about it. But I know that I disappointed him. But he was mature. And he has kind of moved on. So, when we see each other now from time to time, you know, he is beautiful, you know, I put on an event at the summit. And, you know, at 1992 I guess it was in Brazil and you know, Tom flew down to be a part of my event. It was really cool. SM: He has gotten a brand-new book out to you know? "(19)60s Activism" yeah. 1:51:53 RD: So that is what it is called? 1:51:54 SM: He did the book "Reunion" which was very popular in paperback, then he wrote a book on Ireland because he loves the Irish. 1:52:01 RD: Yeah, he does. 1:52:02 SM: Then he has gotten involved with the gangs, talking about the guns in LA. 1:52:05 RD: Is that what his current book is on? 1:52:07 SM: No, no, no, this has nothing to do with the gangs, it is about the whole (19)60s movement, the (19)60s period. Putting it all in a capsule. 1:52:14 RD: He is a good writer, and a great speaker, and I you know, he is a smart guy. 1:52:19 SM: How about Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. 1:52:24 RD: I like Gene McCarthy. I really did. You know, I was so surprised by what happened you know? I mean, I thought we would bring a half million people to Chicago. But you know, I also thought Linda Johnson was going to be the nominee. 1:52:37 SM: Oh, I know! 1:52:38 RD: Ben Johnson withdraws and then Gene McCarthy comes in second. And I mean, or wins I forget, when did it come in second, or win? 1:52:45 SM: Well, he came in second. 1:52:46 RD: Second, yeah so anyway, you know, it was just like, wow, you know, suddenly, you know, everything was moving back into power to electoral politics, you know, which was not where I was at, at the time. But, you know, I, you know, and then just recently we, in 1996, the Democrats went back to Chicago, and I was a hermit, you know, I was living in the Grand Canyon, and I had not talked to anybody, you know, and I did not talk to an adult for four years. And so, I was really inward, you could say, but I felt to go, and I did and, and, you know, immediately I am on Larry King Live, and there is Gene McCarthy, you know? And, you know, I thought he was a good man. Really. I liked him. 1:53:37 SM: How about McGovern? 1:53:38 RD: Yeah, well, I, you know, I liked him, too. I mean, he had the courage to make the run and the fact that, you know, it was an overwhelming, you know, point of view, different point of view by the country. What it takes to come to that level, I do not care who you are, I mean, you may be number two, but the when the party's nomination and the make a run for president is exhausting. It is exhausting. It takes everything to hold yourself together and articulate yourself over and over again, and, and make it credible. You know, I tip my hat to anybody who, you know, he attempts that and pulls that off. And so, you know, and then he and he stood for, you know, I thought good things. And so, yeah, I have nothing but fond memories for McGovern. 1:54:29 SM: The Kennedys. Certainly, Bobby and John and Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X. Could you get an interesting contrast between those four, just thoughts on those four gentlemen? 1:54:41 RD: Well, I thought Kennedy captured the spirit of the, of the of this group that I am talking about, you know? We ourselves may have not seen it that way. You know that. But he did. You know, he was the hope, he was the new generation. He was, you know, America trying to reach for its highest best philosophical side. And, you know, in that way, I think he is similar to Obama, you know, I do I thought for that time and everything. So you know, and he, I really respect the fact that he did so well, in the job that he had while going through so much physical pain. Pain is very tough to handle in any job. And as the President Roosevelt too, I mean, that is, that takes you know, as my admiration really does. Part of the king was a friend, I really thought highly of him. He also had the Mahatma Gandhi view, let us change yourself to change the world. You know, I met him first in Chicago, he had come to do an open housing march in Cicero. And he was very impressed that I was able to bring several thousand poor white people to that marsh. He went out of his way to; he just did not believe it was possible. But it was, you know! He kept hearing that we were coming and it was like, no way. And then when we showed up, and the people were cool, too. I mean, they were really there. Completely. They were not, you know. 1:56:26 SM: His Vietnam speech, too, was just incredible. 1:56:28 RD: Oh, it was incredible yeah, totally incredible. He was just one of those chosen guys. You know, mean, he really was. I never knew Malcolm X truthfully. So I mean, I followed his course and I did become good friends with Bobby Seale and sort of in a certain way, the Black Panther Party, and Malcolm X had a similar track. They were kind of on I guess. 1:56:55 SM: Your thoughts on the black power challenge of people like Dr. King and Byard Rustin and James Armour, Whitney Young, Roy Wilkins. There was a challenge to that group. Black Power all of a sudden, your time is past. Stokely Carmichael. There is a historic picture. We have only got five more minutes I know you are getting tired. But you probably remember that picture Stokely standing next to Martin and Martin was like this. Martin was pretty upset, because his time was passed. 1:57:25 RD: It is tough, you know, when you are when you are basically trying to build a nonviolent movement, and you know, within your own ranks there emerges, pick up guns, and, you know, let us, let us fight back and that sort of thing. You know, it is threatening your fundamental identity. And you try to put a good face on it, because, you know, they are important. They are young people; they are important to the movement. I mean, we had the same thing ourselves when I was trying to hold together a nonviolent coalition and in comes The Weatherman. And you know, and it was similar, you know, it was and these were friends and people I knew, and yet, there was a big disagreement on strategy and tactics. So you know, those are challenging moments and they are for anybody. 1:58:12 SM: I remember Dr. O'Neill from well, I interviewed the professor who wrote "Coming Apart" said he was the adviser to SDS at the University of Michigan. Then he went to Wisconsin, and he said, I did not know what I got myself into. 1:58:25 RD: Its very true. 1:58:27 SM: LBJ and Robert McNamara. 1:58:30 RD: What about it just reactions? 1:58:32 SM: To both Johnson and McNamara, Spiro Agnew, that whole group? 1:58:36 RD: Well, they are not all, to me they are all very different. You know, I think I was pretty judgmental about Lyndon Johnson in the (19)60s. But I do not feel like judgment today. I, you know, I think he was a hard working politician. Who just got over his head with Vietnam, as all Americans did? And, you know, it just more showed the lack of understanding of other cultures. You cannot win in Vietnam. You know, you could make the same argument. You cannot really militarily win in Afghanistan too. I do not know about Afghanistan, but I do know about Vietnam. And, you know, it was, I mean, the French were there fighting for 100 years, and then their military defeated at the Dien Bien Phu know, and when you study that, I mean, West Point studies that battle its brilliant. I mean, it is incredible. I mean, here is this, here is a society that can mobilize 3 million people at one time, you know, just no country can, you know overtake it. And when you understand their culture and how they have been doing this for 3,000, 2,000 years, you know, they defeated the nephew Genghis Khan in the thirteenth century, and people out in the rice paddies tell that story like it was yesterday or something. They just did not understand what they were dealing with. 2:00:01 SM: I think that Obama is going to find out the same thing about Afghanistan. 2:00:05 RD: I mean, that is the concern that people have. I do not know about Afghanistan. But so you know, and then Johnson, you know, withdrew. And, you know, I do not know, I never really, you know, what was interesting to me was McNamara who was so bright and, you know, groomed in the military way of thinking and everything, rises to the level of Secretary of Defense, you know, becomes certainly the architect of how to do it. And then basically has a reflection period and, you know, rewrites history and comes out, you know, criticizes himself with the whole [inaudible]. And I, you know, we were also superficial, in a way in our criticism of our archetypes, you know, for any human being to do that, we would all do well to reflect on doing that ourselves. Okay, that is to really look at yourself, and then let the whole world you know, see 180-degree shift, okay. And where you are, you know, you are basically saying that I was wrong, you know, on a matter involving 1000s and 1000s of lives, you know, it is pretty incredible, really. So I kind of feel inspired by McNamara, truthfully you know. I hated him in the (19)60s. I mean, he was the bad guy. But not now. I say that was pretty- 2:01:37 SM: When I interviewed McCarthy, it was right after "In Retrospect" came out, In Retrospect came out in 1995 and 1996 was when I interviewed McCarthy. In my first interview McCarthy says piece of garbage, and I will not read it. I mean, he was pretty critical of it. 2:01:52 RD: Then Spyro Agnew, I mean, he called me the most dangerous man in the United States on national television and from that point of view, I mean, he kind of made my career, you know, I mean, it was probably the best thing that ever got said about me. I do not really think it was an accurate statement, all things considered, but it certainly helped me with my base. 2:02:17 SM: The two last people are groups, the Barrigan brothers, just your thoughts on the Barrigan Brothers. 2:02:22 RD: They were, they made a real contribution. They brought a certain morality and spiritual religious side onto things. They were very courageous. They went to jail. And I, they were never really close into the coalition. It was interesting. They kind of did their own thing. They were always a part of it, but not quite what I, you know, I was about the coalition, and they were sort of there but really, you know, but I always tip my hat you know, I think well of them. 2:02:51 SM: The last, the last ones are the women leaders, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug of the feminist movement. Because the thing is, when you read, the feminist movement came about because in the antiwar movement, it was run by men. And so women got sick of the men being dominated, dominating those movements, and then created the women's movement. Now, your thoughts on that statement number one, and just your thoughts on their effectiveness and their value? 2:03:21 RD: I think it is sort of the traditional role of a movement, you know, your social change movements tend to identify with a particular constituency, they then look around and see what is suppressing that constituency. They do not really say start off by let us change ourselves to change the world, they said, let us change, man, let us change the races, let us change them, you know. And that is, that is pretty standard and usually, it, it starts by trying to have some coalition building and conciliatory, you know, like, like, Obama would love to do get a bipartisan something going. But, you know, over time, I am more, you know, a more focused approach tends to emerge, you know, and his writer writes, it is like, the difference between King and Stokely Carmichael, that sort of thing. And so, Betty Friedan, kind of gives rise to Gloria Steinem. You know, and then from there it goes even more that way. I do not, I do not have a judgment about anybody's politics. That is right and this is wrong, you know, I do not really do that anymore. I used to but I do not buy it. 2:04:46 SM: You are evolving. 2:04:47 RD: I am evolving! That is it. Yeah. 2:04:49 SM: I think that is a word. I think it is a word we ought to use more too because some of the things you said, I have been in university for 30 years. 2:04:58 RD: Yeah. 2:04:58 SM: And I have seen things. 2:04:59 RD: Yeah 2:05:00 SM: I think you are right on. I think you can really appeal to a lot of the young people today. 2:05:05 RD: Yeah 2:05:06 SM: The spirituality is important. 2:05:08 RD: Yeah, yeah. it would be cool. 2:05:09 SM: Why am I here? What is my purpose and all of those kinds of things? 2:05:12 RD: I am very good at those kinds of questions. 2:05:15 SM: Was there any question I did not ask you that you thought I was going to ask you before we end? 2:05:19 RD: Not really, you know, I had no idea what we are going to do truthfully. I was all good. I thought you were well prepared. Well done. And I wish you all the really sincerely the very best with your effort. I know it has been a big effort. You have talked to a lot of people and, and, you know, wherever I fit in, it is completely up to you. 2:05:37 SM: No, you are going to be in there. (End of Interview) Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Rennie Davis Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Davis, Rennie ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Chicago Seven Trial, Chicago, Ill., 1969-1970; Political activists--United States; Davis, Rennie--Interviews Description An account of the resource Rennie Davis (1940-2021) was a spiritual lecturer and an activist. Davis was an American anti-Vietnam war protest leader of the 1960s. He was one of the Chicago Seven defendants. He appeared on several shows, including <em>Larry King Live</em> and <em>Barbara Walters</em>, and provided business advice for Fortune 500 companies. Davis was an alumnus of Oberlin College. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-10-10 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.68a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.68b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 125:41 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/b23acbbcd1928fd974fd03904286aecc.jpg 935992e3805a8b9cbabc62b6d0785cda https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/5a545cf806c07167fa222b644703b538.mp3 0b36c0c7745429296c80212ed4cfcff0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-09-10 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Susan Jacoby, 1945- Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Susan Jacoby is an author and has written twelve books, including The Age of American Unreason. She is a graduate from Michigan University and she now lives in New York City, where she is the program director of the New York Branch of the Center for inquiry.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:515,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:13228792},&quot;12&quot;:0}">Susan Jacoby is an author and has written twelve books, including <em>The Age of American Unreason</em>. She is a graduate from Michigan University and she now lives in New York City, where she is the program director of the New York Branch of the Center for inquiry.</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 173:52 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Women in the Vietnam War; Baby boom generation; women; Anti-war movement; Activism; Tom Hayden; Pat Tillman.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:515,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:13228792},&quot;12&quot;:0}">Women in the Vietnam War; Baby boom generation; women; Anti-war movement; Activism; Tom Hayden; Pat Tillman.</span> Subject LCSH Authors; Jacoby, Susan, 1945--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Susan Jacoby Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 10 September 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:03): Testing one, two. SJ (00:00:03): Do you want test and see if you are getting it? SM (00:00:12): Oh, I know it will not. Testing. [inaudible] this one has already started. SJ (00:00:14): No problem. SM (00:00:16): I am going to read these to make sure that I get these right too. I am all over the place here. And the first question I was going to ask is that you wrote a piece in the Wounded Generation, which was a book that came out in 1980. It was a paperback on Vietnam. SJ (00:00:32): Back in the Dark Ages. SM (00:00:37): That was back in the Dark Ages. This is the only question I have on that because I have interviewed just about everybody else who was at the symposium. Women in the Vietnam War wrote a piece in the book, in the Wounded Generation on women in the war. How are boomer generation women wounded psychologically, personally, from that war? And how important were they in the anti-war movement? SJ (00:01:05): I will tell you honestly. I think that women who were older than the boomer generation were more important in the anti-war movement than women of the boomer generation. The contact that women of the boomer generation had with the anti-war movement, although there were lots of women obviously involved, just as there were lots of men, but the fundamental thing is the women were not subject to the draft, did not have any danger of having to fight in that war. So I think unless a woman had a brother or a husband who is actually in the fighting, and this would be very different, the attitudes of people who came from the social class that did most of the fighting, which then as now meant people who were not going to college, basically blue collar people, they were not as represented in the anti-war movement as were college educated boomer women. So I really do not think that that women were affected in the same way that men were, except that women in general were more anti-war than men. And that was true not just for boomer women, but for all women. SM (00:02:26): Right. Let me just... Here we go. SJ (00:02:32): Let me see if I can get this guy again. SM (00:02:33): Okay. Very good. SJ (00:02:33): That is done. My cell phone is back in my purse. That is it. SM (00:02:40): Okay. SJ (00:02:43): Okay. SM (00:02:46): I have read a little bit about your background from going on the web and also in the book, but how did you become who you are? In terms of, who were your mentors, your role models? I know you went to Michigan State starting in (19)63, but who are the people that influenced you the most in your early years? SJ (00:03:07): Do you mean by my early years, do you mean when I was a- SM (00:03:09): High school. SJ (00:03:09): Kiddo? SM (00:03:10): Yeah. Let us say high school, college. SJ (00:03:17): That is an interesting question. I will preface it by saying that I always wanted to be a newspaper reporter. I wanted to be a newspaper reporter from the time I was a kid. And I wanted to be a newspaper reporter because everybody in my family read newspapers and that is what I wanted to do. At Michigan State, my college career was somewhat different from other members of the boomer generation. I did not want to go to college. I was an idiot. I was a classic example of someone who was not at an age where I could most benefit from education. And unlike most people of my generation who stayed in school as long as they could, men because of the war and women for other reasons, I was determined to get out. I grew up in Okemos, Michigan, which is right near Michigan State. I went to Michigan State for one reason and one reason only. They had an honors college which enabled you if you kept up a certain grade point to take as many credits as you want and get through as fast as you could. I graduated in just a little over two years. At a better university, I would not have been able to do that. At Michigan State, I did. And the reason I did that was I knew that if I had to be in college for four years, I would become a dropout. And there was no way a woman was ever going to get a job as a newspaper reporter if she was a college dropout. I think this is important because I am just on the edge of the baby boom generation born nine months before it actually started. So when I went to college, it was between 1963 and 1965. This was before what people think of as "the (19)60s." When I entered Michigan State, there were parietal rules. I was almost expelled for being found doing nothing in a boys' off-campus apartment. That is what the real... In other words, this is a totally different experience from being that age five years later when all of that stuff had gone out the window. So in many ways, things for me at that age were more like what they were for people in the (19)50s than they were for the boomers who came of age only five years later. And I knew I could not stand living under this regime which kept you as a child, particularly if you were a woman. This is before feminism and so I wanted to get through as fast as possible. Nevertheless, I have to say, I took any course I wanted because that is another thing you could do at the honors college. I took Russian. I majored in journalism and there were some great journalism professors there. A lot of them were people who had been newspaper men in Wisconsin during the McCarthy era and had lost their jobs because of it. And John Hannah, who was then the president of Michigan State, hired a lot of those people. He was very strong about McCarthy. Did not like him. He was a liberal Republican, they were still liberal, and the chairman of the US Civil Rights Commission as well, which practically made you a communist to the eyes of the McCarthyites. Anyway, but the best thing my professors did for me was they made me realize I had to have a huge amount of professional experience by the time I got out of college to get a job as a woman. And I did. And they were my mentors. One of them was named George Huff, who is still alive. One of them was named Bud Myers. And so I went to work as a campus stringer for the Detroit Free Press. SM (00:07:18): Oh, okay. SJ (00:07:19): Michigan State was one of the two biggest universities in the state and it was a source of news. And when I went to interview at the Washington Post in the spring of 1965 for a job, I had a huge professional string book from the Detroit Free Press. So I would say that things worked out for me, although they should not have. My real education came later on. SM (00:07:45): Yeah. Gets me right into my next question here. As a journalist in the (19)60s and (19)70s, do you feel the media only went after what was sensational? And by that I mean the drug culture, the long hair, the clothes, the violence, the protests. And there was little coverage of the majority of the young people that were not involved in any of this kind of activism. SJ (00:08:13): I mentioned this in the age of American Unreason. SM (00:08:17): Right. Right. SJ (00:08:18): And it was not that they went after just what was sensational. That was as much a part of the (19)60s as anything else. It was that the media mostly, it is absolutely true, was then and is now, the media was liberal. Reporters who were close to the age of the students who were protesting shared their views. We did not know anything about the things we now know. I knew nothing about fundamentalist religion. And in fact, there was a whole other (19)60s. That whole other (19)60s is represented by George W. Bush and all of the neoconservatives who first got into government under Ronald Reagan and really began running things under George W. Bush. They were there in the (19)60s too and they were drawing quite different conclusions about what was going on around them than people like me who worked for the Washington Post were. I was not aware of what I now call the other (19)60s at all then. I have become aware of it in the last 20 years, but I never thought about it then. SM (00:09:27): Well, you brought it up. You are one of the few people that is really brought it up in any detail. When I interviewed Lee Edwards, a historian down in Washington, he said one of the things in all the books on the (19)60s is they do not ever talk about the conservative students and the Young Americans for Freedom, for example. SJ (00:09:43): That is right. SM (00:09:44): And other groups like that. And of course the importance of the Goldwater election and the links to Ronald Reagan. Why was that? SJ (00:09:52): As I said, I think why it was is that the social class of the media was very different from the social class... First of all, in the early 1960s, there was no intellectual right wing. There was William Buckley in the National Review and that was that. But there was not any... Now, there is a whole right wing intellectual establishment as well. There was no right wing intellectual establishment then. There was Bill Buckley and his followers, and that is who it was. But there is something else too, I think just as important as that, is the fact that the (19)60s were the years when the fundamentalists established their kindergarten through college network of education and began to train the generation that has had so much influence on public life for the last 30 years. We did not know those people. SM (00:10:49): Well, it is interesting cause you bring up the Campus Crusade for Christ. [inaudible]. SJ (00:10:54): They were just getting started then. SM (00:10:56): Being a college administrator, actually, I have worked with many of those students. But it is interesting about how they used the dress of the (19)60s but they had a different point of view. SJ (00:11:08): Well, sure. SM (00:11:08): Yeah. And so a lot of people do not even think about the Campus Crusade for Christ when they are talking about the (19)60s. SJ (00:11:14): But they were in the (19)60s is when the Campus Crusade for Christ really, it actually was started in the (19)50s, but it did not really have any traction on anything but religious campuses until the late 1960s when they really got started. And one of the things that they were presenting themselves as was an alternative to the drug culture. You can be cool. You can be hip like the Jesus Electric Light and Power Company. You can be cool, you can be hip, but you do not have to share the views of all of those hippies about free love and all of that. And remember, also by the late 1960s, there were a lot of kids who had been involved in the drug scene and so on and were disillusioned with it, were looking for something else. SM (00:12:02): Right. You talk about what they call the grateful and the Ungrateful Generation. Define those. SJ (00:12:10): Well... SM (00:12:10): Because the people that are going to be reading these interviews may not have read your book. SJ (00:12:14): Well, the Grateful Generation was my parents' generation. I call them the Grateful Generation, not the Greatest Generation. SM (00:12:21): And they are not linked to the Grateful Dead. SJ (00:12:23): They are not linked. The Grateful Dead is part of the Ungrateful Generation. But my parents' generation, the World War II generation was the Grateful Generation. These were people who, my mother who is still alive, is a very typical example. Brought up in a blue collar family, first member of her family to go to college. My grandfather, her father, they were blue collar people. My parents, the generation that emerged from World War II as young adults, first of all... In the case of my father it was a little older, but a lot of them went to college on the GI Bill. They came from families where a generation earlier, they would not have been able to go to college. The Grateful Generation, what Tom Brokaw calls the Greatest Generation, they had a lot to be grateful for. One of the things they had to be grateful for is unlike people getting out of the service today, they got to buy houses with mortgages at 4 percent with VA loans. They went to school on the GI Bill. They came of age at a time when, although there were ups and downs, America's economic prospects were good. All of those members of the Grateful Generation who went to school on the GI Bill, enjoyed a standard of living which their own parents could never have dreamed of. So they had good reason to be grateful. And the idea, it was always taken for granted that they would send their own children to college. That was not even a question then. And the thing is-is they expected their children who had so much more than they had had when they were growing up during the Depression when they were coming of age during World War II, they expected their children to be thrilled with the middle-class life they had achieved and to which they so aspired. And why I called us the Ungrateful Generation then, again, only some, but particularly among those who are college educated, turned around and said, "We do not want your ticky tacky houses. We do not like these universities. We do not like what they are teaching. We do not like your war." SM (00:14:54): It is interesting. I interviewed Tom Hayden this past week at the follow-up interview that I had [inaudible] for... I interviewed him for almost two hours. And then of course about a year ago I interviewed Todd Gitlin. And they hate the term boomer generation. Both of them. SJ (00:15:08): Well, they are not boomers. SM (00:15:09): Yeah. Well, yeah, they were 42 and 40, I think. SJ (00:15:13): They are not boomers. SM (00:15:14): Todd's younger than Tom. But Tom Hayden, I would like your response to this. Because Tom said he does not like even Tom Brokaw's book The Boom, because he says boom is an indication of something being shot out, showing violence. And boom, that is way the Tom [inaudible]. And then the fact that it happened so fast that the boomer generation was insignificant. It was just a short time period in history. So he was attacking the term boom. SJ (00:15:51): Well, I think if you will pardon my saying so, he is being a bit of naturalistic in his interpretation. The word baby boom was used beginning in the 1940s, and it did not have anything to do with violence. All it meant is all of these people were having all of these children. Did not have anything to do with the idea of the boomer generation as it was taken over in the (19)60s. Tom Hayden, if he says that, his mind is still in the (19)60s, which does not really surprise me. And as for the boomer generation being a short moment in time, well, he does not know much about demography then. Now, there really are two boomer generations. 1957 was the highest birth rate in American history. It was the exact midpoint of the baby boom generation. After that, the demography tapers off a little. But there are really two halves of the boomer generation. One is people born between 1946 and 1957, the older boomers, and people born between 1957 and 1964, the younger boomers. There is a big difference between them. One of them being that it is only the older boomers who came of age in the late 1960s. The younger boomers came of age in a much more conservative era. And in fact, they are more conservative politically in many ways than the older boomers. Barack Obama is a younger boomer. SM (00:17:23): Right. 52 years old, I believe. SJ (00:17:26): He keeps trying to dis-identify himself from the baby boom generation, but he is a boomer. And here is the one thing that the older boomers and the younger boomers have in common. And again, Hayden and Gitlin are not boomers at all. They belong to that half generation born, really, between the middle of the depression and the end of the Second World War. And they have some different... Although you are right, they were involved in in fact, what people think of today as a lot of the activities of the boomer generation. But what the younger boomers and the older boomers have in common is this. They both grew up in spite of the recessions of the 1970s, in times overall that were a rising economy in which they expected and in fact did get access to a lot of things their parents never had. And this is true when you think about Barack Obama. In fact, the younger half of the boomer generation that was Black benefited a lot more from these things than the older Black baby boomers, simply because of the achievements of the civil rights movement that were won when Barack Obama was a baby. So the younger boomers and the older boomers have in common, it did not cost them a fortune to go to college. The real rise in college tuition did not happen until the mid 1980s, after even most of the younger boomers were through college. The younger boomers, Blacks and Hispanics benefited from scholarships and things that did not exist for Blacks, for the older boomers. And something else also, which is that the younger boomers... Again, the Obamas are perfect examples of this. They moved into a path that had been paved by the older boomers, which was if you were 20 in the 1950s, you were expected within two years of graduating from college, if you were a girl to be married, if you were a guy, you were not expected to be married till you were 30, if you were a guy to have a good job. And when the boomers who came of age in the (19)60s came along, they pioneered a path in which it was okay not to get married right away and it was okay to stay in school longer, to take some time out, find out what it was you really want to do. Now, when you look at Barack Obama's career in the 1970s, the timeout he took from school before he went back to law school, these are things that, for instance, a young Black man from the older part of the boomer generation, his parents would have gone nuts if he had said, "I want to wait to go to law school. I want to find myself." SM (00:20:19): Yeah. SJ (00:20:21): Yeah. These possibilities, which are that your life is not set in stone when you are 22, that was a way of living that was pioneered by the older bloomers. When Tom Hayden says this was just a moment in time, he was utterly wrong. SM (00:20:38): He was referring to that term boom and he was referring to Tom Brokaw's book. Yeah. So- SJ (00:20:43): This is a book being written 40 years after all of this is taking place. SM (00:20:47): Right-right. SJ (00:20:48): And I do not know what Tom Brokaw means by boom, but maybe Tom Hayden does not know that the term baby boomer became current in the 1940s. It was not an invention of the 1960s. SM (00:20:58): I know when I interviewed Richie Havens, Richie said, "I was born in 41, but I am really a boomer." SJ (00:21:03): Yeah. SM (00:21:04): Because of his spirit. And that is- SJ (00:21:06): Well, what happened with the boomers of Tom Hayden's age, and the pre-boomers is the things came along in the 1960s and they took advantage... You are absolutely right. A lot of what is thought of as the boomer activities of the late (19)60s was really carried out by this half generation to which both Todd Gitlin, whom I love, and Tom Hayden belong. SM (00:21:34): Yeah. And so did Richie. SJ (00:21:35): Yeah. And Richie too. SM (00:21:36): Yeah. One of the things that I was curious, you already made reference to it, before the real strong women's movement and feminism and so forth, and what was it like being a female reporter? You said you had two people who were really strong role models for you, men, who- SJ (00:21:54): Not role models. They gave me great advice. SM (00:21:55): They gave you great advice. SJ (00:21:57): They were not role models at all. SM (00:22:01): But what was it like to be a female reporter in the early or mid (19)60s? SJ (00:22:05): Well, I applied for a job at two places. The Detroit Free Press and the Washington Post. Fortunately, the Detroit Free Press did not hire me, so I was hired by the Post, which was great. SM (00:22:17): Right. SJ (00:22:20): The Free Press refused to hire me for anything but the society section. This is 1964. Although I had been covering regular stories for them for years because they said a woman could not be out at night if there were a story that came up at night. The Post was a different kettle of fish. They hired me as a regular reporter, but I was only the second reporter, female reporter who did not work in what was then called the society section. However, I think I would have encountered a lot more trouble at the New York Times then than at the Washington Post, because the Post was then expanding. It had a lot of really young reporters on it. It was not a disadvantage to be a woman in the same way as it would have been at the New York Times in the early 1960s. SM (00:23:09): I have a couple, you have a quote in your book, this book. "In this increasing illiterate America, not only the enjoyment in reading, but critical thinking is at risk." And the way I really want to ask this question is, is this a direct link to the (19)60s? Because a lot of criticism of today's young people today is they are smart, but they do not know their history. SJ (00:23:42): Blaming it on the (19)60s. Well... SM (00:23:48): Is there a link between this quote in the (19)60s. SJ (00:23:55): Yes and no. Yes and no. In the 1960s, books were still really important to all of us. I can remember when Portnoy's Complaint was published in 1969. SM (00:24:05): I read it. Yeah. SJ (00:24:07): I can remember. I had heard about this book. I can remember just rushing to the bookstore, just dying to read this book. I do not think anybody rushes to a bookstore dying to read a book at all today. I really think more than the (19)60s, although there is a connection with the (19)60s which I will circle back to, but I really feel that the older boomers belong more to the previous generation in terms of their attitudes toward reading. The younger boomers belong more to the next generation because there was not any internet. There were not any computers before the 1980s. So that we grew up in a society in which if you read, books were important. As far as not knowing history goes, this has gotten worse every year. It did not start in the (19)60s. There were actually some polls from the 1930s which show how little history Americans knew in the 1930s too. But I do think that what happened in the 1960s, nobody could have imagined the internet then. Nobody did. But there were certainly a lot more forms of entertainment began to intrude on time that had once been devoted to reading. Look. The transistor radio, the small portable transistor radio, I think played an important role in this. For the first time, although it was nothing like now, it was nothing like an iPod, it was nothing like computer access 24/7, but for the first time, you could bring your music with you everywhere. I think it was the beginning of a change which was a descending curve that was fairly soft in the (19)60s. I do not think it really takes a sharp downward turn until the 1980s. This is going to be a problem, I think. SM (00:26:12): We can move to... SJ (00:26:13): Well, there are not any tables. SM (00:26:14): [inaudible]. SJ (00:26:18): Because this guy is talking awfully loudly. All right, well let us... They will not stay there. SM (00:26:26): Yeah. You were in the middle of [inaudible]. SJ (00:26:34): No, that is the way it is. Okay. There is one aspect of the (19)60s that I think does have something to do. And it was really the late (19)60s, early (19)70s. I think in general, student demands are blamed in general by conservatives for watering down of the university curriculum. Now, it is true that students were demanding a lot of bullshit things in the late 1960s, early (19)70s. And I do not believe that their criticisms of the curriculum were justified at all, their criticisms the way universities were run was. But I think what happened in the (19)60s, it was bad that was entirely the fault of the faculty at that time is for some reason they were actually scared of these student demands. And you had two kinds of people. You had had younger faculty members, many of whom threw in their lot with the students who wanted to teach women's studies and so on. And you had older faculty members, the people who wanted to teach the way they always had. The dead white European male curriculum. And they both got their way. And I think it was a very evil and stupid compromise. What they did was they shunted it off, instead of developing a great African American studies curriculum which was taught to every student of American history, they shunted it off into minority studies departments. Instead of including women writers in every English class and making women's studies part of the whole, they shunted it off into women's studies departments. This pleased everybody on campuses. And I was an education reporter for the Washington Post at the time this was happening. It pleased the old guys because they could continue to teach their white studies, their white male studies exactly the way they always taught them. And it pleased the new people because it meant more jobs and more tenure. Everybody got what they wanted. It was bad for education in general. The kind of Balkanization of things that every kid ought to be learning started in the late 1960s. And it was not the fault of the students. It was the fault of the faculty who were supposed to be the grownups but they did not act like it. SM (00:28:58): Yeah. You mentioned in the book too, that tenure was something very important in the (19)50s on college campuses, and then when the (19)60s, mid-(19)60s in particular to maybe around the mid-(19)70s, tenure was not that important. It was basically they were involved in the reacting to the social movements that were happening. SJ (00:29:18): That is not what I said. SM (00:29:19): No? SJ (00:29:20): I did not say anything about tenure at all. But in fact, the way things worked out, the way things worked out, everybody got tenure. People who were involved in the social movements of the (19)60s are the tenured professors who will not leave because they cannot retire on college campuses today. Tenure did not have anything to do with whether you were fighting the establishment than at all. Those people got tenure too. Those women's studies professors got tenure, the African American studies... And there are campuses with African American studies departments. Harvard is one of them, [inaudible] where in fact, lots of kids of all races go. But what happened in most campuses was they became an enclave for minority students and meant that the minority students were not learning everything they should learn, and the white students sure as hell were not learning everything they should learn. But as for tenure, that is my whole point. Everybody got it. That is why everybody was happy with what happened. SM (00:30:19): You do a great job also in the book of the criticisms of the neocons toward anybody that was involved in any kind of protest or activism at that particular time. Bring up Irving Crystal and Norman, is it Podhoretz? SJ (00:30:35): Podhoretz. Well, they are ancient. SM (00:30:39): Yeah. And commentary. But they were the old left, and their attitudes toward the (19)60s. How do you react to the current neocons? When New Gingrich came into power in 1994, when the Republicans came in, he made some strong commentaries. SJ (00:30:55): Remember, the Newtster was coming of age of the (19)60s. SM (00:30:58): Yeah. SJ (00:30:59): He was part of that other (19)60s. SM (00:31:00): Yeah. Yeah. He was there and then you had the Bill Crystals of the world who were coming on. And then even today on Fox, you see a lot of the criticisms of the (19)60s. There is a lot of the reasons why we are having a problems in our society today was looking back at the drug culture. SJ (00:31:27): Well, by the way, those people in Fox do not know any more about the (19)60s than most of America knows about ancient Greek or Latin. They do not know anything about it. There is this image of the (19)60s frozen in time. I think that is probably really what Tom Hayden was objecting to. The idea that people who were protesting things in the (19)60s were just free lovers and dopers and that was it. And that is all there was to the (19)60s. People who wanted to do anything that they wanted to do. SM (00:31:58): One of the things, it is a generation gap. It was very obvious. I remember on Life Magazine, they had that front cover with that young man and he had his glasses on. In one side of the glass was his father pointing at him and he was pointing back at his dad. So the generation gap between parents and their kids was very obvious at that particular time. But also in that book, the Wounded Generation, Jim Wetton made a commentary at the symposium back in 1980 that the real generation gap was not between parents. The generation Gap was those who served in Vietnam, and when they were called to serve their nation, they went and those who did not. SJ (00:32:38): Well, that was not a generation gap. That is a culture gap. SM (00:32:41): But he called it a... And actually, he went even further by saying that oftentimes the (19)60s generation is supposed to be the Peace Corps generation, the Vista, the service, that they took the words of Kennedy and they used it whether to go into service or to go into the Peace Corps. He says they are not a service generation because they did not serve. A lot of them refused to serve. SJ (00:33:05): Jim Webb, by the way, is not a baby boomer, I believe. SM (00:33:09): I do not know. I think he is about 44. SJ (00:33:12): Yeah. He is very young. But I would say that that is true. That in general, all of the children of the (19)60s were not the service generation. But if you go back to Vietnam, to say that people who did not serve were just motivated by selfishness, that is not just wrong. It is true that they did not want to get shot at, but they did not want to get shot at for this particular thing. I do not know whether Jim Webb thinks the Vietnam War was worthwhile or not. I do not to this day think the Vietnam War was worthwhile. What did we get out of it except all of those dead? And Vietnam is now what it was always going to be. A communist country far from our sphere of influence. And the countries we are fighting in now, Iraq and Afghanistan, are going to be Muslim countries far from our sphere of influence when all of this is over. I do. But I think as somebody who remembers the Vietnam War, I think not just somebody who has heard about it, which is all Jim Webb has. He has heard about it. He does not remember the Vietnam War. He knows only what he has been told at the Military Academy about the Vietnam War. And I like Jim Webb. SM (00:34:31): Well, he served in Vietnam. SJ (00:34:37): He served in Vietnam? SM (00:34:37): Yes, he did. SJ (00:34:37): Oh. So he is not [inaudible] then. SM (00:34:37): No, he served in Vietnam. SJ (00:34:37): He did? SM (00:34:39): Yes. SJ (00:34:40): Are you sure? SM (00:34:40): Yes. And of course his son is serving in Iraq- SJ (00:34:43): Right. SM (00:34:44): Has done two tours. SJ (00:34:45): Well, if Jim Webb thinks the Vietnam War was worthwhile, I do not agree with him. And if he thinks that in order to be of the service generation you had to serve in Vietnam, I do not agree with him. You could call young Nazis members of the service generation too. They served the Nazis. And I do not buy that... These members of the service generation too, they served the Nazis. And by that, I assure you I do not mean that people who served in Vietnam were Nazis. I mean, because you do not choose a particular kind of way to serve. But I will tell you this, that I think far worse than anything that happened in terms of culture division in Vietnam is what is happening today. I think that to have an all-volunteer army, which of course was the direct result of the fact that so many people did not want to serve and used education and privilege to get out of the draft, I think the all-volunteer army is far worse. I think the reason that even now, I do not think America is paying any attention to these wars, to how many people are being killed, and I think the direct reason they are not paying any attention to it is that their sons and daughters do not have to go if they do not want to. My parents were moderate Republicans who opposed the Vietnam War. My father was a veteran. They did not think the Vietnam War was worth fighting. They opposed it because they were terrified that their son was going to get drafted, my brother. He did not, but I do not think they would have any position if they were the same kind of people today on the Iraq War. They would not have to worry about my brother being drafted. My father saw absolutely no analogy between Vietnam and World War II, and he was not a liberal. SM (00:36:42): When you look at the whole Jane Fonda situation, and I have interviewed- SJ (00:36:49): Jane is another one of those iconographic (19)60s people. SM (00:36:52): Yeah. We saw her when she was at the New School this past year, I think it was in February, talking about her whole career. It was unbelievable. It was a tremendous hour and a half program there. But when you look at... Oftentimes entertainers themselves are being criticized today. You should just be an entertainer. That is not your role. SJ (00:37:13): That is ridiculous. SM (00:37:14): When you go back to the (19)60s, you can always remember John Wayne, Martha Ray, Bob Hope, which would be- SJ (00:37:22): Of course. SM (00:37:23): ...The gung ho for the troops. Then you had the Donald Sutherlands, the Jane Fonda, the [inaudible] SJ (00:37:30): There is no reason why entertainers should not use their celebrity any way that they want. And by the way, while I am thinking of it, this is not a question you are asking, but you know were asking about boomers and boom and all of that. I do not know about boom, but of course now the boomers... I have a new book coming out in February. SM (00:37:53): You do? SJ (00:37:54): It is called Never Say Die, the Myth and the Marketing of the New Old Age. And here is another thing, and here is why Tom Hayden is very wrong that this was just a moment in time. Oldest boomers turned 65 next year in 2011, the oldest boomers turned 65. By 2030, unless there is some kind of a catastrophe, which of course there always could be, there are going to be 8.5 million Americans over the age of 85, most of them boomers. Now, there is a... And this is related to the age of American unreason because there is also one thing older and younger boomers have in common: a kind of forever young state of mind, whether they are or not. This is hitting the boomers hard now, and this is what my next book is about. There is now the same kind of propaganda about the New Old Age that there was in about boomers being completely different from their parents, in that there is a mindset that says, if only we live right, if only we work hard enough, this phrase defying old age comes up all the time. It is a boomer mindset, a mindset in which... And it is also very much a mindset of the (19)70s after the (19)60s, the retreat into the personal growth kind of thing. But if you just work hard enough, if you live right, your old age is not going to be at 90. I went to this panel two years ago, three years ago called "90 is the New 50". Jane was in the audience, by the way. Well, I could answer you whether 90 is the new 50. It is not, but the boomers are going to be affecting ideas about old age thus far in a very unrealistic sort of way for quite a while. As far as a lot of boomers are concerned, the only people who get Alzheimer's disease are people who did not exercise enough and who ate too many carbs and got too fat. If you live to be more than 85, you have a 50 percent chance of getting Alzheimer's disease. It is evident. Facts cannot be denied. And that is something that a certain fantasy part of the boomer generation has always tried to do. The Boomer attitude toward old age now is exactly like the attitude of aging boomer women who wanted to have natural childbirth, which is they believed if they only it, childbirth would not hurt. SM (00:40:37): Well, I know that boomers do not want to have senior citizen centers. SJ (00:40:41): Hell no. SM (00:40:44): They want to get rid of that word senior citizen. SJ (00:40:48): Look, I used the word old in my new book. The word old is the word boomers hate. Hello, I am just 65. How many 130-year-old do you see walking around? I am not middle aged. They are not middle-aged. By 2030, none of us are going to be anywhere near middle-aged. We are going to be old. SM (00:41:11): It is interesting, you go to any park or any place, people are running, walking, exercising, biking. Doctors will say that will extend your lifespan. SJ (00:41:22): No they do not. They say it is good for you now. No good doctor says... It is good for you in a million different ways. Whether it will extend your life, your healthy lifespan, is completely unknown. I know the AARP which is now run by boomers, of course, the AARP for which I have written for many times, and God bless them, I love them. The AARP, the attitude about the new old age is this: it is okay to be old as long as you pretend you are not. So as the AARP concentrates on the 95-year-old sky diver, the 90-year-old who are having great sex, of course there cannot be very many of them among women because most women who are 90 years old do not have partners. And if you noticed ads for Viagra, which was actually intended either for people who had things like diabetes or for people over 65, 70, the people in ads for Viagra are all in their 40s. They do not want to present the real age at which Viagra is really aimed. What they want to say in these commercials is that if you take Viagra, it will be just like it was 20, 30 years ago. SM (00:42:40): Well, you hit on some... SJ (00:42:41): But this is related to the boomer generation. SM (00:42:43): Oh, yes. SJ (00:42:45): ...Because the boomers are getting old. SM (00:42:48): And I think when they were younger, they felt... This is another thing too. When I was in school, there was this feeling that we were going to change the world, we were going to end the war, bring peace, end all the racism, sexism, homophobia, clean up the environment. There was this attitude that... Not a hundred percent of the people, but the activists had that they were going to make a difference in this world. SJ (00:43:14): And we did make a difference in a lot of ways. Look, would you rather be Black in America today or would you rather have been Black before the Civil Rights Movement? Would you rather be a woman in America today, or would you rather be a woman from Mad Men? These changes in women's lives, and I am not discounting for a minute that what we are seeing now is ugly, and the idea that this was kind of eradicated either then or now is ridiculous, and anybody with their brain in their head knows it. But the fact is the progress that was made in opportunities for minorities, the progress that was made in opportunities for women, is absolutely undeniable. It was not better to be African American or Hispanic or female in 1960 than it is today. It is much better to be all of those things today. SM (00:44:06): You talked a lot about – SJ (00:44:06): Wait until he gets done with this. SM (00:44:16): Busy park. How we doing time-wise? SJ (00:44:18): We have been at it for about- SM (00:44:20): 45 minutes? SJ (00:44:21): Oh, more than that. We can go on. I am comfortable here and get this done maybe. SM (00:44:26): I forget what I was going to ask. Oh, I will come back to it. When you look at the period that boomers had been alive, which is 1946... Oh, I know the question I was going to ask. Many people have said to me during my interviews, when you look at Bill Clinton and when you look at George Bush number two, you can tell they are boomers. Just a general comment. You can tell they are boomers. What do you think they are seeing when they say that? SJ (00:44:57): I have no idea. I mean, they both behave like boomers politically in a sense. I do not know what they mean by that, if you look at them, you can tell that they are boomers. But I can tell that they are boomers because I know they are the age they are. They have to be boomers. I actually do not have any... I cannot venture a comment on that because I do not know what they mean. If they mean a style of politics which is a little less buttoned up, maybe that is what they mean, but I do not know what they mean by if you look at Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, you can tell they are boomers. Do they both smoke pot? Yeah, when they were young. I do not know what that says. SM (00:45:43): I think some were referring to George Bush as well, my way or the highway kind of mentality that some of the activists had in the (19)60s and Bill Clinton with his Monica Lewinsky. SJ (00:46:00): Well, yeah. As we know, politicians who are not boomers never have extramarital sex. This is ridiculous. There is this tendency on the part of the right to attribute everything they do not like, that they imagine to be true about the boomer generation to it being the boomer generation. How can anybody make this ridiculous statement about Monica Lewinsky being an example of a typical boomer mindset? Exactly what generation of politicians has not had sex scandals? The only difference was in the past is that the public did not know about it because the press did not write about it. SM (00:46:38): What did that period, 1946 to 1960, how did that shape the very, very young boomers with respect to the issue of fear? We already talked about McCarthyism, which was on television in the early (19)50s, so the front running boomers would have seen that. Then you had the- SJ (00:46:58): It affected... I remember the air raid drills when we would crouch under the desk, which was supposed protect us from radiation. I do not know a single person my age or who was a sentient being in the early (19)50s who does not remember the fear of the bomb. Exactly how much that shaped us, I do not know. The nature of being young is not to be fearful. I can remember the air raid drills and thinking it was silly, but I do not come from a typical family. My family, while they were not liberal or left at all, but they were sort of completely indifferent to that sort of sort of thing. SM (00:47:46): I think across the board, whether it is accurate- SJ (00:47:51): I think a lot of it would have depended on what kind of a family you came from. SM (00:47:56): Well, three adjectives that I lean on here in describing the early life of boomers as a whole is fear, and fear being that you talk about the bomb and growing up with the Cold War and obviously the communist, looking for communists everywhere. Naive, naivety, because I believe that (19)50s television was all about that, and you really had to read between the lines. And being quiet. SJ (00:48:27): Quiet? SM (00:48:30): Being quiet. I think that history thought boomers really never started speaking, I mean, being outspoken until the (19)60s. SJ (00:48:41): Well, first of all, boomers in the (19)50s were little kids. SM (00:48:41): They were in the junior high school, though, in the early (19)60s. SJ (00:48:46): We do not tend to take down the utterances of little kids, but I think you are very wrong about. I think you are conflating something, the silent generation, which was people who came of age in the (19)50s, with the boomers. I think on the contrary, child-rearing was much more permissive in the 1950s. I do not think people are wrong for good as well as for bad, to say that Dr. Spock's ideas about child-rearing, which while in some ways very traditional, were much freer than the kind of child-rearing people of my parents' generation were brought up with. I think in fact, although boomers, every little word was not taken as seriously as kids are today, I think that boomers grew up in a much freer, more outspoken atmosphere and said things that would not have been allowed for their parents to say when they were children, but I do not think... The (19)60s did not come out of nowhere. They did not come out of nowhere. It is not like a switch was turned on. And you have got to remember that the election of John F. Kennedy, the oldest boomers were 14 when John F. Kennedy was elected, in some ways, that was still the (19)50s, but in some ways too, that also felt like the dawn of a new day. I would say quite the opposite. Yes, there was the bomb and all of that. Did I really think anybody was going to drop a bomb on me when I was... I think, in fact, the boomers were brought up with a great deal more security and entitlement than their parents were. I would say it was quite the opposite of fear. Life was pretty nice for a child in the 1950s if you came from a middle class family. And I do stress that if you came from a middle class family life growing up in the 1950s. If you grew up in a ghetto, or if you were a poor white or black person growing up in the South... Bill Clinton's early life was very different from mine, but what was different by the time he got into college in the (19)60s is there were scholarships for bright young [inaudible]. Bill Clinton, he had been born in generation earlier, he had have been no one. He had have been white trash, because there would not have been any way for a boy like that to go to college. SM (00:51:09): Right. You cannot forget about Native Americans as well during the 1950s on the reservations. SJ (00:51:15): They were not on the radar at all, but the life of the poor and the middle class and the (19)50s was very different. It was certainly as different as it is today, and you just cannot... That is one of the reasons why a lot of the anger today was there... A lot of the other (19)60s were not just the rich people like the Bushes, it was also working-class people. And there are people who did not make it out of the working class in the 1950s and the 1960s. My family made it out of the working class in the 1950s and their children, there was never any thought that we were going to be part of that blue collar class, which was only a half generation away in our family. But a lot of Americans do. SM (00:52:05): This afternoon, I will be speaking to Marvin [inaudible]. He is going to talk about growing up African American in Detroit in the (19)60s. SJ (00:52:12): How old is he? SM (00:52:13): Oh, he has got same age as [inaudible]. He has got to be probably mid-(19)60s. SJ (00:52:18): He is the same age as I am. SM (00:52:20): Yeah, and he does not live in America anywhere. He lives in Mexico. He just happens to be visiting friends here. SJ (00:52:25): Well, that will be a very interesting interview because Detroit in the mid (19)60s was changing rapidly, and the mid (19)60s is a period when the whites just basically abandoned Detroit and Detroit was just abandoned. That should be a very interesting interview. SM (00:52:42): He and another person wrote a book on the labor unions in Detroit at that time and how they took on the black power and the Black Panther mentality in the labor union. In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin and when did it end, and what was the watershed moment? SJ (00:53:00): Actually, I think the (19)60s really began around 1963, and not just with the Kennedy assassination. I think one of the things that you definitely felt when you were a teenager in the early 1960s, there is a big cultural change that started to happen. Although the early (19)60s, Man Men is not wrong about this. In some ways, they were more like the 1950s than they were the later prior to the (19)60s, but in some ways they were not. And one thing that happens in the early (19)60s is that, first of all, there begins to be strong concern in mainstream America about peace. You get movies like On The Beach, which was a big hit. Movies of the kind that would have been considered commie only five years before. You have 1964, you have two movies, Dr. Strangelove, which is an iconic movie, and Fail Safe. The Fail Safe movie came out just before that. What they both were about were movies suggesting that war might happen by accident, not by the evil of communism, and we do not want to be thinking about that. There is a very big change that starts in those early years of the (19)60s. Not exactly at 1960, but I would say that the minute John Kennedy began talking about nuclear disarmament, which coincided with this cultural moment when movies questioning whether war necessarily arose from the total evil of the enemy, I think that is where the (19)60s really begin. They end with the end of the Vietnam War. You have a lot of things. I consider the women's movement, which is really early (19)70s, really it is a (19)60s phenomenon. Although the women's women really does not begin to... Boy, they sure empty the garbage a lot, which is good. I think the (19)60s really end with the end of the Vietnam War and kind of the beginning of the consolidation of what the women's movement was gaining. [inaudible] and women's movement is really the late (19)70s, not the (19)60s. SM (00:55:32): Give us a watershed moment. Was there a watershed moment? [inaudible] to pick a moment that stands out. SJ (00:55:49): As to when the (19)60s ended? SM (00:55:49): No, just the whole period of the (19)60s. SJ (00:55:49): Well, to me, the watershed moment was... Of course there is document original about this, it is 1968. It was not when the (19)60s ended, but the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy within months of each other, it certainly changed my frame of mind about what was possible. This is followed right away by the election of Richard Nixon, and the election of Richard Nixon, it was not just old people who voted for Richard Dixon. The (19)60s were not going to turn out to be a turning point in history toward what I would have said were my values, this becomes pretty obvious by the end of 1968. SM (00:56:33): Do you remember the exact moment you heard that John Kennedy was killed. Do you remember the... Most people do. Where were you when you heard? SJ (00:56:40): I was buying a dress in a shop in East Lansing, Michigan, but what I remember more and what meant more to me is I also remember where I was when Bobby Kennedy was killed and when Martin Luther King was killed. And when Martin Luther King was killed, I was at home at my house on Capitol Hill, my apartment on Capitol Hill, and I just immediately jumped in a cab and went straight to the Washington Post because I knew that the city was going to go up in flames, which it did. I was a reporter for the post. When Robert Kennedy was killed, I was in Frankfurt Airport changing flames for Kenya where I was going to meet my fiancé. Everybody in Frankfurt airport was crying. And that is when I learned and I said to myself, this is the end of my hope. It was not, of course, but it felt like it. SM (00:57:36): As a person has written a lot of great books and analyzed America from different angles, when you look at the assassinations of Kennedy, King, and Kennedy again, what does it say about America? Is it that if you speak up too much, they are going to do you in, or what does it say? SJ (00:58:11): What it says to me, and believe you me, I have been thinking about a lot this week, what it said to me is that there is a lot of free-floating anger and rage in our culture, which I do not think it had anything to do with speaking up per se, but when you do become a lightning rod for people who feel threatened, there is no shortage of the true combination of craziness and evil that takes a gun out and shoots. And I have been thinking about that a lot. It feels to me, I am not saying it is, but what is going on right now feels to me very much like things felt to me in the late 1960s. Only worse because- SM (00:59:06): Hold that thought. I am want to turn my tapes over here. SJ (00:59:17): Well, it feels to me in 2010 as we approach this anniversary of the terrorist attacks, it feels to me, although it is not the same cast of characters, but I have the same really uneasy feeling I had in 1968, which is I have this feeling that anything could happen. That there is a lot of unfocused rage out there added to even more ignorance than existed in 1968 because I do believe people know us. I do believe that the 24-hour news cycle, the web and so on have made us stupider, not smarter. They have given us more information, but I believe in terms of logical thinking, in terms of the ability to remember anything that happened before 10 minutes ago, I think we have a worse and more stupid culture than we did in 1968. But I feel the same kind of anger around me. I am not saying I am right. I am saying it feels kind of the same to me now, which is bad. And that it feels the same to a lot of people who live through that time right now, I have this feeling that I do not know where the ground quite is beneath me, what is going to happen next. When some crackpot leader of a congregation of 50 people in Gainesville, Florida gets a call from the Secretary of Defense begging him not to burn the Quran, it makes me feel like almost anything could happen. SM (01:00:58): And also recently with- SJ (01:01:01): I hope that this is a feeling and not a fact. SM (01:01:04): Well, I have a feeling because I have been studying lately the football player that was killed by friendly fire. SJ (01:01:11): Pat Tillman. SM (01:01:12): Pat Tillman. Unbelievable. And the latest is that he was murdered because he was going to come back in the United States and be an anti-war protestor. He and his brother had, some of his close associates had seen enough. He was going to finish his time, but he was going to come back, and there was a worry that he would come back and that would be terrible to have the number one guy that everybody know about- SJ (01:01:44): Well, what I would say about this, that this idea is around, is part of what makes it feel like 1968. This is probably not true, probably it is just the Army covered its ass, as it always tries to do after friendly fire. But the fact that this rumor, that these conspiracy theories are all out there, and we see more of them on the right than on the left at the moment, but the existence of conspiracy theories in which a lot of people believe... Not saying whether they are true or not, but it is a sign that there is a lot of dangerous anger out there. SM (01:02:22): I agree. And of course we all worried about President Obama when he came into power as somebody wanted to knock him off. SJ (01:02:30): Well, I am still worried about that. SM (01:02:32): Who won the battles in the (19)60s? Who won the battle? SJ (01:02:39): Which battle are you talking about? SM (01:02:40): Basically the liberals versus conservatives. Who really won? It was very obvious- SJ (01:02:46): The left won the culture war, the political war was a draw as we see very well. If the left had won the political war, we would not have the kind of problems that we have today. Richard Nixon would never have been elected President. Ronald Reagan would never have been elected president. Loads of baby boomers voted for Ronald Reagan. SM (01:03:10): Yes, I know. SJ (01:03:13): So the left definitely did not win the political war, but I said the left won the culture war, it did in the sense that a lot of the lifestyle changes of the (19)60s were adopted on the right as well as the left. SM (01:03:27): Nixon always used the term silent majority, and the silent majority, there were a lot of young people that were in that silent majority as well. SJ (01:03:35): That is right, that is right. SM (01:03:37): And one of the criticisms of the (19)60s generation or the boomers or the activists, they always say that in the generation of 78 million, only about 15 percent were ever involved in any kind of activism. Even some of the strongest activists I have talked to have said 15? It is more like five. SJ (01:03:58): Yeah, I would agree with them. But that alone is not a measure because there are a lot of ideas which were shared by people who were not activists. Again, in a way I am atypical, but everybody says this. When I was 24 years old, I got married to the Moscow correspondent to the Washington Post and moved to Moscow with him for two and a half years where I wrote my first book, and did not go back to newspaper writing because I wanted to write books and magazine articles. But I was very affected by my time in Russia in this, that many of the cultural concerns of my contemporaries seemed very trivial to me when I came back. And it also affected me very much after [inaudible] some of the bad educational things that happened in the (19)60s. I was in Russia, a country where there was no such thing as popular entertainment that was bearable. If you wanted to do anything that was fun in Russia, it was listening to classical music, it was reading classics, because those were the only kind of good books that were available. And so that in a way, in Russia, I got the education that I missed when I was in college because there was no such thing as a popular entertainment culture there that was anything but anything but controlled by the party. So in a way, in Russia, I had to read poetry and classics with an intensity that I had never read before, and the only kind of music I could hear was good music. I just laugh. I just laugh when I see this silly book about Bob Dylan, that Sean Wilentz, who is another child of the (19)60s, just published. The idea of Bob Dylan is a great artist, to me, is ridiculous. And I know why it is ridiculous to me. Because when everybody else was listening to The Stones and Bob Dylan... I know who genius poets were. They were [inaudible] and [inaudible]. Bob Dylan is not a genius of a poet. And it is an example of a low educational standards of a lot of my generation, that this guy is taken seriously as anything but a singer of his generation, which in that respect, he was perfectly good. SM (01:06:23): What did you think of Rod McKuen? SJ (01:06:25): Rod McKuen was the worst. SM (01:06:28): How about the beat writers? SJ (01:06:31): The beat writers fall a whole different category. They were earlier and after something else. Al Ginsburg is a great poet. Rod McKuen is not. Rod McKuen was liked by both the left and the right, by the way. In a lot of pop culture of the (19)60s, you have a cultural... That is why I say the left and in general stupid won the culture war in the 1960s. 1960s is when you begin to see a lot of decline in a lot of things that I value. I am not sure if I had not spent... Ages 24 to 26, I was in Russia. These are very formative years. I was not listening to The Stones or Bob Dylan. There was a little pot in Moscow. SM (01:07:24): What do you consider to be the major failures of the movement? The movement or the movements? SJ (01:07:40): I do not think the Civil Rights Movement failed in any way, except in the sense that undermining something as potent as racial discrimination and racial stereotypes in a country that was founded upon slavery is not the work of 10 years or 20 years, or as we see now, to paraphrase John Kennedy, even in our lifetime on this Earth. I do not think the Civil Rights Movement was a failure at all. I think it was a complete success. They failed to persuade probably 25 percent of people in this country now as then that they were right is not a failure. They persuaded a lot of people that they were right. When we got through the Civil rights movement, you heard about anybody being lynched lately? No. I do not think the civil rights movement was a failure in any way. The anti-war movement was clearly a failure. It failed to end the war. It was not the movement's fault. The entrenched nature of what Eisenhower called the military industrial complex is too much for anybody burning their draft cards and American flags on college campuses. Clearly, the anti-war movement, in terms of changing a kind of reflexive respect for the military, was a failure. I would say that one of the greatest disappointments of my adult lifetime is, as far as I can see, to me, the war in Afghanistan resembles the futility of the war in Vietnam much more than any other, that we did not learn anything from our experience in Vietnam. We did not learn much about the limits of American power in a totally different culture, very, very far from home. And by the way, when you think about that war now, when you think about, let us say the Viet Cong and the Taliban, you understand the Viet Cong were practically kissing cousins in relation to us compared to the values of somebody like the Taliban. As we now see, we are a country with all sorts of commercial relations with- See, we are a country with all sorts of commercial relations with Vietnam. Vietnam is part of the world in which we live. The parts of the Muslim world controlled by people like the Taliban are not. But so I would say the anti-war movement was absolutely a failure, both in the short term in the war went on for years until 1975, and in the long term, in terms of making people more skeptical about this kind of careless exercise of American power. The women, the women's movement was a success in that it opened up a lot more educational and economic opportunities to women. Whether, I think it probably was, I would not say that the women's movement was a failure. People say things are still bad for women who want to raise a family and have a career. That is true, but I do not exactly see that as a failure any more than I see the fact that that Americans who hate Barack Obama will not admit that race has anything to do with it today. I do not see that as a failure of the civil rights movement any more than I see the fact that it is still tough to have a family and a career as a woman. I see those as entrenched structural problems that the civil rights movement and the women's movement made a good start on that nobody could have expected would be solved even by now. SM (01:11:39): You do not have to go into any sense of detail, but then you have got the Native American movement, which many people felt was only a four-year movement. With aim starting in Alcatraz and ending at Wounded Knee, although the Native American movement had been going on for a long time. And then of course you had the Chicano movement and farm workers and of course the environmental movement and the gay and lesbian movement, so they were all- SJ (01:12:06): Well, the gay and lesbian movement, it starts where the (19)60s end really. I mean, I am in the gay rights movement. I mean the enormous chance that has taken place that started at Stonewall, but it really does not begin to, all you need to do is look at the different attitudes of young people and older people and as the difference between people who are not old enough to be boomers and boomers too. Boomers have far more negative attitudes about gay than the next generation down. Our parents have far more negative attitudes about gay than the Boomers did. These things take a long time. I do not think that the gay rights movement has failed because a lot of people still hate gays, and I think that the one thing that has not changed in American society is the vast influence of a very retrograde form of religion, which is unique to the United States, which is something that progressives in every generation, beginning with the deists of the 18th century have thought were going to be gone by the next generation that has not. The influence of fundamentalist religion, and I do not mean evangelical religion, I mean fundamentalist religion, the kind of religion that takes seriously and believes that lives should be ordered by the writings In Sacred Books. The Taliban are fundamentalist Muslims. The fundamentalist Christians are fundamentalist Christians. The Jews out in living in their little Hasidic sheddles in Brooklyn, are fundamentalist Jews. They believe that all of this is to be taken literally, they are a real threat in American society. The biggest threat are the Christians, simply because the fun there are more fundamentalist Christians than there are fundamentalist anything else in America. It is unique. It is a failure. It is a failure. I will not go into a lot of this. Read Free Thinkers if you want to, but it is something that is, we are the only country in the developed world in which a third of our citizens do not accept that evolution is not a scientific reality. SM (01:14:22): You talk about the anti-intellectual atmosphere that came out of the (19)60s, but you did talk about how during John Kennedy's three years, there was a hope there that there was an intellectual development taking place because of the people that he hired, the thinkers, the idea people, and of course dealing with the sciences and Sputnik and all the other, but then you see the comparison. Mario Savio in 1964 said that- SJ (01:14:53): I still have a Savio for state senate. SM (01:14:56): Well, I like the guy. He was right on target and he said that the fact is that the battle in the university should the university's about ideas. It is not about being the corporate takeover of everything. SJ (01:15:10): Exactly. SM (01:15:11): And we are back to the corporate takeover of everything right now. SJ (01:15:15): Well back. We are at a worst place. Yeah, it is in relation to that than we ever were then. Yeah. Well, we did not know what a real corporate takeover of everything was then. We only thought we did. SM (01:15:29): Well, Clark Kurt talked about the knowledge factory, but what did the universities learn from the (19)60s that makes them better prepared to work with the student activist in particular today? SJ (01:15:41): First of all, there are not any student activists today. I mean, there are few, but the universities did not learn anything from the (19)60s as far as I can see, and what they learned, what the universities learned from the (19)60s was how to dumb down their standards enough to please stupid students that were among the activists as among everybody else. There were highly brilliant activists. I think Mario Savio was one of them, by the way. I had the greatest respect for him. Yes, Todd Gitlin too. There were student active-. There were two activists. He got less smart as he got older. There were student activists who were smart and there were student activists who were dumb. The university never had any ability to distinguish between those two groups at all. The reason they did what they did was they did not want any shortage of their gravy train. They actually, I do not know who told you 15 percent was too high an estimate, but they were right. SM (01:16:43): Several people, several people. SJ (01:16:44): But somehow the universities actually thought that parents were going to stop sending their kids to college if they did not shut up these activists on campus, which was never going to happen, and so they got the worst of all possible worlds when instead of truly reforming the curriculum in a good way, that would have added the knowledge that people need about every part of history to the general curriculum. They shunned it off into ghetto studies. By ghetto, I mean ghetto women's studies. Ghetto queer studies, which is ridiculous too. Whatever is necessary to know about any minority is necessary for everyone to know. It is not necessary only for the minority or the interested few to know. SM (01:17:32): After the Kennedy assassination, I think you said that things changed in the universities, that the Sputnik, and the science, and math, and the importance of those things. But then when he died and then the university, something happened within the university. Clark Clerk talks about it, the knowledge factory. It is like the IBM mentality. SJ (01:17:50): The emphasis on science did not change at all. That was right. That is when the money was always there for science, but what changed the late 1960s and largely as a result of faculty yielding to this pressure of this 5 percent or whatever it was, was that people were not required to learn a common core of knowledge. I think that, by the way, I think they are right, people like Diane Ravitch are absolutely right about that. And Arthur Schlesinger Jr, who of course came from the opposite political thing. I think that they are absolutely right about the decline of common core knowledge. I think that as far, I think that the faculty of the late (19)60s and early (19)70s covered itself with disgrace by settling for this non-solution of dumbing down general humanities courses. Telling students they could decide basically what they wanted to take, and there has been a swing the other way, but so much has been lost. So much has been lost in terms of what people have been not required to learn over the last 30 years, but I do not know if anything can ever- SM (01:19:05): Well it is a well-known fact- SJ (01:19:06): And computers have made it so much worse. SM (01:19:09): It was a well-known fact as I experienced it myself, that students of the (19)60s would make demands within the university knowing that if those demands were met, they would demand other things that they could not demand. So nothing would ever please them. SJ (01:19:26): Of course. SM (01:19:26): Do you think that kind of a mentality of that small percentage of activists who were really publicized highly by the media as the example of the (19)60s- SJ (01:19:34): The spokesmen. SM (01:19:37): Spokesmen of the (19)60s, has anything to do with the atmosphere that we had today, which was probably the same back then as not listening to each other? It is my way or the highway kind of mentality. SJ (01:19:51): Well, again, I think it is worse now beyond anything we could have imagined then. Again, I do mean in a way I agree that the power of the quote activists was exaggerated. Look, I mean, I know a lot of these people were thought to be flame throwing activists. Some of them turned into extremely intelligent great scholars by the end of the 1970s. Some of them did not. But I think what, what is going on now, I do not relate it in a direct line to the (19)60s at all. I think that people, I cannot imagine, for instance, anybody like Sarah Palin even being listened to in the 1960s. When if you think who was the conservative political hero in the (19)60s, Barry Goldwater, if you think about him and Sarah Palin, just put them in the same time. Put them in the same frame for a second, and if you want to see an example of the degeneration of political and intellectual culture, just see that. Barry Goldwater is a giant compared to Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin is somebody who knows nothing and is proud of it. There were people like that in the (19)60s, but they were not proud of it. They did not build careers out of it. SM (01:21:15): I have a couple quotes here and we will end on these quotes. SJ (01:21:19): Okay, I got to stop for you because I am losing my voice. SM (01:21:24): You have a quote here. "The denigration of fairness has infected both political and intellectual life and has now produced a culture in which disproportionate influence is exercised by the loud and relentless voices of single-minded men and women of one persuasion or another." SJ (01:21:41): More true now in the second year of Obama than it was when I wrote them in 2007. Sadly, one of the most bewildering things that is that is happened is that Obama, forget about whether you agree with some of the things he does or not. Obama is clearly a man of reason. I think in many ways he got elected because people were sick of the dumbness of George Bush, but when people got him, the biggest criticism made of him is that he is too cerebral. He is out of touch with what ordinary people feel. I think undoubtedly Obama's great strength and weakness is that he is a reasonable man and I do not think he could really believe that so many of his countrymen are as unreasonable and irrational as they are. I think it is a difficult, I think then this could be fatal to him if he does not understand it, that he is dealing with a lot of people who cannot be reasoned with it all. SM (01:22:43): Would you also say, and I think you have said this in your book, that in the 1960s, at least on college campuses, when someone came in from a different point of view, students will be there in numbers protesting? SJ (01:22:55): Absolutely. SM (01:22:55): And challenging, whereas today it is all like-minded people. SJ (01:23:02): Absolutely. It is all like-minded people who go to your like-minded people. SM (01:23:05): I got two more quotes and then we are going to end. I love this and it is in the introduction here. "In today's America, intellectuals and non-intellectual alike, whether on the left or right, tend to tune out any voice that is not an echo. This obduracy is both a manifestation of mental laziness and the essence of anti-intellectualism." SJ (01:23:29): Yes, I agree with agree with that writer. SM (01:23:31): Yeah. I got a lot of quotes here and my last one here is you put Thomas Jefferson's quote at the very beginning. "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." SJ (01:23:45): That is right. Why do not they just replace In God We Trust on the coins with ignorant and proud of it? I do not think in this book, I do not think that you should neglect religion. I think that- SM (01:23:56): I am not going to. SJ (01:23:58): Now, I think there were, there is a lot, remember the big-time cover story in 1968, God is Dead. Well, that is a real big mistake we made in the 1960s, and again, the whole fundamentalist upsurge was not something that the media and in liberal intellectuals were aware of at all. SM (01:24:18): The Terry Falwells of the world- SJ (01:24:21): Unfortunately, not only is God not Dead, I would not care if he were alive for reasonable people, but a particularly unreasonable kind of God is not dead. SM (01:24:33): Last question and I know it is hard. Boomers are now reaching 65, as you say, and the youngest ones are getting towards 50. When we are long gone, when Boomers are long gone. What do you think the historians, people like yourself, sociologists, writers will say about this generation or better yet the period that they lived? What do they say about them? SJ (01:24:59): Well, a lot of it, like a lot of history, will be a crock. It will depend on which history books they are reading. It will depend on whether they are reading my version of the (19)60s or Todd's version of the (19)60s or Bill Crystal's version of the (19)60s. It will depend to some extent on what they think. But I will tell you one thing, and I think about this a lot as a writer and as a scholar. There is one thing I can say for certain. That getting any kind of a rounded picture of who our generation was is going to be much more difficult for a historian 50 years from now than it is for us say to get a picture of people who were born in 1920. Why? We stopped writing letters in the 1960s. This is before the computer. We stopped writing letters when long distance phone rates went way down and we have stopped writing them almost all together since the advent of computers. There is very little record, except for a video record, of the inner lives of people of our generation. The kind of inner lives, you can write an excellent history of what intellectuals and activists, too, in the 1930s were thinking. The record of what people were thinking except for those who actually wrote books stops around 1970. You will never find out, for example, what my life was like from reading my personal correspondence because I do not have any anymore. Because people stopped writing me back around 1975 and that is when I stopped writing that back. Email has done nothing about this. Email is a totally different, non-reflective, instrumental form of communication. SM (01:26:55): You are right on that. SJ (01:26:55): It is gone. I think this is one of the most important things is we are never going to have any sense of what the inner life of this generation was like. Historians are going to find it very difficult. SM (01:27:07): We took students to see John Culver, the former senator from Iowa who was a close friend of Teddy Kennedy, and this is back in the (19)90s, and he said, now that the interview's over, I want to take it back into my office. And he said, I want you to look at these. Have you ever seen these? These are letters, these are love letters between my mom and dad. Have you ever written a letter? No. And we are talking (19)90s now, right? This is in the (19)90s. So love letters. Have you ever sent a love letter to your girlfriend or boyfriend? No. So John Culver is saying, just you look at these and see how beautiful they are. I am going to end with this. SJ (01:27:44): I have just about had it. SM (01:27:47): Yep. Barney Frank said, it is in his book. He wrote a book- SJ (01:27:50): I love Barney Frank. SM (01:27:51): In his book, Speaking Frankly, he said, The Democratic Party to survive, must separate itself from George McGovern, the McGovernites, the people, the anti-war people, all those people that were involved in those movements. If it is to survive this Barney Frank, speaking frankly. SJ (01:28:10): What makes Barney Frank think anybody remembers George McGovern. That is why that would be my question to him. SM (01:28:15): Book in the (19)90s, Speaking Frankly though, he said, and he was saying, and he was not attacking it as a conservative, he was attacking it as a liberal basically saying, if we are going to survive, we have to disassociate ourselves from those people that were in the counterculture and the people that supported George McGovern in (19)72. SJ (01:28:36): And just where does Barney think his place in the party looks to people who think that the Democratic Party ought to disassociated self from people like Barney Frank. He is really, I will tell you, he has really got a nerve. I love him. SM (01:28:51): That was (19)92 though, so anyways. Testing. One, two. (01:29:07): I certainly will. SJ (01:29:08): College guys. Do you want test and see if you are getting a test? SM (01:29:16): I do not know about testing. I know this one is, this is my prize one. This one is. Double check. SJ (01:29:22): Testing one, two. But I am not going to be talking that loud. I could talk a lot louder out here than I can in the cubicle in the library. No, that is okay. SM (01:29:35): We are fine. I will be coming and this one has already started. SJ (01:29:46): No-no clapping. SM (01:29:49): I am going to read these to make sure that they, I get these right. So I am all over the place here, and the first question I am going to ask you is that you wrote a piece in the Wounded Generation, which was a book that came out in 1980. It was a paper back on Vietnam. SJ (01:30:05): Black In The Dark Age. SM (01:30:07): This is the only question I have on that because I have interviewed just about everybody else who was at the symposium. Women in the Vietnam War wrote a piece in the book on the, in the Wounded generation on women in the war. How are Boomer generation women wounded about psychologically, personally from that war, and how important were they in the anti-war movement? SJ (01:30:37): I will tell you honestly, I think that women who were older than the boomer generation were more important in the anti-war movement than women of the Boomer generation. The contact that women of the Boomer generation had with the anti-war movement. Although there were lots of women obviously involved just as there were lots of men. But the fundamental thing is the women were not subject to the draft, did not have any danger of having to fight in that war. So I think unless a woman had a brother or a husband who was actually in the fighting, and this would be very different, the attitudes of people who came from the social class but did most of the fighting. Which then as now meant people who were not going to college, basically blue collar people. They were not as represented in the anti-war movement as were college educated Boomer women. So that I really do not think that that women were affected in the same way that men were, except that women in general were more anti-war than men, and that was true not just for Boomer women, but for all women. SM (01:32:02): Let me just, I will check this one here to make sure. SJ (01:32:03): Let me see if I can get this guy. SM (01:32:03): Oh, okay. SJ (01:32:04): Well, my cell phone is blocking my purse. That is it. Okay. SM (01:32:13): Well, I have read a little bit about your background, from going on the web and also in the book, but how did you become who you are in terms of who were your mentors, your role models? I know you went to Michigan State starting in 63, but who were the people that influenced you the most in your early years? SJ (01:32:33): Do you mean by my early years? Do you mean when I was a kiddo? SM (01:32:37): Yeah, I would say high school, college. SJ (01:32:43): That is an interesting question. I will preface it by saying that I always wanted to be a newspaper reporter. I wanted to be a newspaper reporter from the time I was a kid. And I wanted to be a newspaper reporter because everybody in my family read newspapers and that is what I wanted to do. At Michigan State my college career was somewhat different from other members of the Boomer generation. I did not want to go to college. I was an idiot. I was a classic example of someone who was not in an age where I could most benefit from education, and unlike most people of my generation who stayed in school as long as they could. Men because of the war and women for other reasons, I was determined to get out. I grew up in Okemos, Michigan, which is right near Michigan State. I went to Michigan State for one reason and one reason only. They had an honors college, which enabled you if you kept up a certain grade point to take as many credits as you want and get through as fast as you could. I graduated in just a little over two years. At a better university I would not have been able to do that. At Michigan State. I did. And the reason I did that was I knew that if I had to be in college for four years, I would become a dropout, and there was no way a woman was ever going to get a job as a newspaper reporter if she was a college dropout. I think it is important because I am just on the edge of the baby boom generation, born nine months before it actually started, so when I went to college, it was between 1963 and 1965. This was before what people think of as quote the (19)60s. When I entered Michigan State, there were parietal rules. I was almost expelled for being found doing nothing in a boys off-campus apartment. That is what the real, in other words, this is a totally different experience from being that age five years later when all of that stuff had gone out the window. So in many ways, things for me at that age were more like what they were for people in the (19)50s than they were for the Boomers who came of age only five years later. And I knew I could not stand living under this regime, which kept you as a child, particularly if you were a woman. This is before feminism, and so I wanted to get through as fast as possible. Nevertheless, I have to say I went to, I took any course I wanted because that is another thing you could do at the Honors College. I took Russian and I majored in journalism, and there were some great journalism professors there. A lot of them were people who had been newspapermen in Wisconsin during the McCarthy era and had lost their jobs because of it. And John Hanna, who was then the president of Michigan State, hired a lot of those people. He was very strong about, not about McCarthy, did not like him. He was a liberal Republican. They were still liberal and the chairman of the US Civil Rights Commission as well, which practically made you a communist in the eyes of the McCarthyites. Anyway, but the best thing my professors did for me was they made me realize I had to have a huge amount of professional experience by the time I got out of college to get a job as a woman, and I did and were, my mentors, one of them was named George Huff, one of them who was still alive. One of them was named Bud Myers, and so I went to work as a camper stringer for the Detroit Free Press. Michigan State was one of the two biggest universities in the state, and it was a source of news. And when I went to interview at the Washington Post in the spring of 1965 for a job, I had a huge professional string book from the Detroit Free Press. So I would say that things worked out for me, although they should not have. My real education came later on. SM (01:37:01): Yeah. Gets me right into my next question here. As a journalist in the (19)60s and (19)70s, do you feel the media only went after what was sensational and by that, I mean the drug culture, the long hair, the crows, the violence, the sex, protests? And there was little coverage of the majority of the young people that were not involved in any of this kind of activism? SJ (01:37:27): Well, I mentioned that this In the Age of American Unreason. And it is not that they went after what was, just what was sensational. That was as much a part of the (19)60s as anything else. It is that the media mostly is absolutely true was then and is now. The media was liberal reporters who were close to the age of the students who were protesting, shared their views. We did not know anything about the things we now know. I knew nothing about fundamentalist religion, and in fact, there was a whole other (19)60s. That whole other (19)60s is represented by George W. Bush and all of the Neoconservatives who first got into government under Ronald Reagan and really began running things under George W. Bush. They were there in the (19)60s too, and they were drawing quite different conclusions about what was going on around them than people like me who worked for the Washington Post were. I was not aware of what I now call the other (19)60s at all then. I have become aware of it in the last 20 years, but I never thought about it then. SM (01:38:39): Well, you brought it up. You are one of the few people that is really brought it up in any detail. When I interviewed Lee Edwards, the historian down in Washington, he said one of the things in all the books on the (19)60s is they do not ever talk about the conservative students and the young Americans for Freedom, for example. SJ (01:38:54): That is right. SM (01:38:55): And other groups like that. And of course the importance of the Goldwater election and the links to Ronald Reagan. Why was that? SJ (01:39:02): As I said, I think why it was is that the social class of the media was very different from the social class. There was first of all, there was no, in the early 1960s, there was no intellectual right wing. There was William Buckley in the National Review, and that was that, but there was not any, now there is a whole right-wing intellectual establishment as well. There was no right wing intellectual establishment then. There was Bill Buckley and his followers, and that is who it was. But there is something else too, I think just as important as that is the fact that the (19)60s, where are the years when the fundamentalists established their kindergarten through college network of education and began to train the generation that has had so much influence on public life for the last 30 years. We did not know those people. SM (01:39:57): Well, it is interesting because you brought bring up the Campus Crusade for Christ. SJ (01:40:00): They were just getting started then. SM (01:40:04): Being a college administrator, actually, I have worked with many of those students, but it is interesting about how they used the dress of the (19)60s, but they had a different point of view. SJ (01:40:15): Well, sure. SM (01:40:16): Yeah. So a lot of people do not even think about the Campus Crusade for Christ when they are talking about the (19)60s. SJ (01:40:21): But they were in the (19)60s as when the Campus Crusade for Christ. It actually was started in the (19)50s, but it did not really have any traction on anything but religious campuses until the late 1960s when they really got started. And one of the things that they were presenting themselves as was an alternative to the drug culture, you know, you can be cool. You can be hip, like the Jesus Electric Light and Power Company. You can be cool, you can be hip, but you do not have to share the views of all of those hippies about free love and all of that. And remember also by the late 1960s, there were a lot of kids who had been involved in the drug scene and so on, and were disillusioned with it. We were looking for something else. SM (01:41:07): Right. You talk about what they call the grateful and the ungrateful generation. Define those. Because a couple of people that are going to be reading these interviews may not have read your book. SJ (01:41:19): Well, the Grateful Generation was my parents' generation. I call them the Grateful Generation, not the greatest generation. SM (01:41:26): And they are not linked to the Grateful Dead. SJ (01:41:28): They are not linked. The Grateful Dead is part of the Ungrateful generation. But my parents' generation, the World War II generation was the Grateful generation. These were people who, my mother is a very still alive, is a very typical example. Brought up in a blue collar family. First member of her family to go to college. My grandfather, her father, they were blue collar people. My parents, the generation that emerged from the World War II as young adults. First of all, it was not the case of my father who was a little older, but a lot of them went to college on the GI Bill. They came from families where a generation earlier, they would not have been able to go to college. The Grateful generation, what Tom Brokaw calls the Greatest generation, they had a lot to be grateful for. One of the things they had to be grateful for is unlike people getting out of the service today, they got to buy houses with mortgages at 4 percent with VA loans. They went to school on the GI Bill. They came of age at a time when although there were ups and downs, America's economic prospects were good. All of those members of the Grateful Generation who went to school on the GI Bill enjoyed a standard of living, which their own parents could never have dreamed of. So they had good reason to be grateful. And the idea, it was always taken for granted that they would send their own children to college. There was not even a question then. And the thing is they expected their children who had so much more than they had had when they were growing up during the Depression, when they were coming of age during World War II. They expected their children to be thrilled with the middle class life they had achieved and to which they so aspired. And I call that the Ungrateful generation, then. Again, only some, but particularly among those who are college educated, turned around and said, we do not want your sticky, crappy houses. We do not like these universities. We do not like what they are teaching. We do not like your war. SM (01:43:54): Well, it is interesting. I interviewed Tom Hayden this past week as a follow-up interview I had. I interviewed him for almost two hours. And then of course about a year ago I interviewed Todd Gitlin, and they hate the term Boomer generation, both of them. SJ (01:44:05): No, they are not Boomers. SM (01:44:07): Yeah. Well, yeah, they were 42 and 40. SJ (01:44:10): Yeah. They are not boomers. SM (01:44:11): Todd is younger than Tom, but Tom Hayden, I would like your response to this. Because Tom said he did not like even Tom Brokaw's book Boom. Because he says, boom is an indication of something being shot out, showing violent and boom, basically Tom. And then the fact that it happened so fast that the Boomer generation was insignificant, it was just a short time period in history. So he was attacking the term boom. SJ (01:44:46): Well, I think if you, pardon of my saying, so he is, he is being a bit of anachronistic in his interpretation. The word baby boom was used beginning in the 1940s and it did not have anything to do with violence. All it meant is all of these people were having, all of these children. Did not have any. As all of these people were having all of these children. Did not have anything to do with the idea of the Boomer generation as it was taken over in the (19)60s. Tom Hayden, if he says that his mind is still in the (19)60s, which does not really surprise me. And it is for the Boomer generation being a short moment in time. Well, he does not know much about demography then. Now there really are two Boomer generations. 1957 was the highest birth rate in American history, is the exact midpoint of the Baby Boom generation. After that, the demography tapers off a little. But they are really two halves of the Boomer generation. One is people born between 1946 and 1957, the older Boomers, and people born between 1957 and 1964, the younger Boomers. There is a big difference between them. One of them being that it is only the older Boomers who came of age the late 1960s. The younger Boomers came of age in a much more conservative era, and in fact, they are more conservative politically in many ways than the older Boomers. Barack Obama is a younger Boomer. SM (01:46:15): He is two years older, yeah. SJ (01:46:16): He keeps trying to dis-identify himself from the Baby Boom generation, but he is a Boomer. And here is the one thing that the older Boomers and the younger Boomers have in common, and again, Hayman and Gitlin are not Boomers at all. They belong to that half generation born really between the middle of the depression and the end of the second world war. And they have some different... Although you are right, they were involved in fact, what people think of today as a lot of the activities of the Boomer generation. But what the younger Boomers and the older Boomers have in common is this. They both grew up in spite of the recessions of the 1970s, in times overall that were a rising economy in which they expected, and in fact did get access to a lot of things their parents never had. And this is true when you think about Barack Obama. In fact, the younger half of the Boomer generation that was Black benefited a lot more from these things than the older Black Baby Boomers, simply because of the achievements of the civil rights movement that were won when Barack Obama was a baby. So the younger Boomers and the older Boomers have in common, it did not cost them enough fortune to go to college. The real rise in college tuition did not happen until the mid 1980s, after even most of the younger Boomers were through college. The younger Boomers, Blacks and Hispanics, benefited from scholarships and things that did not exist for Blacks, for the older Boomers. And something else also, which is that the younger Boomers, again, the Obamas are perfect examples of this. They moved into a path that had been paved by the older Boomers, which was if you were 20 in the 1950s, you were expected within two years of graduating from college, if you were a girl to be married, if you were a guy you were not expected to be married until you were 30, if you were a guy to have a good job. And when the Boomers who came of age in the (19)60s came along, they pioneered a path in which it was okay not to get married right away. And it was okay to stay in school longer, to take some time out, find out what it was you really want to do. Now, when you look at Barack Obama's career in the 1970s, the time out he took from school before he went back to law school, these are things that, for instance, a young Black man from the older part of the Boomer generation, his parents would have gone nuts if he had said, "I want to wait to go to law school. I want to find myself." These possibilities, which are that your life is not set in stone when you are 22. That was a way of living that was pioneered by the older Boomers when Tom Hayden says, "This was just a moment in time." He is utterly wrong. SM (01:49:20): He was referring to that term Boom. And he was referring to Tom Brokaw's book. SJ (01:49:26): This is a book being written 40 years after all of this is taking place. And I do not know what Tom Brokaw means by Boom, but maybe Tom Hayden does not know the term Baby Boomer became current in the 1940s. It was not an invention of the 1960s. SM (01:49:39): I know that I interviewed Richie Havens. Richie said I was born in 41, but I am really a Boomer because of the spirit. SJ (01:49:47): Well, what happened was the Boomers of Tom Hayden's day and the pre Boomers is that things came along in the 1960s and they took advantage. You are absolutely right. A lot of what is thought of as the Boomer activities of the late (19)60s was really carried out by this half generation, who was both Todd Gitlin, whom I love, and Tom Hayden belong. SM (01:50:14): And thought of Richie. SJ (01:50:14): Yeah, and Richie too. SM (01:50:15): Yeah. One of the things that I am curious, you already made reference to it, before the real strong women's movement and feminism and so forth, and what was it like being a female reporter? You said you had two people who were really strong role models for you. Men who treated- SJ (01:50:32): Not role models, they gave me great advice. SM (01:50:34): They gave great advice. SJ (01:50:35): We were not role models at all. SM (01:50:36): But what was it like to be a female reporter in the early or mid (19)60s? SJ (01:50:42): Well, I applied for a job at two places, the Detroit Free Press and the Washington Post. Fortunately, the Detroit Free Press did not hire me, so I was hired by the Post, which was great. The Free Press refused to hire me for anything but the society section, this is 1964, although I had been covering regular stories for them for years because they said a woman could not be out at night if there were a story that came up at night. The Post was a different kettle of fish. They hired me as a regular reporter, but I was only the second reporter, female reporter, who did not work in what was then called the society section. However, I think I would have encountered a lot more trouble with the New York Times then. But at the Washington Post, because the Post was then expanding, it had a lot of really young reporters on it. It was not a disadvantage to be a woman in the same way as it would have been at the New York Times in the early 1960s. SM (01:51:45): I have a couple... You have a quote in your book, this book, "This increasing alliterate of America, not only the enjoyment in reading, but critical thinking is at risk." And the way I really going to ask this question is, is this a direct link to the (19)60s? Because with a lot of criticism of today's young people today is they are smart. They do not know their history. SJ (01:52:14): Blaming it on the (19)60s. SM (01:52:25): [inaudible] Between this quote and the (19)60s. SJ (01:52:26): Yes and no. Yes and no. In the 1960s, books were still really important to all of us. I mean, I can remember when Portnoy's Complaint was published in 1969. I mean, can remember I had heard about this book. I can remember just rushing to the bookstore, just dying to read this book. I do not think anybody rushes to a bookstore dying to read a book at all today. I really think more than the (19)60s, although there is a connection with the (19)60s which I will circle back to, but I really feel that the older Boomers belong more to the previous generation in terms of their attitudes toward reading. The younger Boomers belong more to the next generation. Because there was not any internet, there were not any computers before the 1980s. So that we grew up in a society in which, if you read, books were important. As far as not knowing history goes, this has gotten worse every year. It did not start in the (19)60s. There were actually some polls for the 1930s, which show how little history Americans do in the 1930s too. But I do think that what happened in the 1960s, I mean, nobody could have imagined the internet then, nobody did. But there were certainly a lot more forms of entertainment began to intrude on time that had once been devoted to reading. Look, the transistor radio, the small portable transistor radio, I think played an important role in this. For the first time, although it was nothing right now is nothing like an iPod. It was nothing like computer access 24/7, but for the first time, you could bring your music with you everywhere. But I think it was the beginning of a change, which was a descending curve that was fairly soft in the (19)60s. I do not think it really takes a sharp downward turn until the 1980s. This is going to be a problem, I think. SM (01:54:36): We can move to... SJ (01:54:37): No, there are not any tables. Because this guy is talking awful loudly. All right, well, they will not stay there. SM (01:54:47): You were in the middle of [inaudible]. SJ (01:55:01): No, that is the way it is. Okay. There is one aspect of the (19)60s that I think does have something to do, and it was really the late (19)60s, early (19)70s. I think in general, student demands are blamed, in general, by conservatives for watering down of the university curriculum. Now, it is true that students were demanding a lot of bullshit things in the late 1960s, early (19)70s. And I do not believe that their criticisms of the curriculum were justified at all. Their criticisms the way universities were run was. But I think what happened in the (19)60s that was bad and was entirely a fault of the faculty at that time is for some reason they were actually scared of these student demands. And you had two kinds of people. You had had younger faculty members, many of whom threw in their lot with the students who wanted to teach women's studies and so on. And you had older faculty members, people who wanted to teach the way they always had, the dead white European male curriculum. And they both got their way, and I think it was a very evil and stupid compromise. But what they did was they shut it off. Instead of developing a great African American studies curriculum, which was taught to every student of American history, they shunted it off into minority studies department. Instead of including women writers in every English class and making women's studies part of the whole, they shut it off into women's studies department. Now this pleased everybody on campuses and I was an education reporter for the Washing Post at the time this was happening. It pleased the old guys because they could continue to teach their white studies, their white male studies exactly the way they always taught them, and it pleased the new people because it meant more jobs and more tenure. Everybody got what they wanted. It was bad for education in general. The kind of vulcanization of things that every kid ought to be learning started in the late 1960s, and it was not the fault of the students was the fault of the faculty who were supposed to be the grownups that did not act like it. SM (01:57:12): You mentioned in the book, too, that tenure was something very important in the (19)50s on college campuses and then in the (19)60s, mid (19)60s in particular. So maybe around the mid (19)70s tenure was not that important. It was basically they were involved in the reacting to the social movements that were- SJ (01:57:29): That is not what I said. I did not say anything about tenure at all, but in fact, the way things worked out, the way things worked out, everybody got tenure. People who were involved in the social movements of the (19)60s are the tenured professors who will not leave because they cannot retire on college campuses today. Tenure did not have anything to do with whether you were fighting the establishment then at all. Those people got tenure too. Those women's studies professors got tenure, the African-American studies. And there are campuses with African- American studies departments, Harvard is one of them, where in fact, lots of kids of all races go. But what happened in most campuses was they became an enclave for minority students and meant that meant the minority students were not learning everything they should learn, and the white students sure as hell were not learning everything they should learn. But as for tenure, that is my whole point. Everybody got it. That is why everybody was happy with what happened. SM (01:58:26): You do a great job [inaudible] of the criticisms of the neocons towards anybody that was involved in any kind of protest or activism of that particular time. You bring up Irving Crystal and Todd Hortz. SJ (01:58:47): Todd Hortz. Well, they are ancient. SM (01:58:48): And commentary, but they were the kind of old left and their attitude toward the (19)60s. How do you react to, because the current neocons, when Newt Gingrich came the power in 1994 when the Republican came in, he made some strong commentaries. SJ (01:59:01): Remember the Newtster was coming of age of the (19)60s. He was part of that other (19)60s. SM (01:59:02): Yeah. Yeah. He was there and then he had... You had the Bill Crystals of the world who were coming on, and then even today on Fox, you see a lot of the criticisms of the (19)60s. There is a lot of the reasons why we are having the problems in our society today, just looking back. SJ (01:59:33): Well, by the way, those people on Fox do not know any more about the (19)60s than most of American knows about ancient Greek or Latin. I mean, they do not know anything about it. There is this image of the (19)60s frozen in time. I think that is probably really what Tom Hayden was objecting to. The idea that people who were protesting things in the (19)60s were just free lovers and dopers, and that was it, and that is all there was to the (19)60s. People who wanted to do anything that they wanted to do. SM (02:00:01): One of the things, the generation gap, it was very obvious. I remember on Life Magazine, they had the front cover with that young man, and he had his glasses on and one side of the glasses his father was pointing at him and he was pointing back at his job. So the generation gap between parents and their kids was very obvious at that particular time. But also in that book, the Wounded Generation, Jim Webb made a commentary at the symposium back in 1980s. But the real generation gap was not between parents. The generation gap is those who served in Vietnam, and when they were called to serve their nation, they went and those who did not. SJ (02:00:49): So that was not a generation gap, that is a culture gap. SM (02:00:49): He called it... And actually went even further by saying that oftentimes the (19)60s generation is supposed to be the Peace Corps generation, the Vista, the service. They took the words of Kennedy and they used it, whether it be go into service or to go into the Peace Corps. He says they are not a service generation, so they incur. A lot of them refused to serve. SJ (02:01:04): Jim Webb, by the way, is not a Baby Boomer, I believe. SM (02:01:07): I do not know. I think he is about 44. SJ (02:01:11): Well, he is very young, but I would say that that is true. That in general, all of the children in the (19)60s were not the service generation. But if you go back to Vietnam and to say that that people who did not serve were just motivated by selfishness. That is not just wrong. It is true. But they did not want to get shot at, but they did not want to get shot at for this particular thing. I do not know whether Jim Webb thinks the Vietnam War was worthwhile or not. I do not to this day think the Vietnam War was worthwhile. What did we get out of it except all of those dead. And Vietnam is now what it was always going to be a communist country, far from our sphere of influence. And the countries we are fighting in now, Iraq and Afghanistan are going to be Muslim countries far from our sphere of influence when all of this is over. But I think as somebody who remembers of Vietnam War, I think not just somebody who has heard about it, which is what all Jim Webb has, he has heard about it. He does not remember the Vietnam War. He knows only what he has been told at the military academy about the Vietnam War. I like Jim Webb. SM (02:02:25): Oh, he served in Vietnam. SJ (02:02:31): He served in Vietnam? SM (02:02:32): Yes, he did. SJ (02:02:32): So he is not in his 40s then. SM (02:02:32): Well, he served in Vietnam. SJ (02:02:32): He did? SM (02:02:32): Yes. SJ (02:02:32): Are you sure? SM (02:02:35): Yes. And of course, his son is serving in Iraq on two tours. SJ (02:02:40): Well, if Jim Webb thinks the Vietnam War was worthwhile, I do not agree with him. And if he thinks that in order to be of the service generation you had to serve in Vietnam, I do not agree with him. I mean, you could call young Nazis members of the service generation too. They served the Nazis, and by that, I assure you, I do not mean that people who served in Vietnam were Nazis. I mean, because you do not choose a particular kind of way to serve. But I will tell you this, but I think far worse than anything that happened in terms of culture division in Vietnam is what is happening today. I think that you have an all-volunteer army, which of course was a direct result of the fact, but so many people did not want to serve and use education and privilege to get out of the draft. I think the all-volunteer army is far worse. I think the reason that even now, I do not think America is paying any attention to these wars, to how many people are being killed, and I think there is direct reason they are not paying any attention to it is that their sons and daughters do not have to go if they do not want to. My parents were moderate Republicans who opposed the Vietnam War. My father was a veteran. They did not think the Vietnam War was worth fighting. They opposed it because they were terrified that their son was going to get drafted, my brother. He did not, but I do not think they would have any position if they were the same kind of people today on the Iraq war. They would not have to worry about my brother being drafted. My father saw absolutely no analogy between Vietnam and World War II, and he was not a liberal. SM (02:04:30): When you look at the whole Jane Fonda situation, and I have interviewed a lot- SJ (02:04:39): Jane is another one of those iconographic (19)60s people. SM (02:04:40): You saw her when she was at the New School this past year, I think it was in February, talking about her whole career. It was unbelievable. It was a tremendous hour and a half program there. But when you look at, oftentimes entertainers themselves are being criticized today, you are just being entertainers. SJ (02:04:59): That is ridiculous. SM (02:05:00): And when you go back to the (19)60s, you can always remember John Wayne, Martha Ray, Bob Hope, which would be gung-ho for the troops. But you had the Donald Sutherland, Jane Fonda who were against. SJ (02:05:16): Here is no reason why entertainers should not use their celebrity anyway that they want. And by the way, I would like, while I am thinking of it, this is not a question you are asking, but you know were asking about Boomers and boom and all of that. I do not know about boom, but of course now the Boomers... I have a new book coming out in February. It is called Never Say Die, the Myth and the Marketing of the New Old Age. And here is another thing, and here is why Tom Hayden is very wrong, that this was just a moment in time. Oldest Boomers turned 65 next year in 2011. The oldest Boomers turned 65, by 2030, unless there is some kind of a catastrophe, which of course there always could be, there are going to be 8.5 million Americans over the age of 85, most of them Boomers. Now, and this is related to the age of American unreason because there is also one thing older and younger Boomers have in common, a kind of forever young state of mind, whether they are or not. This is hitting the Boomers hard now and there is now, this is what my next book is about. There is now the same kind of propaganda about the new old age, but there was in the about Boomers being completely different from their parents in that there is a mindset that says, "If only we live right, if only we worked hard enough, the phrase defying old age comes up all the time." It is a Boomer mindset, a mindset in which, and it is also very much a mindset of the (19)70s after the (19)60s, the retreat into the personal growth kind of thing. But if you just work hard enough, if you live right- SM (02:07:06): [inaudible] exercise. SJ (02:07:08): ...your old age is not going to be... At 90, I went to this panel two years ago, three years ago, called is 90 the new (19)50s. Gene was in the audience, by the way. Well, I could answer you whether 90 is the new 50. It is not, but the Boomers are going to be affecting ideas about old age thus far in a very unrealistic sort of way for quite a while. But as far as a lot of Boomers are concerned, the only people who get Alzheimer's disease are people who did not exercise enough and who ate too many carbs and got too fat. If you live to be more than 85, you have a 50 percent chance of getting Alzheimer's disease. It is evidence, facts cannot be denied. And that is something that a certain fantasy part of the Boomer generation has always tried to do. SM (02:08:00): Yes, exactly. SJ (02:08:00): The Boomer attitude toward old age now is exactly like the attitude of aging Boomer women who wanted to have natural childbirth, which is they believed that if they only wanted it, childbirth would not hurt. SM (02:08:14): Well, I know that Boomers they do not want to have senior citizen centers. SJ (02:08:20): No-no. SM (02:08:21): They want to get rid of that word senior citizens. SJ (02:08:25): I used the word old in my new book. The word old is the word Boomers hate. Hello. I am just 65. How many 130-year-old do you see walking around? I am not middle-aged. They are not middle-aged. By the 2030, none of us are going to be anywhere near middle-aged. We are going to be old. SM (02:08:48): It is an interesting, you go to any park or any place, people are running, walking, exercising, biking. Doctors will say, that will extend your lifespan. SJ (02:08:58): No, they do not. They say it is good for you now. No good doctor says it. It is good for you in a million different ways. Whether it will extend your life, your healthy lifespan is completely unknown. I know, I know. The AARP, which is now run by Boomers, of course, right? The AARP for which I written many times, and God bless them, I love them. The AARP, the attitude about the new old age is this, it is okay to be old as long as you pretend you are not. So as the AARP concentrates on the 95-year-old sky diver, the 90-year-old who are having great sex, of course there cannot be very many of them among women because most women who are 90 years old do not have partners. And if you noticed ads for Viagra, which was actually intended either for people who have things like diabetes or for people over 65, 70, the people in ads for Viagra are all in their 40s. They do not want to present the real age at which Viagra is really aimed. What they want to say in these commercials is if you take Viagra, it would be just like it was 20, 30 years ago. SM (02:10:12): You hit some- SJ (02:10:14): But this is related to the Boomer generation because the Boomers are getting old. SM (02:10:19): Yeah. And I think when they were younger, they felt... This is one thing too. When I was in school, there was this feeling that we were going to change the world. We were going to end war, bring peace, end all the racism, sexism and homophobia, clean up the environment. There was the supposed attitude of not 100 percent of the people, but the activists had, but they were going to make a difference in the world. SJ (02:10:46): And we did make a difference in a lot of ways. Look, would you rather be Black in America today or would you rather have been Black before the Civil Rights movement? Would you rather be a woman in America today, or would you rather be a woman from Mad Men? These changes in women's lives, and I am not discounting for a minute that what we are seeing now is ugly, and the idea that this was kind of eradicated either then or now is ridiculous, and anybody with a brain in their head knows it. But fact is the progress that is made in opportunities for minorities, the progress that was made in opportunities for women is absolutely undeniable. It was not better to be African American or Hispanic or female in 1960 than it is today. It is much better to be all of those things today. SM (02:11:33): You talked a lot about- How we doing time wise? SJ (02:11:47): Well, we have been at it for about- SM (02:11:47): 45 minutes? SJ (02:11:48): Oh, more than that. We can go on. I am comfortable here and get this done maybe. SM (02:11:52): Yeah [inaudible] I will come back to it. When you look at the period that Boomers have been alive, which is 1946... Oh, another question I was going to ask. Many people have said to me during my interviews, when you look at Bill Clinton, and when you look at George's Bush number two, you can tell they are Boomers. Just a general comment. You can tell they are Boomers. What do you think they are saying when they say that? SJ (02:12:24): I have no idea. I mean, they both behave like Boomers politically in a sense. I do not know what they mean by that. If you look at them, you can tell what they are Boomers. But I can tell if they are Boomers because I know they are the age they are. They have to be Boomers. I actually do not have any... I cannot venture a comment on that because I do not know what they mean. If they mean a style of politics, which is a little less buttoned up. Maybe that is what they mean. I do not know what they mean by, if you look at Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, you can tell they are Boomers. Do they both smoke pot? Yeah, when they were young. I do not know what that says. SM (02:13:06): I think some were referring to George Bush as well, my way or the highway kind of mentality, but some of the activists had in the (19)60s and Bill Clinton with his Monica Lewinsky. SJ (02:13:20): Well, yeah, as we know, politicians who are not Boomers never have extramarital sex. But this is ridiculous. There is this tendency on the part of the right to attribute everything they do not like that they imagine to be true about the Boomer generation to have been the Boomer generation. How can anybody make this ridiculous statement about Monica Lewinsky being an example of a typical Boomer mindset? I mean, exactly what generation of politicians has not had sex scandals? The only difference was in the past is that the public did not know about it because the press did not write about it. SM (02:13:58): Look at that period, 1946 to 1960, how did that shape the very, very young Boomers with respect to the issue of fear? We already talked about McCarthyism, which was on television in the early (19)50s, so the front running Boomers would have seen that- SJ (02:14:18): It affected... I remember the air raid drills when we would crouch under the desk, which was supposed to protect us from radiation. I do not know a single person my age or who is a sentient being in the early (19)50s who does not remember the fear of the bomb. Exactly how much that shaped us, I do not know. The nature of being young is not to be fearful. I think I can remember the air raid drills and thinking it was silly, but I do not come from a typical family. My family, while they were not liberal or left at all, but they were sort of completely indifferent to that sort of sort of thing. SM (02:15:03): I think that across the board, whether it is that- SJ (02:15:06): I think a lot of it would have depended on what kind of a family you came from. SM (02:15:12): The three adjectives that I lean on here in describing the early light Boomers as a whole is- SJ (02:15:21): Fear? SM (02:15:22): And fear being what you talk about the bomb and growing up with a cold war, and obviously that the Communist, looking for Communists everywhere. Naive. Naive, hey, because I believe that (19)50s television was all about that, and you really had to read between the lines. And being quiet. SJ (02:15:40): Quiet? SM (02:15:40): Being quiet. I do not think Boomers [inaudible] thought Boomers really never started to do things. I mean, being outspoken, until the (19)60s. SJ (02:15:48): Not, well, first of all, Boomers in the (19)50s were little kids. SM (02:15:48): They were in junior high school, though. SJ (02:15:59): We do not tend to take down the utterances of little kids. But this I think you are very wrong about. I think you are conflating something, the Silent Generation, which was people who came of age in the (19)50s with the Boomers. I think on the contrary, child rearing was much more permissive in the 1950s. I do not think people around for good as well as for bad to say that Dr. Spock's ideas about child rearing, which while in some ways very traditional, were much freer than the kind of child rearing people of my parents' generation were brought up with. I think in fact, although Boomers, every little word was not taken as seriously as kids are today. I think that Boomers grew up in a much freer, more outspoken atmosphere then. And said things that would not have been allowed for their parents to say when they were children. But I do not think the (19)60s did not come out of nowhere. They did not come out of nowhere. It is not like a switch was turned on. And I mean, you have got to remember that the election of John F. Kennedy, the oldest Boomers were 14 when John F. Kennedy was elected. In some ways, that was still the (19)50s, but in some ways too, that also felt like the dawn of a new day. I would say quite the opposite. Yes, there was the bomb and all of that. Did I really think anybody was going to drop a bomb on me when I was... I think in fact, the Boomers were brought up with a great deal more security and intelligence than their parents were. I would say it was quite the opposite of fear. Life was pretty nice for a child in the 1950s if you came from a middle class family. And I do stress that if you came from a middle class family. Life growing up in the 1950s, if you grew up in a ghetto or if you were a poor white or Black person growing up in the south, Bill Clinton's early life was very different from mine. But what was different by the time he got into college in the (19)60s is there were scholarships for bright young boy. Bill Clinton, he had been born in generation earlier, he would have been no one. He would have been white trash because there would not have been any way for a boy like that to go to college. SM (02:18:15): You cannot forget about Native Americans as well during the 1950s on the reservations. SJ (02:18:21): They were not on the radar at all. But the life of the poor and the middle class in the (19)50s was very different. It was certainly as different as it is today, and you just cannot... I mean, that is one of the reasons why a lot of the anger today was that a lot of the other (19)60s were not just the rich people like the Bushes. It was also working class people. And there are people who did not make it out of the working class in the 1950s, the 1960s. My family made it out of the working class in the 1950s. And their children, there was never any thought that we were going to be part of that blue-collar class, which was only a half generation away in our family, but a lot of Americans did not. SM (02:19:07): This afternoon I will be speaking to Marvin Serff. He is going to talk about growing up African American in Detroit in the (19)60s. SJ (02:19:07): How old is he? SM (02:19:07): Oh, he is like same age as Alan Wolf. He has got to be probably mid (19)60s. SJ (02:19:07): Yeah, he is the same age as Alan then. SM (02:19:22): Yeah. But I think he does not live in America anymore. He lives in Mexico. He just happens to be visiting friends here. SJ (02:19:28): Well, that will be a very interesting interview because Detroit in the mid (19)60s was changing rapidly and the mid (19)60s are the period when the whites just basically abandoned Detroit and Detroit was just abandoned. That should be a very interesting- SM (02:19:48): Another person wrote a book on the labor unions in Detroit at that time, and how they took on the Black Power and the Black Panther mentality in the labor room. In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin and when did it end? And what was the watershed moment? SJ (02:19:57): Actually, I think the (19)60s really began- Actually, I think the (19)60s really began around 1963 and not just for the Kennedy assassination. I think one of the things that you definitely felt when you were a teenager in the early 1960s, there is a big cultural change that started to happen. Although the early (19)60s, Mad Men is not wrong about this, in some ways they were more like the 1950s than they were the later part of the (19)60s. But in some ways, they were not. But one thing that happens in the early (19)60s is that, first of all, there begins to be strong concern in mainstream America about peace. You get movies like On the Beach, which was a big hit movie, movies of the kind that would have been considered commie only five years before. But, yeah, you have 1964. You have two movies, Dr. Strangelove, which is an iconic movie, and Failsafe. The Failsafe movie came out just before that. What they both were about were movies suggesting that war might happen by accident, not by the evil of communism, and we all ought to be thinking about that. There is a very big change that starts in those early years of the (19)60s, not exactly at 1960, but I would say that the minute John Kennedy began talking about nuclear disarmament, which coincided with this cultural moment when movies questioning whether war necessarily arose from the total evil of the enemy, I think that is where the (19)60s really begin. They end with the end of the Vietnam War, and we have a lot of things... I consider the Women's Movement, which is really early (19)70s really a (19)60s phenomenon. I think of it as... although the Women's Movement really does not begin to... they sure empty the garbage a lot, which is good. I think the (19)60s really end with the end of the Vietnam War and kind of the beginning of the consolidation of what the Women's Movement was gaining. The high-water mark of women's movement is really the late (19)70s, not the (19)60s. SM (02:22:15): What was the watershed moment? Was there a watershed moment? One particular moment that stands out? SJ (02:22:15): It was to when the (19)60s ended? SM (02:22:15): No, just the whole period of the (19)60s. SJ (02:22:15): Well, to me the watershed moment was of course, I mean you got the original about this, it was 1968. It was not when the (19)60s ended, but the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy within months of each other, it certainly changed my frame of mind about what was possible. This is followed right away by the election of Richard Nixon. And the election of Richard Nixon, it was not just old people who voted for Richard Nixon. The (19)60s were not going to turn out to be a turning point in history toward what I would have said were my values. This becomes pretty obvious by the end of 1968. SM (02:23:20): You remember the exact moment you heard that John Kennedy was killed? Do you remember? SJ (02:23:20): I sure do. SM (02:23:27): Most people do. Where were you when you heard? SJ (02:23:32): I was buying a dress in a shop in East Lansing, Michigan. What I remember more and what meant more to me is I also remember where I was when Bobby Kennedy was killed, and when Martin Luther King was killed. When Martin Luther King was killed, I was at home in my house on Capitol Hill, my apartment on Capitol Hill, and I just immediately jumped in a cab and went straight to the Washington Post, because I knew that the city was going to go up in flames, which it did. I was a reporter for the Post. When Robert Kennedy was killed, I was in Frankfurt airport changing planes for Kenya where I was going to meet my fiancé. Everybody in Frankfurt airport was crying, and that is when I learned, and I said to myself, "This is the end of my hope." It was not, of course, but it felt like it. SM (02:24:33): As a person who has written a lot of great books and have analyzed America from different angles, when you look at the assassinations of Kennedy, King and Kennedy again, what does that say about America? That, if you speak up too much, you are going to be in or what does it say? SJ (02:24:53): What it says to me, and believe you me, I have been thinking about it a lot this week. What it said to me is that there is a lot of free-floating anger and rage in our culture. I do not think it had anything to do with speaking up per se, but when you do become a lightning rod for people who feel threatened, there is no shortage of the true combination of craziness and evil that takes a gun out and shoots. And I have been thinking about that a lot. It feels to me, I am not saying it is, but what is going on right now feels to me very much like things felt to me in the late 1960s only worse because- SM (02:25:46): Hold that thought. I want to turn my tape here. Yeah, you are bringing up some very interesting- SJ (02:26:01): So one thing my throat is getting sore. SM (02:26:03): Yep. Okay. SJ (02:26:07): Well, it feels to me in 2010 as we approached this anniversary of the terrorist attack, it feels to me, although it is not the same class of characters, but I have the same really uneasy feeling I had in 1968, which is I have this feeling that anything could happen, that there is a lot of unfocused rage out there added to even more ignorance that existed in 1968 because I do believe people know-know us. I do believe that the 24 hour news cycle, the web and so on, have made us stupider not smarter. They have given us more information, but I believe in terms of logical thinking, in terms of the ability to remember anything that happened before 10 minutes ago, I think we have a worse and more stupid culture than we did in 1968. But I feel the same kind of anger around me. I am not saying I am right, I am saying it feels kind of the same to me now, which is bad, but it feels the same to a lot of people who live through that time. Right now, I have this feeling that I do not know where the ground quite is beneath me, what is going to happen next. And some crack pot leader of a congregation of 50 people in Gainesville, Florida get the call from the Secretary of Defense begging him not to burn the Koran. It makes me feel like almost anything could happen. SM (02:27:44): And also recently with the fact- SJ (02:27:48): I hope this is a feeling and not a fact. SM (02:27:50): Well, I have a feeling because I have been studying lately the football player that was killed by friendly fire. SJ (02:27:57): Pat Tillman. SM (02:27:57): Pat Tillman. Unbelievable. And the latest is that he was murdered because he was going to come back to the United States and be an anti-war protestor that he and his brother and some of his close associates had seen enough. He was going to finish his time, but he was going to come back, and there was a worry that he would come back and that would be terrible to have the number one guy [inaudible] else about. SJ (02:28:28): Well, what I would say about this is that this idea is around is part of what makes it feel like 1968. This is probably not true, probably it is just the army covered its ass as it always tries to do after friendly fire. But these conspiracy theories are all out there, and we see more of them on the right than on the left at the moment, but the existence of conspiracy theories in which a lot of people believe, not saying whether they are true or not, but it is a sign that there is a lot of dangerous anger out there. SM (02:29:05): I agree. And of course we all worried about President Obama when he came into power and somebody wanted to knock him off. SJ (02:29:13): Well, I am still worried about that. SM (02:29:16): Who won the battles in the (19)60s? Who won the battle? SJ (02:29:21): Which battle are you talking about? SM (02:29:22): Basically the liberals versus conservatives. Who really won? It was very obvious- SJ (02:29:31): The left won the culture war. The political war was a draw as we see very well. If the left had won the political war, we would not have the kind of problems that we have today. Richard Nixon would never have been elected President. Ronald Reagan would never have been elected president. Loads of baby boomers voted for Ronald Reagan. SM (02:29:50): Yep, I know. SJ (02:29:52): So the left definitely did not win the political war, but I said the left won the culture war. It did in the sense that a lot of the lifestyle changes of the (19)60s were adopted on the right as well as the left. SM (02:30:05): Well, Nixon always used the term silent majority and there were a lot of young people that were in that silent majority as well. SJ (02:30:14): That is right. SM (02:30:16): One of the criticisms of the (19)60s generation were the boomers, or the activists is they always say that in the generation of 78 million, only about 15 percent were ever involved in any kind of activism. Even some of the strongest activists I have talked to have said, "15? It was more like five." SJ (02:30:33): I would agree with them, but that alone is not a measure because there are a lot of ideas which were shared by people who were not activists. Again, in a way I am atypical, but everybody says this. When I was 24 years old, I got married to the Moscow correspondent of the Washington Post and moved to Moscow with him for two and a half years where I wrote my first book and did not go back to newspaper writing because I wanted to write books and magazine articles. But I was very affected by my time in Russia in this, but many of the cultural concerns of my contemporaries seemed very trivial to me when I came back. It also affected me very much apropos of some of the bad educational things that happened in the (19)60s. I was in Russia, a country where there was no such thing as popular entertainment that was bearable. If you wanted to do anything that was fun in Russia, it was listening to classical music, it was reading classics because those were the only kind of good books that were available. And so that in a way, in Russia, I got the education that I missed when I was in college because there was no such thing as a popular entertainment culture there. There was anything but anything but controlled by the party. So in a way, in Russia, I had to read poetry and classics with an intensity that I never read before and the only kind of music I could hear was good music. I just laughed. I just laugh when I see this silly book about Bob Dylan that Sean Wilentz, who was another child of the (19)60s, just published. The idea of Bob Dylan is a great artist to me is ridiculous and I know why it is ridiculous to me. Because when everybody else was listening to the Stones and Bob Dylan, I know who genius poets were. They were Osip Mandelstam and Joseph Brodsky and Boris Pasternak. Bob Dylan is not a genius of a poet, and it is an example of low educational standards of a lot of my generation that this guy is taken seriously as anything but a singer of his generation, which in that respect, what he was perfectly good. SM (02:32:49): What do you think of Rod McKuen? SJ (02:32:51): Well, Rod McKuen was the worst. SM (02:32:54): How about the beat writers? SJ (02:32:55): But Rod McKuen? Well, the beat writers fall a whole different category. They were earlier and after something else. Al Ginsberg is a great poet. Rod McKuen is not. Rod McKuen was liked by both the left and the right, by the way. You have a lot of pop culture of the (19)60s. That is why I say the left in general was stupid, won the culture war in the 1960s. 1960s is when you begin to see a lot of decline and a lot of things that I valued. Ages 24 to 26 I was in Russia. These are very formative years. I was not listening to the Stones or Bob Dylan. There was a little Pat and Oscar. SM (02:33:47): What do you consider to be the major failures of the movement? The movement or the movement? SJ (02:34:01): I do not think the civil rights movement failed in any way except in the sense that undermining something as potent as racial discrimination and racial stereotypes in a country that was founded upon slavery is not the work of 10 years or 20 years or as we see now. To paraphrase John Kennedy, even in our lifetime on this earth, I do not think the civil rights movement was a failure at all. I think it was a complete success, but they failed to persuade probably 25 percent of people in this country now as then that they were right is not a failure. They persuaded a lot of people that they were right. We got through the civil rights movement. You heard about anybody being lynched lately? No, I do not think the civil rights movement was a failure in any way. The anti-war movement was clearly a failure. It failed to end the war. It was not movement's fault; the entrenched nature of what Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex is too much for anybody burning their draft cards and American flags on college campuses. Clearly, the anti-war movement in terms of changing a kind of reflexive respect for the military was a failure. I would say that one of the greatest disappointments of my adult lifetime is, as far as I can see, to me, the war in Afghanistan resembles the futility of the war in Vietnam much more than any other. But we did not learn anything from our experience in Vietnam. We did not learn much about the limits of American power in a totally different culture, very, very far from home. And by the way, when you think about that war now, when you think about the Viet Cong and the Taliban, you understand the Viet Cong were practically kissing cousins in relation to us compared to the values of somebody like the Taliban. SM (02:36:12): Yes. SJ (02:36:12): As we now see, we are a country with all sorts of commercial relations with Vietnam. Vietnam is part of the world in which we live, with parts of the Muslim world controlled by people like the Taliban are not. So I would say that the anti-war movement was absolutely a failure both in the short term, in that the war went on for years until 1975, and the long term in terms of making people more skeptical about this kind of careless exercise of American power. The women's movement was a success in that it opened up a lot more educational and economic opportunities to women. I would not say that the women's movement was a failure. People say things are still bad for women who want to raise a family and have a career. That is true, but I do not exactly see that as a failure any more than I see the fact that that Americans who hate Barack Obama will not admit that race has anything to do with it today. I do not see that as a failure of the civil rights movement any more than I see the fact that it is still tough to have a family and a career as a woman. I see those as entrench structural problems that the civil rights movement and women's movement made a good start on, that nobody could have expected would be solved even by now. SM (02:37:47): You do not have to go into any extensive detail, but then you have got the Native American movement which many people thought was only a four-year movement with AIM starting at Alcatraz and ending at Wounded Knee. The Native American movement had been going on for a long time. Then of course you had the Chicano movement, the farm workers and of course the environmental movement and the gay and lesbian movement, so they are all- SJ (02:38:08): Well, the gay lesbian movement, it starts where the (19)60s end really. I mean, I am in the gay rights movement. The enormous change that has taken place that started at Stonewall. All you need to do is look at the different attitudes of young people and older people, and it is a difference between people who are not old enough to be boomers and boomers too. Boomers have far more negative attitudes about gay than the next generation down does. Our parents have problem negative attitudes about gay than the boomers did. These things are take a long time. I do not think that that the gay rights movement has failed because a lot of people still hate gays. I think that the one thing that has not changed in American society is the vast influence of a very retrograde form of religion, which is unique to the United States, which is something that progressives in every generation, beginning with the ideas of 18th century, have thought, "We are going to be gone by the next generation." That has the influence of fundamentalist religion. I do not mean evangelical religion, I mean fundamentalist religion. The kind of religion that takes seriously and believes that lives should be ordered by the writings in sacred books. The Taliban are fundamentalist Muslims, the fundamentalist Christians are fundamentalist Christians. The Jews out living in their little Hasidic shtetls in Brooklyn are fundamentalist Jews. They believe that all of this is to be taken literally. They are a real threat in American society, the biggest threat of the Christians simply because there are more fundamentalist Christians than there are fundamentalist anything else in America. It is unique. It is a failure. It is a failure. I will not go into a lot of this. I read free thinkers if you want to, but we are the only country in the developed world in which a third of our citizens do not accept that evolution is not a scientific reality. SM (02:40:19): You talk about the anti-intellectual atmosphere that came out of the (19)60s then, but you did talk about how that during John Kennedy's three years, there was a hope there that there was an intellectual development taking place because of the people that he hired, the thinkers, the idea people, and of course dealing with the sciences and Sputnik and all the others- SJ (02:40:42): Well, you know they- SM (02:40:42): Do you see the comparison? Mario Savio in 1964 said that the- SJ (02:40:47): I still have a Savio for state senate bumper sticker! SM (02:40:52): Well, I like the guy. He was right on target and he said that the fact is that the university's about ideas. It is not about being the corporate takeover of everything, and we are back to the corporate takeover of everything right now. SJ (02:41:07): We are back. We are at a worst place in relation to that than we ever were then. We did not know what a real corporate takeover of everything was then. We only thought we did. SM (02:41:23): Clark Kerr talked about the knowledge factory, but what did the universities learn from the (19)60s that make them better prepared to work with the student activists? SJ (02:41:31): They are not- SM (02:41:33): In particular, today. SJ (02:41:37): First of all, there are not any student activists today. I mean, there are few, but the universities did not learn anything from the (19)60s as far as I can see. What the universities learned from the (19)60s was how to dumb down their standards enough to please stupid students. There were among the activists, as among everybody else, there were highly brilliant activists. I think Mario Savio was one of them, by the way. I had the greatest respect for him. Todd Gitlin too. There were student activist- SM (02:42:02): Tom Hayden was smart, too. SJ (02:42:03): There were two activists. Well, he got less smart as he got older. There were student activists who were smart and there were student activists who were dumb. The university never had any ability to distinguish between those two groups at all. The reason they did what they did was, they did not want any shortage of their gravy train. I do not know who it was that told you 15 percent was too high an estimate, but they were right. SM (02:42:30): Several people. SJ (02:42:31): But somehow the universities actually thought that parents were going to stop sending their kids to college if they did not shut up these activists on campus, which was never going to happen. So they got the worst of our possible worlds. When instead of truly reforming the curriculum in a good way, that would have added the knowledge that people need about every part of history to the general curriculum. They shunted it off into ghetto studies, and by ghetto, I mean ghetto women's studies, ghetto queer studies, which is ridiculous too. Whatever is necessary to know about any minority is necessary for everyone to know. It is not necessary only for the minority or the interest in you to know. SM (02:43:16): After the Kennedy assassination, I think you said that things changed in the universities, that the Sputnik and the science and math and the importance of those things. But then when he died, something happened within the universities. Clark Kerr talked about the knowledge factory. It is like the IBM mentality. SJ (02:43:38): The emphasis on science did not change at all. That is when the money was always there for science. But what changed the late 1960s and largely as a result of faculty yielding to this pressure of this 5 percent or whatever it was, was that people were not required to learn a common core of knowledge. By the way, I think people like Diane Ravitch are absolutely right about that, and Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who of course came from the opposite political thing. I think that they are absolutely right about the decline of common core knowledge. I think that the faculty of the late (19)60s and early (19)70s covered itself with disgrace by settling for this non-solution of dumbing down general humanities courses, telling students they could decide basically what they wanted to take, and there has been a swing the other way, but so much has been lost. So much has been lost in terms of what people have been not required to learn over the last 30 years, but I do not know if anything can ever- SM (02:44:43): It is a well-known fact- SJ (02:44:44): And computers have made it so much worse. SM (02:44:46): It is a well-known fact as I have experienced them myself, that students of the (19)60s would make demands within the university knowing that if those demands were met, they demand other things they could not demand, so nothing would ever please them. Do you think that kind of a mentality of that small percentage of activists who were really publicized highly by the media as the sample of the spokesman of the (19)60s? SJ (02:45:07): [Inaudible] SM (02:45:07): Has anything to do with the atmosphere that we had today, which was probably the same back then as not listening to each other, my way or the highway kind of mentality? SJ (02:45:24): Well, again, I think it is worse now beyond anything we could have imagined then. I do, in a way, I agree that the power of the quote activist was exaggerated. Look, I know a lot of these people who are thought to be flame-throwing activists. Some of them turned into extremely intelligent great scholars by the end of the 1970s. But I think what is going on now, I do not relate it in a direct line to the (19)60s at all. I cannot imagine, for instance, anybody like Sarah Palin even being listened to in the 1960s. When you think about who was the conservative political hero in the (19)60s, Barry Goldwater, if you think about him and Sarah Palin, just put them in the same frame for a second. If you want to see an example of the degeneration of political and intellectual culture, just see it. Barry Goldwater is a giant compared to Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin is somebody who knows nothing and is proud of it. There were people like that in the (19)60s, but they were not proud of it. They even built careers out of it. SM (02:46:45): I had a couple quotes here and we will end on these quotes. SJ (02:46:47): Okay. I have got a spot for you because I am losing you. SM (02:46:51): You have a quote here. "The denigration of fairness has infected those political and intellectualized and is now produced a culture in which disproportionate influences exercised by the loud and relentless choices of single-minded men and women of one persuasion or another." SJ (02:47:07): More true now in the second year of Obama than it was when I wrote them in 2007. Sadly, one of the most bewildering things that that is happened is that Obama, forget about whether you agree with some of the things he does or not. Obama is clearly a man of reason. I think in many ways he got elected because people were sick of the dumbness of George Bush, but when people got him, the biggest criticism made of him is that he is too cerebral. He is out of touch with what ordinary people feel. I think undoubtedly Obama's great strength and weakness is that he is a reasonable man and I do not think he could really believe that so many of his countrymen are as unreasonable and irrational as they are. I think this could be fatal to him if he does not understand it that he is dealing with a lot of people who cannot be reasonable to [inaudible]. SM (02:48:05): Would you also say, and I think you said this in your book that, in the 1960s, at least on college campuses, that someone came in from a different point of view, students will be there in numbers protesting- SJ (02:48:16): Absolutely. SM (02:48:16): And challenging us today. It is all like-minded people. SJ (02:48:21): Absolutely. It is all like-minded people who go to your like-minded people. SM (02:48:26): I got two more quotes and then we are going to end. I love this and it is in the introduction here. "In today's America, intellectuals and non-intellectual alike, whether on the left or right, tend to tune out any voice that is not an echo. The obduracy is both a manifestation of mental laziness and the essence of anti-intellectualism." SJ (02:48:47): Yes, I agree with agree with that writer! SM (02:48:52): I got lot of quotes here and my last one here is you put Thomas Jefferson's quote at the very beginning. "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." SJ (02:49:03): That is right. Why do not they just replace "In God we trust" on the coins with "Ignorant and proud of it." I do not think, in this book, that you should neglect religion. Remember the big Time cover story in 1968, "God is dead". Well, that is a real big mistake we made in the 1960s and again, the whole fundamentalist upsurge was not something that the media and liberal intellectuals were aware of at all. SM (02:49:35): The Jerry Falwells of the world. SJ (02:49:36): Unfortunately, not only is God not dead, I would not care if He were alive for reasonable people, but a particularly unreasonable kind of God is not dead. SM (02:49:43): This is the last question. Boomers are now reaching 65, as you say, and the youngest ones ever getting towards 50. When boomers are long gone, what do you think the historians, people like yourself, sociologists, writers will say about this generation or better yet the period that they live? What do they say about them? SJ (02:50:11): Well, a lot of history will be a crock. It will depend on which history books they are reading. It will depend on whether they are reading my version of the (19)60s or Todd's version of the (19)60s or Bill Kristol's version of the (19)60s. It will depend to some extent on what they think, but I will tell you one thing, and I think about this a lot as a writer and as a scholar. There is one thing I can say for certain that getting any kind of a rounded picture of who our generation was is going to be much more difficult for a historian 50 years from now than it is for us to get a picture of people who were born in 1920 are. Why? We stopped writing letters in the 1960s. This is before the computer. We stopped writing letters when long distance phone rates went way down and we have stopped writing them almost all together. Since the advent of computers, there is very little record except for a video record of the inner lives of people of our generation. You can write an excellent history of what intellectuals and activists too in the 1930s were thinking. The record of what people were thinking except for those who actually wrote books stops around 1970. You will never find out, for example, what my life was like from reading my personal correspondence because I do not have any anymore because people stopped writing me back around 1975, and that is when I stopped writing. Email has done nothing about this. Email is a totally different, non-reflective, instrumental form of communication. SM (02:51:57): Wow, you are right on that. SJ (02:51:59): I think this is one of the most important things is we are never going to have any sense of what the inner life of this generation was like. Historians are going to find it very difficult. SM (02:52:09): We took students to see John Culver, the former senator from Iowa who was a close friend of Teddy Kennedy. This was back in the (19)90s, and he said, "Now that the interview's over, I want to take it back into my office". And he says, "I want you to look at these. Have you ever seen, these are letters, these are love letters between my mom and dad. Have you ever written a letter?" No. And we are talking (19)90s now, right? She was in the (19)90s, so it is love letters. Have you ever sent a love letter to your girlfriend or boyfriend? No. So John Culver is saying, "Just you look at these and see how beautiful they are." I am going to end with this. SJ (02:52:46): I am just about had it. SM (02:52:47): Yep. Barney Frank said at the very end, he wrote a book- SJ (02:52:50): I love Barney Frank. SM (02:52:51): In his book, Speaking Frankly, he said the Democratic party to survive must separate itself from George McGovern, like McGovernites, the anti-war people, all those people that were involved in those movements if it is to survive. Mr. Barney Frank is speaking frankly. SJ (02:53:08): What makes Barney Frank think anybody remembers George McGovern? That would be my question to him. SM (02:53:13): In his book in the (19)90s, speaking frankly though, he was not attacking it as a conservative, he was attacking it as a liberal, basically saying, if we are going to survive, we have to disassociate ourselves from those people that were in the counterculture and the people that supported George McGovern in (19)72. SJ (02:53:31): And just where does Barney think his place in the party looks to people who think that the Democratic party ought a disassociated itself from people like Barney Frank. I am sorry, he has really got a nerve. I love him. SM (02:53:46): Well that was (19)92 though, so anyway. Okay. Well, thank you. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Susan Jacoby Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jacoby, Susan, 1945- ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Authors; Jacoby, Susan, 1945--Interviews Description An account of the resource Susan Jacoby is an author and has written twelve books, including <em>The Age of American Unreason</em>. She is a graduate from Michigan University and she now lives in New York City, where she is the program director of the New York Branch of the Center for inquiry. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-09-10 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.69a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.69b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 173:52 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/5aef0a6d32788bc27ada8bda1827064e.jpg 07681f522885a1b08913d6d3a1552cfb https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/8a2aafbcbabbb3fda9a2a838570c961f.mp3 e02039ebee5c7734eea10d0d3b306211 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js) This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-03-08 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Cleve Jones Language English Biographical Text Cleve Jones is the founder of the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. He began his lifetime of activism in the 1970s, in part, due to his friendship with pioneer gay rights leader Harvey Milk. Jones worked as a student intern in Milk's office after his election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. After realizing the seriousness of AIDS, Jones created the San Francisco AIDS Foundation in 1983.&nbsp; He conceived the AIDS Memorial Quilt at a candlelight memorial for the late Harvey Milk.&nbsp; Since then, the AIDS Memorial Quilt became the largest community art project memorializing the lives of 80,000 Americans who died from AIDS. He has received international and national awards from AIDS and gay rights organizations, religious conferences, state, and national health associations, and the legislatures of California and several other states. Cleve Jones lives in San Francisco, where he serves as a community organizer for Unite Here, an international union representing hotel, food service, casino, and restaurant workers. He is also an author, lecturer, and activist who travels the country talking about his life, the AIDS Quilt, and gay activism since his early days as a student at San Francisco State University. Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 1 Microcassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 86:20 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Public experience; Purdue University; Gay liberation movement; Vietnam War; Eugene McCarthy; George McGovern; Racism; National Liberation Front; Saigon; Democratic Party; Assassination of Harvey Milk ; Drug Culture; Sexual Revolution; Newt Gingrich; Sexual Freedom; AIDS; LGBT; Civil Rights Movement; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Equal Rights Amendment; Feminist Movement; Healing; Hippies; Baby boom generation; Activism.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:14275305}}">Public experience; Purdue University; Gay liberation movement; Vietnam War; Eugene McCarthy; George McGovern; Racism; National Liberation Front; Saigon; Democratic Party; Assassination of Harvey Milk ; Drug Culture; Sexual Revolution; Newt Gingrich; Sexual Freedom; AIDS; LGBT; Civil Rights Movement; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Equal Rights Amendment; Feminist Movement; Healing; Hippies; Baby boom generation; Activism.</span> Subject LCSH Human rights workers; Authors; Gay liberation movement—United States; Jones, Cleve--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Cleve Jones Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jones, Cleve ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Human rights workers; Authors; Gay liberation movement—United States; Jones, Cleve--Interviews Description An account of the resource <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Cleve Jones is a human rights activist, author, and lecturer. He joined the gay liberation movement in the early 1970s and worked with one of his early mentors, Harvey Milk, a politician and LGBT activist. During the AIDS epidemic, he co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:515,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:14275305},&quot;12&quot;:0}">Cleve Jones is a human rights activist, author, and lecturer. He joined the gay liberation movement in the early 1970s and worked with one of his early mentors, Harvey Milk, a politician and LGBT activist. During the AIDS epidemic, he co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.</span> Cleve Jones is the founder of the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. He began his lifetime of activism in the 1970s, in part, due to his friendship with pioneer gay rights leader Harvey Milk. Jones worked as a student intern in Milk's office after his election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. After realizing the seriousness of AIDS, Jones created the San Francisco AIDS Foundation in 1983.  He conceived the AIDS Memorial Quilt at a candlelight memorial for the late Harvey Milk.  Since then, the AIDS Memorial Quilt became the largest community art project memorializing the lives of 80,000 Americans who died from AIDS. He has received international and national awards from AIDS and gay rights organizations, religious conferences, state, and national health associations, and the legislatures of California and several other states. Cleve Jones lives in San Francisco, where he serves as a community organizer for Unite Here, an international union representing hotel, food service, casino, and restaurant workers. He is also an author, lecturer, and activist who travels the country talking about his life, the AIDS Quilt, and gay activism since his early days as a student at San Francisco State University. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-03-08 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.70 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 86:20 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/3876c991568aec6681e66e84c2ea1cdd.jpg 4422338d670cdd1c81366e29c654da71 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/e15c8a773d5e383fdb6d7bf65194b8c1.mp3 ced71b5a41a423cba60263f99de1d50c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-02-09 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Dr. David Kaiser Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Baby boom generation; Individualism; Drug culture; Free Speech Movement; Identity Politics; Gay and Lesbian Movement; Feminist Movement; AIDS; Chicano Movement; Native American/ American Indian Movement; Anti-war Movement; Vietnam War; Assassination of John F. Kennedy; College student protests; Healing; Vietnam Memorial;Woodstock; Kent State; Summer of Love; Counterculture; Hippies; Yippies; Students for a Democratic Society; Weathermen; Black Panthers; Black Power.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:14275305}}">Baby boom generation; Individualism; Drug culture; Free Speech Movement; Identity Politics; Gay and Lesbian Movement; Feminist Movement; AIDS; Chicano Movement; Native American/ American Indian Movement; Anti-war Movement; Vietnam War; Assassination of John F. Kennedy; College student protests; Healing; Vietnam Memorial;Woodstock; Kent State; Summer of Love; Counterculture; Hippies; Yippies; Students for a Democratic Society; Weathermen; Black Panthers; Black Power.</span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 106:26 Subject LCSH College teachers; Physics; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Kaiser, David--Interviews Biographical Text Dr. David Kaiser is a historian and educator. He also served in the Army Reserve from 1970 to 1976. Dr. Kaiser was a Professor in the Strategy and Policy Department of the United States Naval War College from 1990 until 2012 and has taught at Carnegie Mellon, Williams College, and Harvard University. He is the author of several books and articles. Dr. Kaiser received his Bachelor’s degree and his Ph.D. in History from Harvard University. Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: David Kaiser Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 9 February 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:03): David Kaiser. February 9th, 2010. Plug it in- DK (00:00:10): By the way- SM (00:00:11): I am going to start out with some of the general questions, and then we will get into some of the specifics here. First off, I want to say, I think your book, American Tragedy is great. DK (00:00:23): Thanks. SM (00:00:24): Yeah. The way you talk about the Eisenhower administration, it is very, very good. In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin, and what was the watershed moment when it began, and what was the watershed moment when it ended, in your opinion? DK (00:00:44): Well, I have come to think of this in the terms that were defined by my dear late friend, Bill Strauss and Neil Howe. Rather than talk about the (19)60s, they used the term awakening, which they see as a recurring phenomenon in American history. I would say that the awakening began in 1964 or 1965, and that it continued for approximately 20 years. Although by the end of that time, it was not primarily visible in politics, and there had been a swing to the right in politics. But with respect to social changes and whatnot in American life, it was certainly continuing into the early 1980s. It is interesting, and it was important of things to come really, that it is fair to say that the first baby boomer, even using the relatively narrow demographic definition, who held a major policy position, was I think David Stockman as Budget Director under Reagan. SM (00:02:01): Oh, yes. DK (00:02:01): That was an interesting portent as it turned out, of the political influence that adult boomers were actually going to have. SM (00:02:12): Could you explain that a little bit more? Because I remember David Stockman, I think he was... If I remember right, he resigned or was- DK (00:02:20): No. SM (00:02:21): Forced out? DK (00:02:22): Kicked out the first term. SM (00:02:23): Yeah. DK (00:02:23): He got into trouble for making some intemperate statement, but I think he finished out the first term. Then, again, in a typical boomer move, he wrote a very frank memoir explaining that he never believed most of the things he was saying, and that what the administration had been trying to do could not possibly work. Loyalty is not one of the big virtues of our generation. SM (00:02:48): Right. DK (00:02:49): Then he got onto Wall Street, and I believe he has been in some legal trouble, although I do not remember exactly how that came out, since then. But what I mean to say is, that perhaps because we are so self-centered in politics, we turned out to have a much more conservative impact than one would have cast way back in the (19)60s. SM (00:03:15): You make reference there to a quality that you think was part of the boomer generation. I know it is very difficult to generalize for 70 plus million people. I have heard that from many of my interviewees and a lot of them based their experiences on the people that they knew, grew up with, have worked with, have become friends with and so forth, so then they are able to talk about boomers. Is there some general positive qualities or negative qualities that you think are really linked to this group? DK (00:03:48): Oh, I definitely think so. And remember, again, thanks to Strauss and Howe, I have been thinking about these questions very intensively and discussing them with well-informed people for about 15 years now. I think that the positive contribution came from taking individual feelings seriously, from taking the idea of individualism seriously, and of addressing a lot of personal emotional issues that previous generations, particularly the GI's, our parents, for the most part, at least among the older boomers, had swept under the rug. I think that probably made boomers much better parents than their parents had been, for the most part. On the other hand, I think a major characteristic is a rather terrifying faith in our own opinion, which again, the older generation played into by making the catastrophic mistake in Vietnam, and a belief that whatever we want must be best, not only for us, but for everyone else, and that there really cannot be any serious objections to establishing whatever we regard as good, and right, and just. Now, you see the thing that Strauss and Howe really taught me, for which I am grateful, is to see these qualities on both sides of the political fence. In the same way that some of my contemporaries at Harvard thought it would be great to transform Harvard University, if not to bring it to a halt in 1969, and to eliminate ROTC, and form Black Studies Department, and do all sorts of things right away, no matter what the cost, the same kind of certainty informed our contemporary George W. Bush when it became obvious to him that overthrowing Saddam Hussein and setting up democracy in Iraq was just a thing to do, and that would put the whole world on a great new track. SM (00:06:29): That is interesting you say that about Bush, because when the two boomer presidents, a couple of people have commented, and they do not go into any great detail, but they say, "Look at our two new boomer presidents, Clinton and Bush. There you have all the qualities of the boomers." And then I got to say, "What do you mean by that?" DK (00:06:46): Well, I do not entirely agree about Clinton. And in fact, Clinton did not have a typical boomer childhood at all. He had a very difficult childhood. Clinton, while he certainly is narcissistic and he could be irresponsible in his personal life, he actually was a natural politician and a conciliator who did not try to insist on putting through his own views. I think Hillary is much more of a traditional boomer, in that respect. I would make a little bit of an exception for him in that regard, and that is probably what made him a much more successful president, actually. SM (00:07:35): Yeah. See, one of the things that many of the boomers felt when they were young, is they were the most unique generation in American history up to that point. DK (00:07:42): Absolutely. SM (00:07:44): I can remember being on college campuses, feeling that we can be the change agents for the betterment of society, that we have the power within us to end racism, and sexism, and bring peace to the world, and a utopian mentality. DK (00:08:01): Oh yeah. Wait, how old are you exactly? SM (00:08:03): Oh, I am the same age as you are. DK (00:08:03): Oh, fine. Okay. Yeah. SM (00:08:04): I graduated from Binghamton University in 1970. DK (00:08:07): SUNY Binghamton? SM (00:08:08): Yes. DK (00:08:10): Did you know Camille Paglia? SM (00:08:11): Yes. Oh, I knew of her. Yes. I saw her in classes, but I did not know her personally. Of course, I tried to approach her once with no luck, when I tried to take students to meet her. She was there, and I think she was a graduation speaker in 1969, a year before I graduated. DK (00:08:34): I think she graduated in (19)68, actually. SM (00:08:37): Was it (19)68? DK (00:08:38): The three of us are all the same age, but I think you were a year late, apparently, and she was a year early. SM (00:08:43): Yeah. DK (00:08:44): Yeah, I think that is right. SM (00:08:45): Yeah, and I stayed an extra semester too because I double majored- DK (00:08:49): I see. Anyway, okay. Do you, by any chance, remember a guy named Barney [inaudible]? SM (00:08:53): No, I do not. DK (00:08:54): All right. He was there too, and he went into the Navy, and he taught with me here in the (19)90s for a while. SM (00:09:00): I know the president was one of the good presidents when I was here, Dr. Bruce Dearing. DK (00:09:05): Yeah. Okay. SM (00:09:06): He went onto Upstate Medical Center, but I guess he retired because the students got to him after a while. DK (00:09:11): Sure. All right, well, let us get back to our- SM (00:09:14): Yeah, but anyways, the uniqueness, could you comment on that feeling? Because even if you talked to some boomers who were 62 and 63, some of them still feel that way. DK (00:09:25): Well, again, Strauss and Howe see a repeating cycle. What that means is, that there have been generations like boomers, but we did not know them or at best, we met a few of them when they were very, very old, as I did. The characteristic of these generations, which they call profit generations, that they are born in the wake of great national crises. There was a similar generation born after the foundation of the Constitution. And actually, that was a very long generation that went from sometime in the 1790s till about 1820. Those were the men and women who gave us the Civil War. There was a similar generation, which Strauss and Howe called the missionaries, born from the early 1860s until I would say about 1884. They also had a very strong sense of moral purpose, very intense sense of themselves. I am actually studying them now, in connection with a book about American entry into the Second World War. SM (00:10:35): Oh. DK (00:10:36): I have to give them credit for a lot more self-discipline and realism than boomers have shown, which is an interesting issue. Those are the parallel generation, but boomers are very different from any of the other living generations, yes. And furthermore, not only do they pride themselves on being different from other generations, but they pride themselves, and here I would certainly have to include myself, on being individually unique and on being different from each other. SM (00:11:18): Yeah. One of the things about the boomers that I have been... Everything seems to be placed in context. In other words, did the event shape the boomers or did the boomers shape the events? Because when you talk about the baby boom, you are talking about the largest... I think there are more millennials now, though. Boomers can no longer say... There are more millennials now than there were ever were boomers. DK (00:11:45): That is probably true. Well, again, I think it is a mix. I am convinced now, and again, this is thanks to Strauss and Howe, that there would have been a rebellion against the values of our childhood, no matter what. On the other hand, there is no question in my mind that the Vietnam War made that rebellion much more intent and had tremendous long-term consequences in a lot of ways because it convinced so many boomers, including ones who became very important in one way or another, that we could safely disregard everything our parents had ever said, and toss aside so many aspects of the world they had created without any caution, or regret, or anything. SM (00:12:54): How important were the Beats in this kind of an attitude? This was a group from the silent generation, the Ginsburg's, the Kerouac, the Anne Waldman Serengeti, that particular group of writers that seem to have they were small in number, but their influence seemed to be large in many ways in the (19)50s because they were the epitome of not showing a whole lot of respect for the status quo and- DK (00:13:24): Yeah. Well, again my wife- SM (00:13:26): They were pre-boomers. DK (00:13:27): Well, yeah. Well, they were skeptics, certainly. I do not know if I would call them pre-boomers or not. My wife would have a lot to say about that. She is actually a year older than we are, and she was aware of them from a very early age. They certainly were providing an alternative voice. Also, there was Morton Sahl, the comedian. SM (00:13:55): Oh, yes. DK (00:13:56): There were the early folk singers. That was a kind of wedge in the door. For instance, I can remember in high school, my friends and I getting a little kick out of the song that I think was actually written by Pete Seeger, Little Boxes on the hillside, and things like that. They did provide an alternative view, but I do not think their influence was extremely widespread. SM (00:14:33): When you look at the boomer generation, I have had to clarify to many of the people I have interviewed, they said, "Are you talking about the 70 million, Steve, or are you talking about the 15 percent who were the activists?" Because they said, "I can talk about the activist. They can talk about all those people involved in all those movements, anti-war." DK (00:14:56): I do not think, okay, well, first of all, there is this definitional issue. The demographic definition I know includes people born from what, (19)46 through (19)64? SM (00:15:11): Yes. DK (00:15:12): Okay. The Strauss and Howe definition is different. They started around (19)43, which I think is the shaky boundary and run it through 1960. In terms of experience, I think that is a better definition. Essentially what that means, and this is what I say, they never said it this way, boomers are people who do not remember FDR, but who do remember Kennedy. That is the way I would define it. No, the comments I am making certainly do not refer simply to the activists. SM (00:15:55): Okay. DK (00:15:57): Although the activists demonstrated a lot of key generational characteristics. Now, what you will find and remember, I have a very different kind of student body, and I teach a generations course, and my students who are no longer boomers, most of them are Gen X now, but they write autobiographical papers and I hear about their parents. You can find people born even as late as we were, who either did not go to college or who somehow got on track in life very early so that they were already launched when the awakening began around 1965. Many of them are different, but that would be... Those people could not be significantly younger than we are. I think that everybody, by the (19)70s, certainly, again, there are regional differences too, but by the (19)70s, everybody was growing up in a very different world than the world people had grown up in the early (19)60s. SM (00:17:09): You keep saying the awakening around (19)65. Are you making reference... The Vietnam War, of course, it was around (19)65 that started to get bigger and bigger, and then by (19)67, we know what was happening there. DK (00:17:22): The Vietnam War gave the awakening a political trust. I am talking about different music, I am talking about different ways to dress, different ways to wear your hair, different sexual morays, drug use, which arrived at Harvard, interestingly enough, in a big way in the fall of 1966, brought in by the incoming freshman class, many of whom had done drugs in their last year in high school, particularly [inaudible]. SM (00:18:01): That is my class. DK (00:18:04): Yes, right. And things like that. All that was getting going. There is a wonderful piece. I do not think I referred to it in American tragedy, although I found it doing American Tragedy. It is a piece from the New York Times that appeared sometime in the first six months of 1965, and it is called Narcotics the Growing Problem Among Affluent Youth. It is quite an extraordinary read, in retrospect, and one of the more prophetic pieces that Deborah appeared. SM (00:18:39): I know there is brand new book out right now on Timothy Leary and the drug culture up at Harvard. DK (00:18:45): Oh, okay. SM (00:18:46): Yeah, and that just came out. DK (00:18:47): Right. SM (00:18:48): One of the things I want to talk about here is Newt Gingrich, when he came into power, who is a boomer, by the way- DK (00:18:59): Yes, he certainly is. SM (00:19:00): When he came into power in 1994, I read some of his commentaries about attacking that generation of the (19)60s generation and that era. George Will oftentimes has, when he gets an opportunity, either in his books or his articles, will take shots at the (19)60s generation. DK (00:19:22): Yeah. SM (00:19:22): I think he is a pre-boomer, I do not think- DK (00:19:24): Oh, he is a silent. Yes, he definitely is. SM (00:19:27): Yeah. They are just examples. And then Pat Buchanan in a recent video on the Weatherman, really blasts the (19)60s generation, regarding 1968, and when he was working with President Nixon. Basically, all three of them claiming that all the problems we have in American society today can go right back to that period of time- DK (00:19:51): Well, actually that is a fantasy, which actually I used to share, from a different political perspective. Without Vietnam say, we might have stayed in the early (19)60s indefinitely. I now think that is a fantasy. But what I want to stress, is that Gingrich is being a complete hypocrite, in my opinion, just the way George W. Bush was, when he would criticize the (19)60s and say, "The problem is that for too long we have been saying if it feels good, do it." Well, I blogged a good deal about this, and I can tell you where to find it. It was one of the first things I did back in 2004. George Bush's whole presidency is a testimony to, if it feels good, do it. I want to get rid of Saddam, so I will do it. Do not tell me this is too hard. Do not tell me we do not have any allies. I want to cut taxes, so I am going to do it. Do not tell me about the deficit. He is as much a part of that as anybody. You see this now again, in the total irresponsibility of the Republican leadership in Congress, which is composed entirely of boomers, I think now. Whereas interestingly enough, the Democratic leadership is still composed mainly in silent, which is part of the reason they are such a pushovers compared to the Republicans. SM (00:21:26): You just made a comment there. It is almost as if George Bush sounds like Woodrow Wilson, if you go back to- DK (00:21:34): No. That would be a long discussion and a complicated one. I think that is been unfair to Woodrow Wilson. It is true that they were similar. They were more similar from a personality point of view. Wilson was very intolerant of dissent, and felt it was everybody's duty to agree with him. He was a genuinely very subtle thinker, in a way that Bush certainly never would be. SM (00:22:08): Yeah. I know he had problems with the leadership of the Republican party when... He did not consult with anybody. He was a hero in Europe and then he did not consult with anybody back in the Congress. DK (00:22:21): No. And he refused to come. SM (00:22:23): Yeah. That leads me right into this question here, it is- often times we cannot generalize about an entire generation, but can you see the results this time passes on the influence that one generation can have in America? DK (00:22:36): Oh, yeah. SM (00:22:36): Does the 70 plus million deserve praise or condemnation for any of the major flaws we see in our society today? Have the boomer leaders of Congress, the office of the president, the governors, the state assemblies, and local governments been good or bad overall? Because they have been running things. Generation X's are now in there too. How would you grade them as a whole? DK (00:23:00): I think that they are in politics. They do not even deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the GI's, as our parents' generation. I think that the silent generation was pretty good in politics, never did get anybody into the White House. They have now pretty much been chucked aside. I think the boomers have had a terrible influence in the economy, although there the silent generation shares the blame, but I would give a lot of it to the boomers, and we are going to be living with that for a long time now. Again, the GI's having lived through the Depression, understood that you needed restraints on the financial community, on industry, and various regulation to avert another catastrophe. Naturally, we assumed that none of that applied to us. A lot of those regulations have been either repealed or simply disregarded, and here we find ourselves once again in a situation parallel to the (19)30s. The other area, and this is my personal view, but it has been acquired at great cost, may I say, I think in academia boomers have been a complete disaster and have done damage that I do not see how it will ever be repaired. SM (00:24:44): Can you talk about that? DK (00:24:47): Sure. SM (00:24:47): A lot of the professors... I have worked at quite a few universities and I have heard for years about the attacks on today's faculty members, particularly in the humanities and social scientists as political correctness and all the attacks by the conservatives toward the universities today, that the people that run the universities, and they were making reference to administrators too, administrators and faculty are basically examples of the (19)60s generation all over again. DK (00:25:19): Well, I think there is some truth to that, but I think again, the biggest single problem... Well, there are two problems, which you see in particular in my own discipline of history. The first is a rejection of the idea of objective truth, and an endorsement of the idea that reality is different for everyone, and that they are entitled to express their own reality, which makes evidence much less important than running history. And secondly, the idea that it is the job of the historian to study the oppressed and the people who have not had any voice in the past, to the almost complete exclusion of studying people in power. The prevalence of that idea, is the reason that I, who has written not only American Tragedy, but five other books, three of which are on the same scale as American Tragedy, more or less, has to teach at the Naval War College because there is literally no room in any history department in the country anymore for somebody like me. This is still happening. We just hired a young guy from a very distinguished university, just finished his PhD, who has written the thesis on the... Well, I do not want to get too specific here because this may eventually be published- DK (00:27:03): Well, I do not want to get too specific here because this may eventually be published. He has written a thesis on a major diplomatic issue in the Cold War, and I heard from a third party that that cost him a chance at a job at a university because the bulk of the people in the department said, "This work is simply too traditional". Yes. So that has been very serious. In economics, the boom generation of economists, with very few exceptions, have swallowed the idea of the rational market, and that which has gotten us into the mess that we are in today. In political science, most of the quote, "cutting edge work", is now based on what is called rational choice theory, which does not really describe human beings at all. And in literature, postmodernism has had a terrible effect. And again, if you could get her to talk to you, Camille [inaudible] would be the best person to talk to about that, but I know she has become almost impossible to approach. And I have tried to approach her several times with no luck, and I have given up. SM (00:28:22): I approached her once. DK (00:28:23): But again, that is somebody else who is probably the outstanding literature scholar of our generation and who works in an art school. SM (00:28:33): It is interesting because the person I just interviewed this past weekend, Dr. Franklin? DK (00:28:38): Yes. SM (00:28:39): Said that because in an article that he wrote criticizing something that somebody had written, he had a hard time finding a job. And he had written three books, very well-established books. DK (00:28:54): Well, that is possible, although the job market has been so tight for the whole of my career. SM (00:29:00): Well, that was back- DK (00:29:01): There could be so many reasons why people have had trouble finding a job. SM (00:29:04): Well, that was 20 years ago though. DK (00:29:06): Okay. But I mean, the other thing that... You see, another problem, which we did not invent, to be fair, in modern academia's specialization, and that also leaves no room at all for somebody like me who has never written the same book twice or written on the same subject twice. And I know that cost me many opportunities. SM (00:29:31): One of the events that took place in the (19)60s, historic event, was the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in 1964 and (19)65. DK (00:29:40): Sure. SM (00:29:42): And Ronald Reagan came into power based on two things. Number one, that he was going to stop those students who were protesting on college campuses that took their lead from the free speech movement, and secondly, he was going to end the welfare state. I suppose those are two of the big issues. And so he took those issues on as, and of course they support him in California and he won election. But I want to, the question I am basically asking here, is there a fear of activism on university campuses today? Did the universities learn anything from the Boomer protests on their campuses in the (19)60s and (19)70s? I asked that question. And second part of the question is, we did a couple panels at our university when I first got there in the late (19)80s, early (19)90s, where I had boomers in Generation Xers on stage, and they did not like each other. It was very obvious they did not. And it was the current students who were Generation Xers, and some of the faculty who were boomers, and some people from off campus who were boomers. And I can remember the split. There was either two responses between the Generation Xer and the boomers. One, "I am sick and tired of hearing about your nostalgia and the way it was. Shut up. I am tired of it. I do not care about it". And the other one was, "I wish I lived when you lived because you had issues and we do not have them today". So then, there was nothing in between. But, so I am really asking about activism here. Art in today's universities are run by boomers and [inaudible]. DK (00:31:29): Well, no. Well, if you go back to Berkeley, and I assume you are familiar with that documentary, Berkeley in the (19)60s. SM (00:31:36): Yes, I am. DK (00:31:37): Good. Yes. Basically, and I remember this very well, even though I started college year after that, those kids were reacting to the idea that the whole purpose of the educational system, which was run by GI's then, was to turn them out as copies of their parents. So they were dressing like their parents, they were acting like their parents, and so on. Now, Vietnam, again, gave the protests a completely different character and a political character. And nothing like that has happened since. Now, as soon as you get to Gen X, you are dealing with kids, many of whom are short on cash, are borrowing money to go through school, and who are focused on their future. And that was one of the great things about being a relatively young boomer, is that you just assumed that was not going to be a problem. Now today, and I have not followed it that closely, but as you know, there are significant protests going on in the UC campuses again, you have a very different story because you have got millennials who have been told all their lives, here is what you have to do, do it, and you will be rewarded. And they have responded to that very enthusiastically. And I got, you see, I did get a glimpse of this firsthand because I was a visiting professor at Williams College three years ago. That was just for one year though. And now suddenly, they are in a situation where it is not clear the rewards are going to be there, and that could have significant repercussions. But you see, our protests were based on moral criticism, and we had the luxury of focusing on moral criticism because of the extremely secure environment in which we had grown up. And that is the paradox, as I say, of every prophet generation, from the transcendentals after the Constitution, through the missionaries, and right up to us. SM (00:34:06): Well, that free speech movement all started actually by chance, because of the fact that they told a group of young students that they could not hand out literature in... DK (00:34:17): Right. SM (00:34:18): [inaudible] Plaza. And even the students that did not like that group that was handing out literature, when they saw that their fellow students are being attacked, they came together. DK (00:34:28): That is right. SM (00:34:29): And it was, " You cannot tell us what to do". And of course, Clark Kerr made that mistake, and then he gets fired by President Reagan, or not President Reagan, governor Reagan. DK (00:34:38): Governor Reagan. Right. SM (00:34:39): Because he was not tough enough on the students. I have a question here, looking at the presidents that were during the lives of Boomers, and that includes Harry Truman too, even though they cannot hardly remember him. But I remember him as a little boy. DK (00:34:58): I remember the (19)62 election. SM (00:35:00): Yes. DK (00:35:01): I do not have any specific memories of Truman as president. I am sure I knew he was president. SM (00:35:06): I just knew as was a little boy, he did not like McCarthy. Which of the presidents do you feel had the greatest impact on the generation? And when I look at it, I am talking about Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and now Obama. Because they have been all the presidents of during the time that- DK (00:35:29): Well, that is a big question. SM (00:35:30): That is a big question. I know Kennedy had an influence. DK (00:35:33): I would say Kennedy had the biggest emotional impact, even now. I think Johnson clearly had a huge impact because of the decision to fight in Vietnam. SM (00:35:47): Right. DK (00:35:49): Now, you were touching on something important when you talked about Reagan, mainly that the awakening in the anti-Vietnam War protest was a major factor in destroying the existing Democratic majority and leading to Republican domination of the White House for a long time. Okay, I think Reagan did have a very big impact, coming along when he did, in making conservatism and consumerism respectable among boomers, just as they were in their thirties and having kids and things like that. And that was very important. And, you know, based on the data I saw, boomers split pretty evenly, even in the last election. Just as they split evenly in 1972, even. So they have never been, as a group, a strikingly liberal group. It was Gen Xers and millennials who put Obama in the White House. Now, Clinton, I do not know, I guess I will leave it there with Kennedy, and Johnson, and Reagan, as having the probably biggest impact. Obama is very interesting because this is the end of Boomer tenure in the White House. I mean, he clearly is not a boomer, and if you do not believe it, ask him because he will tell you. SM (00:37:43): Yep. DK (00:37:44): And he is not acting like one. SM (00:37:46): Yeah. And he is being criticized for [inaudible]. DK (00:37:48): If it will ever get back in the White House is not at all clear. SM (00:37:51): There is three things here. First off, on President Obama, he is being attacked because people think that he is bringing back the (19)60s. And then with Reagan and Bush, the thing that really strikes a lot of boomers about Reagan is that, when his bold statement, when he became President, "We are back". We are back. And he was referring not only to the military coming back to the way it used to be, but certainly the country. And then George Bush Sr. made a very important statement that really, if you were cognizant of it at the time it happened, "The Vietnam syndrome is over", and that, to me, whoa, that is a pretty strong statement. So to me, all those really kind of had strong impact on boomers as their agent. DK (00:38:37): Well, maybe so. Maybe so. I would have to think about that. I do not think of Bush as a, I think he was actually, Bush Sr. was a very underrated president. And in foreign affairs, actually, he was a very fine president, but I did not feel he was terribly influential. He did, of course, put the first boomer on the Supreme Court, namely Clarence Thomas. Another interesting example of a, well, that is a fascinating point. It partly has to do with the Republicans being better strategists about the Supreme Court. Well, except for [inaudible]. Now, all the boomers on the court are Republican and they are acting like it. SM (00:39:33): Yeah. Well, explain that. Explain that the boomer Supreme Court justices are acting like boomers. Get some specific- DK (00:39:41): If they do not like a law, they throw it out. If they do not like a precedent, they throw it out. SM (00:39:47): Who are the boomers, again, on the court? DK (00:39:51): The boomers on the court are Thomas, Alito, Roberts, and Sotomayor. No, I cannot say that about her yet. I mean, she has not done anything like that yet. She has not been around very long. And then you have got, Stevens is a GI, and so that would leave us with four silence. It would be Kennedy, Scalia, Breyer, and Ginsburg. That is right. That is right. SM (00:40:24): When you place a label on the generation, and the boomers had had a lot of labels, but which of these do you think truly defines the group? The Vietnam generation, the Woodstock generation, the (19)60s generation, the civil rights generation, the [inaudible]- DK (00:40:41): Certainly not the civil rights generation. SM (00:40:44): All right. DK (00:40:44): That is a complete fantasy. SM (00:40:47): Yeah, because that was more in the (19)50s, I believe. DK (00:40:49): That was in the (19)50s, in the early (19)60s. And in fact, boomers and especially African American boomers, to be blunt about it, destroyed the civil rights movement. SM (00:40:59): Are you talking about black power and Black Panthers? DK (00:41:03): Yes. SM (00:41:04): Could you go into that a little bit? Because that was one of my upcoming questions. DK (00:41:07): I am talking about not only that, but I am talking about the whole shift from a well-organized mass movement that was a very effective pressure group, into much smaller organizations focused on identity politics and turning their back on the system and things like that. But I would say, when you talk about Vietnam generation or Woodstock generation, you are talking about older boomers like us. So I do not know. I guess my generation would probably be the best one if I had to just think of one. But again, I think there is, well, yeah, the tendency is to focus on people about our age who actually lived through such fantastic changes as young adults. I mean, if you or I just think about what college was like the day we entered and the day we left, I mean, those were staggering changes. SM (00:42:19): Oh, yes. DK (00:42:21): But that was just the leading edge of the generation, of course. SM (00:42:27): You mentioned identity politics, the many movements that came out of the Civil Rights movement. Well, of course the anti-war movement took place, but you had the gay and lesbian movement, the women's movement. DK (00:42:37): Yes. Now, those could be- SM (00:42:40): Native American, environmental movement, all those movements. DK (00:42:43): Well, the feminist movement, although started by silence, it was certainly boomers who really picked that up and ran with it. And the gay rights movement was very much a boomer movement, although I guess a lot of the boomer gay rights leaders were decimated by aid. Actually, I have a younger brother who is gay, and he was written a good deal by gay issues. He has been in the gay journalist organization, and he was very fortunate health wise, and he has written a lot about that. But those definitely were boomer movements. And again, that is where I think we do have some things to be proud of, in terms of opening up personal options for people. SM (00:43:43): How would you mention the Chicano movement and certainly the Native American movement with AIM and the environmental movement that worked closely with the anti-war movement? DK (00:43:56): Well, I would have to look at exactly what they accomplished in the same way you would have to look at it for civil rights. Again, the basic pieces of environmental legislation were passed by bipartisan GI majorities, like the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. SM (00:44:24): I am going to change this. Okay, go right ahead. DK (00:44:33): Now again, as boomers have gotten into power, the environment has not been doing very well, so I would not be able to take very much credit there. Now, again, the identity politics issue among Native Americans, Chicanos, and so on, is something that I am very ambivalent about, because I think that, and this is where I am still true to my childhood and the values I learned in my childhood before the awakening, when you focus on things like that, you are making it harder to form the kinds of coalitions that will get actual national action on anything. And that is why you see, at the individual level, I think boomers are pretty good at the... But anything requiring organization, leadership, coalitions, they are pretty hopeless. SM (00:45:42): One of the things that you remember during the anti-war movement, there seemed to be signs for all the groups together. The anti-war movement in its heyday seemed to bring all groups together. And then as you go later on into the (19)70s, (19)80s, (19)90s, you see more of a separation of... DK (00:46:01): Well, sure. But there was plenty of splintering in the anti-war movement, too. SM (00:46:04): Right. Especially around when the weatherman came in and... Yes. And of course, then the Vietnam veterans against the war took over the anti-war movement around (19)71. DK (00:46:17): That is right. You see, one thing you should understand about me, which I certainly think comes out in American tragedy too, is that, you see, my father had been in and out of, he had been in government through my whole childhood in various ways. I had met many leading Democratic office soldiers. I was too involved in that world to give up on the system completely, even after I turned against the Vietnam War. And that is why, unlike most of my contemporaries, I have not changed that much since I was in college. Now, that is also why I am extremely depressed at what I see happening around me now because I do not see those values I grew up with coming back. At least not yet. And I am beginning to wonder if I will ever see that. But that is another story. SM (00:47:17): Of course, the big issue now is, what will boomers do in old age? Because supposedly they are going to change even old age, how people retire. Dennis Hopper has that advertisement on TV about, of course, he is a perfect example of a- DK (00:47:33): Well, he is a silent. SM (00:47:34): Yeah. He is a silent, but still they use him for the advertisement. So the next 20 years still have to be written with respect to how they are- DK (00:47:44): What is interesting, and this makes me very sad. I mean, my wife and I talk about going back to the Boston areas to retire, and we are sure as hell not going to the Sunbelt or anything like that. SM (00:47:57): Right. DK (00:47:59): Well, actually, I think we talked into going to Austin, Texas, but that is a special case. But when you go to The Brattle Theater in Cambridge now, which was one of the great sites of my youth and where my cultural experience was broadened, most of the audience is going to have gray hair. So that, I think there is a good chance boomers will remain more focused on cultural things in retirement. I am kind of curious as to whether there will be any kind of, how shall I put this, self-denial movement having to do with the medical profession? And actually, it would be a great thing if boomers could set an example by accepting the idea that they will die and that it is not worth half a million dollars to prolong their life through four miserable months and things like that. But obviously that will be a very individual manner and we will just have to wait and see. SM (00:49:16): Yeah. Here is a question. So obviously we know that the TV was a big influence on boomers in the (19)50s because the World War II was obviously the radio and the fireside chats and everything, and then TV came about. Of course, today we have the technology and Facebook and the millennials and Generation X have been formed with a whole, and that is kind of split the generations too, just the technology issue. But the question I ask, and this is, I always think of my 1950s and I have had, I have interviewed people and of course an African-Americans experience in the (19)50s was different than a white person, and a female was different than a male, and certainly the gay and lesbians experience and all the other things here. But generally, when we are talking about TV, I am going to read this here. This was the first generation and they saw the news on TV, they saw sitcoms and black and white in the (19)50s. How important was TV in shaping the boomer lives with typical shows of when they were very young with Howdy Doody, Captain Kangaroo, Hopalong Cassidy, TV westerns, which we always saw, the Native American was the bad guy, the variety shows, the game shows, the live coverage of historic events, even early on, we saw the McCartney hearings and the Mickey Mouse Club, the median shaping lives both consciously and subconsciously. Of course, you did not see many people of color on TV in those days. Was there something happening that, what did the media do? Besides being the first TV generation, we saw the Vietnam War on TV in the (19)60s, but what is it about the media that truly shaped this generation? DK (00:51:03): Well, that is a very complicated question. I think that when you look at the TV from the (19)50s, now, I am struck by the sterility of it. I am struck by the use of laugh tracks often as a background of things that were really very funny. And I think it was all giving you a lot of messages about what you were supposed to feel. And that was part of what we eventually rebelled against. So that is one thing I would say. On the other hand, well, there is so many issues here. The news is very good. The news was much better than it was now. The (19)60s is probably the greatest age of TV news, I would say. And it was straightforward, it was no nonsense, and they had a real commitment to giving you the fact, and they would take some time for a complicated story in a way that they never would now. Now, I do think the single most important medium for changing the generation though, much more important than television, was music. And second most important, I would say, was movies. And again, the boomers were the audience for the cultural explosion in film in the late (19)60s. By the (19)70s, a few boomers were even making the new movies. And again, that was a great achievement and a really positive transformation of American life. Again, it is very sad that now that boomers run the studios, they do not sponsor making movies like that. I mean, for instance, if you say, I teach a course called Generations of Film, and it is all Gen Xers now, and the pivotal movie that I use to explain what the awakening was about, not the only one, but the pivotal one is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and... SM (00:53:52): Jack Nicholson. DK (00:53:53): Yes. And not only is it a great movie, but I believe it was the top grossing movie in 1975. And although my students really enjoyed seeing it and got a lot out of it- DK (00:54:03): ...my students really enjoyed seeing it and got a lot out of it. They unanimously agreed that it would not be a hit today. It is only because it moves too slowly. That is kind of sad too. There was one thing I did want to say. You mentioned the Mickey Mouse Club. There is something I will never forget the Mickey Mouse Club, and it was the end of the introduction, the announcer would read every day, which is very prophetic. It was dedicated to you, the leaders of the 21st century. All I can say is little did they know. It seems to me that the key thing about that was there were only three networks. There was very little difference between the networks. It was an aspect of the uniform, mass-produced culture that we grew up in and eventually rebelled again. I am putting down today's movies justifiably, but actually today's television, if you know where to look, there are a lot of tremendous things on today's belt, particularly on the cable channel and things that you certainly could never have dreamed of way back then. SM (00:55:40): Is there one specific event when you were young that had the greatest influence on you? DK (00:55:50): What kind of influence? SM (00:55:53): It impacted your life. A lot of people say the Kennedy assassination affected... DK (00:55:57): Well, certainly that. That is why- SM (00:55:57): That innocence. DK (00:55:59): That was my next book after American Tragedy and it was about that. SM (00:56:02): Yes. DK (00:56:04): That was the most traumatic event of my life, and it probably still is the most traumatic event of my life. Although, I did not really realize that at the time. The depth of that only emerged later. But no, the most influential event for me was definitely the Vietnam War. SM (00:56:21): Right. Almost everybody remembers where they were when they heard about President Kennedy was shot. DK (00:56:27): I remember exactly. SM (00:56:28): What is your personal experience of remembering that moment? DK (00:56:33): I was in boarding school in Connecticut, and we had been let out of lunch at 1:45, and I had to go see a dean or something in his office. I was in his office and some kid ran in and said, "Hey, they said the president has been shot." But, the way he said it, he clearly did not really believe it, and I did not either. Then I started to walk back to the dorm, and then I began to realize this was serious. I remember, I think I started to run, and when I got into the dorm, the radio was on and everybody knew this was really serious. Then I went down the hall to where the teacher on the floor lived and went into his place and he had TV on. I saw Cronkite read the announcement. When Cronkite read the announcement, I was still in a denial phase and I was sitting there saying, "No, please. Let us stop this tape now." I was not using that language, but that was the way I was feeling. This is all happening too fast. My most vivid memory about all that is I spoke to my parents that day. They were in Washington at that point, and they were very shaken. My father particularly, it was probably the most shaken I ever heard him. The next weekend was Thanksgiving weekend, and I went home. They had a huge party on Saturday night of that weekend with all their administration friends. I could not find anybody at that whole party who wanted to talk about Kennedy. All they wanted to talk about was Johnson and how well he was doing and what was going to be happening in the future. I was very shocked by that. It took me a long time to realize what was going on there. My real personal awakening was in 1968 as a result of Ted Johnson's withdrawal and my own complete reevaluation of a lot of my thinking about American foreign policy. SM (00:59:24): What were the most important books that you read when you were young and what were your peers reading? What were young people reading when you were a college student? DK (00:59:40): I would say the most important book for me, in the context of what we are talking about, and many others was Catch 22. I remember that I finished it on the night before my 21st birthday. That was in June of 1968. That was a great moment to be reading it. I had tried to read it earlier in the decade and I could not get into it because the idea of turning World War II into a joke just turned me off, as it turned off a lot of the older generation at that time. By 1968, I was ready for it. SM (01:00:30): You have actually written a book on Vietnam, An American Tragedy. The venue that I am dealing with here is an oral history and oral interviews. In your opinion, why did the Vietnam War end when it did? What was the main reason that it ended? Secondly, how important were the college student protests on the college campuses at ending the war? DK (01:01:12): How important were the college student protests at ending the war? Until Nixon, not at all. We now know that Nixon, in November of (19)69 decided not to massively escalate, in significant part because of the protests. He denied that at the time but we now know that that is true. Obviously, the reaction to Kent State meant that he was going to have to continue deescalating for political reason. Now, the protests did have another impact, I think, which in the long run was going to be far more significant, which was the end to the draft. Which is certainly not a bad thing. In fact, to some extent, and this is something that we have touched on already, you could also make a case that the protest prolonged the war because Nixon remarked to Haldeman, and I think to Henry Kissinger too, but certainly to Haldeman frequently, that the student protests were a godsend [inaudible] because older people hated the students so much. Again, Johnson decided not to escalate again and to withdraw in the winter of (19)68. I do not think that was mainly because of protests. I think it was because Clark Clifford had been convinced that it was useless, and because of very severe international economic strain that they had to pay attention to. Why it ended was that, I think Henry Kissinger, actually, there is some credit for trapping Nixon into that. The real reason was that they had this other huge agenda with the Russians and the Chinese, and Kissinger simply did not want to drag just to drag on for a few more years. As we now know, knew very well that this is likely to leave the collapses South Vietnam, but he did not care. SM (01:04:39): Could you talk a little bit about the atmosphere in America at the time of the Vietnam War? Particularly in the period between (19)67 and (19)71, (19)72 when deferments were happening all over the country and it basically became a poor man's war. People that did not have the power or the influence and the tensions between those 3 million boomers that served in Vietnam and the rest of the boomers who did not? DK (01:05:21): They lived in different worlds because for the most part, the ones who served were the ones who had not gone to college and vice versa. I do not think there was a lot of hostility between those two groups. I went into the Army Reserve in September of 1970, and I did basic training in (19)71. And my company was divided about 50 50 between draftees and enlistees on the one hand and National Guard and Reserves like myself on the other. That was so late that even the draftees were not living in terror of what was going to happen to them. They knew that their chance of dying in combat by that time was very low. That undoubtedly tanked things somewhat, but I did not feel there was a lot of hostility or much hostility at all based on that. I think it is very interesting that there was so much protest among college students who basically were protected from. One accusation that I think is false is the idea that they were just protesting because they were scared. I do not think that is true. SM (01:07:08): There is always these books out called Spinning Image. You have probably heard of that book where the troops had come back and they were spat upon when they- DK (01:07:16): My understanding is- SM (01:07:17): That really happened. DK (01:07:18): That that is largely amiss and that there are very few documented cases of that happening. I remember, I mean, I was not very lucky. I did my basic training in Fort Leonard Wood in the wilds of Missouri, but I got to go to St. Louis a couple times and I did not wear my uniform when I went. Some people did. I certainly did not hear about anybody getting a negative reaction to wearing their uniform. Of course, in that part of the country I do not suppose you would have. I do not remember ever hearing anything like that from anybody I met. SM (01:08:07): I go down to the Vietnam Memorial on Memorial Day in Veterans Day every year. You see some of the tensions of the commentary against those who were against the war, whether they be Jane Fonda or even when Bill Clinton- DK (01:08:21): Jane Fonda was- SM (01:08:23): Even when Bill Clinton came to the wall. DK (01:08:24): It is true that you can still get a rise out of almost anybody. SM (01:08:26): They booed Clinton when he came to the wall too. Quite a few veterans booed him in the background when he spoke there in (19)93. DK (01:08:35): Who? SM (01:08:36): Bill Clinton. Then when the Vietnam Veterans of America formed the anti-war group, there was tension between that group and other Vietnam veterans, which goes right into the Kerry situation in the 2004 elections. These tensions are still there. DK (01:08:56): That is true. I think that the Jim Webb type of veteran is a very vocal minority and I do not think is all that representative. The whole time I was in the Army, I did not meet one troop who was a developed believer in that war. And that is a fact. SM (01:09:30): Yeah. Even A Rumor of War by Phil Caputo, in his book talks about 1965, how they were starting to go against the war even then by some of the things that were happening. That is the troops thinking that. I have a very important question here that we actually asked Senator Muskie when a group of students that I took to Washington about maybe eight years ago, before he died. We asked him this question, do you feel that the boomers are still having problems with healing due to the extreme divisions that tore the nation apart in their youth? The divisions between black and white, between those who supported authority and those who criticized it, division between those who supported the troops and those who did not. Do you feel the boomer generation will go to its grave, like the Civil War generation, not truly healing? Am I wrong in thinking this or has 40 years made the following statement true? Time heals all wound. Is there truth in this statement? DK (01:10:34): No. SM (01:10:34): Your thought on whether [inaudible] healing. DK (01:10:38): There will never be a consensus among boomers about the war, about religion, about almost anything. That is the nature of the generation and what is likely to happen. We are in the third great crisis of our national life now. After the Civil War and the Depression of World War II, it is the profit generations that bring about those crises. As soon as the crisis is over, they are stuck into the attic. At some point that will happen again and no one will care what we think anymore. At that point you will see bipartisanship in the Congress and things like that, again. As long as we are around, those qualities will be towards applying. SM (01:11:41): I guess I am really- DK (01:11:43): I would not necessarily put it in terms of wounds and healing. The point is that we wear our heart on our sleeve and we are so obsessed with being right. Most of us will die that way. SM (01:11:58): So, just as there is 70 million different people in the boomer generation, 70 million people have different responses to the issue of healing. DK (01:12:08): Exactly. SM (01:12:11): What do you think the wall has done? Jan Scruggs wrote the book, To Heal a Nation. It is supposed to be a non-political entity to heal the veterans, those who served and the families of those who lost loved ones. He goes further and says we want to heal the nation on this. What do you think the wall has done to not only heal veterans but the nation? Just your thoughts. DK (01:12:38): That is a difficult question for me to answer. I am very pro wall. I am very moved by it. I think its significance may increase in a way. This depends on what is going to happen in the next 20 years. I constantly have to remind my own students, for instance, most of whom now were born when the war was over, that the entire casualties in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or certainly the killed, the wounded it might be a little different, do not add up to half of 1968. When you look at that wall, it is brought home to you that even though that was thought of as a relatively small war, it was being fought on a scale which would be unimaginable today. That is progress to me, very important progress, which I hope not to see reversed in my lifestyle. There was an aroused minority that resented the wall. One advantage I have, although I have been writing about the US now for 20 plus years, I started out as a European historian, and my teaching here is still involved in the history of a lot of other nations. All great nations have made terrible mistakes and suffered terrible catastrophes as a result. Some of them much worse than what we suffered in Vietnam. Thus, it is not difficult for me to regard this as the kind of mistake that sadly any great nation is going to make once in a while. The wall, to me, can be viewed that way. People have complained that it makes it look like it was a traffic accident. To me, that is fine because I do feel it is a kind of a manmade catastrophe, though quite unnecessary [inaudible], but this is part of life. SM (01:15:11): The other area that I want to look into is the issue of trust. The boomers obviously experienced many leaders who lied to them and were dishonest in many ways. The result is that many, if not most did not trust their leaders. No matter what their role in society, they could be a President of the United States or of a university, a congressman, a senator, a corporate leader, a religious leader, anybody in a position of responsibilities. There did not seem to be any trust toward any of them. The question I am asking, is this a very distrustful generation or is that just a natural thing? I was a political science history major and I learned early on that lack of trust is something that is okay in a democracy because it challenges other points of view. Do you feel that this is a generation that did not trust, and if they did not trust, are they pass this on to their children and thus their children's children? Just your thoughts on that. I bring this up because I can remember in a Psych 101 class once in college, the professor saying, we are going to talk about trust today. In that class he said, "If you cannot trust someone, you will not be a success in life personally. You have got to be able to trust somebody." I have always remembered him saying that, and then seeing the generation that I was around in that classroom not really trusting anybody. Just wondering if that is really part of this generation. DK (01:16:57): I think it is part of the generation. While, I think it is a healthy impulse to distrust your government to a certain extent, I think that as with so many other things, we pushed it much too far so that it has prevented many boomers from looking at leaders of all kinds, realistically, at all. They are too quick to write them off based on one transgression. As a historian, it is my job to make meaningful comparison, not to compare everything to some hopeless ideal. So, that is a problem. On the other hand, that most definitely is not what boomers passed on to their kids. The millennials are very trusting of authority, almost shockingly so. Although, they do resent it very much if authority changes the rules in the middle of the game. That is the one thing that will really freak them out. They just want you to tell them what needs to be done so they can do it. I was shocked. Again, I did the same generations in film course at Williams and had them write autobiographical papers and you would have to waterboard these kids to get them say anything nasty about their parents. That is not true about GenX, at all. SM (01:18:49): Right. DK (01:18:50): And obviously it was not true about boomers. SM (01:18:53): It is interesting. Boomers had that big generation gap of their parents and there was a friction between boomers and Generation Xers. I found in my work in college that millennials get along pretty well with boomers. This is an important point to make. I have read some of the how, and I have read the latest book on millennials. I have read that. DK (01:19:16): I only read a little of that. SM (01:19:18): One of the things is that millennials do want to leave a legacy. But, it is when they want to leave it, that is the issue. They want leave a legacy once they are 40 and beyond. They want to get their job done, raise a family, and they just want to enjoy themselves in the twenties and thirties. Then in the forties, they want to give something back to society. Whereas, the boomers always had this feeling that they wanted to make a difference in the world. Maybe that is where they have a uniqueness, a link, both generations want to make a difference in the world. One wanted to do it when they were young and maybe have failed as they have gotten older. The others do not want to do it when they are young and they want to do it when they are older. DK (01:20:15): Boomers change their own world. I think their record of actually making a positive difference in the world at large is not very strong. I keep going back to that. It is interesting. I have a son who is a kind of an older millennial. He is already the principal of the charter school in Brooklyn. He works 16 hours a day and he has been under tremendous pressure, but he wants this to be the best middle school in New York. He may in fact be successful with that. SM (01:20:52): Wow. That is good. DK (01:20:58): He got into an interesting argument at Christmas with my wife, who is not... Christmas with my wife, who is not his mother, she is my second wife, and what she was trying to claim that the work he was doing was somehow inspired by Boomers. And, he said very politely, "If Boomers have had any influence on the positive changes in American education, I have not noticed it." SM (01:21:22): Wow. DK (01:21:25): And, he said, he came out of Teach for America. And, he said that for everybody who has been in Teach for America, the focus is totally on what works, what does not. What has actually shown results, what has not. And that is all. So, they probably will leave much more of a legacy. But, again, if you look at the transcendentals, I mean the legacy of the Civil War was that the union was preserved, but that was about it. And, they did not have the follow- up power to turn that into a real positive outcome, I think. In either the North or the South. And, the missionaries on the other hand, I mean, they left an enormous legacy. That is another the story. SM (01:22:16): You keep saying that the Boomers are not leaving much. DK (01:22:23): Not at an institutional level. SM (01:22:28): Well, where are they? DK (01:22:29): Personal level, maybe they are. SM (01:22:33): It is like individuals doing good things for others, but not as a community? In the hope- DK (01:22:37): No. And, also opening up emotional lives, opening up opportunities for minorities. I mean, the gay rights movement is a very revolutionary development and obviously a good one. The whole way that the therapeutic profession, the mental health profession has changed and become very important thanks to silencing Boomers. That is a huge step forward. Whereas remember in the (19)50s, to the extent that there was psychiatry, it was based on a very narrow Freudianism that assumed that your problems were in some sense of your fault. And, it certainly was not a result of something somebody had actually done to you or something like that. And, we have gone beyond that, and that is very important. So when you see, in the movies I use about Boomers, when I want to show a positive image, it is something like Goodwill Hunting and the Robin Williams character there who's a therapist. Or possibly An Officer and a Gentleman in which Foley, the drill instructor, is clearly a Boomer although Louis Gossett, the actor is [inaudible]. And, when I want to show a negative image, it is something like Wall Street and Gordon Gekko. And, we are where we are today because of many Gordon Gekkos. SM (01:24:15): Do you share Taxi Driver? DK (01:24:18): No. SM (01:24:18): That is the Vietnam vet who goes nuts. DK (01:24:22): Well, that is an interesting movie. Although I do not think, well, we could have a long conversation. I do not think that movie has a lot of broader significance the same way. Actually, I also have a particular theory about that movie. SM (01:24:40): There is the other movie- DK (01:24:40): Then there is the climax is a [inaudible]- SM (01:24:43): Yeah. There is the other movie too, that Jane Fonda was in. I forget it. It is Vietnam. DK (01:24:48): Coming Home. SM (01:24:50): Yeah. Coming Home. DK (01:24:50): Still have not seen that. SM (01:24:51): Yeah. DK (01:24:53): [inaudible] enough. I do not know why. I think [inaudible 01:24:52] movies about Vietnam are fabulous. SM (01:24:56): One of the things, I interviewed Richie Havens, I want to talk a little bit here about the music. We all know how good the music was, the influence it has had on the generation with all its social messages and all the types of music. Folk, rock, and obviously Motown. But, Richie said something pretty interesting. He said, "People make sometimes fun of Woodstock. One of the things I want to correct about Woodstock is that half the people of the 450,000, that there were not Boomers, they were older people who brought their families and they were World War II generations. So, it is not all about young people if they really study what Woodstock truly was." But, he said what it was is that it finally, "They cannot hide us anymore." And, it is in his book. "They cannot hide us anymore." And, he was referring to the Boomer children, the Boomer kids. He felt that the way the music and the media had tried to hide the Boomers and Woodstock really brought it out that the Boomers- DK (01:26:07): I was not there, but I have to dispute his facts as to the composition of the crowd. SM (01:26:13): Right. DK (01:26:13): I mean, I am sure there were good many silent there, but I certainly do not think there were very many World War II generation people there. And, in fact, one of the funniest things in the movie is that there is some dialogue among towns folk who are very divided, if you remember. SM (01:26:31): Oh yeah. DK (01:26:32): About the whole thing. SM (01:26:32): Yep. Yep. DK (01:26:33): And that is a great scene, actually. But, I suppose that is true, yes. That it did put the generation on the map. But again, the reaction from the older generation was not positive there. SM (01:26:56): But who were your role models when you were growing up? You personally? DK (01:27:04): Oh, what a difficult question. That is a terribly difficult question. I suppose some of the professors I had in one way or another. I had a very strange relationship with my own parents, in that we had very intense family life and they never understood that I was really a completely different person. I was pretty close to a couple of uncles. I had one in particular who was very much of the GI. I was also very... Let us see. There were a number of silent generation women who I became quite close to, who I think sort of picked it out very early on that the Boomers were more interesting than the GI men they were around. And, a lot of what I learned about movies, literature, and whatnot, was from people like that. One in particular actually, who is still alive, but there were a number of them. But, then I was more influenced by contemporary. SM (01:29:00): One of the things that is come up on some of the documentaries about the (19)60s and the Boomers when they were young in that period, is we came close to a second civil war. And, I have had people respond differently because so much was going on here with the cities going up in flames in the early (19)60s. You got Watts and then of course there was the fear when Martin Luther King died, cities were burning. I can remember with my brother going to baseball game at Connie Mac Stadium, were taking the train in from New Jersey, and we had to keep our heads down because there were snipers all over the place shooting at the subways. So, seemed like there was a second civil war happening. And, I would like your thoughts on that, because when people make comments about, and some of these documentaries about the Civil War, they say the next real era of that problem was not the depression World War II, it was the (19)60s. DK (01:29:57): All right. SM (01:30:01): And, then I had something that Malcolm one of my guests said and then we will close. Your thoughts on that? DK (01:30:11): Well, there were plenty of people who would have been willing to be foot soldiers, but I think it was misleading because the older generations who were in charge still, had shared values. Shared belief in institutions, and in fact all of that, by the mid (19)70s, they had not shaken the political structure very much so I think that was an illusion. Again, you could go back to around 1900 and you could find a lot of very violent strikes. You could find bombings, terrorism, things like that, and make the same kind of argument. But revolution, civil war only happens when the old order is really dying, which is what we have right now. SM (01:31:13): Yeah. DK (01:31:14): So, I think that no was, I think that is an exaggeration. SM (01:31:23): So, you make a very important point like what is happening now. I interviewed Malcolm Boyd last week. DK (01:31:28): Yeah. SM (01:31:29): I had a two-part interview with him. And, he mentioned that, that what is happening now in America has a greater chance of tearing this nation apart than anything that happened in the (19)60s. DK (01:31:43): Definitely. SM (01:31:44): Because- DK (01:31:44): Definitely the case. SM (01:31:45): I got you. DK (01:31:46): And, you see now we have got the total paralysis in Washington that at no time did you have anything like that then except maybe briefly during Watergate. SM (01:31:57): Why do you think so many people are actually trying to criticize President Obama? They may not like his policies, but they say he is just bringing the (19)60s back again. You have probably heard that before. DK (01:32:07): Well, that is ridiculous. SM (01:32:08): Yeah. DK (01:32:08): I mean, that is conservative propaganda. And, he is not a (19)60s person at all. But, that is what they pulled out against the Clintons too [inaudible]. SM (01:32:20): And, my very last question, this is it. What has the Boomer generation left to future generations? What in your opinion, have they done? Now remember, they thought they were going to be the change agents for the betterment of society. They were going to- DK (01:32:36): They have changed things enormously for more than half the population that is women and homosexual. And, that is not trivial. Meanwhile, they have unleashed a lot of raw economic forces with very unfortunate consequences. And, they have done great harm to the Western intellectual tradition. So, those are both positive and negative things. SM (01:33:25): Can you say a little bit more about the great harm to the Western intellectual tradition? DK (01:33:30): I already have. SM (01:33:31): Okay. DK (01:33:31): I mean, they have propagated the idea that reality is an individual matter, therefore standards of evidence do not matter. And, they have cut off universities from the real world to an extent that is almost medieval, in my opinion. So, that in a couple of centuries, or even in one century, if people are reading the articles that are appearing today in the American Historical Review, it will be just as difficult for them to intellectually engage those articles as it would be to engage medieval religious controversies. SM (01:34:18): Very good. All right. DK (01:34:20): No, well, I mean, I did not know what this is going to be like, but in terms of, and again, I really am very tired and in general, Mike. SM (01:34:29): Yep. DK (01:34:30): But in fact, what I am going to tell my wife, you may hear from me again about her. I think she expected that you were going to be asking a lot more questions about the interviewee's actual life and that is what she would be interested in bugging you about. SM (01:34:52): Well, I could have done that too. DK (01:34:54): Well, you see, because she actually, she was a hippie. She became a homesteader in Arizona. SM (01:35:00): Oh, yeah. That is- DK (01:35:00): She built this ranch from scratch. So, if you would like to talk to her about things like that, then you should. SM (01:35:06): Yep, definitely. Because, each interview has been different. DK (01:35:10): All right. Well then let me just give you her name and number. SM (01:35:13): Okay. Hold on a second. Let me write this down. Okay. DK (01:35:15): Yep. Patti, P-A-T-T-I. Cassidy. 4-0-1 4-2-3 3-9-0-6. SM (01:44:12): 4-2-3 3-9-0-6? DK (01:44:14): That is right. SM (01:44:16): Does she have an email or do you? DK (01:44:18): Yes. Let me make sure I got that right. Wait a second. Hold it. She has a tricky email. I want to make sure it is right. Yeah. T-A-P-I-T-1. SM (01:44:41): P-A? DK (01:44:42): No-no-no. T as in Tom. T-A-P-I-T-1. That is an anagram for Patti you see, @gmail.com. SM (01:44:55): Say that one more time. DK (01:44:57): T as in Tom, A-P as in Patti, I, T as in Tom, one the numeral. SM (01:45:05): Okay. DK (01:45:06): @gmail.com. SM (01:45:08): Why did you want me to ask more about your personal life or? DK (01:45:11): No-no-no, that is fine. But, we did [inaudible]. SM (01:45:13): Yep. Okay. Very good. Because you are the historian, I think, and you said some things about what made you who you are too. And- DK (01:45:21): I did a little bit. Yes. SM (01:45:23): Yep. DK (01:45:24): You see, it is very interesting. A friend of mine is Jamie Galbraith, who is John Kenneth Galbraith's son. And, John Kenneth Galbraith, by the way, did express himself publicly about American tragedy, which meant a great deal to me. SM (01:45:43): Yes. DK (01:45:44): And, Jamie is an economist at the University of Texas, and he is a new deal kind of economist, of which there are almost none left. Krugman is the best known, but practically none of them left. And, again, I think it is because he was too involved in our parents' world just to completely turn his back on it and decide that he could forget about everything we had ever learned. And, that was certainly the case with me too. SM (01:46:21): Well, one of the things that is come up on some of the documentaries about the (19)60s and the Boomers when they were young in that period is we came close to a second civil war. And, I have had people respond differently because so much was going on here with the cities going up in flames. And, the early (19)60s you got Watts. And, then of course there was the fear when Martin Luther King died, cities were burning. I can remember with my brother going to a baseball game at Connie Mac Stadium, we were taking the train in from New Jersey, and we had to keep our heads down because there were snipers all over the place shooting at the subways. So, seemed like there was a second civil war happening. And, I would like your thoughts on that, because when people make comments about, in some of these documentaries about the Civil War, they say the next real era of that problem was not the depression World War II, it was the (19)60s, and then something. DK (01:46:22): All right. SM (01:46:22): And, then I had something that Malcolm, one of my guests said and then we will close. Your thoughts on that? DK (01:46:23): Well, there were plenty of people who would have been willing to be foot soldiers, but I think it was misleading because the older generations who were in charge, still had shared values. Shared belief in institutions and in fact all of that, by the mid (19)70s, they had not shaken the political structure very much. So, I think that was an illusion. Again, you could go back to around 1900 and you could find a lot of very violent strikes. You could find bombings, terrorism, things like that, and make the same kind of argument. But, revolution civil war only happens when the old order is really dying, which is what we have right now. SM (01:46:23): Yeah. DK (01:46:23): So, I think that no was, I think that is an exaggeration. SM (01:46:23): So, you make a very important point, like what is happening now. I interviewed Malcolm Boyd last week. DK (01:46:23): Yeah. SM (01:46:23): I had a two-part interview with him. And he mentioned that, that what is happening now in America has a greater chance of tearing this nation apart than anything that happened in the (19)60s. DK (01:46:23): Definitely. Definitely the case. SM (01:46:23): I got you. DK (01:46:23): And, you see at now we have got this total paralysis in Washington that at no time did you have anything like that then, except maybe briefly during Watergate. SM (01:46:23): Why do you think so many people are actually just trying to criticize President Obama? And, they may not like his policies, but they say he is just bringing the (19)60s back again. You have probably heard that before. DK (01:46:23): Well, that is ridiculous. SM (01:46:23): Yeah. DK (01:46:23): I mean, that is conservative propaganda, and he is not a (19)60s person at all. But, that is what they pulled out against the Clintons too [inaudible]. SM (01:46:23): And, my very last question, this is it. What has the Boomer generation left to future generations? What in your opinion, have they done? Now remember, they thought they were going to be the change agents for the betterment of society. They were going to- DK (01:46:23): They have changed things enormously for more than half the population that is women and homosexual. And, that is not trivial. Meanwhile, they have unleashed a lot of raw economic forces with very unfortunate consequences. And, they have done great harm to the Western intellectual tradition. So, those are both positive and negative things. SM (01:46:23): Can you say a little bit more about the great harm to the Western intellectual tradition? DK (01:46:23): I already have. SM (01:46:23): Okay. DK (01:46:23): I mean, the idea, they have propagated the idea that reality is an individual matter, therefore, standards of evidence do not matter. And, they have cut off universities from the real world to an extent that is almost medieval, in my opinion. So, that in a couple of centuries, or even in one century, if people are reading the articles that are appearing today in the American Historical Review, it will be just as difficult for them to intellectually engage those articles as it would be to engage medieval religious controversies. SM (01:46:23): Very good. All right. DK (01:46:23): No, well, I mean, I did not know what this is going to be like, but in terms of, and again, I really am very tired and just like, but in fact, what I am going to tell my wife, you may hear from me again about her. I think she expected that you were going to be asking a lot more questions about the interviewee's actual life. And, that is what she would be interested in bugging you with. SM (01:46:23): Well, I could have done that too, actually. DK (01:46:23): Well, you see, because she actually, she was a hippie. She became a homesteader in Arizona. SM (01:46:23): Oh yeah. DK (01:46:23): And, built this ranch from scratch. So, if you would like to talk to her about things like that, then you should [inaudible]. SM (01:46:23): Yep. Definitely, because each interview has been different. DK (01:46:23): All right. Well then let me just give you her name and number. SM (01:46:23): Okay. Hold on a second. Let me write this down. Okay. DK (01:46:23): Yep. Patti, P-A-T-T-I. Cassidy. 4-0-1 4-2-3 3-9-0-6. SM (01:46:23): 4-2-3 3-9-0-6? DK (01:46:23): That is right. SM (01:46:23): Does she have an email or do you? DK (01:46:23): Yes. Let me make sure I get that right. Wait a second. Hold it. She has a tricky email. I want to make sure if I... Yeah. T-A-P-I-T-1. SM (01:46:23): P-A? DK (01:46:23): No, no, no. T as in Tom. A-P-I-T-1. That is an anagram of Patti, you see. @gmail.com. SM (01:46:23): Say that one more time. DK (01:46:23): T as in Tom, A-P as in Patti, I-T as in Tom, one the numeral. SM (01:46:23): Okay. DK (01:46:23): @gmail.com. SM (01:46:23): Why did you want me to ask more about your personal life or? DK (01:46:23): No-no-no, that is fine. What we did was fine. SM (01:46:23): Yep. Because, okay, very good. Because, you are the historian, I think, and you said some things about what made you who you are too. DK (01:46:23): I did a little bit. Yes. SM (01:46:23): Yep. DK (01:46:23): I was, you see, it is very interesting. A friend of mine is Jamie Galbraith who is John Kenneth Galbraith's son. And, John Kenneth Galbraith, by the way, did express himself publicly about American tragedy, which meant a great deal to me. SM (01:46:23): Yes. DK (01:46:23): And, Jamie is an economist at the University of Texas, and he is a new deal kind of economist, of which there are almost none left. Krugman is the best known, but they practically none of them left. And again, I think it is because he was too involved in our parents' world just to completely turn his back on it and decide that he could forget about everything we had ever learned. And, that was certainly the case with me too. SM (01:46:23): Well. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. David Kaiser Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaiser, David ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource College teachers; Physics; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Kaiser, David--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. David Kaiser is a professor of Physics and the History of Science at MIT. He received his Bachelor's degree in Physics at Dartmouth College and Ph.D.s in Physics and the History of Science at Harvard University. His historical research focuses on the development of physics in the United States during the Cold War. Additionally, his research in physics studies the early-universe cosmology, working at the interface of particle physics and gravitation. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-02-09 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.71a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.71b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 106:26 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/0c1104ed0fb3a0a1e44aa826908d9bcf.jpg 6ece1a61dab48f9a1fbf3271a03ac523 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/32917909293bb94458f8389ee5f641d2.mp3 66d45c3b65f66d3125cca06306c3f673 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2011-02-12 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Michael Kazin, 1948- Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Michael Kazin is a historian and professor at Georgetown University. Kazin's research focuses on the American social movements from the 19th and 20th centuries. He received a Bachelor's degree in Social Studies from Harvard, a Master's degree in History from Portland State University, and a Ph.D. in History from Stanford University. &quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:7043,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,5099745],&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Dr. Michael Kazin is a historian and professor at Georgetown University. Kazin's research focuses on the American social movements from the 19th and 20th centuries. He received a Bachelor's degree in Social Studies from Harvard, a Master's degree in History from Portland State University, and a Ph.D. in History from Stanford University. </span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MicroCassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;George McGovern; Foreign policy; Conservatism; Generation gap; The Wounded Generation: America After Vietnam; Vietnam War; McCarthyism; Montgomery Bus Boycott; The moon landing; John F. Kennedy inaugural address; Neo-liberal; Radicals; Higher education; African Americans; Pop culture of Nineteen sixties; Richard J. Hughes; New Leftist; Harvard University; Students for a Democratic Society.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:14275305}}">George McGovern; Foreign policy; Conservatism; Generation gap; The Wounded Generation: America After Vietnam; Vietnam War; McCarthyism; Montgomery Bus Boycott; The moon landing; John F. Kennedy inaugural address; Neo-liberal; Radicals; Higher education; African Americans; Pop culture of Nineteen sixties; Richard J. Hughes; New Leftist; Harvard University; Students for a Democratic Society.</span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:54:16 Subject LCSH Historians; College teachers; Georgetown University; Social movements--United States--19th century; Social movements--United States--20th century; Kazin, Michael, 1948--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Michael Kazin Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 12 February 2011 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:02): Testing, 1, 2, 3, testing. MK (00:00:11): [inaudible] if you rather, but this is more comfortable. SM (00:00:12): That is fine. It carries pretty good. MK (00:00:16): You got two of them, huh? SM (00:00:17): Yep. MK (00:00:17): Stereo. SM (00:00:18): For the last maybe hundred interviews I have had two, because Peter Goldman gave me some advice there too. He said, you need to have two interview tapes because if you are redoing the tape and something that happens to one, you got a second one. Could you tell me a little bit about your growing up years? I know you had a famous dad who was a literary critic and a very well-known critic, but what were your early influences? Who were your role models, teachers, historians, and how important was your dad in shaping who you became? MK (00:00:53): Well, I will deal with him first, I guess. I was born in 1948. My parents were actually divorced when I was one and a half. I have no memories of them living together. So direct influence in terms of being by the house, there was not any, I saw him once a month or so. We had a difficult relationship. He was not very good with little kids. He was only comfortable with people if he could talk about books and ideas. And when you are five years old, you do not really do that. So, we had a difficult time, but by the time I started at junior high or high school, at least, I do not remember exactly when people said, "Oh, are you the son of Alfred Kazin?" He was part of this world of what Irving Howe called the New York Intellectuals. And I grew up in a suburb of New York, Pinewood, New Jersey, near just a one exit off the South East Parkway from George Washington Bridge. SM (00:01:53): It is Englewood, is not it? MK (00:01:54): Yeah, Englewood. So I kept hearing about him. I read his work when I was in high school and we argued about politics. When I was in high school. He was a Cold War liberal, and I was beginning to be an anti-war liberal. And then of course, later on, a radical. So I think the conflict between us, which was partly personal and partly political, was constructive, I think, to teach me how to argue about politics with someone who is very smart. And also I learned to take ideas very seriously. And also, without thinking about it at the time, I certainly learned that you could have a pretty good life being a teacher and a writer, which of course is what he was. He was more writer than teacher. He taught all the time, but his real passion was for writing. He taught only because he could not make enough money writing. If he could have made enough money writing, he would not have taught. Which is not true for me. I love teaching. So other influences. My mother, of course, who I grew up with, who was on the left politically. She had gone to Russia in 1936 when American liberals as still thought Russia was a pretty good place, at least a lot of them did. And just as a tourist, she went. And she had been involved in various popular front groups in the thirties, a fellow traveler, old term for that. And she had friends who I met, some of whom were emigres from Nazi Germany, who got out just in time in the thirties, and I met them growing up. And our next-door neighbors were left-wingers. They subscribed to a magazine [inaudible] called the National Guardian, which was a left-wing magazine. You might know of it. Again, late (19)40s. In fact, one 4th of July they had a barbecue, and they had The Weavers over to sing- SM (00:03:59): Oh my God. MK (00:03:59): In the backyard next door. SM (00:04:01): Pete Seeger. MK (00:04:03): That was pretty cool. This is, I forget exactly the year, sometime in the (19)50s. So I grew up in, what I understood later was a particular kind of left liberal background, people who had been close to the Communist Party at one point, but no longer were, it was mostly Jewish, not all Jewish, certainly. And my schools, I will not go into great detail, but my schools were influenced too. I went to a public school until seventh grade in my hometown, in Englewood, New Jersey. And it was an integrated school. And in fact, my first two teachers were Black, first grade and second grade teachers. And so, I think, again, in retrospect, I never had an experience of seeing Black people always under me. And I was a great baseball fan, still am. And I used to go to games in the [inaudible] grounds in Englewood and crowd was almost half Black at that time. Baseball was a very popular sport among Black people then, much more than this now. And that was important too. I was a Dodgers fan. The Dodgers had signed Jackie Robinson. So this was all part of the gestalt of politics and culture at the time. So, I would not say I had any role models per se, but clearly my parents were the biggest influence on me and being part of this whole milieu. I met my father's friends. I met Norman Mailer, met Robert Loeb, Richard Hofstadter, who was his best friend. These, in retrospect, very important intellectuals. But at the time, I just thought were my father's friends. And I identified very early with left-wing causes, civil rights movement. There was a sit-in Englewood for integrated schools. And my mother would not let me go, but I talked about it at my school. SM (00:06:19): How old were you at that time? MK (00:06:20): 14, I think. SM (00:06:20): Okay. Wow. MK (00:06:22): She was afraid of violence. I wanted to go to the March on Washington (19)63. I forget why I did not go, but I did not for some reason. But I started to go to anti-war demonstrations very early in early (19)65. And also my stepfather, Mario Salvadori, who was a professor of engineering Columbia, helped to sponsor the anti-war teach-in at Columbia. It was one of the first anti-war teach-ins in, I think it was January (19)65, February (19)65. I do not know exactly when. And I ran for a school president at one point too. And I was [inaudible] because I had talked about my views about the war and so forth. And I remember one poster of the candidates who ran against me showed Khrushchev on one side, Castro on the other side and me in the middle all of us shaking hands. So, I lost, that is why I lost. And also, I worked on political campaigns. I worked on John Kennedy's campaign as a 12-year-old in Englewood. And at the time, when Englewood was basically Republican and Nixon was very popular. I worked on Johnson's campaign in (19)64. I was head of a group called Young Citizens for Hughes. Richard Hughes was running for reelection as governor of New Jersey. So I was not a new leftist yet. I was still a liberal Democrat. But I like a lot of people I knew, there was a continuum in some ways between being a liberal Democrat, at least there and being leery about the Cold War. My mother took me to a SANE nuclear policy, the group SANE rally in Madison Square Garden in I think (19)58, which was part of their campaign for a nuclear test ban treaty. And I heard Dr. Spock speak, he was a lead speaker at the time. SM (00:08:25): William Sloan Craws was connected to that. MK (00:08:25): So as I said, there was a lot of stuff going on. SM (00:08:28): Did you talk to your dad? When I looked at what your dad, the people that he liked the most, Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman, they were the really big thinkers of the 19th century that he, and, of course, they were role models to a lot of people on the left, especially Thoreau and Emerson. Did he ever talk to you about them? MK (00:08:45): Not so much. Part of our conflict was that I tried to stay away as much as possible from people he liked. He loved Henry Adams, I did not meet Henry Adams until I was much older. He loved Dreiser loved. I did not meet Dreiser until I was much older. So if my father wrote about somebody, I made a point of not reading until I was older. SM (00:09:00): I can understand. MK (00:09:01): We read Thoreau and Emerson High School a little bit. SM (00:09:07): How did you end up at Harvard? How did you pick Harvard? MK (00:09:12): Well, it was Harvard. Obviously, back then, if you get into Harvard, you would try. And also, my father had always wanted to teach there. He was a great admirer of people. He was friends with [inaudible] Junior. He looked up for Perry Miller, a great scholar of the Puritans who was a Harvard teacher. And he would have wanted to teach at Harvard if he could have. So certainly, to get into Harvard back then for a upwardly mobile intellectual Jewish kid was the pinnacle of academic success. So that is why I applied. I did not think I would get in, but I did. I applied other schools. I did not get in everywhere. I did not get into Stanford where my daughter goes Now, I did not get into Haverford, but I think I was very political. Harvard probably liked that in my application. I think my statement I wrote about why I wanted to be US Senator. I said, "I do not want to be president because it is not time for a Jewish kid to be president yet. But I would like to be Senator." SM (00:10:27): Was Chuck Schumer in your class? MK (00:10:30): He is one year younger, I think. SM (00:10:31): And was David Eisenhower also there at that time? MK (00:10:39): Yeah, actually, no, he went to Amherst, I think. He did not go to Harvard. But in my freshman dorm, he was friends with one of the kids in my freshman dorm. And we used to have parties and he and Julie Nixon would come to these parties and bring their own bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label. Like the secret of service, they do not drink from anybody else's. SM (00:10:58): I remember years ago reading about him that Fred Grandy, the actor, his father had picked him to be kind of the role model for David when he went there as a first-year student. MK (00:11:10): I think it was Fred's room where the parties were. SM (00:11:13): Yeah. Fred was a year older than him. Anyway, now, you were very active at Harvard and you became president of the Students for a Democratic Society, which had one of the largest- MK (00:11:23): Co-chairman was the actual name. SM (00:11:26): That was one of the largest chapters. Even I remember this back then, it was the one of the largest chapters of SDS, I think, in the country at that time. MK (00:11:34): I am not sure. SM (00:11:37): What was your student life like? I really want you to talk about the experience of the Harvard Yard experience because that is a historic event. When you think of Columbia of (19)68, when you think of Harvard in (19)69, when you think of Ken State in (19)70, these are really historic events to me, as a person who studied the (19)60s. What was the main issue? Describe what was going on there in (19)69, how this all evolved. MK (00:12:08): Well, of course, this happened after the student of the left had been growing for a couple years, beginning with in many ways, with the free speech movement from Berkeley in (19)64 and going onward. And of course, things got really amped up with the escalation of the war. And then with the Columbia strike in the spring of (19)68. In Some ways there was a kind of emulation competition going on. I think without emphasizing it too much, we felt, "Well, Columbia SDS can shut down their school. How come we cannot shut down our school?" Because I had a lot of friends in Columbia SDS, some of whom died in the townhouse explosion. Ted Gold and I was friends with Mark Wood. We worked together at SDS regional office in New York in (19)67. So, I knew a bunch of people. But anyway, the key issue, of course, was the war as it was everywhere. That is why you had a large new left as you know. It would not have happened without that. And we were very responsible, I think, contrary to the image that a lot of people have about the students running amok and going crazy and smashing things. We believed in organizing. We had a careful campaign, which is probably detailed in that WHRP book. We began in the fall of (19)68, some ways coming off the Democratic Convention in Chicago where I was and got arrested. And we decided, "Well, what is the main tentacle of the octopus of the war machine on campus? Well, it is RTC." Now, there was not much. RTC maybe had 30 people in it. It was not a big deal. But other people in the country were attacking RTC. It was one way we could localize issues of the military and the war. So, we started petition to, in a very responsible way, to try to get the administration to abolish RTC on campus. And they refused. And so we kept going to meetings and making some noise, faculty meetings, and some people got arrested for disrupting a meeting. But in the end, we got, I do not remember how many, but we had many thousand signatures because the war was very unpopular at Harvard, as it was a lot of campuses like that around the country, so it was not a problem. And then had house meetings at the Harvard houses. We had house meetings in Harvard Yard where the freshmen lived. We did what organizers have always done. I spent probably, that was my junior year, I spent most of the year organizing, not much time on classes. And we basically had The Crimson on our side, the daily newspaper, which was useful, of course. They would report on our meetings. I do not want to go into great detail about this, but we had two pretty antagonistic factions within SDS as you probably read about. One was my faction, which is we sort of called the new left faction. It was sort of loose. We liked rock and roll, and we thought there was nothing wrong with smoking dope. And we wanted a sort of vaguely radical democratic society. Was not too sure what that might mean. We were very pro Vietcong, we were pro the Cubans, but we were very supportive of Black Panthers and other Black power groups. But we were very critical of what we saw as sort of dogmatic Marxism. And of course, the other side was the Progressive Labor Party, which was a group, as you probably know, that was [inaudible] for the Communist Party in the early (19)60s over supporting the Chinese and the Sino-Soviet Split. And they were very hard-nosed about how you have to organize workers and do strike support and men should cut their hair, women should wear dresses and very counter-culture of all kinds. So we had a lot of divisions and they tended to be actually on campus actions more militant than we were. So when it came down to deciding, when the faculty did not agree to abolish RDC, we had to decide what to do. And at first, people in our faction were not in favor of taking a building, taking University Hall, which was the administration building on campus, the main one. But the PL group called the Workers Student Alliance always was in favor of it. They believed in being more militant. And also they wanted to build their faction nationally. And they knew, if they were the leaders of a chapter which shut down Harvard, this would be a feather in their cap. And there were three co-chairs of SDS. I forget exactly why we had three, but that is the way it evolved. Two of them were from their faction. I was the only one from our faction. But PL because they were so hard line on dogmatic had a certain, was not as popular in the wider student body as our faction was. So, a lot of people who were not in SDS looked to me, I think more as a leader than they did to those people. So again, and this, of course, is always true at the time, if you want to have a militant action, you do it when the weather is nice. And, of course, up in the Boston area, it did not really start until April. So April 9th I think is when we took over University. Again, this is all detailed in these books. But we had a very tempestuous meeting the night before going back and forth. And I thought we had to seize the moment or seize the time as the Black Panthers used to put it. And so if we were going to force the issue, we had to do it then. So, I was always in favor of taking the building, even though the first votes in this meeting were not in favor. So somewhat manipulatively, I must admit, I kept the issue alive. And PL was prepared with that too. So in the end, I think the vote was inconclusive. I forget exactly what the vote was, but I have not gone back and looked at these books to check. But we decided we were going to have a march after the meeting was over that night, I guess April 8th it was and march through campus. And I had a list of our demands. And I, the historian already, nascent historian, I knew about Martin Luther tacking these 95 theses up on the door of the cathedral in Germany. So, I decided to go to the President's office and tacked the demands up on his door and made some little speech of some kind. And then as we walked around Cambridge after that, our faction and the PL faction decided we were going to take the building. So we spent much of the night putting together leaflets, passed them out on campus. And at noon we went to University Hall and kicked the deans out. PL people picked the deans up and took them out. They wanted to show them a little of who they were, which in the end they got arrested. Some of the people who did, they got arrested for that. And you want me to go into University Hall, what happened there? SM (00:19:41): Yeah, you took over the hall. How long did it take? MK (00:19:45): We were there for basically from noon until about 6:00 AM the next morning when the police came in. And there was a big debate. Actually, I was not inside University Hall when the police came in. I thought someone should go out of the hall and first of all see if they were in and if they were, tell people that the police were coming. And then I thought I would go back in the hall. But I went outside and the police started to come in almost as soon as I got outside. So, I said, "Well maybe I will stay outside and not get arrested and get the stuff going." And also, to be honest, in retrospect, I was a little scared too. I did not like the idea of just sitting there and getting my head beaten. And again, I think it was probably a good decision because the other leaders of the chapter were arrested. So I was able to start a rally on the steps of Widener Library right in Harvard Yard, denouncing the police and calling for a student strike as other people were doing too. And the student strike basically started spontaneously, in large part, not necessarily because everybody at Harvard thought we had done the right thing by taking the building. There was a lot of people... Got the dog on your tape there? SM (00:21:05): Yeah [inaudible]. MK (00:21:06): A dog passed by [inaudible], but it is her turf. SM (00:21:08): Brody does the same thing. MK (00:21:10): Zoe shut up. SM (00:21:13): Brody just barks because he does not want anybody to leave. MK (00:21:15): Really? She gets upset when we go on a trip. As soon as we bring her back downstairs, she knows what is going there. SM (00:21:22): Oh, boy. Does she bark? MK (00:21:23): No. Sits in front of the front door and says, "You are not getting past me." Where were we? Oh yeah, the strike. So as often happened, it happened at Columbia too, other places, the student movement grew large partly because students were in support of our basic anti-war position, even if they were not in support of our specific politics, dogmatic imperialism, supporting the people fighting American troops and so forth. But they really got active when they saw their friends getting clubbed by police. And we would not have had a huge, good strike without that if we just sat there. In fact, ironically, if the administration just let us sit in that building and they just waited us out, we probably would have had to leave in defeat. But in the end, the calling the police in, which of course they had a legal right to do, galvanized the student strike. And we had big meetings at the Harvard stadium across the river, 10,000 people, 12,000 people, obviously the cover of Black Magazine because it was Harvard. Now, what we were doing was not all that different really from what was happening on hundreds of campuses around the country. SM (00:22:45): In happened in Hamilton too. MK (00:22:45): It was Harvard. That is the reason it was a big deal. And we knew that. We knew we would make a splash by doing this. I must say though, one of the things that I realized, and I have written about since then was, you can see how happy or glad I should say, the police were to bust our heads when they came in. And this a [inaudible], the idea of driving their cruisers into Harvard Yard, leaving deep ruts in the grass of Harvard Yard. These were mostly middle class white guys from Cambridge, from other parts of the Boston area who all thought Harvard was these stuck up, privileged, rich people. And to them, I think, even though all of us certainly were not rich, lots of [inaudible] kids and so forth, but to them it was pretty clear, they took a certain glee I think in smashing into Harvard and smashing up these unpatriotic freaks who had [inaudible]. SM (00:23:48): James Fallows was there too, I believe around that time. MK (00:23:50): Yeah. [inaudible] here now. SM (00:23:52): And then, of course, just recently, the death of John Wheeler, the murder. And I had interviewed him for my book. And he had been at Harvard too later on after he had served in Vietnam. MK (00:24:02): Jim was president of Crimson. I am not sure if it was that year, but maybe the year before. SM (00:24:09): And he had written a lot about how guilty he felt about avoiding the draft. MK (00:24:12): [inaudible]. SM (00:24:12): Yeah, yeah. And of course he became close friends of Jack Wheeler over time, The Long Green Line, the book that was written. You went on to Portland State and then you went on to Stanford. Were you as active politically on those campuses? MK (00:24:25): Oh, yeah. SM (00:24:26): Now when- MK (00:24:27): Did not have much at Stanford. By then it was the mid (19)70s. And if you are getting a PhD, you do not have much time. But I got active in the early (19)80s again in the nuclear freeze movement. But Portland State, well first of all, I went to Portland not to go to school, not to go to university, but because I was kicked out of Harvard in the fall of (19)69 for leading a demonstration against the people of the Center for National Affairs, which Henry Kissinger had set up, sort of a think tank/elite department. And I went to New York, started work on Liberation Mews Service, this underground press service, sort of like the AP of the Radical Press and long story. But basically they had taken a feminist turn. There were too many men on the collective. They said I could work there, but I could not join the collective. My girlfriend who I met there was not happy about it, but basically, I would not be able to stay there as a man. So, they liked my work a lot. So, I looked at all the papers that were coming to the office there from all around the country, all over the world, for that matter. And the one from Portland, Oregon was a really nice paper. And I always like the idea of living on the West Coast for a while. I had lived in Berkeley for a while, in the summer of (19)69. Actually. Oh, it was (19)68. And so I called up the Portland paper, I said, "Do you need a staff member?" They said, "Sure, $25 a week." And so I hitchhiked out to Portland. And while I was there, the paper, long story, it fell apart basically after about a year. And I had a few jobs, working restaurants and working at Portland State University and Tate Library. And I said, "Well, I always liked history. The revolution might not be happening. I would better think of something to earn a living. I do not want to be short order cook for the rest of my life." So, I applied to Portland State history program just to try it out. SM (00:26:41): And then you went on and got your PhD? MK (00:26:42): Yeah, but while I was there, I was involved in the anti-war movement, which, of course, still going on. SM (00:26:47): A very liberal area out there too, Portland. MK (00:26:51): Yeah. And of course, we had that newspaper that I helped edit, called the [inaudible] Bridge. And I got involved in a free clinic. I was involved with a group called Medical Committee for Human Rights, which was in favor of national health insurance. And actually, it had been originally started by this guy, Howard Levy, who was an army doctor who turned against the war. And I was also involved in, we had a little campaign to impeach Nixon during Watergate. So whatever was going on, I was involved in. And I worked for McGovern, which was sad. But I did for a short time. SM (00:27:26): That was quite at a defeat. I saw McGovern in 1972 when he flew into Columbus, Ohio. He got off the plane but never really left tarmac. And I could not see him very well, but I heard him, Ohio State had a big contingent there. Big. MK (00:27:39): Is that where you went to school, Ohio? SM (00:27:43): Yeah, grad school. I was there for five years I noticed that you had been a professor, and adjunct professor at a lot of different schools from San Francisco State, Stanford, Santa Cruz, even went to Europe for a while and taught there. And then of course- MK (00:27:59): I went to Europe; it was after I was already a tenured professor. SM (00:28:03): And that of course, you have taught at American and now at Georgetown. When you look at your peers, and you have probably been asked this before, and it was not any condemnation of the two generations that have followed the Boomer generation in terms of... But when you compare the students from your era, the students that you went to class at Harvard and Portland and so forth and the students that you have been teaching over the years, do you see a big difference within the generations? And what would those differences be? Because I like the millennials that are today. I know they are doing a lot of things, but... MK (00:28:43): I do not think as deeply about generations as some people do, I guess. I think about groups within generations and they have to all... We know from polls today that Boomer generation is probably more conservative on a lot of issues and has been for a while than younger generations are, certainly on issues like gay marriage, on abortion, on US foreign policy. So, the image that people often have that the Boomer generation was full of leftists, it was not true then, and it is not true now. There was a certain group within it who certainly were, and college students tend to be more than people that did not go to college. But I often tell my students that the most popular candidates in 1972 among people who were from my generation, a lot of them had been voting for the first time, were both for George McGovern and George Wallace. So rebellious figures were popular, it was just not necessarily rebellious figures on the left. And I have written a little about this in my book on populism. So, there is a real division within the generation, I think, more than there was some lock step. One of the things which is true though, and of course, I see these younger generations mostly through my kids who are now 19 and 22 and through my students over the years, and one thing I have noticed since I have been teaching for, wow, 35 years now in college and some in high school too. I taught some high school in the late (19)70s. One of the things I see is that there is less desire, I think, to mix it up ideologically, less desire to really fight over essentials, more inclination to be civil towards other people's opinions, sometimes to a fault, I think. I am always trying to get my students and talk my kids too, to really see that that is a lot at stake in these different points of view. And there is nothing wrong with having sharp arguments about these things. But I notice, especially kids my age, to a certain degree, I have noticed this for the last 10, 15 years of my students too, that they are loath to really take on someone from their own generation, really argue fiercely with them about issues. They feel somehow being impolite or perhaps that in the end, the differences do not matter as much as getting along matters. And that is very different from our generation's feeling as you know. We can be accused of a lot of things, but not taking politics seriously is not one thing we cannot be accused of. SM (00:31:48): Kind of the Rodney King mentality, cannot we all just get along? MK (00:31:50): Yeah. And it is fine. I am not in favor of revolution. I have not been for many, many years now. I am a liberal democrat basically today and I think conservative Republicans have terrible ideas. And I think if they do not explain why I think they do is fine. And I have considered this with my class and I am very empathetic with them. I draw them out, evaluations they give me show that they respect that, and they know I do not agree with them, but they do not argue for conservatism as much as I would like them to, to be honest with you. There is a lot of lazy liberalism on my campus anyway, and my views in general. And I think it is important for my liberal students to hear arguments well-articulated and well defended and vice versa. [inaudible]. SM (00:32:42): I was feeling, when I read the first biography of Hillary Rodham Clinton, I remember when she was in high school, her teacher- MK (00:32:49): In Illinois? SM (00:32:51): Yeah, in Illinois. She was a Goldwater girl, and her friend was a big supporter of LBJ. They had a project, you probably know, have heard about this, and she wanted to debate her friend representing Goldwater. Well, he said, "If you are going to learn about the other point of view and the positions of the people that you are opposing, then you need to learn backwards and forwards what they stand for. So you are going to represent LBJ and your friend's going to represent Goldwater in the debate." And as a result of that experience, Hillary became a liberal. That is a true story. MK (00:33:26): I did not know that. SM (00:33:27): And it was all based on this teacher who realized the true learning and we tell this to students all the time that you can be emotional about your feelings, but knowledge is just power. Know the issues. When you hear Newt Gingrich make statements about President Obama, well you study President Obama and where he stands on things, but you need to study Newt Gingrich too. Just do not take a line here and then- MK (00:33:51): I started to write about conservatism about 20 years ago and it was partly because I wanted to understand why they were doing so well, for someone who did not agree with them. But also it is useful because you learn to not demonize the other side and actually- MK (00:34:03): It is useful because you learn to not demonize the other side. And actually it leads to more civil dialogue, I think. It does not mean you agree with them more, but you at least understand why they have come to that position. SM (00:34:13): Do you like the term, the Boomer generation? I get a sense you like groups within the generation as a- MK (00:34:20): I mean obviously generations matter. I mean they listen to some similar kinds of music. They are affected at the same time of their lives by certain kinds of events. So, I am not saying generations do not matter. I just think this is a big, big country and it is also a big, big world. And to assume that somehow generational experiences are all the same, that is just not the history. I mean also more and more historians; it is just sort of transnational ways of looking at things. And I do that some too and obviously the generation I was part of, especially the cohort of it, there were people in Italy and France, and Germany and Britain, and Japan and Argentina, and Mexico were going to a lot of the same experiences. And to generalize about how the experiences affected them would be presumptuous. What I really know about without studying it, about what a kid growing up in Tokyo who happened to join Jim [inaudible], the Japanese left-wing kids’ organization. What specifically was driving that person? Was it same thing as driving me as a Jewish liberal New Yorker? Probably not. Some things, yes, some things, no. SM (00:35:34): The generation gap is a term we all know. It was defined as the disagreement between the older generation, the younger generation or between parent and child. And if you remember 1968, Life Magazine had that front cover with a guy with glasses on. It was kind of a black silhouette with the fathers pointing at the son and the son pointing at the father. So the Generation Gap was well known. But in the book, the Wounded Degeneration, which was a book that came out in 1980, there was a symposium that included James Fallows, Phil Caputo, Jack Wheeler, a young man then. Who else? Bobby Mueller and Jim White was an unbelievable symposium. And basically they were talking about a lot of different things, generation gap. And they brought up this very important thing. MK (00:36:22): All men are all white. SM (00:36:24): Yeah. And there was another writer that I cannot remember, he was a columnist though, not a vet. And the issue came up and said that the boomer generation has always been labeled as a service generation. That is not what your country can do for you. That Kennedy inspired so many people in the Peace Corps Vista. Well one of the gentlemen in the conversation said that this is a myth, that this generation is a service generation. The reason it is a myth is because they did not serve in the war in Vietnam. A service generation is one when your country calls, you go. And this was Jim Webb I believe, who was the at the time was... And so, he said when we start talking about the generational gap between parents and children, I think it is equally important to talk about the intra generational gap between those who went to Vietnam and those who did not. MK (00:37:19): And those were in the military, and those who did not. As you know, most people went in the military, did not actually go to Vietnam. And that chart, that was chance of circumstances, other charts since then, I always show my students because they have the sense of you in the army and you in combat. Not true. But obviously the idea of being in the military and making that decision when if you are from a certain background like my background, you could get out of it, which I did. That was a huge division as well. I always tell my students about when I had my physical in 1970, it was May 18th I think 1970 if I remember exactly, it was in the middle of the student strike after Ken State, after Jackson State, the biggest of student strike in American history. And I would come from Cambridge, I dropped out of Harvard, but I was a student anymore. But it was clear they did not want anybody from Cambridge like me. And I got out, I will not go into the details of how I got out, but it was not hard and walked out. There was this guy sitting there, short hair, looked pretty gloomy. And I believe that counselor, I said, "Hey, I just got out. You want me to help you get out?" I said, "Where are you from?" He said, "I am from South Boston." Irish, catholic kid probably, I am not sure. And I said, "Get out. Hell, I do not want to get out. If I do not pass this physical, my parents' going to kill me." Because everybody's family had had been in the military and he actually was afraid he would not pass, because he would bring disrespect on his family. So that was an important experience to me to have that interaction. SM (00:38:57): Did you have any conflicts with any of your fellow students in Harvard or Portland regarding over the war or any of the other issues? That would be the intergenerational battles. And then did you have battles within your family with your mom? MK (00:39:10): No, my mom was very- SM (00:39:11): And your dad. MK (00:39:12): My father was opposed to the war. By the time I was eligible for draft, it was (19)66. Because I had a two S for a while, then I burned my two S card. Actually, I am sure you will love this for the book, I actually rolled a joint in my two S card and smoked it. SM (00:39:30): Oh my gosh. That is a magic moment. You cannot go to jail. MK (00:39:41): Yeah, right. Well it was a party. It was party. I got pretty stoned in my dorm. But I mean I thought, again, it is a class thing that Fallis talked about in an essay. I thought the draft system was the cemetery against other class people, which it was. And so, I wrote to my draft board and said, I understand I am doing my draft, but I said, "I am giving up my two deferment and this is a terrible system." And of course the draft boards were all local. So they wrote to my mother or my father, I forget who in the state. "He is putting himself up eligible for draft." And I said, fine. So I went to physical but then failed. I purposely failed the physical. It is not that I wanted to go, it is just that I did not think it was fair for me to have a legal way out when a lot of other people did not. So where were we? So basically, yeah, so that was my experience with that par generation gap. And I went to a private high school in New Jersey, Englewood School for Boys, it was then called. Now it is called Dwight-Englewood School. And there was only one kid I knew who went to my high school, who went to the military and he enlisted, he became an officer. But clearly, I mean that itself shows, I mean this is a whole generation of people. When the draft was on, none of whom, as far as I know, were actually even drafted. He enlisted. SM (00:41:01): Wow. I got so many different angles here. I am coming with this interview. And in your opinion as a historian, a person who studied social movements, I was going to have you do comparisons here, but I am really going to concentrate on the movements of the late (19)60s and (19)70s. But the first question I want to ask, is there any link between McCarthyism of the (19)50s and the red baiting in the late (19)40s and (19)50s that we all know about? Because there is a lot of fear of speaking up. People sometimes felt they were being watched and many were reported and people that were all fear of being linked to somebody or something connected to being a communist. Is there something between what was happening in the (19)50s and what we call in the six (19)60s where we have seen more and more people speaking up and thus, we see these great movements because there is no McCarthyism happening now. MK (00:41:56): Well, there is an attempt. They did not fail. SM (00:42:00): Yeah, it is an attempt. We have seen precedence in, we know that there is prices that people pay for standing up for the beliefs. We know that. So many of the anti-war people that I have talked to believe that they are veterans as well as the people that served in Vietnam. Not in terms of military veterans, but in terms of the damages, broken noses. I have had a few people that- MK (00:42:19): Even though I am supportive of most of what I did then- SM (00:42:22): You are not going to go that far. MK (00:42:25): Got the stretch. I mean we purposefully put ourselves in danger. So whereas if you were drafted into the army and sent to Vietnam, you might not like it, but you had orders. Nothing. SM (00:42:36): Those movements really could not have happened in the (19)50s though. Could they? Even civil rights was happening and people were taking the risks and Dr. King and- MK (00:42:46): That is a different matter. That is a different matter. I am talking about people like me, white middle class kids who were in the [inaudible ]. That was a different matter? No, of course if you were a black person in Mississippi or Alabama and you took your left hand if you wanted to, wished to vote. I mean that was very different. That was very different. Well, I think that the impact of McCarthyism did not last really much since the (19)60s. As you know there was this famous demonstration, Francisco City Hall to protest The House Un-American Activities Committee hearing 1960. And the people who were supportive of the committee, made a film, Operation Abolition, which they thought would expose the communist threat trying to abolish this stolen, patriotic anti-communist committee. And the film was left at it, it felt completely flat. And more people saw the film, said, "Hey, that is a kind of cool kid protesting." And the police attacked them and so forth. So it was a backlash. Todd Gitlin has written his book on the 60s talk about this. Todd's a friend of mine. And so I think that certainly in the south, the civil rights movement with the COINTELPRO program, really with Hoover trying to tar... King with being a communist. So his aid, Stanley Levison having a communist of course has to basically get out of the inner circle and so forth. Under all that was going on, Hoover was still a powerful figure. But among people I worked with, sort of middle class whites, especially in places like New York City and the Bay Area in Chicago, college towns and Swarthmore and Wellesley, and even some places like Chapel Hill, Madison, Wisconsin, McCarthyism was not a cause. These were liberal places would never like McCarthy anyway, and never liked Hoover anyway. And so, the real division was between people who were supporting the Democratic administration and people like us who were denouncing it. So that conservative anti-communism did not really have a place there. I remember there was this guy, Joe Mulotmuraz, his name was, he was from Hungary and he had immigrated after the revolt of (19)56 have been put down by the Soviets and their allies. And he used to show up at every FDS meeting, every FDS rally at Harvard, anywhere in Boston home of the Hungarian Freedom Fighter. He is also an anti-Semite, which has a long history in Hungary. And he had a sign saying communism is Jewish and denounced this. And it was a joke. I mean no one took this guy seriously and he was not the antisemitic, he was like the crazy right wing anti-communist who always showed up. And after a while it became a sort of pat. It was like, "Hey Joe, we missed you last time." I mean he was so serious and he was not convincing anybody. SM (00:46:06): How important were the following events and shaping the times that boomers were alive? And what I am referring to here is, it is amazing how people book state the number of boomers there are, I think 79 million is the actual figure. I heard 74- MK (00:46:22): I think about the (19)60s as well as was active in it. That number, I do not know. SM (00:46:26): 79 is, let us give or take a few amount. But what I am trying to get at here is we know that the new lesson, we know that the anti-war movement was a small number of people comparison to the entire generation. And basically, what I am trying to get at with this question is not so much that these particular events influence and created protests, but that it is subconsciously affected the entire generation in terms of their lives as young people and their lives since as the oldest Boomer turns 65 this year. So, I am listing these events and just simply say which ones are few that you feel really get all of a generation. Congresses Board of Education in (19)54, the Montgomery Bus Boy Act in the (19)50s, the lunch counter protest in (19)60, freedom Summer in (19)64, the Free Speech Movement in (19)64, (19)65. Kennedy's election and his inaugural speech in 1961, Sputnik in 1957, the Kennedy assassination in (19)63. MK (00:47:36): You want me to go each one? SM (00:47:38): Oh no, no, not each one. I am just saying which ones you feel really affected all. And some of them may not affect all, they might affect the new left more than the Civil Rights Act of (19)64, (19)65, the year 1968 when Nixon was elected and certainly Ken State and Jackson State in 1970. And the election or loss of George McGovern in (19)72. And certainly, the escalation of the Vietnam and Reagan's election in (19)80. MK (00:48:04): Well make course without doing research specifically about that, I am just going to speculate because again, it would be great research project to take and maybe someone is doing it to take a scientific cross section of the boomer generation, different cohorts chronologically, different regionally, racially, men and women, et cetera. Yeah, as far as I know, no one has done that. It would be interesting to do that. Someone should do it. Or maybe someone is doing it. Maybe someone has. I should know. But again, just speculating pretty wildly because I believe in research. Clearly the most important events that influenced everybody were ones that influenced all Americans, which is presidential elections. I mean, you forgot about things like the moon landing for (19)69, Woodstock, which probably more if people think about what they still think was important about the (19)60s, those things are more important than any of the things you mentioned except perhaps Kennedy's election. And so Kennedy's inaugural. But again, at the time, how many people actually watched it? Probably not that many. Well a lot did, but there was in American Divided at the end, I think we found a poll done late (19)90s. I think when the first edition of our book came out, people actually, Americans were asked which these things about the (19)60s are most influential to you. And it was the Beatles, Woodstock, and the moon landing, none of them specifically political events. And that is important to realize, partly because people like to remember things that made them feel good. And all the things made people feel good. I mean, human beings are like that. Our lives are fairly short. We rather think about the Beatles than think about Vietnam. And that is probably true of people in Vietnam too. So I mean clearly the war, everyone knew the war was going on. All young men, unless they had some easy out had to think about, do I want to go in or not? And the civil rights stuff you mentioned clearly was any black person, any African American, could not be influenced by those things in one way or another. They were all over the black class, all over. People knew people who were involved in them. Whites, again, I do not know for sure again the research project to figure that out. But if you were in Greensboro, North Carolina, then obviously, or around near any place, citizens were taking place in 1960 that mattered If you were involved in a school that was beginning to be desegregated sometime after Brown, as it took a while, yes. For that to happen, all the liver speed was meant really slow most places and so close cases to actually make it happen after that. I think I am always amazed. I have my students in my 1960s lecture course, which I am teaching right now. I have taught it many times, have them do oral histories. Someone like you are doing with someone from the (19)60s and they have to put in a more demo context. Really do it about race, and they do it with a white person and race is central to it. I am almost amazed how unaware most whites were about what was going on in these terms. I mean, again, most people are making their own lives. They do not feel themselves being involved in making history. Dick Flacks you might know is- SM (00:51:54): Oh yeah, I interviewed Dick. MK (00:51:55): Yeah. He wrote an essay called, Making History. And then he wrote about and read his book on the left, he read his book. And he talked about that. And it is obvious in ways, but somehow a lot of historians forget that, that people do not see themselves as part of this world, historical things. They think about their family, they think about maybe their ethnic group, they think about their church and their religion, but basically they neither have time nor interest in thinking about the larger world and politic people somehow forget that. After the Democrats lost the house in (19)94, I had lunch with Dick Gephardt who had been the majority leader and would have been the speaker of the house if they won. And with some other people, was not just me, in his spacious office, he was about to lose because Republican was taking over. And he said sort of tongue in cheek, he said, "We have polls which showed that 75 percent of the American people neither consume nor wish to consume politics." And that sort of stuck with me. And he was a pretty skillful politician and he understood that most people really, really, we just assume politicians go away and politics go away. SM (00:53:12): In your own words, can you describe... The boomers are reaching 65 this year, the front edge boomers, I think I read that 3,500 people a day are going to be turning 65 until the last Boomer turns 65 from the group from 64. And so, the question I am trying to ask you- MK (00:53:39): I just say, just one quick thing about that, again, the generation really 18 years, I always question that. Barack Obama is a boomer, but is his experience of the (19)60s is really, really much like that of yours and mine? I do not think so. SM (00:53:54): That is what Todd said. And many others besides Todd. Todd said he does not like generations period. He does not like the greatest generation, but Tom Brokaw kind of emphasized, did not like Generation X and you did not like anything. He was like, what you were saying, things within generation. I have learned from this project that the people that were born between 1937, (19)38 and 1945 are closer to the first 10-year boomers, the first front edge boomers than the last 10 years in the boomers. MK (00:54:23): No- SM (00:54:26): Because if you can remember as students, one of the first things you learned and I learned in grad school when I went to Ohio State is the Harry Edwards book where he breaks down the differences between the radicals, the activists, the anomic activists, the militants and so forth. And the revolutionary. And he talked about it and he said a lot of the young people in college, they were being led or inspired by graduate students, students who were in their mid to late twenties. Now those are people born between (19)40 and (19)45. And one thing I have learned from Missy Havens, Richie says, "I am a boomer. I was born in 1941, but I am a boomer and it is because of the spirit of the times that has nothing to do when I was born. It is the spirit." George Hower was born in 1916. He is part of the spirit of the time. So that is one thing I think you really hit the mark. And this is one thing I really learned by doing this book is- MK (00:55:30): Well, I think Mr. should be better sociologist often than, and one of the things sociologists teach is that who influence you the most in politics, as you say, people who are just a little bit older than you. It is peers and people who you see as leaders. And Todd, he is five years older than me, Tom Hayden is maybe six or seven years older than me. I am not sure. I mean, I was in FDS. The people who founded FDS were obviously going to be my mentors in a way. And they were all, as you say, were born before (19)46. SM (00:55:59): Yeah. Rennie Davis was the same. And that whole group is there. I would like your feelings though, in terms of, just as a historian, you teach the (19)60s. When you teach the (19)60s, you have to talk about the (19)50s and certainly the late (19)40s. MK (00:56:15): The first lecture I did was on the (19)50s. SM (00:56:15): And between (19)46 and (19)50 too. Cause when we started being born at that timeframe. Just in your own words, describe America in terms of whether it be culturally, politically activists wise between 46 and 60? MK (00:56:33): That is a good question. Well, it is a combination of clearly economic growth and shared economic prosperity. More shared than any other time and American history. Any other time in world history actually, we know now, given what is happening in Europe and Japan, even in the Soviet plot. Eric Hobsbawm, his book Age of Extremes, wonderful book, which is a world history of 1940, 1989. And he calls these years the golden age, late (19)40s, early (19)70s. It began after World War II, of course. But at the same time there was a lot of anxiety, a lot of fear that nuclear war had happened, that communists were gaining. There was a lot of racial tension in the cities in the north as much as south. My friend Tom Sugrue has written a book that sort of a very important book called, the Origins of the Urban Crisis. I do not know if you know that book. SM (00:57:39): I know Tom Sugrue, but... S-U-G-R-U-E, right? MK (00:57:43): S-U-G-R-U-E. Yeah. And he points out that about Detroit. Other people have written about this in other cities at the time. If black people tried to move into white neighborhood in late (19)40s, early (19)50s, they often would meet with mobs saying, forget about it. And even though civil rights laws were on the books and some of these states from late 1940s on, it was very hard to, if you are a black person, to get an apartment or a house in a white neighborhood, realtors and final council. And then if they decided, of course, famous block busting- SM (00:58:19): Got 30 minutes, I think we still got 30 minutes. MK (00:58:23): Yes. SM (00:58:23): Because I know that was the one order there. MK (00:58:35): That does not matter, but I am just looking at just ordinary black people wanted to move with the white neighborhoods who did not have any politics to speak of. SM (00:58:43): Yeah, we are okay. MK (00:58:44): Because of course that shows not just racism, but also insecurity on the part of white people in this neighborhood that they felt understandably, that if black people began to move in their house, which is what they had more money stock into than anything else, was going to go down at value, they were afraid their schools would be problems. Of course, they were afraid that their daughters and sons might get involved manically with black people. And so just on and on and on. So, the glory of (19)50s was glorious economically in the aggregate compared to other times in American history. And compared to recent times too. But it was clearly still a time of great insecurity and in great anxiety, many people who were doing better were not so sure that the better times was going to continue. It was a time when institutions were very strong. Labor unions. People forget, were stronger than ever before in American's history. And that had something to do with the prosperity. And obviously corporations are strong. People thought they could go to work for big corporations, GE or Westinghouse, or thrift meat packing or Ford, and you could work for the rest of your life until you retired. And then when you retired, you would have a pension. You would not have to put your money in the stock market like you do now. But at the same time, people would come out of the depression, come out of the war, and they did not know whether this could continue. They did not have great optimism that their kind of country would always be as prosperous as it was. And of course, with the Cold War there, in 1960 debates, when Kennedy talked about the missile gap, which was of course a complete lie, it was all on the other side. But nevertheless, people believed him enough because they said, well, Soviet Union seems to be gaining and all these countries are communists and communists are causing trouble around the world. And so there is this fear that, yeah, the United States are in pretty good shape now, but who knows what the future will bring. And of course, there was youth revolt in the (19)50s too. Rock and roll riots and Elvis, and juvenile delinquents and all this stuff. SM (01:00:53): Gangs. MK (01:00:53): Yeah, exactly. So comic books, there were congressional investigations into comic books. SM (01:00:59): James Dean. MK (01:01:00): It seems hilarious now that people be thinking comic books were a threat to the republic. But nevertheless, as in history, nothing is spontaneous, nothing comes from nowhere. And everything happened in the (19)60s, the seeds were sewn for that earlier. I mean, a lot of them before the (19)40s and (19)50s too. But certainly, in the (19)40s and (19)50s already, you have debates between my uncle Daniel Bell and C. Wright Mills about whether the United States is a plural society or is one run by a power elite? All that is taking place in the (19)50s already, a rather kind of debates between liberal and radicals that we think about in the (19)60s already happening, beginning to happen in the (19)50s. SM (01:01:44): How about the period 1961 and 1980? MK (01:01:49): What about it? How would you contrast it? SM (01:01:50): It is the same thing. Yeah. How would you contrast it with that whole period from John Kennedy's inaugural to Ronald Reagan's inaugural? MK (01:01:57): I think I am not a Marist anymore, but I am enough of a... I believe in important of economics lives enough to believe that when a boom ends, then a lot of other things are affected by it. And that happens in beginning in the late (19)60s, but really as in the early (19)70s with stagflation with the oral crisis. And so, I would, like most of historians and days, I would say the period is more (19)61 to (19)73 than it is (19)61 to (19)80. I mean, the rise of conservatives would be, of course, who knows kind of factually. But it can only be understood in the context of inflation, unemployment of fear that Keynesian remedies are not working anymore. That one of the reasons Americans were willing to elect liberal presidents from Roosevelt to Truman, to Kennedy to Johnson, and have not been willing to ever since, perhaps Obama's exception, but he did not run as a liberal, is because they saw liberals as whether they remember or not, as people who basically said the government will take care of you. The government will keep the economy afloat. And it did not. Even though Nixon was in power when the worst of it happened, the programs were basically the Keynesian programs. And Nixon was the first president, said he was a Keynesian. They are all Keynesian now. So I think that that was a key that you took a win. The (19)60s ended, it ended in the early (19)70s with the economic crisis, of course, with the end of the war. SM (01:03:40): Yeah. And I am the only person that said this. And that is that I knew in the fall of (19)73 that the (19)60s was beginning to end when streaking happened. And I am working on my first job at Ohio University, and I get a call from all my buddies that are still in graduate school there at Ohio State and Jones Graduate Tower. And they said, "You have got to get back here tonight." And I said, "What do you mean I got to get back there tonight?" "Oh, they are going to be doing the Rockettes behind the law library." And I said, "The Rockettes?" "Yeah, the girls are going to come out all naked and then the guys are going to file suit and then there is going to be a big streak across the oval tonight, and then they are going to streak the Olympics all weekend." And I did not believe it, but then I went, I said, "Oh my God, this is in the (19)50s where they just stuck themselves into-" MK (01:04:35): Telephone booths. SM (01:04:35): Telephone booths or in the laundromat. Oh I said, "Oh, boy." MK (01:04:39): Or a panty wave. Right. That is a good point. SM (01:04:42): So that particular period, so when you say the next period really is the onset of, I think the late (19)70s and the (19)80s is the era of Reagan and conservatism, would not you say? MK (01:04:56): Politically, yeah. We talked about this in America Divided, and I think culturally, people on my side continue to gain even, we did not have a movement per se, but feminism continues to percolate in various ways and continues to affect women. I mean, college students today, women, just think if you told them, well, what else we need, that you cannot really think about the engineer because that is a man's job. They would say, "What are you talking about?" The idea that is a man's job, a woman's job. But of course, we were growing up in the (19)50s, that was taken for granted. Ads in the papers said, help wanted, man. Help wanted, women. It was just expected. And I think race is lots a lot more complicated now because of immigration, partly, but also because I think people no longer, again, I mean the civil rights movement did not succeed in all the things he wanted to do. As king was an economic radical, not just a civil rights person. He really wanted a guaranteed annual wage health insurance. He was basically a democratic socialist. In fact, he said so in private. But clearly culturally you cannot be a public racist anymore in this country, and you cannot justify things on the base of race. Now you can still justify the basis of not like the immigrants, and that is partly racial, but that is more recent. And the whole thing about sexuality, which of course gays and lesbians have been able to more open sexuality and people thinking, if you love each other, why not have all the right to anybody else? That is a creature of the (19)60s, I think, too. SM (01:06:39): And the age crisis, which infuriated many of the gay lesbian leaders, because Reagan refused to even mention the word. And many believed that he cost thousands on thousands of people that dying because he could not even say the word. MK (01:06:53): Which is ironic, because as he was not anti-gay personally. I mean, Nancy had lots of friends who were gay and this whole Hollywood scene it was, and designers and stuff, he was hardly a fundamentalist on these issues. So in that sense, yeah, conservatives, I mean, we talked about this in American Divided, conservatives won for the most part politically. Though again, there is limits too. I mean, as you know, when they attack the healthcare bill last year, this year, they attacked it for jeopardizing Medicare, which of course Ronald Reagan said was socialism at the time. So there is a lot of these conflicts. I mean, America's never been as liberal as some people thought in the (19)60s. It was not as liberal then as its people thought, and it is not as conservative. And it was not as conservative in the (19)80s as people thought either. We have these conflicts in American history, which in many ways go way back and neither side wins a complete victory. SM (01:07:47): Would you say the culture was as ongoing with respect to even how they look at Bill Clinton and George Bush the second? Because here you have two boomers, one conservative, one liberal, and they are comparing them, and this guy is this way and this guy's that way. Is that just part of the culture- This guy is this way, and this guy is that way. Is that just part of the culture wars, the ongoing culture wars? MK (01:08:05): Well, the partnership was obviously very strong. SM (01:08:07): The Vietnam War. MK (01:08:09): If you look at it-it in the larger perspective, neither Clinton nor Bush... But both Clinton and Bush were, in many ways, Clinton was sort of center left. Bush was sort of center right. Neither was trying to roll back "New Deal", "Great Society" programs to any great degree. Bush was not a Tea Party person at all. We were not. And Clinton was certainly not a far-off liberal, either. And yet of course, both sides jumped on the other one, partly for Bush was because of the war, of course, in Iraq. But even before that, people saw him as illegitimate winning the presidency and everything else. And I think one of the results in the (19)60s is that people were politically active, which is not most Americans. People who are politically active really believe that the other side is evil. And I was saying before, earlier in the interview, that I think it is important to take a strong stance. But it does not mean that that Democrats and Republicans, as parties, are really ideologically bound parties. They are more than there used to be, certainly. But still most Americans who vote for Democrats, Republicans agree with some of the things the other party is for, too. Most Americans are not deeply ideological. SM (01:09:33): A major question I have been asking every person from the very first interview with Senator McCarthy is the issue of healing. Whether you feel that there is an issue within this generation of lack of healing for those who were... Support for the war, against the war, for the troops, against the troops, the divisions between Black and white, male and female, gay and straight. This question comes because a group of students came up with a question, they wanted to ask Senator Edmond Muskie when we took a group in 1995 to meet him in his office. And because they had seen the film on 1968 and they thought we were close to a second civil war. And they were not born yet, but they had seen the riots, some of the films in (19)60s, they had seen the riots. They saw two assassinations, King and Kennedy. They saw the Chicago Eight trial, they saw the terrible confrontation in Chicago that year. And they came up with a question and they thought Senator Muskie would talk about (19)68 and all the divisions. And I will give you his response after I hear from you. Do you think that part of the divisiveness that we have right now, that there is a link between what is happening today and what happened back then? The bitterness, the somewhat hatred between people with opposing points of view, that this is continuing, ongoing and that the generation itself, either consciously or subconsciously, because you cannot talk about 79 million, but it is something that I have brought up to everyone, and they have all had different answers to this. Do you think we have an issue with healing as a generation? And that many will go to their grave still bitter toward people who had opposing points of view, no matter the issue? MK (01:11:26): Again, it depends on who you are talking about. I think you have to separate people who were activists then and continue to think as activists now. People who were not much activists then, or they might have gone to a demonstration or they might have gone to a rock festival or something, but they were just sort of riding on the wave, whatever the wave happened to be. But those who actually started the waves and continued to want the waves to continue and not to break on the shore, that is the right metaphor. I think yes. I think on both sides, if you talk about two sides, continue to say that if you are on the left, that conservatives now are the same people who are wrong back in the Cold War in (19)64 and supported the war in Vietnam and liked the police cracking people's heads in Chicago and so forth. And of course, on the right, mirror image, "These crypto communists think America's not exceptional." I just wrote a piece. I have a column for the New Republic, and I just wrote a piece on American exceptionalism, how Obama can maybe take advantage of that concept. But as I said before, I think that if you look at issues though, there has actually been some healing. Or I would rather think of transcendence than healing. I am not sure it is healing. As often happens in history, after a while people no longer care to argue about certain issues. It is just not relevant anymore, either to their lives or to the society. It is not politically opportunistic to argue about it. I think we are approaching that with gay rights. Certainly already approached it with gay military. That is over. And I think we will approach with gay marriage in the next five to 10 years, as well. Already at the Conservative Convention downtown, the CPAC convention- SM (01:13:27): CPAC. MK (01:13:27): Happening now. No one. Did anybody talk about gay marriage? Not because they might not believe that it is wrong, but because they realize that most people do not care enough about that to vote on that basis. Abortion is still a very loud issue, and in fact, young people are probably more anti-abortion now than they were a few years ago. But again, it is not something that is central to the dialogue. And someone who is in favor, pro-choice and yet hopes that people do not have to have abortions, I think that in many ways that is where the center of Americans are. They do not want to make abortion illegal, but they would like it to as few abortions possible. So, there is ways in which people are transcendent to those debates. Foreign policy... Again, I will not go into all the issues, but yeah, I think that is basically where we are. That activists, core activists on both sides will not surrender. But the large majority of people from the boomer generation, I think, have transcended the idea that there are two sides. They have a more complicated position depending on the issue and depending on their experience. SM (01:14:37): Do you think the Vietnam Memorial, the wall... I want to ask you, when you went there for the first time, what did you first think in terms of... Were you having flashbacks of your youth? MK (01:14:48): No. SM (01:14:48): When you went to the wall for the first time? I am going to get back to this question of healing, but as part of it, Jan Scruggs wrote a book called "To Heal a Nation". And of course the goal of the wall was to heal the families of those who lost loved ones in Vietnam and also those who served the nation in Vietnam. And many are still going through unbelievable problems upon their return. Just your thoughts on whether Jan Scruggs's idealism of hoping that that wall would heal the generation, because we were so divided over the war, I do not know if there has been healing between Vietnam vets and anti-war people, but your thoughts on going to that wall and whether it will heal the nation anymore. MK (01:15:34): My first thought as someone who was spent important years of my life in the anti-war movement were that this was an anti-war memorial, because it is black, it is a gash in the earth. SM (01:15:44): Yeah. MK (01:15:44): It is right next to the Lincoln Memorial, which is a memorial to a war that was won. At least by the north, it was won. Great Greek temple, it is like a Parthenon. That one is also a war memorial. And I think it is a brilliant piece of public art. She is a brilliant architect, Maya Lin. But also, I was aware that people going there were able to have a mourning experience publicly and privately that they had not been able to have before. So I think it was wonderful in that sense. By the time it started, I forget when I first saw it, maybe two years after, three years after it was finished... (19)85, I think I came here first. I was living in California before then, so I had not been back there to see it. I was blown away by it. I really thought it was one of the most beautiful pieces of public art or architecture I have ever seen, because it allowed you... It made you think right away about the war. It did not tell you what to think the way I think the World War II Memorial does, which I hate. I hate that memorial because it just... SM (01:16:57): Ooh. MK (01:16:59): Oh, "All hail the concrete heroes." Wars are not that simple. People die in large numbers. And anyway, and the Vietnam, our memorial, I saw people there. I saw people crying. I went there at night, I think, the first time, and saw the candles there and people's faces reflected in the black marble, which is a brilliant effect. Now, clearly, this came out of a desire to heal those divisions, which even though those divisions were very raw, clearly enough people got on top of them, the Vietnam vets groups, scrubs, and others to realize that this was not a good thing. And it was not helping either side. Was not helping Vietnam vets, either. And of course, Vietnam vets themselves, we provided, as you know. SM (01:17:48): Oh, yes. MK (01:17:49): A lot of donors were Vietnam vets. We thought they had been betrayed by the country. So some folks, they were betrayed by the country for having sent them there in the first place. Some folks were betrayed by the country for not supporting them more once they were there. So, it is a mix. So, I thought, I still think it is a wonderful place, and partly because it allows all kinds of things to happen. Of course, a lot of people who go there and have petitions against Jane Fonda and people who were there and sold the flags of "Do not forget the MIAs, the POWs", even though there is hardly any evidence, there is still people there. It enabled a debate to take place on a more rational basis, which is very important. SM (01:18:30): But the bitterness towards Robert McNamara is still pretty evident, even though he wrote those two books. Because what he wrote, "In Retrospect"... I will never forget going to the wall. I went to the Vietnam Memorial, which I have been to the Vietnam Memorial, Memorial Day and Veterans Day, ever since I knew Lewis. And after he died, since (19)94. And the very first year I was there... "In Retrospect" was (19)95, I believe. And I have some unbelievable shots that I took there that because, so there were two "In Retrospect" books left at the center, and they had bullet holes in them. They had been taken to a firing range with bullets and left there. And I took about 25 pictures at different angles. Sure. Unbelievable. So the bitterness... But I interviewed Craig McNamara there in California. Craig's unbelievable. I do not know if you could ever get him into your class, if he is ever back in the east. He is a gem. MK (01:19:24): Has he written anything? SM (01:19:25): No, he does not write. No. But he runs a farm out in the North, up in the Napa Valley. It is a walnut farm. He has done very good. And I really respect him. He was an unbelievable person. He was anti-war. MK (01:19:39): I was friends with Bundy's son while in California. He married a friend of mine who was a radical sociologist. And Bundy came to... When I was in the freeze early (19)80s, he came to is this is McGeorge Bundy, [inaudible]. SM (01:19:59): Oh yeah. MK (01:20:00): He came to a meeting and he was very impressive, partly because he was so guilty. SM (01:20:05): Of course, what is really amazing about McGeorge Bundy is McGeorge Bundy, just like Robert McNamara, knew very early we should have gotten out it. MK (01:20:11): Yep. SM (01:20:11): And I bet... And I know both of them went to their grave thinking that. It might have even helped. MK (01:20:17): Well, the fair fact, McNamara commissioned the Pentagon Papers. SM (01:20:21): Yes. MK (01:20:22): It showed historicalness, but also when he quit, it would have been a huge impact if he had said "This was a mistake." But of course, he did not do that. SM (01:20:30): In (19)70, he went to Ashton. I got him in trouble. Do you say one of the qualities that defined the entire generation, though, is their lack of trust? It is not a trusting generation. Again, I am talking about... MK (01:20:42): I think America in general, since Johnson escalated the war in (19)65 and sent American troops in large numbers that year. I think Americans, since then, have not been trusting of any generation. I am not sure... Again, like Todd, I am dubious about thinking about the generation as a whole. And polls showed that. Polls showed it. As you probably know, from World War II up to (19)64, Americans... As you know, Gallop Poll has this every year. "Do you trust this institution, the authorities to do the right thing? Government, church, military, universities, et cetera?" And since that point, government has never had majority. Sometimes it is low, it is like in the teens, like during Watergate. Sometimes it's a little higher, like right after 9/11. Universities are, I do not know, twenties and thirties. Churches are a little higher. Military's usually higher. But in general, Americans as a whole do not have huge amount of trust for any major institutions or authorities. SM (01:21:51): I know specifically, for me, as a young person going into I think sixth grade or something like that around the time, it is that Eisenhower lied at the U2. That is the first time I ever saw a President lie. MK (01:22:03): Yeah. SM (01:22:03): Because I think everybody was shocked that this grandfather figure had lied to us. MK (01:22:12): Of course. Absolutely. Famously, FDR, who I think was a great guy, he lied. He knew the US was going to get into World War II, but he was not going to say it. SM (01:22:22): I wanted to mention that the result of the response to Senator Muskie to that question. Senator Muskie did not even mention (19)68 and then did not mention anything that was happening in America. The students were totally shocked because they were all waiting for this great answer from the Vice-Presidential candidate in (19)68. And he said, "We have not healed since the Civil War in the area of race." And he went on to give a lecture and he said, "I have just seen the Ken Burns series in the hospital. We lost 430,000 people in that war. Almost an entire generation of Southern..." MK (01:22:53): Civil War? SM (01:22:53): Yeah, Civil War. MK (01:22:53): It was more than that. It was 600,000. SM (01:22:53): Yeah. Well, the thing is, he went on to talk about that and he showed his emotion too, by the tears. And actually witnessed what the news media had talked about. The guy had emotion, and there is nothing wrong with that. (01:23:08): One of the things here, too, is the violence. You were a member of SDS. I do not know if you know Larry Davidson. MK (01:23:15): I was living there for a short time, too. SM (01:23:15): Yeah, I am going to bring that in. Larry Davidson founded at Georgetown. He was the founder, he is a history professor at Westchester University., And he founded SDS at Georgetown. MK (01:23:26): I never- SM (01:23:26): Lawrence Davidson. And he was on the front newspapers, he got arrested. His parents were not too happy with him because his father was in the military. But the question is this: he quit SDS because it went to the weatherman in violence. And so many quit. Do not you think? And Mark's done a great job in "Underground". I have interviewed Mark and I was with him for a whole evening at the Kent State last year. MK (01:23:53): I saw him. It is funny, I do not know if you know this. We had lunch, he had not finished the book yet, maybe three years ago. And he had come to Washington and I said, "Why come to Washington?" He said, "Well, the FBI invited me to Quantico to talk about terrorism." SM (01:24:06): You are kidding me. He did not say that he was there. MK (01:24:10): That is hilarious. So, he stopped to Washington on his way out of Quantico. SM (01:24:11): Oh my God. Well, I really like Mark. I love Mark. MK (01:24:16): I liked him back then, too. SM (01:24:18): But he admitted the mistake that was made that he would not have supported violence. And he says about it in the "Underground" book, really, that he was against it. And I think that is where he has had different disagreements. MK (01:24:29): He was not against it soon enough. [inaudible] Right? SM (01:24:31): Bernardine. I am interviewing Bernardine in about two weeks. But your thoughts on, SDS going to the Weather Underground the biggest mistake ever made by SDS was that? MK (01:24:41): Well, no, I think it began before then. And the biggest mistake we ever made was to basically think that revolution was possible in the United States, and talk that way. And to support people like the Black Panthers. This is for Weather Man, who basically talked about revolution. We really thought that. We are so angry at this country... People who run this country, what they are doing, and also at a lot of Americans for supporting what the country's doing, that we basically are not going to identify with the country and not going to make an analysis that any political person should be making of what is possible, and whether what we are saying is jeopardizing what is possible. So, on the one hand, yes, we have built some important movements and the anti-war movement, most important of them, at least for people like me. Of course, the Black movement was also on before then. But I think we... I just finished a book on History of the American Left. I have been thinking about this a lot. It is coming out in August. But ever since the New Left collapsed, there has not been a mass radical movement in this country. There has been campaigns here and there. There has been things like Chomsky and Howard Zinn who speak for radical causes and radical ideas. SM (01:25:58): Right. MK (01:25:59): But basically I think we did not... And it is not just our fault. Context has changed, too. But basically, we did not think about the future. We just thought... Look, we were kids. That is part of it. My wife is always reminding me that when you are 20, 21 years old, you can do a lot of things, but reflecting soberly is not usually one of them. And that is part of all that falling apart. We did not have mentors. And so I think our mistake was an analytical mistake, which came out of our putting emotions ahead of thinking. And some of that was useful. Being angry was important, but we should have coupled our anger with a long-term strategy. And we did not. We thought somehow that everything was coming down around us and we would somehow be able to take advantage of that. And you probably know the history of Nazis a little bit. Famously, the German communists had these battles with German socialists in the streets of Berlin where the Nazis were gaining in votes. And when the German communists were asked why it was more important to eliminate their rivals on the left than it was to fight the Nazis, the slogan was, I forget the German, basically "After Hitler, us. Hitler will not make it. Germans will not follow this crazy guy. And then they will want communists to go in power." And in fact, we believe that. I remember in (19)68, there was a chance Reagan would run for president, even though he had just been elected governor of California. And George Wallace, of course, is running for president. And I thought, "What would it be like if the presidential election came down to Reagan against Wallace?" Two people who, from my point of view, were both crazy right-wingers. And I asked some friends of mine from SDS, and they said, "Great. Country deserves that. Country deserves to go to hell that way." And when I was a Weatherman, long story, but basically people who were in my collective had to give these very short speeches on the subway at one point. Like 30 minutes. And one of the guys in my collective was a working class kid from Northeastern University, from Southie, actually, Irish Catholic kid. Jimmy, I forget his last name. Jimmy O'Toole, I think. And he was reticent about speaking. He just was not used to public speaking. He had to come up with something. So, the subways stops and is quiet all of a sudden. And Jimmy said, " This country sucks." A lot of people thought we thought this country sucks. That is not a way to convince the majority of Americans. SM (01:28:39): Knowledge is power. Knowledge is power. Know your stuff. MK (01:28:41): Anyway, so the message that many Americans received from SDS was "This country sucks." And that that is not a message that a majority of Americans... You are not going to convince the majority of Americans to hate their country. You are just not going to. SM (01:29:00): Yeah. MK (01:29:01): And you should not, either. So that is why- SM (01:29:03): One thing- MK (01:29:04): The Weathermen came out of that. See, the Weathermen did not come out of nowhere, it came out of that. We basically said, "Yes, this country sucks. Let us bring it down." SM (01:29:11): You were not in the group that was hiding, were you? MK (01:29:14): No, I left before it went underground. I did not go underground. SM (01:29:17): How we doing time wise? We got five minutes? MK (01:29:19): Five, 10 minutes. SM (01:29:20): Okay. These are just very important terms that, again, the people that are going to be reading this, this is going to be geared to our college students, high school students, and the general public at large. But mostly I want this to be in the (19)60s courses. I have got some great interviews. Jack Wheeler interview, Mike [inaudible], you cannot believe that interview. MK (01:29:36): You are going to have to cut it. You are going to have to make it shorter, though, because college students- SM (01:29:38): No, I know that. MK (01:29:42): [inaudible] pages. SM (01:29:43): Yeah. Just your quick definition of these terms, if you can do it. "Counterculture". What does that mean? MK (01:29:52): It means a set of behaviors and ways of thinking. Stop a sec. SM (01:30:00): Yep. MK (01:30:05): Basically behaviors and attitudes opposed to what people perceive to be the dominant behaviors and attitudes about sex, about drugs, about a lot of things. Friendship, music. It was, I think, more of a youth culture than a counterculture, per se, because so many people were able to be part of what we think of the counterculture, who were just basically consuming differently. Not necessarily changing their minds. Some of them changed their minds. But for the most part, again, they were activists. Everyone with counterculture was not Abbie Hoffman. SM (01:30:43): Right. Participatory democracy, which we know about was part of what SDS's foundation was. And also I believe participatory democracy was very important in the Freedom Summer and the Civil Rights Movement itself. (01:30:56): Bye. Nice meeting you. Take care. (01:30:58): Definition of participatory democracy. MK (01:31:10): Well, again, that is more easily defined because it was the New Left, White New Left, especially, but soon to be Black New Left's attempt to project a vision of the way they thought politics should work. As small scale as possible, as much based on ordinary peoples having a voice as possible, as opposed to representative democracy. It was utopian and impossible to run a society that way. But I think it gave rise to a lot of people joining groups. And in some ways it goes back to Tocqueville and goes back to the flowering of volunteer institutions, voluntary associations in various parts of American life. And I think it was important part of the New Left's appeal that people believe that everyone should be able to have... What was the SDS's slogan statement... Something like "Everyone should have a,..." I forget exactly. "Should be able to help decide, make the decisions that affect their lives." And that makes sense to me. SM (01:32:35): It is people as opposed to one specific leader. That was very important. Black Power. MK (01:32:42): Well again, Black Power had a specific definition at the time in the late (19)60s when it began to be talked about by Stokely Carmichael and others. Clearly was, in many ways, the latest phase of Black nationalist ideology. Black nationalism goes all the way back to Martin Delany and people like that, even before the Civil War. That Black people have to [inaudible] themselves to free themselves, and should also be proud of who they are culturally, how they look, how they dress, their history. So it was both connected to Jewish ethnic assertion, Italian assertion, Irish assertion and identity, and different from it because the history of African Americans in the United States is different from that of any other group for obvious reasons. SM (01:33:35): Why was Che Guevara so important to many people in the New Left? Mark mentioned, when we started having our conversation, he immediately started talking about Che Guevara and how important he was. And he was reading at Columbia. And even since then, why is Che Guevara, Herbert Marcuse, why are they so important? MK (01:33:56): But they are very different. SM (01:33:57): Yeah, I know. MK (01:34:11): Che was much more important than Marcuse. You want about Che? SM (01:34:11): Yeah. MK (01:34:11): Well, it was not that important to me. Ho Chi Minh was more important to me. But he was... First of all, he was cool. He was beautiful-looking. He was international. He saw himself as a citizen of the world. He had been in different countries, Congo, and he was Argentinian, but he was in Cuba helping to make the revolution. He was a writer, an intellectual, as well as being an activist. And that was of course what people like me in the left wanted to be, as well. And he was a martyr, and martyrs are always important. We would not have Martin Luther King Jr. holiday if Martin Luther King was still alive. SM (01:34:51): He was a doctor too, if I am correct. MK (01:34:55): Yes, he was. That was less important to me. And he wrote Guerrilla Warfare, and of course people were beginning to have this romance with guerrilla warfare. And Cuba had a special place. You probably read some of that Van Gosse book, "Where the Boys Are" and so forth. Cuba had a special place in the minds of New Leftists. C. Wright Mills wrote a book before he died called "Listen, Yankee", supporting the Cuban Revolution. And it was in our hemisphere, a lot of Cubans had been in the United States. Of course, then, we tried to overthrow the government. So it was in the minds of people becoming leftists, people already were leftists. It was going to have a very important place. A lot of people have been there. My in-laws, Beth's parents who were in the Communist Party took their honeymoon in Cuba in 1953 or something. SM (01:35:49): You were part of that group called the Vencer... MK (01:35:53): [inaudible] Yeah. I went to Cuba. SM (01:35:54): Yeah, did that- MK (01:35:55): That was after Che died. That was (19)69, (19)70. SM (01:35:57): Did that get you in trouble in terms of the FBI looking at you? MK (01:36:01): Well, I was already in trouble after I was a Weatherman. I was already in trouble because I had been a Weatherman. But yeah, I think my name was mentioned at Senate hearings. I think Senator Eastland from Mississippi said we were "little capsules of revolution", some metaphor he used. "Little missiles of revolution." SM (01:36:17): Has that affected the rest of your career in any way? MK (01:36:20): No, not really. Academia is a pretty safe place for people. SM (01:36:26): This is very important because Tom Hayden, when he came to our campus, really had to almost give a lecture to students on this, the difference between power and empower. Your thoughts on the difference between them. Students sometimes feel they have power, and then you use the term "empower" and they look like this. And if you use this term to boomers who are my age, who are conservative, "Oh God, the (19)60s." So just your thoughts and difference between power and empower. MK (01:36:59): I do not use the term " empower" too much because it seems like jargon, but... Well, power is obvious. Power is you have the ability to get people to do things you want them to do, either because you control institutions or because you have people believe that you are their leader. And "empower" has a connotation more of ordinary people feel that they have the ability to get power and to influence people in power. That is what I think. SM (01:37:35): And then just the difference between the Old Left and the New Left. MK (01:37:38): Well, again, the Old Left was people who became radicalized, mostly 1930s, some earlier. Again, generationally, it is complicated. But people whose primary ideological paradigm was Marxist and was focused on the working class and on the labor movement. Not to say they [inaudible] other things. And people who thought the battle over whether the Soviet Union was a good place or not was absolutely crucial to everything else. The magazine I am co-editor of now, Dissent, was very much part of the Old Left when it got started. And Patton, Irving Howe and other editors battled with people in the New Left, in the late (19)50s, because they thought New Leftists were naive about communism because they were socialists. And for them, the Bolsheviks and then Lenin and Stalin and all those people in the American Communist Party and other communist parties had destroyed any real hope for socialism, because it had made socialism equated with tyranny. In retrospect, I think they were probably right. But at the time, I thought... At the time most of them... I was an anti-anti-communist. I thought anti-communism was just a way of saying "People in power in this country continue, are okay. They might be doing some things wrong, but at least they are not communist, so we cannot really oppose them any major way." And of course, War in Vietnam, a lot of the people, the anti-communists Old Left, were either supportive of the war in Vietnam at first, or very ambivalent about it. Because after all, this was a war against Stalinists, as they put it. And the New Left of course, were people like me, mostly Baby Boomers, not all, as we talked about before, who got radicalized in the late (19)50s and (19)60s, when the key issues were first Black freedom, inequality, then Cuba, and then the war in Vietnam. And the issue of... Marxism was influential, labor. They were pro-labor, but these are not their priorities anymore. SM (01:39:48): And also the difference between neocons and neoliberals. MK (01:39:54): Well, neoliberals means something very different in Europe than it does here. Neoliberalism, here, was a term that was coined I think in the late (19)70s, early (19)80s, by people who were Democrats, capital D, who understood liberalism was in decline and disrepute. And they wanted to move somewhere to the right, less regulation, dubious about affirmative action, try to win back majority. And people like Paul [inaudible] were neoliberals. I am trying to remember some of the names now. It did not last very long. In many ways, Bill Clinton could be argued was a neoliberal. The Democratic Leadership Council, which just went out of business this week, was- SM (01:40:36): Did it? MK (01:40:37): Yeah. Was very much a neoliberal bastion. The think tank called Progressive Politics Institute still exists, but that DLC does not exist anymore. And it also is a way to show businesses, which of course all is very powerful in the politics of this country, that we are not just anti-business; we are just anti-business going off on their own and opposing regulation. So with neoconservatives, the term was coined by, I think, Michael Harrington, who was of course a socialist, or maybe Peter Steinfels, who was a left-wing Catholic. There were people who had been liberal-driven radicals in their youth in the (19)60s, mostly Jewish, who began to move to the right because they opposed the New Left, they opposed Black Power, and they identified with Israel and opposed the Soviet Union. Part of the Soviet Union was, they thought, tyrannical, and part of the Soviet Union was anti-Israel. And they thought that supporting Israel, supporting what they saw as mainstream centrist government was being attacked more by the left and by the right. And of course, most of these people ended up just being conservative, like Billy Crystal. And then his son, Billy. But at the time, they continued to support the welfare state as they understood it. They just were opposed to---Continued to support the welfare state as they understood it. They just were opposed to what they saw as some people on the left, who were trying to move things beyond where they should go. Anyway... SM (01:42:11): Two final questions. What lessons had the institutes of higher education learned from the student protests of the (19)60s and (19)70s? Are they lessons learned, and lessons lost? I say this, because when you look at the Free Speech Movement in (19)64, (19)65, it really did not have to happen, although I think eventually it would have happened because the war was coming, and so forth. What really gets me is that when Mario Savio, the things that always stand out, and why I think he is a very important person in the history of activism in America, but also in terms of what happened in free speech and higher education, is the fact that ideas matter. I know your father, ideas matter. Universities are about ideas. All ideas should be presented, all points of view. Yet the universities were still were at that time being controlled by corporations. MK (01:43:11): Well ... SM (01:43:12): The reason why I bring this question up is when you look at universities today, and I have been in higher education for 30 years until I left two years ago, fundraising, scholarships, doing a program, everything seems to be linked to we got to raise money. We got to raise money, we got to have a corporate link to this, this, prove that this program has value because is it bringing money in? MK (01:43:39): I think I told you now that was then, actually. SM (01:43:40): Yeah. When I interviewed two great educators, Arthur Chickering who wrote Education and Identity. One of the things in higher education in masters and PhD programs you learn about is seven vectors of development. The ultimate for all students is that they have a sense of integrity. That is what we all shoot for, knowing who they are. Like you, you know who you are and what you stand for. Activists have lived a lifetime. They have integrity because they are genuine. When I interviewed Alexander Aston and Arthur Chickering, I asked them, "Is there one disappointment that both of you have in higher education today now that you are," well, one is retired, one is still there. Yeah, corporations have taken control again. They are running the universities. MK (01:44:24): I think it depends on the university. I think it is less true at wealthy universities because they can get money from wealthy people who went to school there. Harvard, I do not think is owned by corporations. I think it is certainly true. We have a new business school, and we only have it because corporations have financed that. It does make sense in some ways, you want people to learn how to work in corporations, corporations might as well pay them, help them do that. SM (01:44:52): Yeah. MK (01:44:55): Part of the whole context of the (19)60s as I was talking about, was this unprecedented prosperity. I mean, state university campuses were being founded Every year. I mean, Ohio had 78. Pennsylvania, California, New York, I mean places that did not exist before for World War II. I think in some ways, people who grew up in that period, and then went to higher education, I did get a sense that sense of entitlement, I guess is the best way to put it, that we should be supported for whatever we think, and whatever we want to do. Now, I believe in tenure, I believe in free speech, of course. At same time, there are some people, and I say this as person on the left, some people on the left in academia who feel like somehow whatever they want to do, whatever they want to say should be, is sort of immune from criticism from outside. I mean, the war Churchill is the worst example of that, of course. Because, he even lied about what he did, but who he was. I think that one of the good things, not corporate takeover isn't good, but I do think that there is a lot of programs in universities now, at least in mine, others which where people do go back and forth between the outside world and world university, they all have internships and so forth. I think that is really good because it is important for the university to be in the world. Of course, you cannot avoid being in the world to certain extent. The whole ivory tower thing I think was and is a little over over-hyped. I think the best professors, to me, the best professors I had in college, the best professors now that I know of, are people who are continually in dialogue with people outside. I see myself as doing that because I do a lot of journalism, and I am still active in various things. I think certainly everyone has got to do that. I think it is important to have an important cohort, people in universities who do that, who do not see themselves as just completely apart from everything else. Now, at the same time, if you are an Aristotle scholar, I would not expect you, or want you necessarily to be involved with having ... Politically in your town. You cannot be if you want. Cannot be, you are not. But, for political scientists, for example, who studies, let us say Congress, not to care at all about what people think of Congress outside is a mistake, I think. SM (01:47:25): Of course, David Horowitz and Phyllis Schlafly, when I interviewed both of them, they were pretty clear that they feel that the universities are now run by the troublemakers of the (19)60s. MK (01:47:38): Yeah. See that is also, take it the other way. SM (01:47:41): That is the culture wars. Again, the whole concept of PC, being politically correct and everything, that is all part of the... MK (01:47:46): Yeah-yeah. I mean, I always say about conservatives when I have been on lots of church committees in history departments, both in American University, and here at Georgetown, here in Georgetown. We never get conservatives applying. It is not that we will not hire conservatives, it is ridiculous. I mean, conservatives do not go into history, or philosophy, or for the most part, or English departments, or American studies, or anthropology, or sociology. They go into government some, and economics, of course, and business schools. In general, students have decided that universities are hostile to them, or they just want to make more money. SM (01:48:29): That is what they go, many of them to think tanks like the heritage organizations. MK (01:48:31): Well, local schools too. Yeah. SM (01:48:34): The last question is kind of a three-partner here and oh, you put it all into one. I do not like to use the term the boomer generation either, starting to feel the same way as you and Todd, but when the Best history book, you are a scholar, you have written books. Your book on the 1960s was written in (19)95, I believe? MK (01:48:53): The first edition came out in (19)99. SM (01:48:54): (19)99. I think. MK (01:48:56): The 4th edition comes out in a couple months, actually. SM (01:49:02): Yeah. Well, I like the first edition. MK (01:49:02): Okay. SM (01:49:03): Because, I actually given a couple first editions to my family. MK (01:49:09): Oh, great. Thank you. SM (01:49:09): I have the original. MK (01:49:09): We keep updating it. SM (01:49:10): Yeah, something about the first ... I like first editions. I like the hardbacks. I am a hardback guy. When the best history books are written, I remember Steven Ambrose saying before he passed away, that the best books on World War II are usually 50 to 75 years after the period has happened. I guess this question came about when I go to the Civil War battlefield every year, and I spend a lot of time over at Gettysburg. I go there five, six times a year. There is a statue there. The last person who was alive, who was around during the Civil War, and they had a name person who participated in the war. What will be the legacy? What will historians and sociologists be saying? Do you think, I know it is hard to say when the last boomer has passed away? For the last ... Yeah. That might be the, and also, what would be the, what is the legacy of the generation? What is the legacy of Vietnam, and the legacy of the movements? Because, some people think the movements have gone backwards. MK (01:50:11): Well, I mean, I guess we should look at the new conclusion, the latest conclusion of the fourth edition of our book. Because, I am responsible, we provide the chapters, Morrison, I am responsible for that, for the conclusion. I wrote that mostly. It is a huge question. Again, never know for sure. I think that, as I said before, two things are going to be essential. One is the framework of prosperity, and the assumption on the part of a lot of people that prosperity would continue. There is insecurity, but nothing like now. Two, obviously the cohort, and the way in which it shaped, it divided people, and it taught people that there is only two choices in the world, either freedom or capitalism, and freedom or communism, as in this country, or in Soviet Union, socialism, or exploitation. I think that sort of dualism in the world, even though, of course, it was more complicated than that, but that expectation that has be on one side or the other, is something which is no longer true. It was not true for the most part before then either. It is very rare when we have a two-power world. We do not have one now, and we did not have them before then either. That shaped possibilities in many ways. Part of what, even though we were not necessarily aware of at the time, I think part of what the new left was trying to do was to find space in between those two. Basically, we liked the individual freedoms America afforded, and we liked the idea of a more collectivist, more egalitarian society that socialism. We wanted to put those two together. We were not successful. I think that impulse of ... Ray Mills talked about this basically his, before he died, he was trying to put together a conference of ... I think he even called it the Third Way, E.P. Thompson, the great, British historian I interviewed back in the early (19)80s. He said Mills was trying to put together, he was trying to invite the Cubans, and the Yugoslavs, and Martin Luther King Jr, and all these folks. He died before he put it together. Maybe he would not have been able to put together even afterwards. But that I think was the impulse that was there among new leftists. It was a good impulse, I think, in retrospect, but we were not able to carry it into fruition for all kinds of reasons. SM (01:52:46): Any final thoughts on the boomer generation? MK (01:52:49): No-no. SM (01:52:51): The legacy of Vietnam? MK (01:52:52): I think we had better music. SM (01:52:54): Yeah. MK (01:52:57): I always tell my kids, I stopped doing this, but I say, "Tell me which group that you like now, people will still listen to in 50 years the way they are still listening to the Beatles, stones, Motown and so forth." They have a hard time because they say, "Well, a whole musical genre, we might listen to hip hop, yes, but anyone hip hop artist, I mean...", so that is what was fun. SM (01:53:17): That is a great legacy too. MK (01:53:19): Yeah. SM (01:53:20): I think one of the legacies of the boomer generation is all the progress that has been made in so many different areas in terms of women's rights, and stuff. MK (01:53:29): Yeah. SM (01:53:30): It is interesting. I constantly put on my Facebook (19)60s and (19)70s. I got, in fact, with the Valentine's Day coming up, I just put on the Beatles song, which I think they did one of the greatest love songs of all time. And they- MK (01:53:44): Words of Love, that one? SM (01:53:46): One. Yeah. All you need is love. What is interesting, if you go to the YouTube, if you can find it is just, it is a classic. It is ... they are all dressed up. They got flowers in their ears. I remember that. MK (01:53:56): Yeah. SM (01:53:57): Then in the audience is Jagger. I mean, things are just sitting there listening. MK (01:54:01): Yeah-yeah. SM (01:54:03): It is like, "Oh man, what a time." What it is like forever. I often wonder, somebody who complained against the boomer generation often said they never grew up. I have had a couple people tell me that. MK (01:54:15): But again, it is a danger of generalizing by this generation. SM (01:54:16): Yeah. MK (01:54:16): I mean, usually when people talk about their generation, they are thinking about two or three people they knew. SM (01:54:16): Yes. Well, we at Westchester University, we are done. But, close off, thank you very much. (End of Interview) Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. 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Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. Michael Kazin Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kazin, Michael, 1948- ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Historians; College teachers; Georgetown University; Social movements--United States--19th century; Social movements--United States--20th century; Kazin, Michael, 1948--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. Michael Kazin is a historian and professor at Georgetown University. Kazin's research focuses on the American social movements from the 19th and 20th centuries. He received a Bachelor's degree in Social Studies from Harvard, a Master's degree in History from Portland State University, and a Ph.D. in History from Stanford University. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-02-12 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.72a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.72a Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 237:12 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/4e226f043e72318e859a2733247cff3b.jpg 45a1980a5235a7ed5891da1c07cf1d3e https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/9c8360799fdab0585b2680ec91092a29.mp3 73a7ef09527a6659392df1e6b673a224 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2001-12-16 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen MeKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Krissy Keefer Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Krissy Keefer is a dancer, choreographer, and artist-activist. In 1975, Keefer co-founded the feminist dance company, Wallflower Order. Later, in 1984, she co-founded another dance company, Dance Brigade, with Nina Fichter. She developed her own kind of dance theater which related to the martial arts, female athleticism, and social justice issues.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:15105,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}">Krissy Keefer is a dancer, choreographer, and artist-activist. In 1975, Keefer co-founded the feminist dance company, Wallflower Order. Later, in 1984, she co-founded another dance company, Dance Brigade, with Nina Fichter. She developed her own kind of dance theater which combined martial arts, female athleticism, and social justice issues.</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 1 Microcassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Hippies; Black nationalist; Democratic Party; Republican Party; Global warming; Women's Rights Movement; Kent State; Prison industrial complex; Beat Generation; The Gulf and Tonkin Resolution &quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:5017,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;6&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;7&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;10&quot;:0,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Hippies; Black nationalist; Democratic Party; Republican Party; Global warming; Women's Rights Movement; Kent State; Prison industrial complex; Beat Generation; The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.</span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 82:04 Subject LCSH Dancers; Choreographers; Social justice; Political activists--United States; Keefer, Krissy--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Krissy Keefer Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 16 December 2001 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:02): Testing one, two, testing. Again, thank you very much. KK (00:00:08): Oh, sure. SM (00:00:09): And, hopefully, I will be able to meet you because, actually, I interviewed a couple other people like David [inaudible], who lives in Berkeley. And I know David said, "When you come out, I want you to take my picture," even though I have interviewed him already. Okay, when you think of the (19)60s and the early (19)70s, what is the first thing you think about? KK (00:00:30): When I think about the (19)60s and the early (19)70s? Well, I was actually still in high school. SM (00:00:35): Also, speak up, because this phone of mine is not that loud. KK (00:00:38): Yeah. Well, I was in high school during the (19)60s and early (19)70s, so I graduated from high school in (19)71. So, mostly, I think about the cultural conflict, I do not know, kind of turmoil. It was turmoil, I think, because we were kind of trapped between two value systems that were colliding. The one value system was, get good grades, go to a school, and be a cheerleader. And the other was, give up all worldly possessions, get stoned, and hate the establishment. It was that explosion that was happening, and I felt like I was caught in all of that in high school. SM (00:01:25): When you were in high school, were you already interested in dance? KK (00:01:29): I had been a dancer since I was a kid. I started studying ballet when I was six. My mother was a dancer, so dance is part of our [inaudible]. SM (00:01:39): So you knew, when you left high school, you were going to stay in that as a profession? KK (00:01:45): I did not know how it was going to take form, but it was definitely my aspiration, my [inaudible]. But I had not built self-confidence around it or anything like that, but it was what I loved to do and what definitely unfolded for me, because I actually was able to get involved with a group of people in Oregon when I was probably 19, so really young, and started Wallflower Order with four other women when I was 22, and doing the same thing since then. SM (00:02:22): Before we start to talk about Wallflower Order, what was it in high school? Was it your peers? Was it teachers? Was it things you were seeing on the news? KK (00:02:34): All of that? I was in Cincinnati, Ohio, so I was really drawn to, and was one of the personalities in my high school that very much identified with, being a hippie. But I was in the suburbs in a rather affluent neighborhood, trying to be a hippie in that situation where suburb culture, everybody was smoking pot, listening to music, and becoming a hippie through looking at Life Magazine and listening to the news and sort of watching the anti-war movement, but not really necessarily being a real part of it. So it felt rather peripheral, but important. I was a peripheral player, but it was important for me. And when I talk to people my age, we all say we would rather have lived through the (19)60s than be young now. I actually feel sorry for people who had their maturation process take place during the Reagan era and later. SM (00:03:47): Yeah, describe that, because certainly growing up being young under Reagan, or even Bush? KK (00:03:54): Well, I think, actually, in a way, Reagan's era was more destructive because I feel like the ideological goal of Reagan's reign was to destroy the value system that we created in the (19)60s, which was less is more, and drop out from the rat race, and try to find a sense of peace and brotherly love, and try to get some kind of social justice for the black community and women and poor people. That became the dominant culture. We had a culture. We had a dual power culture operating in the United States that everybody was tied into so that my mother could sing along to Jefferson Airplane songs because our music and our culture is very tightly woven, and it kind of dominated the era. And I think what Reagan did, the goal of that was to undermine that and put [inaudible] personality back at the center, definitely destroy the black liberation movement, and start pumping drugs into the black community, and making social contributions seem more about how much money someone had rather than what they had for contribution. For example, someone like Jackson Brown or Bonnie Raitt who were not... Jackson got more political, but Bonnie Raitt, for example, or somebody like that who was not necessarily political could generate hundreds of thousands of dollars for a benefit for somebody who was working on more a grass roots level like myself for Holly Near that is not generating anywhere the same amount of money, you started to feel maybe your contribution was less significant or less [inaudible] able to participate in that kind of way. And so I felt like all of our contributions, our kind of collective conscious and sharing of resources, all of that, that is what they undermined. And everyone started buying into borrowing money and liquidating their own kind of more political, deep social justice aspirations. SM (00:06:24): Kris, could you speak up just a little bit, too? KK (00:06:26): Yeah-yeah-yeah. SM (00:06:27): Okay. Thank you. When you hear, and I know you have heard it, but I have for many years, these commentators, many of them conservatives, I am not being biased here, but many conservatives who will say that all the problems in the American society today can be placed blame on that period when Boomers were young in the (19)60s and (19)70s. Basically, I know they are making reference to the sexual revolution, the breakup of the American family, the drug culture, the divisions between black and white, the lack of respect for authority, the victim mentality that many people see in our society. And I remember there has even been books written about the Democratic Party was destroyed after McGovern lost in (19)72, and they had to go a different direction because they were identified too much with the anti-war movement. So your thoughts on those critics who blame the problems we have today on what happened when Boomers were young? KK (00:07:31): Well, I think that is their point of view, and that is actually a total distortion of what actually happened. The thing is that this country was founded on the genocide of Native American people and the enslavement of African people. That is the foundation of it, and there was never any self-criticism or rectification for either of those social monstrosities. So if you never looked deeply into how we got this land base and got this, quote, great country going, then you do not have any sense of what is really happening. And what the hippies and the (19)60s did is the truth finally started to emerge about what created the wealth of this country and what created our place in the world, so to speak. And I think all of those people... I am never one of the people that say, "Oh, the good old days." The good old days of what? What era are you talking about? So because the African-American population has never been given any economic [inaudible] this country. And that is what the (19)60s revealed is the inequities, not the division started. It was when the inequities were finally pointed out. And then that is what Reagan did. Reagan put a damper, a big clamp down on the black community and destroyed its economic base. So I think those are the apologists for imperialism. That is the white fundamentalist, Christian-based, church conservative movement of which I have family in Cincinnati. Those are my people, too. That is what I am saying, when you get caught kind of in the cross-hairs, the crossfire of two different world views. But that worldview is deeply unfair and inaccurate. SM (00:09:36): Let me try to turn my volume up. Hold on one second. Yeah, I am just going to have some beeps here. There? KK (00:09:43): Yes. SM (00:09:43): Okay, very good. If you look at the Boomer generation, it is hard to state that everybody falls into this category, but when you look at the generation as a whole, what are its strengths, in your view? And what are its weaknesses? And that is looking at all Boomers, male, female, black, white? What do you think were some of the strengths within the generation? KK (00:10:14): I am from San Francisco, right? So I [inaudible] KPFA events. Do you know what KPFA is? SM (00:10:16): No. KK (00:10:24): Okay, KPFA is the public radio, Pacifica. Do you know what Pacifica is? SM (00:10:29): Yes, I do. KK (00:10:30): WPAI? KPFA? Anyway, for most people in their (19)60s, the most radical radio stations on in the Bay Area, mostly Boomer. It is the older side of the Boomers. And then there is all the Boomers that bought into the Reagan era, and drive SUVs, and spend their time skiing, and shopping at very fancy stores, and travel all the time. You cannot really characterize what the Boomers are now, or what they became. They are just a big group of people. I feel that maybe we had a common experience at one point, and some of us stayed true to our values, but many people did not stay true to the values that were generated. SM (00:11:19): Well, one of the things that the Boomer generation, when they were young, thought, and I know a lot of the people that I knew who were Boomers felt they were the most unique generation in American history, and because they were going to change the world for the better they were going to end racism, sexism, homophobia, bring peace to the world. Obviously, we still have these issues, but there was that feeling. What are your thoughts when you hear people say, "We are the most unique?" KK (00:11:51): Yeah, I think that the (19)60s- SM (00:11:51): Oh, Krissy? KK (00:11:51): Yes? SM (00:11:52): Could you speak up a little louder? I am not sure what is- KK (00:11:54): [inaudible] louder. I am talking really loud. So it is either my phone, or your phone. I cannot talk any louder. SM (00:11:59): Okay, very good. KK (00:12:00): What do I think they we are? I do not even to think that is interesting, actually. What would that be? We are talking about what is going on right now. We had a very amazing experience in the (19)60s, but we have a catastrophic environmental situation, and race and class situation right now, and it is much more interesting. What is that group of people doing about this problem, and what is the kids? What is everyone doing about this right now? You could see in Obama's campaign, underlying Obama's campaign was the organizing tactics of Caesar Chavez. Through Reverend Wright, there was a Black nationalist politics that Obama was aware of. There was community organizing. All of those things are (19)60s value systems that have been able to take through. At the same time, he had to capitulate and manage a whole very conservative Democratic Party wing at the same time, not to mention the ultra-right-wing Republican Party he has got to deal with every day. So, at a certain point, that is the whole spectrum that is happening right now. And how is that group of people dealing with the fact that all the polar ice caps are melting? We are in big trouble here. And so the Boomers sit around and pat themselves on the back. Who cares? It does not matter. What happened a long time ago, does not matter. It is what is going to happen in the next five years. It is absolutely essential that people stop consuming, and stop patting themselves on the back, and all of that. I always use the analogy of the co-op. In the (19)60s, the co-op was a small room, and it had a bin of rice, a bin of couscous, some tofu floating in some water, and some vegetables. Now you go into co-op health food stores, they are multi-billion-dollar conglomerates, 50 different choices on every kind of thing. It is sickening. It is sickening. That is where our values, in my mind, went completely south. That is where we, in the guise of doing something great, it is just as pathetic as if you walked into Kroger's. SM (00:14:36): How did you get to Oregon, when you went to Oregon? And secondly, how did you meet up and start Wallflower Order? And thirdly, what was the basic premise behind Wallflower Order? KK (00:14:54): I found out about Oregon through one of my friend's mothers who told me that I should go out there, because my grades were not that good in high school, and University of Oregon said, "If you get good grades in the summer, you could stay [inaudible] go to school here." Well, I did that. I was dancing with a group called Eugene Dance Collective. And out of that, we started the Wallflower Order. And it was 1975, the Vietnam War just ended, and we were a collective. Everybody was a collective. Collectives were sort of the organizational structure that people glommed onto, a lot coming out of Mao and Ho Chi Min and all of that kind of political thought that was operating in Asia, and started a collective like them. So my group was a collective, and Berkeley women's music collective, and all the hundreds of collective stores, and all of that. And we just started dancing together, and did some performances, and got hooked up with Holly Near. Her sister was in our group, and she took us on the road some. And then we just kind of created our own space nationally and toured all over. SM (00:16:05): Was there a magic moment early on between that time you left high school and your experiences in Oregon when you knew, I am an activist? KK (00:16:20): When I knew I was an activist? I was political in high school, so I was always trying to make sense of it in high school. So I definitely was, in 1975 when we started the Wallflower Order, able to say, "I am an artist as well as an activist." And it was always very important in the Wallflower Order that our dances have social relevance and reflect our community, which at that time was kind of the women's movement. The women's movement was definitely our [inaudible]. SM (00:16:59): A lot of people, when they see dance, they think, certainly, it is an art, but they do not always see the linkage between politics and dance. And obviously from the get-go, from your first experiences in Oregon, to what you are doing today with the Dance Brigade, that is the definition of what you do, politics and dance. That is an activist type of a thing, and it is certainly a little bit different. Explain in a little more in detail? KK (00:17:29): Well, from 1975 on, the women's movement was all about your personal life as political. That was a big part. So we would make dance up, say, about being women, and we would also make dances up, about the environment, or we would make dances up about anti-war dances, or we made dances up about working class women. So we were all studying and thinking together. The whole movement was studying and thinking about all these issues about race and class. So we would use the poetry or the writings of feminist women who we considered part of our national art scene, the Holly years. We used that a lot. We used Baron's music. We used [inaudible]. We had a whole bunch of artists, women artists, that we could draw from. And telling our story was political. And then, as we kept going, we had study groups, and then we got involved in the movements to support the war in El Salvador against... We were involved in the women's solidarity movement, supporting struggles with Chile, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, that whole thing that happened in the early (19)80s. We were involved in that. We got involved in the environmental movements. We were involved in lots of different organizations and things that were working on different causes. SM (00:19:04): One of the things about the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement is that women were often put in secondary roles. And in some of the history books that have been written on the period, many of the women shot away from those groups and became part of the leadership of the women's movement that we saw in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s. And I know it has become a sensitive issue in the civil rights community and some of the anti-war community, but is there truth that, in some of these movements that took part when Boomers were young, and I even asked... I just interviewed Denis Hayes today, of- KK (00:19:45): Who is that? I do not know who that is. SM (00:19:47): He is the founder of Earth Day. KK (00:19:50): Oh, yeah-yeah-yeah. SM (00:19:50): He and Gaylord Nelson, Senator Nelson. And I asked him the same question about the environmental movement in the very beginning as well as the Native American, the Chicano, the gay and lesbian movement, did men dominate? And in a lot of them, they did. KK (00:20:06): Yes. SM (00:20:07): And just your thoughts on if you sensed this as a young person back in Oregon, and then as you came to San Francisco? But, basically, in Oregon you saw this sexism that happened and women had to take the lead on things? KK (00:20:24): What is the question, then? SM (00:20:25): The question is about the movements. Do you think most of the movements were sexist? KK (00:20:32): Yeah. I think we all agree with that. I do not think there is any disagreement on that. And I think the sexism is actually what gave birth to the women's movement. And then I think what happened is the women's movement, actually it is kind of autonomous, had its own leadership, its own culture, and its own social relationships, and all of that. And I think now, for women to try to get involved in politics, and it is like you have not improved enough in relationship to being since 2010. I mean, the homophobia is still rampant throughout the country. There is enormous sexism, not that many women [inaudible] in the government really, not close to 50 percent. In San Francisco, it is very hard for women politicians to get elected, very hard. So, do I think it is improved? Actually, not that much. SM (00:21:25): Wow. KK (00:21:26): In fact, I think a lot of things are actually a lot worse than they were 20 years ago. I do not think we improved the environment at all. I think we dropped the ball on that completely. We dropped the ball on the war. We still have not been able to keep the United States going to war. We have not been able to rectify poverty at all. We have hideous class... When I was growing up, it was one out of 10 percent of the people own 90 percent of the wealth. Now it is 1 percent of the people own 90 percent of the wealth, and it used to be one out of four African-Americans had a relationship [inaudible], and now it is out of three. None of our social movements actually improved the last 30 years, and I attribute that a lot to what happened during Reagan's era. I think that was the goal, to put a brake on what kind of exploded in (19)60s. SM (00:22:18): You make a good point, because I can remember when he became President, his famous two words were, "America's back." And he was making a reference, I think, to the Vietnam War and the breakdown of the military and the army. And he was going to build the military back up again because, well, a lot of the issues from the (19)60s and Vietnam. And then, of course, President Bush, that followed him, said, "The Vietnam syndrome is over." So, between the two of them, they made those kinds of comments. And when I look at those comments, I say, yeah, maybe taking pride in America is what he wanted to see, but it basically a slap of what had been before. KK (00:23:01): Right. SM (00:23:04): How important were the college students in your opinion on the campuses in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s in ending the war in Vietnam? KK (00:23:12): I think very important. I think the draft is why we ended it, because people got sick of being drafted and watching their relatives die. And, unfairly, if you are drafted and you do not want to go, to have to go is completely... everybody [inaudible] that. After a while, so many people died, they got sick of watching it. So I think everybody started to rebel. It was very, very close to home. The fact that there is no draft, who is going is kind of removed in a way that it was not then. SM (00:23:43): Do you think the Boomers have, and, again, this is just subjective based on your experience in knowing people who are Boomers, been good parents and grandparents in terms of sharing what their experiences were when they were young in the (19)60s and early (19)70s? And in terms of activism, passing some of these lessons on to them? KK (00:24:10): Yeah. I am in the Bay Area, so they are the liberal backbone of the country. You know what I mean? I probably have a very different kind of pulse on it. When I see the Boomers, when I am in Cincinnati, are my friends in Cincinnati radical and political? No, they are not. And a lot of them are fundamentalist Christians. So do I go back to high school and have the same kinds of head space that was there? Absolutely not. But is San Francisco and Sonoma and that whole northern California area, [inaudible] people might think like me, yeah. You know what I mean? It is a geographical thing a lot. SM (00:24:53): Good point. Very good point. KK (00:24:57): Probably in Boston, the Boomers are on a certain, same page, and Cambridge, and Northampton, and that. It is true. The liberals want to sort of live with each other, and they create enclaves, but are the Boomers down in Miami, Florida thinking like me? I doubt it. SM (00:25:14): And certainly some of the college environments in different parts of the country may have had different experiences, too. In your view, when did the (19)60s begin? And when did it end? KK (00:25:25): (19)60s, okay, I would probably say with the death of Kennedy, probably, on some level. You are talking to somebody who was 12. I am not a historian, so I have not given it an enormous amount of thought. But I would say from Kennedy through the death of Martin Luther King and then Malcolm X, I would say that is when the shit the fan pretty much in terms of people getting out in the streets and all of that. And when did it end? I would probably say, when did Reagan get elected? When did Carter, lose get election? SM (00:26:04): He lost in (19)79, and Reagan came in (19)80. KK (00:26:06): Yeah, there you go. That was the end. SM (00:26:11): And again, this is purely subjective. KK (00:26:13): You have to see what happened, too. What I see happened in the (19)70s, when the Vietnam War ended, all of that energy that was out in the street turned into creating kind of a social change network of collectives across the United States. So people, instead of fighting the government, they started building a cultural movement in the communities. In Eugene, for example, there was the Woman's Press, there were women's restaurants, there was women's bicycle repair, there was dance companies, there was women's trucking collectives. There was women's [inaudible] collectives, there were dance collectives, there were karate schools, all huge amount of collective business, and they were doing social change work by doing that. So the emphasis shifted. We reported, were sharing resources and ideas, and trying to work together. That is what the end of the Vietnam era gave birth to in my opinion. Then, at the end of the (19)70s, the recession hit, Reagan came in, and it was all survival of the fittest again. SM (00:27:29): If I were to have 500 Boomers in the room from all backgrounds, and I am talking about male, female, all different ethnic groups, sexual orientation, you name it, and we were to ask them, "Is there one specific event that had the greatest impact on your life?", what is that event? And I know there would be different answers, but there would be one that would probably stand out. What do you think that one would be? KK (00:27:58): Well, when you would say, "What was the biggest part of our movement?", I would say, the music. So then you might say, "Well, maybe it was Woodstock," but it depends on if you were thinking politically with Democratic convention and what happened there. Was it the riots in Watts? I do not know. It depends on how you were kind of plugged in. The Beatles and the Sergeant Pepper's Lonely-Hearts Club Band coming out, that who Maharishi going off to India, I do not know. There is so many different parts of it, the assassination of Fred Hampton in Chicago. I mean, it is [inaudible]- SM (00:28:46): It is hard to pinpoint. KK (00:28:48): What you cared about. What do you think? SM (00:28:55): Oh, I am trying not to put my opinion in there. To me. KK (00:28:59): Off the record? SM (00:29:00): Off the record, to me, it would be John Kennedy's death. But that is been a lot, and certainly the death of Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy in the year (19)68, and Kent State. KK (00:29:13): Yes. SM (00:29:14): I might even say Kent State above Kennedy because of what it did. I am going to read this to you. I got a whole lot of questions here that are specifically based on your career, but this is a question that we asked Senator Edmond Musky before he passed away. I worked at Westchester University. We took 14 students leaders to meet him as part of our leadership on the road. He had just gotten out of the hospital, was not feeling very well, but he still met us. And he, I guess, had seen the Ken Burns series when he was in the hospital on the Civil War. And the students came up with this question because they thought he would respond by replying, "1968 and all the issues in America," but he did not let me read the question to you? KK (00:29:57): Okay. SM (00:29:58): Do you feel Boomers are still having problems from healing from the divisions that tore the nation apart in their youth? Divisions between black and white, divisions between gay and straight? Divisions between those who support authority and those who criticize it? Division between those who supported the troops and those who did not? And let us see here. Certainly, the Vietnam Memorial has helped a lot of the veterans, but the question is beyond the veterans. Do you feel that the Boomer generation will go to its grave, like the Civil War generation, not truly healing? Am I wrong in assuming this after 40 years? Or is there true to the statement that time heals all wounds? KK (00:30:47): Framing a question is not adequate. We are suffering. The [inaudible] suffering. The Boomers are not suffering. It is our parents' generation who would suffer, because it was their world that was rocked open. They had a certain idea about how it was supposed to be. We ripped the scab off the sore, but it was not a bad thing that we did that because it was a sore. You know what I mean? So your question demands certain supposition. I think it is backwards. I think we were liberated by that. And so I am not suffering. I am suffering because [inaudible] maintain it. When you say that the (19)60s made the division between gay and straight, there were no gay people that were allowed out of the closet in the (19)60s. So it was not like everything was hunky dory. There was a pretending that everything was hunky story. It was a pretending like Eisenhower and that suburban golf course, pill-popping housewife culture was okay. It was all screwed up. There is the trauma. The trauma was not in what we did. The trauma was the inebriated housewife sucking on Secanol, that is where the problem was, the women that did not have any jobs, women who could not work, the women who were only supposed to have children as their only alternative. That was the trauma. The trauma was not me running around without a bra on. Do you understand what I am- SM (00:32:22): Yes, I do. KK (00:32:24): Yeah. So that is how I feel about it. SM (00:32:25): That is very important because you talk about, what was it, in the (19)50s, these 70-plus million kids who seem to have solid homes, father and mother at home, even in the African-American community, the statistics will show that there was a mother and father at home in the (19)50s and then something happened in the (19)60s. But what was it in those times when parents were trying to give- KK (00:32:53): Let us talk about what is marriage. I mean, look at Tiger Woods. Look at what marriage is. Nobody even really wants to talk about what marriage is. What is monogamy? What is the expectation that two people are going to stay together, raise five kids, and are going to have enough money to do it throughout their whole life and their kids are going to go off to college and make more money than they did, that people are not going to get addicted to drugs an alcohol and end up in [inaudible] prison-industrial complex, and all of it. The whole thing is a mythology. The (19)50s was a mythology, and it was actually a very short amount of time. And who was really served by that? SM (00:33:28): Do you think the beats had any part in this too? The beats? KK (00:33:34): Absolutely. The beats were the beginning of the cultural revolution. Absolutely, absolutely. SM (00:33:41): Because they questioned authority and they did not like the status quo, and Kerouac and Ginsburg were such influences? KK (00:33:47): Very important, very important. Here is deal. I do not know how you describe the black working class in the (19)50s and early (19)60s. I grew up in South Carolina. It was virtually apartheid for black people. We had a maid in our house we paid 50 cents an hour. We were not rich. My mother and father had five kids. It was a young black girl that came in and ironed for my mother. She got 50 cents an hour. We drove her home. They lived in some shanty town. There was no economic base there at all. There was whites only everything, on every library, on where we washed our clothes. Whites and blacks were not allowed to be in the same space together. So where was the good old days? Tell me about that? SM (00:34:39): Well, you raised some very good points, and I have heard some other comments, too. I can remember when my dad won trips to Florida and we went from the Syracuse, New York area down to... And we did not have highways back then, and (19)57, (19)58 and (19)59, we stopped at these restaurants and went by these homes, and I kept asking my parents, "Why are these homes so terrible? They are just shacks." And I do not know if I have ever gotten an answer from them, but I tell you, it was a wide-opening experience for someone that was like nine and 10 years old starting to question. KK (00:35:17): [inaudible] swimming. Black people and white people were not allowed to integrate. Blacks whites were never together anywhere when I was growing up in South Carolina, 1953 until Kennedy was killed. So I do not know when... That is what I am saying. It depends on... It is like Howard Zinn. It is like, who is telling the history? You know what I mean? SM (00:35:35): Right. KK (00:35:37): From their point of view, I do not think it was so [inaudible]. Maybe from somebody else's point of view, it is when we all got along. It is not when we got along. It was when black people had no political power at all, anywhere in the United States. Women had no political power. Gays and lesbians had no political power. So did it appear to be okay? Yeah. But there was a rumble underneath the whole thing. SM (00:36:01): Right. KK (00:36:04): It was the, quote, calm before the storm. You cannot go back to that. You cannot go back. SM (00:36:09): As someone said to me when I was asking another scholar, she said to me, "You are talking as a white male. You are talking the way white males may have thought about what it was like in the 1950s, but it was not white females because if you ever really talked to your mom about how she felt, you never heard it." KK (00:36:32): Yeah, exactly. [inaudible], exactly. I totally agree with that, yeah. SM (00:36:39): There is another issue here, too. And one of the characteristics of the Boomers that is often been written about is that they did not trust anybody, and this lack of trust came from leaders that had lied to them. Obviously, we saw President Johnson with the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which was a lie. But we all know about Watergate and Richard Nixon. Even in recent years, there has been questions about John Kennedy and his linkage to the overthrow of the [inaudible] regime and the issues with Cuba. Then President Eisenhower lied on U2. Then as Boomers aged, there has been issues within every presidency about truth. And Bill Clinton, "I did not have sex with that woman," and weapons of mass destruction by George Bush. Every president seems to have had something. And the question I am asking is this, when I was in college, I had a professor who told me and told our class that no one can be a success in life if they do not trust someone. And so the question I am asking, is the lack of trust that the Boomers have toward anybody in positions of leadership during when they were young, and that included everyone, university presidents, heads of corporations, ministers, priests, rabbis, no matter who was in position, they did not trust them, is that a truthful statement? That one of their qualities is they do not trust? KK (00:38:09): I think that that was a cultural collective consciousness. I would say that was a collective consciousness. It was also sort of a glib remark at the same time, although it did become a headline, never... do not trust anyone over 30. I would say that it was very driven by youth movement, between 18 and 30, or something like that. But I do not think that Boomers... Trust is the kind of personal sort of... I do not know. I would say the collectively, probably black people do not trust white people. Native Americans do not trust United States government. You can say that about groups of people that have been systematically ripped off by a [inaudible]. I would probably say there is all kinds of groups of people that do not trust other groups of people. And I do not know that, as the Boomers age, that they still do not trust. You know what I mean? I do not think [inaudible] was maybe disheartening, or maybe you, or some people, it is just that the Boomers [inaudible] stay true to their original values. And that is a real heartbreak. Not that they disrupted something, it is that what they have disrupted they have not been able to make good on. And I think that is the kind of heartbreak that is out about Obama right now. Obama, had the values of the (19)60s in his campaign. We were hoping, out of that, that he would take our values system and put it in the center rather than having it be some peripheral concept. And what we are seeing is that the whole thing that happened with Van Jones. Do you know who Van Jones is? SM (00:40:17): Yes, he quit, had to leave. Yes. KK (00:40:20): Yeah, he was forced out, kind of an ideologue, and he is only 40, or something. So for thinking Boomers, for political Boomers, for Democratic Party-plus, Green Party-type Boomers, people who still hold those anti-war social justice issues, they might be heartbroken and disappointed, but I do not think trust is very big. We do not trust, because why would you trust United States government? You know what I mean? That kind of thing. SM (00:41:01): I have three statements here that were at the time that I would like your response to see if they truly define the Boomer generation? The first one is Malcolm X, when he said, "By any means necessary." The second one is Bobby Kennedy, which he quoted the Henry-Henry David Thoreau quote, "Some men see things as they are and ask, why? I see things that never were and ask, why not?" And the third one is actually from a Peter Max poster that was very popular in 1971 when I was in grad school, and the words were, "You do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, it will be beautiful." And what those three statements talk about is the more radical group, the people in the movements that were very idealistic for the betterment of society, and then you have got more of the hippie mentality. Would you say those three could define the generation? KK (00:42:04): Yeah. I would say that Malcolm X for my [inaudible] represented people that were very political and interested in building a different kind of political government, socialism and all of that, and just doing something really different. Who was in Washington? I would say Kennedy's statement is more philosophical, or perhaps forward-thinking for writing and intellectuals and all of that. And I think the third one was for people who were rebelling by hanging out. People rebelled by just not working. SM (00:42:41): Right. KK (00:42:44): They stopped plugging in. They stopped plugging in, and that became a value and a virtue. SM (00:42:50): What are the photographs that you think... I am going to change the side of the tape. Photography has always been used to define eras and periods of time and events. When you think of the Boomer generation, what are the pictures that you think of when you think of the (19)60s and the early (19)70s? And I am concentrating a lot in when Boomers were young, which is in the (19)50s, (19)60s, and (19)70s. KK (00:43:23): Well, I think that the child from Vietnam running from the Napalm, I think all the Kennedy assassination pictures, Jackie and the pink dress and the hat and all of those pictures, but those have also been played over and over and over again. I would think the Life Magazine photos of the American people wrapped in the American flag, maybe those were from Woodstock, somebody in America, the way people started wearing the American flag, that whole kind of thing. Photos from photos from Woodstock, to see all people that were there. Kent State, the woman on her knees at Kent State. SM (00:44:13): Yeah, Mary Vecchio. You have you have listed just about all of them. The other one is Tommy Smith and John Carlos at the (19)68 Olympics with the black power fists up. KK (00:44:24): That one. SM (00:44:27): And, obviously, some of the Vietnam pictures too, that were classic of the troops, and certainly My Lai and the guy shooting- KK (00:44:34): The Beatles. I think Beatles played a big part in the whole thing. I am an artist, so I track the influence of art and stuff like that. But the music was very diverse, and everybody tapped into all different kinds of music, from rhythm and blues, to Beatles, to acid rock that came out of San Francisco, to Ike and Tina Turner, the whole thing. Everybody, they are all listing all of that together, and those photos of Timmy Hendrix playing his guitar, for lots of people, that is as big of an icon as the napalm child, you know what I mean? It was all of it was all it together. You cannot have one without the other. It was all hooked up. SM (00:45:26): Would you believe that the social commentary, just like your dance, that the arts... I would like your thoughts, just some general thoughts, on the arts of the period, which you have gone on with your career? But the music, you talked about the Beatles, but I always kind of defined it, and the Motown sound was important. KK (00:45:48): Totally important. SM (00:45:51): And certainly the rock music, and the different types of rock music, and folk music. KK (00:45:55): Totally important. Or, Marvin Gay, Sly and the Family Stone, Diana Ross, pop, the whole thing, I mean all of it. The Coasters, the Four Seasons, I mean the whole thing. That is what was so amazing. It was so much, and no matter which song you hear from that era, it reminds you of a particular time. SM (00:46:22): Did the (19)60s make the music and the art? Or did the art and the music make the (19)60s? KK (00:46:26): No, they happened together. They happened [inaudible] what happens with leftists, with the intellectual left [inaudible]. They underestimate power of art to actually hold and transform [inaudible]. And so they do not give enough credit to it. But I think that Jimmy Hendrix smoking pot [inaudible] broke people open, just like the Vietnam War broke [inaudible]. So it is just everything about what your parents told you just was not true. And how you got there just was all different kinds ways. But lots of people were not in the university. Lots of people dropped out of college, so they were not having the Kent State experience. They only had the Kent State experience through the newspapers. They were having their own experience somewhere else sitting in a park smoking pot, you know what I mean? SM (00:47:23): What did you think of the communal experiences from that era? KK (00:47:28): I thought they were pretty amazing. I think that is what I was saying about my experience with all the collectives all over the country. I felt like we tried to create dual power structure of business, a dual power structure on how to relate socially, how to make money, how to share power, share money, and get something done at the same time. That was pretty amazing and I am really glad I went through it. SM (00:47:54): Let me ask you some question also about the books? Were there any books that were popular with you and your peers? KK (00:48:03): Oh, I do not know. There is all the Richard Brautigan. I am sure I am not kind of... It depends on what era. When I was in high school, it was Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Richard Brautigan, and Kurt Vonnegut, and mostly male writers, Ken Kesey, all of those guys. Then I switched over to the women's movement in the (19)70s, so then it was [inaudible] and Joyce Carol Oates, I am kind of lost right now for all of them, Judy Braun, all the kind of women lesbian poets and writers from the early (19)70s. And then Ginsburg and all those guys had a huge impact. SM (00:48:50): Well, before I ask some questions directly about your experiences in San Francisco and what you are doing now, I wanted you to respond to... You do not have to be long on any responses, but just gut level reactions to these terms or words or people? Are you ready? What does the Vietnam Memorial mean to you? KK (00:49:13): Not very much. I have never seen it, so I do not have a feeling about it. SM (00:49:19): What does Kent State and Jackson State mean to you? KK (00:49:23): Trauma, total trauma. SM (00:49:26): What does Watergate mean to you? KK (00:49:28): The end of the Presidency as he knew it. SM (00:49:34): Woodstock? Summer of love? KK (00:49:39): Transformational. SM (00:49:42): 1968? KK (00:49:44): Traumatic. SM (00:49:46): The term, counterculture? KK (00:49:50): Far out. SM (00:49:52): Okay. Hippies and yippies? They are two different groups. KK (00:49:58): I think they are sort of the same, really. They are all part of the same cultural movement. I know they separated themselves from each other, but it is just that era, a certain era in time. SM (00:50:10): Any thoughts on them? KK (00:50:11): No, mm-mm? SM (00:50:13): No? How about Students for a Democratic Society? KK (00:50:18): I appreciate what they tried to do. SM (00:50:20): How about the Weatherman? KK (00:50:22): I appreciate what they tried to do. SM (00:50:24): How about the Vietnam Veterans Against the War? KK (00:50:26): I appreciate what they tried to do. SM (00:50:34): Jane Fonda? KK (00:50:35): I appreciate what they tried to do, very much. SM (00:50:39): How about Tom Hayden? KK (00:50:40): Yeah, same. SM (00:50:43): Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin? KK (00:50:45): Yes. SM (00:50:46): The same? How about Timothy Leary? How about the Black Panthers, which is Angela Davis? KK (00:50:55): Far out, yes. God, they had their day. SM (00:50:59): Angela Davis, Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, [inaudible 00:51:04] Brown, Stokely Carmichael, that whole group? KK (00:51:05): They were important. SM (00:51:08): How about Richard Nixon? KK (00:51:13): Well, he played his part. That is the heartbreak. Very few people make it to that level of power without having to stop being a criminal. SM (00:51:27): How about Spiro Agnew? KK (00:51:29): I do not have a big opinion on Spiro Agnew? SM (00:51:32): Eugene McCarthy? KK (00:51:32): Yeah, I like what he tried to do. SM (00:51:35): George McGovern? KK (00:51:36): Yeah. SM (00:51:38): John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy? KK (00:51:43): Rich people. Bobby Kennedy, I actually think really suddenly really got it. He actually was a hero. He really got it, all of it. He got what class war was, but tried to do the right thing. SM (00:51:58): How about LBJ and Hubert Humphrey? KK (00:52:01): Not that interesting. SM (00:52:03): Not that what? KK (00:52:04): Not that interesting. I do not think about them. SM (00:52:07): Okay. Robert McNamara? KK (00:52:09): Well, he is interesting because he turned state evidence, right? SM (00:52:14): Yeah. KK (00:52:14): Yeah, I appreciate what he tried to do. SM (00:52:18): George Wallace? KK (00:52:20): Yeah, another fool of the right wing. SM (00:52:23): Ronald Reagan? KK (00:52:25): Big problem. Big problem. SM (00:52:29): Daniel Elsberg? KK (00:52:31): Good guy. SM (00:52:34): Benjamin Spock? KK (00:52:37): Good guy. Yeah. SM (00:52:40): What about the Berrigan brothers, Phillip and Daniel? KK (00:52:42): Do you realize you have only mentioned one woman in the whole group? SM (00:52:45): No, I am coming to them. KK (00:52:47): The Berrigan brothers? Yeah, good guys. SM (00:52:50): Gloria Steinem? KK (00:52:51): Good. Great. Right on. Good. SM (00:52:54): Bella Abzug? KK (00:52:56): Good. SM (00:52:57): Betty Friedan? KK (00:52:59): Good. SM (00:53:00): How about Shirley Chisholm? KK (00:53:02): Yes, great. SM (00:53:05): Barry Goldwater? KK (00:53:08): Republican, probably a nicer guy than what we have right now. SM (00:53:12): The ERA? KK (00:53:14): Equal Rights Amendment? Yeah, [inaudible]. SM (00:53:19): And, let us see, I guess that is... no more names. And I think the last one was John Dean here? KK (00:53:28): John Dean, you mean the actor? SM (00:53:29): No, no, no. The guy who was came out at Watergate. That move from Eugene to San Francisco, that was in 1984, correct? KK (00:53:46): We moved from Eugene, Oregon to Boston and lived there for a year-and-a-half. And, in that time period, we traveled over to United States, Europe, and we went Nicaragua with a group called Grupo Raiz, R-A-I-Z, from [inaudible]. And we did anti-war work around El Salvador and Nicaragua. SM (00:54:09): One of the things that was in some of the literature I read on the web is they defined you as a politically committed choreographer. KK (00:54:17): Yes. SM (00:54:18): Could you define the meaning of that? And I know what the meaning is, but just to- KK (00:54:27): I am a choreographer, but I consider myself part of the social justice movement. I form and work for... do my work [inaudible] forward-thinking, and they use that. They call me that because it is easy to understand what [inaudible]. For me, I [inaudible] based on the [inaudible] Book of the Dead. I did it about the environment. I did a birthday letter Fidel Castro. I mean, my work is crosses the gamut. I did [inaudible] 10th century, so I have pieces about all those things, but I can get pigeonholed being called a political choreographer. But I do not really care what people say. SM (00:55:24): One of the things, I listed some things here when I read the material. You have what I call spirit in the performing arts. And of course spirit was a very important part of the (19)60s and the (19)70s, too, within the Boomer generation. I think it is an important quality. When did you have that sense of spirit that what you do can truly influence your audience? And give some examples of where your performances, you know that it has really had an effect on people? KK (00:55:59): Well, I can tell when I do a show that it is successful because I would say 95 percent time that I have performed in all different venues all over the world, I have gotten a standing ovation for my work. And what that means is that, at a certain point in the evening, audience and the performance got into a groove together and we had epiphany, or a yes, me too, kind of experience at the end. So I can watch that happen in my work. Then I get feedback and letters from people that say, "I have come to see this show three times. It is really helped me out. It is an important part in my time in my life when I was really depressed, or contemplating breaking up in a relationship, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." So it has just been, throughout my career, I have had enough of the same experience to know that it was working on some level. SM (00:57:04): One of the other things too, I look at all the issues that have been involved in your work, the issues you care about, whether it is about class and justice, war, racism, violence against women, even the issue of breast cancer, and certainly people's indifference to the AIDS crisis in the beginning. And I know, I lived in the Bay Area, and I know people out there in terms of the gentrification and the taking away of homes, and that was a big issue when I was out there, and I got so furious as a citizen that people would actually do that. These are great things to put into your work. They are really the spirit of what the (19)60s is all about. And, again, you have what I call, I wish all the Boomers had, a concept of longevity. KK (00:57:54): Yes. SM (00:57:57): And do you find in your audiences, and beyond San Francisco now, that you see a lot of people that are like you? That longevity is very important in terms of making a difference in the world? KK (00:58:11): No, I do not know. Longevity, people either stay true to the original impulse, or they did not at all, or they stayed true to part of it. Or they see me and... When I go up to Sonoma, there is so many lesbians that live in Sonoma. And when I go up to Sebastopol, they look at me and they maybe have not danced in 20 years. They are like, "You used to be in Eugene, Oregon in the Wallflower Order." You know what I mean? There was something that we did then that people resonate with. The fact that they remember me from then means something about their life is still similar to what it was. And I really think that the Bay Area is unique because people go to the Bay Areas so they can live among like-minded people. All the real bashing up of social issues, how you deal with social problems, the best and the brightest ideas come out of the Northern California. And not in Cincinnati. I would ask those questions. If I was in Cincinnati, I would feel completely defeated. But see there, everybody around me, all my women friends, we were all biting up the bit talking about Obama and what he has been able to do and what he has not been able to do, and where the disappointments are, and how we are trying to raise our kids feminists, and how we are dealing with the overt sexuality that is all over the news, the media, that our daughters are having to look at. I 400 kids in the kids program. I have 80 girls in the Girl Brigade. People send their kids to me who are feminist women because they want their kids to be raised in a feminist setting. So I have a very active and very committed (19)60s-2009 life that is very connected to the original impulses there. Our city council in San Francisco is radical. We have the biggest gay lesbian population in Oakland in the whole country. Gay men run San Francisco. It is happening. And we are- it is still living it. We are still living it in Northern California. Also, a ton of money though, and there all is a lot of over-consumerism, I will say that. But a lot of people have the same values in Northern California. SM (01:00:56): Would you say San Francisco... I lived out there and I know how important it is. I felt great out there because just about every issue is discussed. KK (01:01:07): Openly. SM (01:01:07): I mean openly and Jesus, there is a sense of community out there, and a community with a sense of what the (19)60s tried to do, to create a sense of community where people were around people that agreed with them or disagreed with them. Would you say that, when you look at the United States, that San Francisco is the one area that is still like the (19)60s? KK (01:01:28): Yes, I would say so. SM (01:01:31): One of the things that I found very interesting in looking at your background was you did a program called Women Against War after 9/11. KK (01:01:42): Yes. SM (01:01:42): And that you performed in the facility where the United Nations Charter was signed? KK (01:01:49): Yes. SM (01:01:52): Wow. To me, that is a wow experience. Can you explain that? A little bit about that experience? KK (01:01:58): Well, the first thing we did was, the anniversary of 9/11, we did a women against war event because it was when Bush was beating the war drums. And we kind of did it in collaboration with Code Pink, and we had Dance Brigade and Holly Near, and [inaudible] and Naomi Newton, all kinds of women artists I cannot even forget. And then in the spring, right before Bush announced the war I think, we went up to Sonoma and went down to Santa Cruz. And then on the anniversary of war four years later, we did the whole concert again. And these were very well attended events of women, mostly from women's music network cultural things. And they were strong anti-war events to give a voice to women who were trying to think about the whole thing in a very different way. And the fact that it was at the [inaudible] Theater was that much more interesting. It made it have more depth, stuff like that. SM (01:03:17): Well, I tell you, Eleanor Roosevelt would probably have been in the room and giving you high-fives, because this is the 125th anniversary of her birth. KK (01:03:28): Oh, really? SM (01:03:29): Yes. It was the 10th of December is when she was born, 125 years ago, because I think what you do is what she would be so pleased with. I do not know if there is any way you can link up with the Eleanor Roosevelt papers, or with Alita Black, to do something because what you do is what she was all about? KK (01:03:52): Right, yeah. SM (01:03:55): And I would probably have to say that her spirit was probably in the room that night. KK (01:04:00): Yeah. Oh, that is nice [inaudible]. SM (01:04:02): No, I really believe that, because I am a big Eleanor Roosevelt fan and I have done a lot of studying, and we have done programs on her. Oftentimes, the best history books are written 50 years after an event, and of course are a period. Like, World War Two, the best ones have come out in the last 10 years. When the sociologists and historians 50 years from now write about the Boomer generation, what do you think they will say? KK (01:04:38): It is 50 years from now? SM (01:04:40): Yes, 50 years from now? Or even after all the Boomers have passed away? KK (01:04:46): It depends on what happens in the next five years around the environment. I do not [inaudible] talk about them in 50 years so all of what is happening in the world with the demise of capitalism and the disruption of United States' number one imperial power, and all of those things that are going on, on top of the fact that we have no idea if we are going to be able to maintain our food belts inside the United States and all of that. So let us assume that something... I really believe that what happened in the (19)60s was trying to rectify contemporary culture, contemporary history. And contemporary history, I would mean probably the last 500 years of history, the founding of the United States, the beginning of the slave trade, all of that. I would say that last 500 years is contemporary history. And really the hippies, the Boomer generation, rights, and international too, France, they had a big wake-up in France and England, and Western civilization had to really sit back and look at itself. And that was a moment when western civilization had to look at itself in the mirror and the mirror cracked, and we have been reeling from that ever since. SM (01:06:11): Wow. One of the questions I want to ask too, is- KK (01:06:16): That is a good thing. That is where I feel like that was so important that that happened. SM (01:06:25): In my last interview with Mr. Hayes, he mentioned that many Boomers have gone on to take the leads in many corporations as CEOs and all the other things, and there is positives and negatives with what they have done. But the question I want to ask is about universities. The university, the free speech movement, was in California back in (19)64, and I think universities learned a lot from that experience in terms of students and student empowerment. But today, most of the universities are being run by Boomers. And this is my thought. I think today's leaders in higher education are afraid of activists, not volunteers now, because volunteerism is so crucial. But they are afraid of activism coming again on university campuses like it is at Berkeley right now, because it sends messages back that there is disruption on the campus. And when there is disruption on the campus, parents are a little uneasy and they do not want their kids to go there, and they will take their kids out of school. And so they do not want any remembrance of that time, and I think what is happening at Berkeley and wherever there is activism is scary to them, and they are Boomers and they knew about it. And so a lot of the people that run the universities today are both Boomers and generation X-ers, the group have followed them. Do you think universities learned anything from the (19)60s, especially with respect to student protest or activism? KK (01:07:59): Bring in the police faster. SM (01:08:01): Yeah. Pardon? KK (01:08:03): Bring in the police faster. SM (01:08:05): Oh, you think? KK (01:08:06): Less tolerance. SM (01:08:08): Yeah. Am I right in thinking this? KK (01:08:13): Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I think everybody's thing is, the (19)60s was sort of unprepared. What happened in the (19)60s, they were not prepared for, and now they are prepared. Now they have SWAT teams. Now they bring them in quicker, they break it up faster. They have less tolerance. When the Boomers took over ideologically, a lot of the parents also collapsed, because they were living in unhappy marriages. They were all alcoholic and drug-addicted. So everybody kind of rolled their heads together. I think now they maneuver much quicker to [inaudible]. So I think that is what is happening. SM (01:08:57): I want to go back to your roots again, because each of these interviews is not only about general questions about the generation, but it is about each of the individuals, too. I know you already mentioned about the influence in your high school, the hippies and all the other stuff, but what was it growing up in Cincinnati in the 1960s and (19)70s, and maybe late (19)50s, (19)60s, (19)70s, that made you who you are? KK (01:09:24): My parents, my mother and my father. My mother has her own wild, very free spirit. And she was personally very liberated on a lot of levels, so she modeled that. And my parents were young, and I do not know. I feel like it sort of was [inaudible] fate, sort of. And I think that I was lucky enough to be an artist, and I have a certain kind of inquisitive mind and a really good memory. So I always wanted to be putting things together and understand what my own... trying to understand myself and my... because, like what I said earlier, I had a rough high school experience. I got into a lot of trouble. It all backfired. I got busted, had all kinds of own personal traumas during that time. I almost flunked out of school. I got suspended all the time, but my energy was not really channeled. It was more reactive. I was very reactive as a kid. And so I feel like having experience on top of the education of what was happening around me, and then going into the collective model, I do not know, I just feel like it all unfolded in a really great way. And I still am kind of a hippie. I identify with being a hippie, and I identify with it as a good thing. When I say I am a hippie, people say, "Oh, you are not a hippie." People have a bad idea about the hippies did not do anything. But what I mean is I am a counterculture Boomer girl. I say that I am on the baby on the tail end. I was born in (19)53, and I was not in college during the height of the whole thing. I was in high school. That is experience, too. I did not have the personal freedom. I still had to be home at 11 o'clock and all of that. I did not have that experience that college people had. SM (01:11:30): How do you respond to those people that say, "Oh, the hippies were irresponsible, laying around, having sex and not really responsible." KK (01:11:39): I do not believe that. SM (01:11:40): Okay. There people that say that. And now the yippies were the more political wing, but they were more into theater. KK (01:11:47): Yeah. I think of the movement. I do not think it is necessary to pick one part of the movement out to criticize. It all supported everything. And even Carter, the whole thing. When we had the energy crisis, Carter told everybody to put on a sweater, turn the heat down and put on a sweater. Reagan came in and told everybody to jack up the heat, work harder, snort cocaine and work 80 hours a week, and get cars in your garage, and zoom, and we went into the lifestyles of the rich and famous. And in the (19)70s, the best movie was... What was the name of that movie where that young boy was in love with that 80-year-old? Harold and Maud? SM (01:12:31): Oh yeah. KK (01:12:31): It went from Harold and Maud into that Michael Douglas film where she boiled the rabbit alive, Fatal Attraction. That is the flip that happened. We went from peace and love and warmth and comradery into psychopathic behavior in our relationships. That was like 1981-82, or (19)86 or (19)87 when that killing the rabbit movie came out, when Michael Douglass did that. And that set stage for the rest of our culture. We never went back to Harold and Maud, and that is what I am talking about. There was a head space that was created and we were not able to maintain it. Some of us still hold it, and we are fighting, basically, a loose battle at this point. We are not going to get out of it. That is my feeling. My feeling is the polar ice caps are going to melt and it is going to be mass migration over six or seven years, like that. SM (01:13:32): If that happens, we are in deep trouble. I got two more questions and I will be done. One is, again, to go back to the arts, you are in dance, of course there is dance theater, there is movies, TV, and painting, and sculpture, and all the other things. What was it about the arts in the (19)60s and early (19)70s that was so unique? And give some examples of how not only dance, but theater and- KK (01:13:57): Everything with the Living Theater was really big. San Francisco [inaudible] Group was really big. There was all of that European theater that was really important. The music, I have talked about the music a lot. The music really held us all together. Then there was all the poetry that came out. There was a lot of... People are really dancing now in a way that I do not think they ever have before with television picking up on it so much. But, again, a lot of it was collective. A lot of it was political. A lot of it was oriented around demonstrations, which is still happening. Every movement has had its poets and its artists, from the New Song movement in Latin America and Chile, and nueva trova, and all of that. So I think every movement has this. SM (01:14:53): And, of course, Andy Warhol and Peter Max were big names in that era with their paintings. You ran against Nancy Pelosi in the primary. KK (01:15:06): Yes. SM (01:15:07): And, of course, she is a stalwart in the Democratic Party. She is part of the established Democratic Party. That took a lot of courage. And when did you decide to do it? And why did you decide to do it? KK (01:15:22): Well, part of the reason I decided to do it was everybody always told me I should run for office because I am so opinionated and he generally talk pretty well. And I have kind of a personality for making speeches and stuff like that. So that is probably the main reason I did it is people kept saying to do it, do it. I learned a lot. I did not really know what I was doing at all. And the unfortunate thing is she was poised to be Speaker of the House, which I did not really get that that was going to happen. So once that became clear, I knew I was never going to get any real traction. And I wanted to raise the issues against the war, and I really thought that Bush should be impeached. I never understood why they did not impeach him. I feel like without an impeachment, you do not have any barometer for justice. That was a terrible, terrible mistake on the Democratic Party not to impeach him. And I have been obsessed about the polar ice caps melting for the last 15 years. So, I raised that in the campaign. That was before Al Gore put out his movie. So again, global warming, war, some people are paying attention, but lots of people are not. So it was very of interesting to have that conversation when people were not really talking about it. SM (01:16:49): Yeah. I had heard rumors that the person Sheehan was going to run against her, the woman who lost her son in- KK (01:16:57): Yeah, Sheehan ran last year against her. SM (01:17:01): A lot of people thought she was going to win. KK (01:17:04): Mm-mm. SM (01:17:05): No. Next to last question, and I am done. Bill Clinton and George Bush Jr are Boomers, and they are the only Boomers that have been in the White House. President Obama is a Boomer. He was two years old the last two years of the Boomer era, (19)62. But your thoughts on when people say that Bill Clinton and George Bush Jr. are the epitome of the Boomer generation? The qualities they both possess, if you knew who they were and how they ran their government and what they did in their lives, ah, they are Boomers? KK (01:17:45): What does that mean? Be a little more specific? SM (01:17:48): Well, it is that they had the qualities that- KK (01:17:50): Is that like a character defect? Is that what you are saying? SM (01:17:55): Yeah, or something like that they epitomized some of the strengths, the qualities that were in the Boomer generation through their actions and deeds. And I just asked that. Do they typify Boomers? KK (01:18:10): Well, they are Boomers. So that is what I am trying to say is I do not think that you can... Well, okay. I would say that Bush had a very freewheeling relationship to drugs and alcohol, which I can say probably has got some, quote, Boomer characteristics to it. When I look at Hillary and Bill Clinton, I see inside of them very much affected by the Hillary and feminists and social justice advocates at one point. I think being the President of the United States is a whole other ballpark. So it is kind of hard to say what is different between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama? Would it be Bill Clinton's promiscuity? Well, Tiger Woods is not a Boomer, you know what I mean? So I do not know what about that, how you talk about that, really. SM (01:19:33): And my last question is two qualities that were defined about your dance brigade, because I am fascinated by the organization you created. In an article I read, and I think it was in the Chronicle, they gave that a lot of your work is because you are enraged and engaged. Could you explain that a little bit more? KK (01:19:59): Well, I think that part of my personality type is I am quick to anger and outrage at injustice. I am a defender of the underdog, and I often do it by getting mad. And people who know me have dealt with that about me. I have no problem getting up and saying what I do not like about what is happening. So that is probably a [inaudible]. And I am very much engaged. I pay attention and I give people feedback. And I am surrounded by lots of people all day long. I run a business. There is 400 kids that come in every week. There is 300 adults. I have seven people in the office, and we are always engaged in talking and making it work. So I am very engaged, and I am a mother, and I have my own friends, and I have a dance company, so I have a lot going on. SM (01:20:49): Is there something that you have not done that you would like to do down the road? KK (01:20:55): Reach enlightenment. SM (01:20:57): Pardon? KK (01:20:58): Reach enlightenment. SM (01:21:01): Are there any questions that I did not ask you, you thought I was going to ask in the interview that you expected? KK (01:21:08): Did you read the C Magazine interview? SM (01:21:10): Did you see the what? KK (01:21:12): Did you read the C Magazine interview? SM (01:21:14): No. KK (01:21:14): Okay, well, read that. Go [inaudible], go to the magazine and read November's issue. My dance company, Dance Brigade, is on the cover. And then there is a really good interview in there of me by Holly Near. SM (01:21:29): Oh? KK (01:21:30): Yeah, read that. And then if you have any more questions, you can call me back. Okay? SM (01:21:34): Great. And what is the magazine? KK (01:21:36): C? Just the letter C. SM (01:21:39): I have that magazine. KK (01:21:41): Okay. SM (01:21:42): I have not read it yet. It is the November issue? KK (01:21:45): Yeah. SM (01:21:46): Oh, you are in there? Okay. KK (01:21:47): Well my dance company, Dance Brigade, is on the cover. SM (01:21:52): Oh, I did not know that. KK (01:21:52): There is an interview, an article with me and Holly Near. So read that, and if you have any questions, call me back. Okay? SM (01:21:58): Super. Well, thank you very much. My condolences. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Krissy Keefer Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Keefer, Krissy ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Dancers; Choreographers; Social justice; Political activists--United States; Keefer, Krissy--Interviews Description An account of the resource Krissy Keefer is a dancer, choreographer, and artist-activist. In 1975, Keefer co-founded the feminist dance company, Wallflower Order. Later, in 1984, she co-founded another dance company, Dance Brigade, with Nina Fichter. She developed her own kind of dance theater which combined martial arts, female athleticism, and social justice issues. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2001-12-16 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.73 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 82:04 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/eb06d5d0466948db219306ea57d679bd.jpg 46d89c2a26cc0f2725c0be1cf84333e6 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/d01827346f95dc834845a6e7228d6a43.mp3 cc19b319a5a4c542b5c05afb97effbe6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-05-01 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Hugo Keesing Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. Hugo Keesing is a Dutch-American popular culture historian, an educator and a pop music archivist who has an extensive collection of Vietnam war music. He has degrees from Duke University, George Washington University and a Ph.D. in Behavior Research from Adelphi University.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:6535,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,5099745],&quot;5&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Dr. Hugo Keesing is a Dutch-American popular culture historian, an educator and a pop music archivist who has an extensive collection of Vietnam war music. He has degrees from Duke University, George Washington University and a Ph.D. in Behavior Research from Adelphi University.</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 171:38 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Music; Generation gap; Bobby Rydell; Baseball cards; Collectibles; Elvis Presley; Arthur Godfrey; The Beatles; Young Americans for Freedom; Adelphi University; Vietnam War; Baby boom generation; Steve Perry; MacArthur Park.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:14275305}}">Music; Generation gap; Bobby Rydell; Baseball cards; Collectibles; Elvis Presley; Arthur Godfrey; The Beatles; Young Americans for Freedom; Adelphi University; Vietnam War; Baby boom generation; Steve Perry; MacArthur Park.</span> Subject LCSH Popular culture—United States; Historians; Keesing, Hugo--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Hugo Keesing Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 1 May 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:03): Testing one, two. SM (00:00:06): The first question, and I have to check this occasionally too. I want to, how did you become who you are? You were mentioning a few things, but how did you become who you are in terms of your interest in the (19)60s and interest in Vietnam? What inspired you to be a collector of historic information on records and music from that era, but just to have an interest in that period? HK (00:00:38): There are, I am sure, several factors. As I have mentioned, part of it was what was out of necessity. I arrived here off the boat, if you will, here in the US in October 1951. I was seven years old. My father had just gotten a position with the International Monetary Fund in Washington. So three brothers, I am number three of four. And we arrived, I think my English vocabulary was three or four words. I could say yes, no. For some reason I knew corn flakes, I am not sure why. But we arrived on a Tuesday and on a Thursday I was enrolled in public schools in Washington. So dad wasted no time getting us in school. And it was sort of sink or swim. We had to learn Now we were very fortunate, DC is a very international city, but that particular elementary school had a sixth grader who was Dutch, but who had lived in the US for a bunch of years. So I remember that we had permission to... There were real problem that I could leave my classroom, go to his classroom, bring him back, and he would translate to say what was I saying. The expectation was that we would all come home, family would have dinner together, and mom and dad would ask us, what was going on. And the idea was to learn five to 10 new English words every night. And one brother in particular, the one who was 13 months older, he and I quickly learned that it was through comic books, and baseball cards, and sports that we began interacting even when our English was pretty poor. So that got into the pop culture things. Now, my family, the Keesing family, my dad in particular, I guess if I go into the family tree, it is clear that there are a number of people who have been archivist historians for many, many years. Something called the Keesing Archives was a major source for news in the Netherlands. Now, all of that is online, but you can still find huge books. So for whatever reason, I am not going to argue that this would be genetic. But there was an interest in archiving, and I seem to have picked up on that. In my family for as long as I can remember there was always a tremendous interest in learning. Dad was a professor, mom was a Montessori teacher. My grandfather was a math teacher. So the idea of learning, experiencing, traveling, doing new things has been part of my life since, as long as I can remember. We were in Holland during World War II. It is unfortunate that it was the Brits who dropped a bomb that took out our home. So I am lucky to be here. My dad lost... And I did not know this at the time, but he was a collector of books. Books on economics. And I did not learn that he lost his entire collection in that bombing until the memorial service when he passed away in 1972. And the Dutch Minister of Finance, who had been his boss, said that one of the difficulties, or one of the things that really my dad never talked about was that he lost his collection. So he was a stamp collector, perhaps because my family lost virtually everything they had. Mom was one who was prepared to say things. Fortunately we had homes that had basements or attics and my mother could always come up with a reason why something should not be thrown out because it might have good use some other time. What that meant was she was also tolerant of our collecting simply the Keesings collect, everybody has, each of my brothers had a collection that was sort of unique, but mom, never put pressure on me. But evidently the kind that you got that things had to go, it was, it was good to throw it out. SM (00:05:30): It was not everything but certain things. HK (00:05:32): So I am very fortunate. I have my baseball cards, I have my records, things that I wanted to save, I was able to save. And we never, ever threw out books. And books were what was seen as an investment. You learn from them, you pick them up, you read them again and again. And so all these strands were clear from very early on. And I became a teacher. I taught my first psychology course for George Washington University in 1966. More reasons to acquire scholarly books. But from the very beginning of my teaching, I was interested in using some of these other things that I had found very important in my own learning, the popular culture. So I began trying to introduce maybe a song or something for her, studying some psychological construct. And I said, "Look, if you are wondering what it is, listen to," and I would play a piece of a record. For example, I found that even in the late (19)60s, that students liked this. And so all of these professional strands, my interest in teaching my interest in popular culture, I have been very fortunate being able to weave them all together. It was when I began using them, that also legitimized them as professional tools. So I was in the very fortunate position of being able to buy records and books on music and sheet music things, and have them all supporting my teaching. And therefore, a portion of what I invested in those books was tax-deductible when I was filing income tax. And people said, "Wow, how did your max?" I said, "I do not know whether it is lucky or whether it is good planning, but it is all just really worked out." And so now that I am formally retired, I am informally still using all of this stuff. As I said, whether it is for presentations to seniors, whether it is to work on a book on Vietnam, whether it is to lend stuff, own stuff, it is all still very relevant to me. And it is exciting. SM (00:08:06): What was it about that, you know, moved to the United States? You learned the English language through baseball cards and some of these other items, you learned English, but what was it about 1950s culture? The culture that is oftentimes really attacked when you talk about (19)60s culture, A lot of the (19)60s people were attacking the late (19)40s and (19)50s as being a period of like IBM mentality. Everybody copies everybody else. There is no room for individualism. It is all the corporate mentality. And of course, there are a lot of bad things happening with racism throughout the United States. Things were kind of coated over. And a lot of people that grew up during this period felt kind of good because they did not have any hardships like their parents had had during World War II or prior to World War II, because the question I am asking, what is it about the 1950s culture that turned you on, but turned so many other people off? HK (00:09:09): To me, it is very simple. It was mine. And I was seven when the (19)50s began, and I was 17 when they ended. So that was my youth, if you will. And the fact that it was my culture, I do not think people, my generation were knocking it. It was older people. So what was happening then, and whether it was Ricky Nelson's mind, Annette Funicello, and I met her in 19, late (19)90s. And it was incredible. It is a funny story. If we have got time, I will be happy to tell you that. So I was not aware, for example, that there were congressional committees investigating comic books or that the editor of Mad Magazine was called before Congress for, because MAD and other comics that were considered to be orally objectionable. That did not even enter my mind. I was not listening to people knocking Elvis Presley because his behavior was immodest or, I liked his music. We danced to it. So the objections to (19)50s culture were being made by an older generation. It did not sink in that with regard to music, what I remember more, for example, is getting really excited when I heard and record by the Platters, My Prayer. And I said, "Well, listen to this. This is great." And she smiled. She said, "Yeah, I know that." I said, "What do you mean, you know that?" "Well, it was also popular in my day." And I said, "No-no-no." She said, "Yeah." And eventually I checked and it came out 1933. And I resented that. I was not happy with the fact that my music, I mean, hey, it was not her fault, but I sort of suggested, if there are other songs that I like, please do not tell me that they had a previous life. And whether it was Fats Domino, Blueberry Hill was from the (19)40s. And My dream Book Comes Home was from the (19)30s. There was a lot of music in the (19)50s, which was recycled with a rock and roll or a new beat. But because it was the first version I heard became my music. And so if there was a generation gap or conflict, and my parents were very tolerant, as long as we worked hard and we got good grades in school and did not get into trouble, I was permitted, encouraged to do lots of things. But the fact that things which I regarded as part of my immediate life, I really did not want to know that it- SM (00:12:05): Had a previous. HK (00:12:05): ...might have belonged to somebody else. And of course, many, many years later, in the early (19)70s, I came back from overseas. My wife and I were entertaining some people who met there who had a 10 or 11 year old daughter that they brought with him. And at one point I said, "Can I play some music?" Because I had all these records. She said she wanted to hear Puppy Love. And so I put on Paul Anka and she said, "No-no, that is not the right one." And she wanted to hear Donny Osmond. And I said, "But this is the original one." Well, it was not to her, the Donny Osmond version. It was history repeating itself just as The Platters version of My Prayer was mine. And I did not want to know about the previous one. Dotty Osmond was hers, and she did not want to, did not care to know that Paul Anka had recorded this record and popularized it a decade or so earlier. SM (00:13:01): Well, it is interesting because when you think of (19)50s culture, Pat Boone seems to be more in sync than even Elvis, with the shaking of the hips. HK (00:13:10): Pat Boone was more in sync with parents. Pat was less threatening. Pat Boone used correct grammar, and he went to college. And I do not think that parents of 15-year-old daughters were worried that Pat would have a kind of influence on him, that Elvis might. SM (00:13:28): I wrote something down here because I wanted your thoughts on the music of the period that Boomers have been alive, which is the period from four, from (19)46 to (19)64, and of course the Beatles come in here in 1964, which changed so many things. But prior to that, there was Elvis, there was Chubby Checker, there was, and what I consider, I use this term crush music, girls have a crush, which was, yeah-yeah. Which would be Ricky Nelson, Bobby Darren, Fabian, Bobby D., Paul Anka, Bobby Rydell, the Four Seasons. Then I put some of the females in here, Leslie Gore, Petula Clark, Dusty Springfield, Lulu, Marianne Faithful. HK (00:14:12): Probably even a little later. I would the Heartthrobs, well, Annette, Connie Francis, there were not Connie Stevens. SM (00:14:25): Teresa Brewer. HK (00:14:25): Theresa Brewer was earlier. Theresa Brewer was really from (19)50 to about (19)56. And you had the Theresa Brewers, the Patty Pages, that I call them, the double names. You had Doris Day, double D, Joanie, James, double J, Patty Page, Goki Grant. I do not know whether these were their original names or people were just into alliteration. Rosemary Clooney, Joe Stafford, those are artists that I remember hearing. And in fact, the first record that I asked my parents to buy for me was Rosemary Clooney's, This Ole House in 1954. So I know that in (19)54 I was beginning to listen to the popular music. That is just a year before Rock Around the Clock. I have gone back and I have collected all that music. In retrospect, it sounds rather good. It does not have the same personal connections that beginning with The Platters in late (19)55, I mean (19)55 through (19)60, I can probably tell you where I was, who I was with, what I was doing when I heard most of those records for the first time. If I hear, I mean, okay, so that was Rahova Beach, where this was a junior high school dance. I never had learned to read music. I do not play music. I channeled all of my musical interests into collecting records, learning who sang what was on the flip side. So I really have been a music historian. I was a DJ at Many Points, a music historian. So music has been incredibly important. And if I have a regret, it is that I still have not learned to read music. And my grandsons right now saying, "Opa, it is really easy." When you have got an eight-year-old telling you it is really easy, and here is how you learn to play the piano. So they gave me the strip that I can put on the piano upstairs, which is supposed to help me understand the chords. But I carry got oh, 50,000 songs in my head that I can start singing. SM (00:16:43): Was there, would you say, or would you admit that the Patty Pages, that those types singers in the (19)50s were very symbolic of what the (19)50s were truly all about? That it was when Elvis shook his hips, when Chuck Barry did his thing, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Pumping Gas and Little Richard, that these were the ones that scared people because they were, and Bo Diddly, they were a little bit different. And so they were not very... Were people that thought they were a threat. They were like absolutely beats. They were they, to the beat writers of the period different than some of the writers? Would you compare them? Were they predecessors to this attitude that things were changing when the (19)60s came? HK (00:17:32): By the time the (19)60s came, I think there had been some major changes. As I was writing my dissertation 40 years ago, some of these ideas have been floating around. I was able to formalize, for example, up until the mid (19)50s, there really was not a youth culture. Kids were expected to be sort of miniature versions of their parents. They were expected to dress the same as their parents. They were expected to go into the same jobs or occupations, do the same things, like the same things as their parents. So they were scaled down versions of adults. And therefore, there was not music that was intended for young people, there were not clothing styles that were necessarily keyed on young people. It was not, I think, until the early to mid (19)50s that the war was far enough in the background and that there was sufficient, that economically, middle class parents were at a point where kids could get more than a quarter allowance. And I was getting a nickel and then 10 cents, then a quarter. Well, with a quarter a week I could buy baseball cards and maybe a comic book, but not much else. But beginning in the mid to late (19)50s and kids started getting sufficient money to become consumers, and as kids became consumers, there was a whole world out there ready to take their money and to begin creating commerce aimed at kids’ things specifically aimed at kids. And one way to make it attractive to kids was to make sure that parents did not like it. Parents liked Pat Boone. So teenagers my age we are less inclined. If he is okay with mom and dad, and I am trying to separate myself as an individual and begin to establish my own identity, then I should like somebody my parents do not like. And that could be Elvis. And so a lot of growing up, being a teenager is learning to differentiate yourself from your parents. SM (00:20:03): Was that kind of like, I can remember two specific instances of people that were admired by the Boomer parents. That is Arthur Godfrey, when he fired Julius LaRosa for having an affair with some other person, he was very popular. And the other one was Mitch Miller. When he had an affair with Leslie Uggams, he was unpopular. And he went like... HK (00:20:28): But Arthur Godfrey was, he was in DC and I guess I was aware of him, but certainly as far as an influence on my generation, I do not think so. Not at all. And McGuire Sisters were less interesting than the Shirelles or the Chantels? Right. So if it was associated with adults, then it was intrinsically less interesting than something that my parents did not know about. As an example of my family, there was an artist who had a [inaudible], Nervous Norvus. He had a song Transfusion about cars racing and wrecking and needing blood transfusions. It was the sort of thing that parents thoroughly disliked because it first, musically, it was terrible. And singing and glorifying car wrecks was not what they had. But he also had a song called Ape Call at various points in this record, and I can play it for you, there would be this loud scream. Well, evidently my dad did not like that. And the only time I can remember mom commenting on music is when she told my brother and I, please do not play that when your father's at home, or if you play it, make sure, because what we would love to do is we would play the record and then just before the scream, we turned the volume all the way up. So this really, really loud scream, but evidently Dad did not care for that at all. And so that was the only song we were told should not be played when dad was home, for the rest, as long as the music did not get all that loud, I guess it was a fair game. They were letting us grow up and find stuff that was ours. SM (00:22:31): Would you say that just as in the 1950s, the difference between Pat Boone and Elvis? Elvis was kind of a revolutionary person. The Beatles was the revolutionary group that came (19)64. Really, when you are talking (19)46 to (19)63, and then all of a sudden in (19)64, the Beatles come, everything changes from then on. Is that? HK (00:22:56): I think the reasons for the popularity of Elvis and the Beatles in my mind are quite different. I mean, Elvis clearly was a rejection of the kind of puritanical, uptight values, the traditions. Elvis was a white boy who sang black. Elvis was threatening Elvis sneered, if you had a 15-year-old daughter, you worried about Elvis taking her virginity or something like that. Pat Boone was the antithesis. Pat Boone did not kiss his co-star, Shirley Jones, because he was married. So Pat was good, and Elvis was bad, and Elvis was in the same old as James Dean and Marlon Brando. He represented the counterculture that is in represented the change, the new energy, the new vitality, the rejection of some of the old cultures. We will never know. I do not know if the Beatles would had the impact, if Kennedy had not been assassinated. In November (19)63, there had been Beatle records. There had been a couple of Beatle records available in the US in (19)63. I first heard them in Holland in (19)63 and thought, okay, interesting. But it was not anything spectacular. But Americans needed, especially America's youth, needed something to take their minds off. Dallas, Texas, in November (19)63, the Beatles were the antidote to the sort of, call it almost generational depression, if you will. I was, what, a junior at Duke. I remember where I was when I heard Walter Cronkite announce the shootings, et cetera. That was something I will not forget. I was not initially enamored with the Beatles, I was much more in tune with Phil Specter and the Girl Group sound, The Ronettes and The Crystals. SM (00:25:22): Oh, that was great. HK (00:25:23): I mean, fabulous stuff. My early (19)60s artists who are now all the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame were Orison, Del Shannon, and Jean Pitney, because I thought musically, they were ahead of, they sang melodies that you could sing. Those were my favorites. But the Beatles and the British Invasion were a means by which America's youth could turn away from Dallas. I mean, it was not only the music, but again, there was a revolution in styles, whether it was haircuts or whether it was the clothing styles that were personified by Twiggy, and what was her name? Mary Quant, I think it was. But the miniskirts, the whole British European thing became a way to refocus youthful energy, interest, et cetera. So it was not necessarily rejecting the parents' values and the parents' culture, but it was sort of, okay, we need to break out of this depression. This young youthful president is gone, he is dead. We need to find something to reenergize us. And to me, the Beatles were initially seen as clean cut. It was The Rolling Stones who were the antithesis. These were the scruffy guys who got arrested for pissing in public places and stuff like that. But the early British sound is pretty mild. I mean, these are sort of funny little tunes. Hermann's Hermits, [inaudible] The Pacemakers, Peter and Gordon, different from the Kinks, or the Rolling Stones, or the Yardbirds, who were, again, who were blues influenced more of the black rhythm, blues culture, et cetera. So there was that difference as well. SM (00:27:32): Yeah, when you are talking about the change in the culture, obviously when we are talking mid to late (19)60s, we are talking the true counterculture, which is dress, long hair, music, drugs, sexual revolution, living some sort of communal lifestyle was really late (19)60s, (19)70s, particularly after the war ended. But then you had the groups like The Doors and Janice Joplin, Jimmy Hendricks, so many, we can list so many different groups, and were really, students were turning on. That was really a rejection of the (19)50s. It was really, we are going to change the world. We are going to... HK (00:28:19): There were so many things. I was an undergraduate from (19)61 to (19)65. I was dating a young lady who was also in college, and I remember in (19)63, I would think that Gwen's mother gave me a copy of The Feminine Mystique and encouraged me to read it because her daughter was going to grow up to be someone different from, let us say, the role models for the girls who went to college to get their MRS. SM (00:28:56): Yes. HK (00:28:59): In the, let us see. In (19)62, one of the figures on campus that people knew was Peter Clawford. He was a biologist. He worked boots to class, but he was also taking students to Greensboro on sit-ins. And in Durham, there were lots of places where blacks were not welcomed. I do not believe there were any black undergraduates in Duke in (19)61, (19)62, (19)63. On the other hand, when the KKK came marching through Durham and trying to get a permit, I think, to come on campus, most of the Duke students were out there in a counter-protest. So while Duke was still a Southern school, segregated in terms of its politics, it was beginning to catch up when what was happening in the (19)60s. So you had civil rights. I had a roommate in college who was a member of the, what was it? The Young Americans for Freedom. SM (00:30:11): Yeah, that is the conservative right? HK (00:30:13): Yes. And Bill Buckley, who was a Goldwater. I was not campaigning in (19)64, but had I been able to vote, I would have voted for Johnson. And he was voting. He was very, very conservative. And so, one of the things I learned early on that did not interest me was politics. We did not talk politics. We coexisted as roommates, but with the tacit agreement, if you will, that we talked about school, we talked about girlfriends, but I have never been one to get drawn into political debates or arguments. I just do not find it very interesting. But it is clear that things were changing. So the role for women, my girlfriend's mom brought that home, politics were changing. Race relations were changing. We were concerned about a war in Cuba, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs. We had an air raid drill at Duke. I learned where the air raid shelters were located, not because anyone knew about Vietnam, but because of Cuba. Even in (19)65, when I graduated and my draft status was quickly changed from 2S to 1A, I do not think at that point I was all that concerned about the military guy. I had a brother who was in the army. I had another brother who was in law school and who was working very hard to keep his deferment. And I had planned to go either to medical school or going to clinical psychology, and was fairly sure at that point, that was still a deferment category. So the wars or the conflicts were out there, but were not a central part of what I was doing. But I became aware of some of these things through music. Eve of Destruction was Barry McGuire, 1965, the Houston Eastern World is exploding, violent, slur and bullet exploding. SM (00:32:37): I remember when he was on TV for the first time, singing that live. I am not sure if that was Shindig or Hullabaloo or... HK (00:32:43): Those were my shows. SM (00:32:46): I love those shows. HK (00:32:49): And so these were records that I was collecting. I was listening to Where Have All Flowers Gone by The Kingston Trio, not connecting it specifically, but becoming aware that music was not just, as you say about boy meets girl, boy loses girl, et cetera. It was more than love themes that in the early (19)60s, music was beginning to change and beginning to become what I would call in my dissertation, a barometer, an early warning system of things that were in flux. So a song by The Exciters called Tell Him, this is a girl telling another girl. If you like a guy, tell him, do not wait for him. In other words, become more active. Do not be passive that girls can ask boys out or songs about war in a general way. Masters of War, Bob Dylan, Soldier Boy. I would have connected that more with Berlin probably, or, but any rate, I began listening to songs for more than just messages of, I think when I was in junior high school, I found talking to girls relatively difficult. That would not have been unusual, but one way that I could communicate was by selecting records, which by the way, was a great reason for collecting, taking them to parties, because, if you were in charge of the records, you knew what was coming up, and you knew which girl you were going to ask, and you could communicate simply by, "Okay, listen to this next one. That is really the way I feel." So I learned early on that music, in addition to being entertainment could be used in a proactive way. You could exchange information through music. You could take information from music, you could learn from music. HK (00:35:02): Take information from music, you could learn from music. While it had been teen concerns in junior high school and high school, by the time I got to college there were bigger concerns that were showing up in the pop music kit. As I was collecting the popular songs, I became aware that there was this whole new category, I call it "topical pop." And then at some point I began looking for songs with messages, looking for songs with " My daddy is president, what is your daddy?" I thought, "That is pretty huge." This is about Caroline Kennedy. So some of the early ones would have been political, but certainly by the time I was finishing my graduate work, a different aspect of music was coming in for comments in (19)69 and (19)70, as you had both the war and the perceived problem with drugs. If you recall, Vice President Agnew, as the spokesman for the Nixon administration, was frequently quoted as saying that music is one of the causes of the problems that we have right now. Songs glorifying drug use are in fact creating some of the drug problems that we have. And so there was a lot of effort in listing bad songs, like Puff the Magic Dragon is a drug song. My comment, my retort to that was, "Well, if Puff, the Magic Dragon is a drug song then and what about Fly Me to the Moon? Was Frank Sinatra on a drug trip? But what happened, working with a mentor, a professor at Adelfi University who had a clinical practice. George and I played basketball and we would chat. And when he said, "Hugo, I am working with some teenagers who have behavioral problems that include drugs, but I am really finding it difficult to kind of break through and find some common ground to begin therapy. I called him Dr. Stricker until after I got my PhD. So I said, "Dr. Stricker, have you thought about music as sort of a bridge where you might ask your client what does she think of a particular song? You might even play it and try?" And he said, "No." And I said, "Would you like me to put together some music for you such as White Rabbit by the Jefferson Airplane, et cetera?" And George said he would appreciate that. So I put together a little tape of some music that I thought might have the ability to get some reaction. And it was not just drug music. I remember another one that I used was Sky Pilot by the Animals, which (19)68, so that was a war-related song about a chaplain in the Air Force who sends people off to kill and they come back. And how does he reconcile that with, what is it, the seventh commandment, or the sixth, whichever one it is that is "Thou shall not kill." So it had a message that a teenager listening to that music might pick up on, and therefore there might be some basis for getting a conversation started. And that convinced me that there were others who felt that music had gone beyond simply entertaining. If the Vice President is claiming that music about suicides, music about the war, music about drugs, is in fact influencing, impacting, causing certain behaviors. As far as I know, there is no evidence to support that. So to make a long story short, I finished my coursework in 1970. I was a dissertation short of my doctorate, and I had found myself in a very narrow cognitive learning area. This was the dissertation that I took with me overseas. And once I got to Okinawa and then later Vietnam, I realized that there was nothing in this project that in any way held a kind of interest that would sustain me, that would cause me to work on it while I was in Asia. So I thought back to music, which I always carried with me, and which I found in Vietnam had perhaps even greater importance. And I wrote George, Dr. Stricker. I had a couple of questions. I said, "Dr. Stricker, do you think Adelphi University would accept a dissertation focusing on popular music and its impact on youth? And if the answer to that is yes, would you consider being my chair for this?" And while I was in Vietnam, I got a post order letter back and he said yes to both. And suddenly my world changed, because now there was an opportunity. I did not need a library because I was carrying so much of this with me. So it was more sit down and begin putting on paper one of these ideas. That would have been early 1970, and in October or November of 1972, just two years later, I completed what would be one of the earliest dissertations on looking at whether there was in fact any document [inaudible] relationship, especially causal relationship, between what was happening in youth culture and what was happening in popular music. SM (00:41:24): Wow. HK (00:41:25): The answer is no. No causal relationships that I could find, but this is where I came into the notion of an early warning system, that musical trends, something might be happening in California or somewhere else, and music would bring it to the attention of the East Coast. Surfing, California, Hawaii. But the Beach Boys brought an interest to surfing to the East Coast. I remember the early (19)60s being at Rehoboth and seeing a VW with a surfboard on top. There was no surfing ever in Rehoboth because the coastline was not appropriate. But the surfing culture, the straight hair for the girls, the baggies, et cetera, music brought that to the East Coast. All right, that legitimized, that caused me to look even more closely for songs that had messages, or songs that had political overtones, songs that were topical. And from 1970 on, I have really been listening for, collecting, categorizing, listing, putting it all together. This Vietnam project is just the most recent expression of all that. SM (00:42:42): It is unbelievable. I am going to look at this a second. HK (00:42:54): Before [inaudible] I was traveling whenever I could to see more of the world, but whether it was one or two or three hours a day, this was sufficient interest that I was able to write the dissertation in just over a year. SM (00:43:09): How long was the defense? I will not take that. HK (00:43:14): When I went back to Europe, with credentials now, I was not shy about using them. I was assigned to Ramstein in Germany for a couple of terms, and one of the first things I did was to go to the American Forces Radio station in Kaiserslautern, introduced myself and said, "Guys, I just finished a doctorate on pop music. Is there something we can do with this?" And that station had an obligation, I think, as most of the stations in Europe did, to create some provisional programming that could go out on American Forces Europe. So I met a DJ named Scott Trackson and Scott said, "Let us think about how we can do this." So we broke the dissertation up into 12 parts, called it, what was the name of the show? Not Rock Recollections, something like that. But we sat down and then he would interview me about some of the things that I had found out and then play the music. And then he would say, "Okay, Dr. Keesing, how do you think this worked?" It turned out to be 12 one-hour shows. They were aired throughout Europe. I got fan mail. "This is very interesting. How can we get hold of Dr. Keesing and how can we learn more about it?" AFN gave me a little plaque for my contributions. But then I did a short paper for, what was it, the Eastern Psychological Association somewhere in the mid-(19)70s. I was trying to establish credentials as a teacher and going to professional meetings. So I wrote a paper on youth in transition. I gave the paper at. A panel when it was over, the editor of a book came by and said, "I really like what you presented. Can I have it? I am about to publish a book and I would like to use it." I said, "Well, this was a paper." And he said, "No. If it is about this long..." Hold on, I will show you this. A month or two of having presented... Here we go. "The pop message: a trend analysis of the psychological content of two decades of music." All right, it was I presented a paper, a week later sent him a copy, and two months later, I have my first publication in the Book of Readings. SM (00:46:12): My God. HK (00:46:15): So all of this was reinforcement for the notion that music is important. Music and psychology and adolescent behavior and youth culture are a legitimate package. This is about (19)75 when for most traditional academics, pop culture and pop music were sort of throwaway. But I had a dissertation. I had a chapter in a book. I had a radio show. And so I felt as if I had a solid foundation for including music in my teachings and approaching the University of Maryland and suggesting something more formal. How can I build this into a course? First effort was in the honors program. It went over very well. And then again, sort of the fortuitous coming together, the father of popular culture studies in the US, a gentleman name Ray Brown was on a two-year sabbatical at the University of Maryland. He was at Bowling Green State in Ohio, came to Maryland. He was there. I knew Ray from professional meetings and I said, "Dr. Brown, can I get your support for creating a course at the University of Maryland that would really study contemporary American history using music as the main source?" And Ray thought that would be a great idea. And so I created something called American Studies 298a, popular music in American society. It began modestly in 1975 or (19)76 with 17 students in one class and 35 in the other. And in three years I had moved from a classroom to an auditorium that sat 300, where my average enrollment was 280 to 400 students. All of that sort of continued. First of all, it fed the need to stay current. So I began collecting Vietnam music and political music, Watergate, all of those records. Because I now had a formal way to bring them into my class. It meant that the books I used to teach were books on the (19)60s. One of my favorites... Here are my textbooks. Glory and the Dream. SM (00:48:43): Oh yeah, Glory and the Dream. HK (00:48:43): What are some of the others? SM (00:48:49): There is Todd Gitlin's book, I know you have got there. HK (00:48:52): His book is right here. A very interesting book, Year by Year in the [inaudible], which makes the connection between music and all of the events that were going on. And what is even better about this. SM (00:49:17): Wow, there is good. Wow, I never heard of this book. HK (00:49:23): Well, I have used this since then. When I have gone to concerts and I have gotten Everly Brothers. It is probably long, long out of print, but this would tell you news that influenced the rock era. statistics, what people were doing. And it begins exactly at your point where you are interested. SM (00:49:45): Right. HK (00:49:46): So this would definitely be one. SM (00:49:49): You might be able to find this on Amazon. HK (00:49:52): You could probably try it. Yeah. SM (00:49:54): I have this book. HK (00:49:54): But this is also why- SM (00:49:56): I have that one. HK (00:49:57): I tried to use books like this that would encourage students, that would use music as the primary tool, but that had everything about the culture surrounding it. This was, I think, the last text that I used. SM (00:50:14): Do you really believe as a person who studied music for decades, that the music of the (19)60s and say the (19)70s, through the mid (19)70s, more than any other period in our history, had more messages, gave more messages, and had an influence on the young people that were growing up in that era than any other era. I say this because even when you think of the World War II generation, you think of those songs like, oh, the White Cliffs of Dover. HK (00:50:49): Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition. SM (00:50:50): Yeah. Or people are not coming home. There is messages about people who have died and are not coming back home. There were some messages in other music from the (19)40s, I believe, but not like this period. HK (00:51:08): I agree with you, and one of the reasons that I have spent so much time studying war music is because wartime brought more message music than any other time. I mean, there is still the songs of love and separation. But back in that room, I have got 11,000 pieces of sheet music related to World War II. That is my other huge interest. So I have 70 or 80 different monographs that I have put together on themes from World War II sheet Music. And when I began publishing on music and wartime, the first article was World War II and Vietnam. I wanted to see to what extent the messages were the same, were different. And in fact, the Vietnam War music is very different from the World War II-related music. SM (00:52:16): In what way? HK (00:52:17): Specifically, because the wars were so different, the music that is associated with Vietnam from the earliest point, which would be about 1960, (19)61, would be songs that were vaguely pacifist, such as Where Have All The Flowers Gone? I mean, it is not an anti-war tune, but it talks about the futility of war. Soldier Boy is about separation, but it is certainly not like You are a Sap Mr. Jap to Make the Yankee Cranky, or Remember Pearl Harbor. We sort of found we were in Vietnam for a bunch of years before there were any songs that really mentioned Vietnam. The first pop song that mentions Vietnam that I was able to run across is called The Big Draft by the Four Preps. And it is a comedy tune that where this group parodies The Platters in this case, and it says, "Our new records a bomb, they have never heard of us in South Vietnam." So South Vietnam was sort of an incidental point. World War II, you had songs about, I mean, there are hundreds of songs about the Japs, some of them extremely racist. Songs about Hitler. Songs about military units, about battles, about generals, lots of interesting music about the women in the service, the WACs, the WAVES, the SPARs, the Lady Marines who were all new. But I do not think I have in the sheet music of 11,000, more than two or three songs that could be considered critical of war or certainly nothing of World War II. I mean, there may have been, war is not a good thing, but nothing that was critical of US involvement in World War II. It was a righteous war. It was America had been attacked and the entire music industry and more so even the people at home, because maybe 80 percent, 75 or 80 percent of what I have there is music written by your average citizen. It is self-published. It is not by major publishers. It is not by Irving Berlin or Frank Lesser. It is people writing from the heart. Vietnam began with protest music, whether it was Universal Soldier of Buffy Sainte-Marie, whether it was Eve of Destruction by McGuire or PF Sloan. And from (19)65 on, you already had the beginning of a divisiveness, because after Eve of Destruction, you may remember there was an answer record called the Dawn of Correction by the Spokesmen refuting each point that McGuire made. And after Buffy Sainte-Marie's, the Universal Soldier, Jan Barry of Jan and Dean recorded the Universal Coward. SM (00:55:38): I think you mentioned that at your- HK (00:55:40): So you begin getting this tug-of-war music. War music became polarizing from very early on. And there was no polarity in World War II music. It was all strongly supportive of the US and every aspect of its effort. And it was uniformly critical of the Germans and the Italians and Japanese, et cetera. So World War II music, single focus, we are going to win this. We are going to achieve victory over the bad guys. Vietnam, from the onset, it was unclear why were we there? Where were we? Most people did not know where Vietnam was. What are we doing there? What are our objectives? Never clear. And the music that I associate with Vietnam from 1960, for 50 years, the music has been unable to clarify a war that was never clear. The arguments over were we right? Were we wrong? Did we lose? Did we win? They have not been settled. SM (00:56:55): Yeah. In fact, there has been a lot of albums made that are advertised in the Vietnam magazine that you can buy. People you have never heard of. HK (00:57:05): Well, you are going to hear of some of them. SM (00:57:06): Yeah. HK (00:57:13): I saw the ad for John Black in here. SM (00:57:17): Yes, John. Yes. HK (00:57:18): We have got, I think three of Black's cuts are on the box. And I said, "Look, we need to do something similar." And I was told that Vietnam Magazine will in fact, review our- SM (00:57:33): How about the people like the Chris Noel's, some of the singers that were there, or the women that were over there. I think Chris Noel, I am not sure if she did any songs. Oh my God, yeah, I met her. HK (00:57:55): Yep. And we include Forgotten Man. SM (00:57:59): Oh my gosh. I did not even know she did an album. HK (00:58:01): Is one of the ones on the box set. And we also have a 35 or 40 second clip of her date with Chris Show for American Forces Radio. So with Joe's permission or understanding, she is the only woman I think who is included on a disc of all veteran songs, because she was made in honorary Vietnam veterans. SM (00:58:31): Yes-yes. HK (00:58:31): So everything else is by men, but Chris Noel as an honorary vet, as the distinction of being the only woman with a song on one of the last two CDs. SM (00:58:42): How about the Native American, also, musicians? Bill Miller, I think he is a great Native American singer. Do you know Bill Miller? HK (00:58:51): I do not know Bill Miller. I have got one Native American, Jesse Nighthawk with a CD that is entirely Vietnam-oriented. It is a very powerful CD. I have passed along to Bear Family a request that maybe we put 30 seconds of some of the songs on Facebook so that people can listen to and get a sense of what they may be hearing. And for one of the CDs, we are looking at the possibility of one song from each CD. Jesse Nighthawk as the one that I want to feature on, I guess, CD 12, APO San Francisco Visits. It is just an extremely powerful song. SM (00:59:42): Buffy Sainte-Marie has got a new album out. I am trying to interview her. She has agreed to be interviewed, but she has to do it on computer. But she has got an unbelievable new album. HK (00:59:54): We are using her Universal Soldier. I had requested a second song, Moratorium, and for some reason we could not get licensing for that. So she will be included in the set. SM (01:00:10): And talking about the music during the time the Boomers have been alive and they are only hitting about 63 years old. HK (01:00:17): I am collecting Social Security. SM (01:00:26): Yeah, but you are young. HK (01:00:28): I am young. Okay. SM (01:00:28): Yeah. And what I found out in the interview process, that people that were born, Richie Havens was born in (19)40 or (19)41, considers himself a Boomer. He says, "That is my mentality." HK (01:00:41): Psychologically. And the culture, I am certainly [inaudible]. SM (01:00:44): You are right in there. All right. What are your thoughts on, I am talking about the Boomer music now. Let us say we are into the (19)76 period now, disco. I know there is a brand-new book out by a professor at Rutgers University. She has just written a book on the history of disco, and I bought it. Ann Eccles is her name. It is supposed to be a very good book. What are your thoughts on the music from the disco, which seems to be the cutoff point, and then you get into the (19)80s and the (19)90s and today's music. This is all part of the Boomer generation, even though it is geared toward younger people, but disco's certainly part of that Boomer era. HK (01:01:30): Yeah. As an academic, I look for trans patterns. I think one of the important technological changes or events was when FM radio came to prominence in the late (19)50s, early (19)60s. The Payola hearings changed AM radio. I grew up with mobile disc jockeys who played whatever they wanted to. But by the late (19)50s, with Dick Clark, Alan Freed and others, the restrictions on what individual DJs could play were put in place. And you began to get formatted top 40. So beginning in the mid-(19)60s, the sound changed. And then with the advent of FM, you began getting what was then called alternative. So the top 40 were really the music that you heard in the mid-(19)50s until the mid-(19)60s. And then suddenly with FM albums and album-oriented artists and longer cuts could be played on the radio. I mean, The Doors- SM (01:02:51): Light My Fire. HK (01:02:52): Et cetera. Who were much more popular on FM and whose album cuts became better known than some of their singles. And so I was already a little bit beyond, because music was always a tool for me. And by (19)65, I had graduated from college, I was in graduate school, and music's importance to my life was changing. It became more a subject of interest, and sort of the currency the day in terms of where did you go? What did you listen to? What did you bring to parties? So FM music brought in new artists. It also brought in the themes because FM radio had more leeway in terms of what it played than AM. AM was more conservative. It was considered more for kids. The thoughtful late teenagers were now finding their FM stations and getting deep into Jimi Hendrix as opposed to the bubblegum music, for example, because bubblegum was a little bit before. I look at disco as sort of the in-motion bubblegum. Disco, the lyrics were not very heavy, but it was great for dancing. And music, whether it was Chubby Checkers and all of the Twist records in the early (19)60s, disco was simply the continuation of one musical strand, which is, if you ever watched Dick Clark or American Bandstand, the records were rated: "It is got a good beat. You can dance to it. I will give it an 85." So for some listeners, music was primarily about does it have a good beat and can you dance to it? They were less concerned with the lyrics than could they dance to it. And that reminds me of American Forces, AFN, banned Eve of Destruction. And there were some articles on Eve of Destruction that came out in the late (19)60s trying to prove that music like this ought to be banned because it was anti-American and it was bad influence. And one of the studies on Eve of Destruction found that most teens did not have a clue as to what the song was about. They would listen to it and say, "You cannot really dance to it. I do not like it because I cannot dance to it," when asked, "Well, what are the politics? What is the message?" So a lot of kids did not listen for messages in music. It is more a visceral experience. I was one of those who was less interested in the beat and more interested in the learning. SM (01:05:44): Did you see this in your studies, that this was changing as you get into the late (19)60s and say through 1973, because I consider the (19)70, (19)71, (19)72, (19)73, all part of the (19)60s. I listened to the words, I wanted to hear the words. And what upset me is when I could not hear the words. HK (01:06:07): FM music was more attuned to letting you listen to an entire track, or maybe even playing an entire side of an album. And so the ability to go beyond the two and a half minutes of vigorous exercise, i.e. dancing, FM allowed you to do that. People my age began buying albums probably in the early (19)60s. Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul, and Mary, those were album artists. But the currency, I like to use that term, was still primarily singles. If you were 14, 15, 16, and you did not have 3.98 or 4.98 to buy an album necessarily, besides many albums were simply greatest hits where you got all the singles and flip sides. And so until the Beatles began creating albums for themselves, it was more than just a collection of songs. That is to say that younger kids were still primarily into 45s. And 45s, certainly the pop 45s rarely had much of a message. Now, what I have subsequently learned is that virtually all of the message music from the 60s and early (19)70s is country or folk. Folk, usually on LPs, cuts by Joan Baez, by Tom Paxton, by Phil Oaks, by Buffy Sainte-Marie, and people like that. Or if they are Country and Western, it is singles, obscure labels distributed out of Nashville, stuff that probably never sold. But these were people who felt strongly enough to put their words into song, maybe print a hundred records, and that was the last you ever heard of it. But some of the most interesting Vietnam stuff is from those Country and Western singles that came out between early (19)60s to early (19)70s. SM (01:08:18): Yeah, I tell you that Arlo Guthrie too, his music, Alice's restaurant. HK (01:08:25): That there was an Alice's Restaurant Massacre, which came out as a single, maybe four and a half minutes. But to appreciate that you have to listen to the 16 or 17 minute album cut. You cannot get that. SM (01:08:37): Yeah. And the first time you listened to it, because he performed at my alma mater. I saw him twice. HK (01:08:45): I heard him do it in Forest Hills at the tennis stadium in (19)68 or (19)69, somewhere around there. He was just sitting there and strumming away. SM (01:08:58): As the Boomer generation's getting older, in terms of the late (19)70s and the year of Ronald Reagan and the (19)80s. And the (19)80s had really good music. I liked the music of the (19)80s, but it seemed like there was a return of a lot of solo artists at that time. When I think of the (19)80s, I think of those MTVs, watching them on MTV, which was a great way of watching the music and getting to know the songs. But groups like Air Supply, Police. HK (01:09:29): Journey. SM (01:09:29): Duran Duran. HK (01:09:31): REO Speed wagon. SM (01:09:35): Yeah, but I thought it was great music. Steve Perry. HK (01:09:38): Oh yeah. SM (01:09:38): Oh Sherrie. HK (01:09:39): Oh Sherrie. SM (01:09:40): Yeah. But to me, it seemed like it was almost like a return to the (19)50s. It was not a whole lot of messages, but just really good music. Just a lot of solo artists, African American and white, male and female. HK (01:09:56): But beginning with the first divide between AM and FM, and that is... HK (01:10:02): And FM, and that is mid (19)60s, mid to late (19)60s. I mean, in the (19)50s, I think virtually every teenager was listening to the same body of music. By the mid to late (19)60s, you began to find the purchases between album-oriented listeners and those who were still listening to singles and singles became teen bopper music. Bobby Sherman, and David Cat. And music like that. So album... SM (01:10:41): Mark Wansey was another one. HK (01:10:44): Paul Revere and the Raiders. Albums offered more potential for becoming creative. For, I mean, the Beatles were certainly the ones that helped move that along. And so people began creating niches that black music, soul music, R&B and-and Rock and Roll were, except at least in Washington, were synonymous that DJs had listened to, played Little Richard and played Fat [inaudible], played Chuck Barry, et cetera. Now, if you were in the South, maybe you did not hear them. Maybe segregated, their first segregated radio stations boom and the youth culture of the mid-(19)50s put an end to that because kids, once they found out that Little Richard really sang Long Paul Sally, and that it was much better than Pat Boon's version, simply would not accept a station that would only play the white versions, the cover versions. So teenagers made clear that they wanted their rock and roll in its original form, and by its original artist. By the mid-(19)60s, James Brown is helping to take black music a step further. Motown was music by blacks for a broad audience. And some would argue that Motown was too white, even though the artists were black. But the music represented by James Brown, and then later on Funk, these were very clearly aimed at a black urban audience. And while white kids enjoyed much of that music as well, the specialization of musical styles began. I mean, disco. Disco was not just the twist, but disco became a musical style with a culture that went with it, with the leisure suit and Discos and John Travolta. SM (01:12:43): Some people say it was gay culture. Some people think, well, I read that in Anne Eckle's book. HK (01:12:49): Yeah, yeah. Perhaps it is... SM (01:12:54): Saturday Night Fever, yeah. HK (01:12:56): But you did not have to be gay to enjoy disco. I mean, if disco was embraced by gays, that is one thing. But to say that everybody who listened, enjoyed disco was somehow gay. I think that that, that is turning that thing upside. SM (01:13:09): Bee Gees. That is unbelievable. I love the Bee Gees. HK (01:13:12): Yep. But with disco, you also got an emphasis on what electronics drummers now had electronic drum sets, synthesizers. So there was an emphasis on production. Again, Phil Spector songs, I liked them because the wall of sound. By the late (19)60s and early (19)70s, David Foster, one of the reasons I like Steve Perry and Journey is because there is the big orchestration behind it. And so you and I like that music. Others felt that that was way overblown, and were looking for the stripped down music. I mean, take all of that fancy electronic stuff out. Just give me a guitar. It took a while longer, but artists like Eric Clapton became popular again, but unplugged. In other words, you liked, some people liked him when in the electric versions and others, none of them. I did not like him until I heard him unplugged. This was the reverse, what was it, (19)65? When Dylan went to Newport and folk music went from acoustic to electric. The purists were offended, but we would not have had The Birds and The Turtles and The Lovin' Spoonful if Dylan had not done that. And so what? A decade, decade and a half later, it is all right, let us get back to the basics. So by the late (19)70s, mid (19)70s, to me, music had fractured. There were still Casey Case in the American Top 40, and for many people, that was still the way to know what was what. But there were an awful lot of artists whose records did not make Top 40, who became tremendously influential. I mean Led Zeppelin. But how many records did they have that made Top 40? Stairway to Heaven never made the top 100, and yet I was looking at this for each of my classes, Maryland, I would ask my students, okay, what are your top three rock and roll songs? And I have this information from the (19)70s on. The biggest ones were Stairway to Heaven, a Free Bird, and Amy by Pure Prairie League. There were a couple overs, some Springsteen, Born to Run. Did that make it as a single? SM (01:15:54): No, I do not think the Grateful Dead ever had singles. Did they? No. HK (01:15:57): Touch of Gray. Grateful Dead, Springsteen, Billy Joel's early stuff did not come out of singles. But these were the mid-(19)70s artists. I mean, the popular ones. I call them the ABCDs. You had Aba, you know, B was Red, C was The Carpenters. D was John Denver. A was The Eagles. These were the people who were selling singles. But it was Springsteen, Joel, Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, The Who, who were selling huge amounts of music, but not AM top four. SM (01:16:37): When I think of the period from the disco period, because I was working at Ohio University in my very first job, Berry White was so big. HK (01:16:47): Oh, yes. Wonderful. SM (01:16:49): And I do not care, even though I am from the (19)60s from that period and everything, let the music play. Just when I first heard that, I said, let the music play. It just made you feel good. And I thought he was a genius. And then Donna Summer. HK (01:17:05): Donna Summer. SM (01:17:05): Because when she sang that song that they would not play on the radio the full version, Love to Love You Baby, to me... Yeah, Donna Summer and Barry White to me were the stars of that... The epitome. Then there was the one female singer, I forget her name, African American who was sang, had a couple big hits too, but they kind of stood out amongst all the others. HK (01:17:32): I have always appreciated a big voice. I have always appreciated orchestration. I mean Laura Branigan. SM (01:17:42): Oh, she was good. HK (01:17:44): Good? SM (01:17:44): Yes. HK (01:17:44): Yeah, I was delighted when Barry White had his career revived by Ally McBeal, and it was wonderful to hear his music there. But I mean, you and I clearly have overlapping tastes, but we can find people our age, well, maybe not, maybe a couple years younger, who were into punk. Who were listening to the Sex Pistols and The Ramones. SM (01:18:16): Never got into that. HK (01:18:17): Me neither. But those are subsets of our generation, or at least the boomer generation who found their music and whose recollections of the roles music played, et cetera, would be very different from ours. SM (01:18:32): Do you believe, particularly in the (19)90s, we had Chuck D in our campus. I like Chuck D because he was pretty critical of these other rap artists, and he has been, Tupac Shakur and some of the heroes of the (19)90s. Some of them lost their lives, Big Daddy and everything, but that the critics of that music were boomers, a lot of them, who were older. But if they really tried to understand the music a little better, was not a lot of that music about messages too? HK (01:19:03): Yeah. SM (01:19:03): It is just that you could not hear it because there was so much. And of course, today, the way they treat women and all the other things, you can dislike the music, but the messages are there. HK (01:19:15): The messages, to me, it is still a barometer. The barometer right now is for, we indicate as society where, what is the word? It is to my ears, much less civil. It is much more confrontational, in your face. It is loud. And we were, at this point a long time ago, I grew up in a family and in an environment that prize diplomacy, compromise, quiet. I mean, you go about do your business but do not... Rather than 15 minutes and bearing your guts for Oprah or something like that. That is not the way I learned what it was like to become an adult. And so many of the qualities that have been important to me for more than 60 years are not the antithesis, but certainly they are at the other end of the spectrum for what is important now. Now music has, I think, always pulled young people, has pulled listeners from sort of the safe and to a little bit more daring. And whether it was The Flappers and jazz in the thirties, for example, because my mom told me she was born in 1910 and how excited she was when jazz was introduced to Holland and her parents' generation frown on what these young women were doing, wearing lipstick in dances like The Charleston. That is the end of the civilization as we know it. And in the forties, the big bands, there were people who said, "no, we do not want our kids dancing to music sung by some skinny kid named Sinatra." So yeah, I think there is always some tendency for young people to break away from the norms, find something new. It is simply to find something new these days, you have to become more and more extreme. You are pushed more and more to the fringes, as far as I am concerned. SM (01:21:41): In the love of music as a person who grew up around the same time I did. Did you also, not only during those times when the singers that we have been talking about in the late (19)50s or the (19)50s, and then of course the rock musicians of the (19)60s, but there were other songs that had messages that may have been called corny, like MacArthur Park? I thought Richard Harris's version of MacArthur Park, I like the words. "MacArthur Park is mounting in the dark.? There is a message in there. There is a song. HK (01:22:16): There is. SM (01:22:18): And I always think of times when I went with my parents to parks when my parents are gone. HK (01:22:24): But you are also aware that that song has been consistently voted but the worst rock record of all time. SM (01:22:30): I did not know that. HK (01:22:31): Yeah, yeah. And Richard Harris's version, because the Donna Summer version gives it a little bit more life, but "left a cake out in the rain?" I mean, what the hell was he talking about? SM (01:22:41): Yeah but the guy who wrote that was, what is his name? He was actually said... Jim Webb. HK (01:22:45): Jim Webb. SM (01:22:46): Yeah. And I had his album. HK (01:22:48): Who also wrote some very good stuff. SM (01:22:50): Do you have his album of Jim Webb sings Jim Webb? HK (01:22:54): If I did, it is at Maryland. SM (01:22:56): It was an orange cover and it did not sell very much. And all I know is, but a lot of the songs, Simon and Garfunkel's music was just full of messages from Bookends, "Old friends. Old friends sitting on park benches like bookends." And of course, even the movies of that era always had theme songs. I remember Liza Minelli and Wendell Burton in the movie... I forget, but the song was, Come Saturday Morning. HK (01:23:28): One Flew Up the Coop Nest. SM (01:23:31): Yeah, yeah. "It Comes Saturday." HK (01:23:32): No-no, not One Flew up the Coop... SM (01:23:34): No, that is Jack Nicholson. Sterile Cuckoo. HK (01:23:38): Sterile Cuckoo. The cuckoo part I remembered. I just got the wrong... SM (01:23:40): That is real (19)60s because she is off at college falling in love with the Wendell Burton. But that song is "here come Saturday." I always remember that. So there is... HK (01:23:50): One of the qualities of getting older is the willingness to take the time to become more reflective. I mean, Simon and Garfunkel, I listened to them in the (19)60s and (19)70s, but it was not music that you would take to a party. To a frat party, for example. SM (01:24:11): Right. HK (01:24:12): The songs I took to frat parties were Ray Charles, what did I say? Or the Isley Brothers, Shout. Or The Contours, Do You Love Me? Because even in college, I had taken my records with me and I was invited to take them to parties. SM (01:24:25): Well, I know one. I had a very nice record collection at Ohio State when I was there. And I remember one album that some of my friends wanted when they were having a date one night with a girl was Shirley Bassey, I Capricorn. HK (01:24:44): Okay. See that is not something, and there was music you played when you were smoking pot. There was music that you played when you were studying for exams. Certainly the people around me used music. But again, by the mid (19)60s already, there were now so many choices that you could look for, find, adapt music to whatever you wanted to do. In the early (19)50s, we did not have that. We simply had what AM radio was playing and or what you could buy at 45s. I think I got my first LP for Christmas, probably around 19. SM (01:25:35): There was an article that I just recently read, and you may have seen it. And actually, if you go into the computer when you go into your name, you are in that article. HK (01:25:46): That is interesting. SM (01:25:46): But in the article, it says Kent State is part of the culture wars. When people say that Kent State is part of the culture wars, what do you think they are saying? HK (01:26:10): The culture wars in Kent State. Okay. I would go back to initially to a book that James Michener wrote on Kent State in 19... actually it came out (19)71, called "Kent State, What Happened." What was frightening, [inaudible], was the reactions that he got in Kent, Ohio and in the whole state. When his researchers asked people about the events there in May of 1970, there are some things I recall from the book. He talks about protestors at, I think Sandy Shroyer's funeral carrying signs saying "the Kent State four should have studied more" carrying protest signs at funerals. I thought was only that Baptist route out of Oklahoma that did that these days. But this is back in 1970. I used a quote from Michener's book in the set where one of his researchers is now talking to a woman from Kent, Ohio who has three sons who attended the university, who worked as students there. Makes the most sense to [inaudible] about the right place here. But I quoted in the book... All right, so he said, "more than the usual care was taken to get it exactly as deliberate, mother. Anyone who appears in the streets of a city like Kent with long hair, dirty clothes were barefooted deserves to be shot. Researcher, I have your permission to quote that? Yes, you sure do. It would have been better if the guard had shopped a whole lot of them that morning. But you had three sons there. Mother, if they did not do what the guards told them, they should have been mowed down. Professor of psychology listening in saying, is long hair justification for shooting someone? Yes, we have got to clean up this nation and we will start with the long hairs. Professor, would you prevent one of yourselves to be shot simply because he went barefooted. And she says, yes. Where do you get such ideas? And she says, teach at the local high school. Professor Union, you are teaching your students such things. Yes. I teach them the truth. That the lazy, the dirty, the ones you see walking in the streets and doing nothing, ought all to be shot." SM (01:28:33): Wow. HK (01:28:34): Kent, Ohio. 1970. I was following in the Aron Beacon Journal last month, some of the conversations, meetings with the blogs, why does Kent State bother to make this into a big event? I mean, these kids were protesting. Right on. Why are they setting up a special commemorative center, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Those grounds are now what? They have been officially designated a historic site. And there are people who feel very strongly that all of this is wrong. These kids were protesting the war. They were anti-American. So if that fits your definition of a culture war, the differences in opinion that were so evident in that interview in 1970, those differences still exist. And that culture war still exists. It is simply expressed in blogs now. There was somebody in an article that, I do not remember quite how the connection was made, but somebody tried to connect what happened at Kent State in May of 1970 with what happened in New York in September of 2001. And there were people who took loud exception of that. That one was a terrorist attack on the US and the other was a bunch of disgruntled kids. In other words, the politics, the different world viewpoints, et cetera. In that sense, little has changed in 40 years. SM (01:30:31): And I have here that, and I think this is also what is really happening on university campuses today, that controversy can be seen as economically damaging. And Kent State is box office poison. And this was the article I was reading. Because that movie that came out in (19)81 did not succeed, but it was not very well made either on Kent State. But the question I am really asking is if Kent State is symbolic of something that was controversial, like the anti-war movement, what is that saying about, have we learned anything from that period of today? Because if universities are still afraid of controversy, and we know that universities and all colleges are having a tough time now because of the economy we are living in, the world we are living in today, and that if everything is bottom line, the university is a business, but the students of the (19)60s were really challenging the university. That the university is about ideas. It is about preparing students of the world they are going to face. To listening to all points of view that we do not do things for the sake of controversy, but things can be controversial. Had the universities learned anything from what happened in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s and the tragedies that took place on campus? HK (01:32:27): Wow, there certainly is not an easy answer for that. First of all, again, the term universities has to cover so many different institutions and they range from the liberal to extremely conservative. I would not compare the University of Wisconsin to Bob Jones University. SM (01:32:48): Or Hillsdale College. HK (01:32:55): I think that there is... Technology to me makes change that the things that happen on campus are now reported so quickly with a professor says something that is controversial, and it could be a blog within minutes. I mean, somebody could be texting from the classroom. It is picked up and suddenly it is not a difference of opinion between a student and a professor. But it now becomes a point for a talking head on television late in the evening, professor so-and-so said such and such. The next thing you have got a controversy. I think it is much more difficult. I have not been in a college classroom. I was teaching as late as 2006, but when you are teaching for the Department of Defense, you have got a very different environment. I was teaching graduate courses in intelligence analysis. That is a little different than teaching psychology and undergraduate. So in my American studies course, there were times when my presentations of, let us say World War II or Vietnam, were students discrete. I did not see that necessarily as a problem because if they all sit there nodding their heads, you wonder what is happening. And I learned a lot more about what my students were learning when they disagreed or asked questions because then we had to elaborate on our positions. I do not know if faculty today feel more constrained. I think students feel a right to hold faculty accountable. I think that is a (19)70s, post (19)70s phenomenon. As an undergraduate, I would not have questioned a grade that a faculty member gave me unless it was so egregious. But I certainly had a number of students who came and complained about a grade. And in some cases, this would have been in the mid to late (19)80s where parents began to intervene on behalf of their students. That now is a fairly regular phenomenon where you have got the helicopter parents who email a professor and say, how come my kid only got a B or a C? I personally would have trouble dealing with that. I taught one class, I guess this would have been fairly early. It was not, not the entire class was online, but a couple of the sessions. But I have got colleagues who teach online courses where students will complain to a dean if their emails are not answered within an hour. Well, folks, if I were a teacher and I had 300 students and I had computer students who all wanted an answer to a question in the next hour, I would tell them, sorry, this is not going to happen. But these are colleagues who are full-time workers who teach the evenings. And one of the reasons why I do not teach at the University of Maryland anymore is because I said, no, I do not want to work under those kinds of circumstances. Students are welcome to ask questions to interact, disagree, but my concept of the role of a faculty member is based on, my dad was a professor at the University of Amsterdam. Now, when he lectured, he came in academic regalia and his students stood up when he came in. I do not know if they asked questions, but he would present his lecture and he would walk out and they would stand up again. Those days are long gone. Imagine standing in front of a class and for theater, 300 students, and a student comes in behind me, stands in front of me and says, Dr. Keesing, can you tell me what I have missed? The student came in ten minutes late and I simply said, I would suggest that you sit down now. The idea that I am more important than these other 299 students. I want you to deal with my needs first. I simply would not tolerate that and I did not. And so by 80s standards, I was a hard ass. I do not know whether I would survive in the year 2010. SM (01:38:01): The students of the (19)60s certainly challenged a lot of the... They would challenge speakers and sometimes shot them down, which was wrong. I think they had learned that was wrong. HK (01:38:22): Freedom of speech means you say what you want to, but you also let others. In other words it is the notion that it is okay for me, but it is not okay for you. That is misinterpreting the whole notion of academic freedom. I do not recall ever consciously staying away from a topic because I felt it would be controversial. In fact, early on, it would be quite the opposite to that. I think I have mentioned that I was in Vietnam in 1970, teaching psychology for the University of Maryland. I was a young kid. I was what, 26 years old. I had long hair, sideburns. I was fresh off college campus. And six months after Kent State, I was teaching the troops in Vietnam. One of the classes I taught was social psychology, and one of the blocks that I was determined to teach, and I did, was the block on authoritarianism. And what was his name? I was taking a look at his just last night... But the studies on blind obedience where a figure in authority can tell somebody else, you must do this. And then, yeah, why would you do it? Because I was just following orders. I thought, we were in Vietnam. I have got soldiers. And the question that I posed, and I had pilots in class who flew F4 bombing strikes over the north. I said, what you need to do, what I want you to do, is think about what happens if the US were to lose this war, and you were on the wrong side. You were taken prisoner, and you are now brought into a court of inquiry and you were asked to justify why you dropped bombs on Hanoi. Well, those are my orders. And I said, and what happened to the German officers in Nurnberg when they said they were just following orders? This was not the kind of question that my students wanted me to ask, or one that they wanted to think about. This is 1970, there are pilots who have not wanted to really think about that 35 or 40 years later. But to me, that was part of my responsibility as a teacher. That we are not here just to have a good time. I am teaching psychology and this is something that I required them to address at the time in the world. What if we end up being on the wrong side, the losing side, and you have to justify your actions. What are you going to say? How are you going to do it? So to me, that was a requirement of teaching. You challenge. You make students think. If it makes them uncomfortable, then you are more likely to be doing something that is important and useful than if they can just sit back and, oh yeah, this is going to be fun to me that was not teaching. SM (01:41:55): I had professors like that too, and that was good. Can I need your restroom? Just real fast? HK (01:42:04): It is up the stairs... All right, here we go. Music is the soundtrack of my life. So I can give you what was popular in all the reference points. SM (01:42:13): Well, I have a question here which I wanted to ask, which is, in recent years, actors in Hollywood and other entertainers have been really heavily criticized for making political commentaries on whether it be our involvement in the Iraq War, even back in the Gulf War, or things that are happening in certain administrations. I mentioned Susan Saron and Tim Robins are just two of the examples. Jane Fonda, from back in the (19)60s period. And so a lot of people say to these people in the entertainment business, stay in the entertainment business. So thus, I had to ask this question, what about the musicians? And because musicians can write beautiful music, but you might have heard this question before, they should just be entertainers and not be political commentators. HK (01:43:11): The question or that particular view needs to be properly couched and that is that entertainers become the focus of this criticism if the position they take is the opposite of what the people criticizing feel it should be. So was John Wayne ever criticized widely for his stance in Vietnam? I do not think so, because Wayne was pro-America. Do you remember the film, The Green Berets? So was it wrong? Is it wrong for movie stars to become political? Only if the political side that they are espousing happens to be different from the one you feel is important? I do not think that liberal students or common students, I do not know how many boycotted to John Wayne films because of his US involvement in Vietnam stance. Jane Fonda for her 1972 trip to Hanoi is still vilified by a lot of Vietnam vets. If you were in the mall and you saw, not the Park Service Pavilion, but the one that is right there by the Lincoln Memorial Lab, that is run by vets, there are still Jane Fond urinal stickers. That are on sale there. So Fonda was against the war, therefore, she was a politician who was speaking up where she should not have been. Wayne and others were for the war. They were not subject to the same criticism, at least not from those same sources. Again... at least not from those same sources. Again, if there were anti-war students who boycotted Bob Hope or Joey Heatherton, or any of the entertainers who went to Vietnam, for example, as part of USO shows, I am not aware of it. Were they all political? Maybe, maybe not. I mean, Wayne certainly was, it very clear on where he stood. As far as I know, that was never a problem. SM (01:45:31): I know at the very end of his life, he was invited to Harvard for the Pudding- HK (01:45:37): The Hasty Pudding? SM (01:45:38): Yeah, and they were against him. HK (01:45:40): Okay. SM (01:45:40): Yeah and I know that. But he had a good time there, and that showed the Harvard students were a little advanced because they were willing to bring him in, and they had a great time. But they criticized him, but he was who he was, and they were who they were, and they got along fine. HK (01:45:59): That is the point, respect. Expect that there will be differences, and then respect those differences. That not everyone has to think the same way I do, it would be a dreadfully dull world if everyone agreed with you. And it would be difficult to have interesting conversations. But you can respectfully agree to disagree. It does not involve shouting. It does not need to involve confrontation. I disagreed with the war. I remember spending a moratorium day in New York City, listening to Peter, Paul and Mary, walking up Fifth Avenue with Shirley MacLaine, ending our walk at the UN building where the cast of Hair sang "Aquarius, Let the Sunshine In." So that must have been October 1969. But I was prepared to go to Vietnam. It was a war I disagreed with. I had no antipathy toward soldiers. My own thought was, "I can be more effective teaching and getting across my views of war and obedience, et cetera, as in the example I mentioned, in Vietnam, than standing and shouting and being in the US and protesting." So it was a conscious decision. I knew when I signed up at the University of Maryland that a condition of employment was that I would teach at least one turn in Vietnam. And it took getting my head together. But I said, "All right, I will be there to teach, not to proselytize." My hair was long. I found myself in a confrontation the second day I was at the base where I was stationed. I was in the officer's club, I had just had dinner. I was confronted by a pilot who had had too much to drink, and he walked up to me and sort of in my face, said, "What do you think you are doing here, [inaudible 01:48:28]?" And I said, "Sir, I am having dinner." " What is that shit on your face?" And I said, "Oh, I guess you are referring to my sideburns." Tried to deescalate, if you will. And before it could get nasty, I mean, this whole group had gathered around us. And at some point, the group parts and the base commander, bird colonel comes walking over and says, "What is the problem here?" And I said, "No problem, sir." And it broke up very quickly. But the next morning, I was called into the education center, and my boss there, the education advisor said, "People understand you were in a fight last night." And I said, "Oh yeah." "Well, was there trouble at the officer club?" And I said, "I would not characterize it as that, but this is what happened." She says, "Well, I got word from General Clay, head of the Air Force in Saigon, and he has instructed me to tell you that you have got to get your hair cut, shave off your side burns." And I said, "No, ma'am. I cannot believe that that is the case." Said, "Well, I want you to cut your hair." And I said, "Well, let me think about it." So I had not even taught my first class yet. That evening, I walked into my classroom for the first time with my roster, my helmet, and my flak vest, which had been issued at the same time. The first thing that came up was, "Mr. Keesing, do not get your hair cut." What is this all about? Something happened the night before, have not even met these students, but this is a small base and there were not many civilians. The first thing my students said was, "Do not get your hair cut." Because I represented the outside coming in and I guess the antithesis of the authority, and they were on my side. I had not even opened a book yet. So I was conflicted, but I did not, I did not go and get my hair cut short or shave my sideburns off, and I have got plenty of photos to prove that. Again, to make a long story short, four months later, I had taught what I thought were a couple of really good classes. As I am walking from the post office back to my trailer across this open field, there is an officer coming my way and he is wearing eagles. So as we pass, he stops and says, "Are you Mr. Keesing by any chance?" And I said, "Yes, sir." He came over and he reached out and he said, "I just want to tell you, I have heard nothing good things about your teaching." To me that was justification. SM (01:51:27): Wow. HK (01:51:27): In other words, it may have taken four months, but there were a sufficient number of people who had gotten beyond the haircut and the sideburns and who were aware of what was going on in the classroom. So that this colonel, and I very much appreciated him at that point, said, "I have heard nothing but good things about your teaching." Because that is what I was there for, not to be a one-man protest. So that really made- SM (01:51:54): Great story. HK (01:51:55): A huge difference for me. In terms of confidence, and I am doing this the right way. Not being easy, not staying away from subjects, not sort of hiding behind words, but teaching is challenging, confronting, getting people's heads involved. SM (01:52:15): Yeah. HK (01:52:15): It was a great place to have to do that and to get, as it turns out, positive reinforcement. SM (01:52:21): That is a great story. HK (01:52:24): It is certainly one I will remember. SM (01:52:25): Yeah. That is a great learning lesson too. These are just quick responses. What do you think are the greatest anti-war musicians, in your opinion? HK (01:52:38): During the time of the war? SM (01:52:39): Yeah. I am basically referring to the time when boomers were young, which could be any time even in the (19)50s. So I am talking about the (19)50s, (19)60s and (19)70s, basically. HK (01:52:51): The most powerful songs were people like Phil Ochs. SM (01:52:57): Yep. HK (01:52:57): Tom Paxton, Seeger. They were the folkies. They were not the most popular, but when you listened to some of the Phil Ochs songs, for example, the messages are very, very clear. The most powerful voices now are the vets who are writing about the battles that they fought, the buddies who were killed, the problems that they have had. Again, I am quite well-informed about World War II music and I have not run across a single World War II song by a veteran that says anything. I mean, they just do not exist. Vets of World War II did not write music, did not express themselves in music. So this is a completely new phenomenon. Same thing true for Korea. The popular artists who are best remembered are probably Creedence Clearwater, Fortunate Son, Run Through the Jungle, Who Will Stop the Rain. A series of songs by Crosby, Stills and Nash with Young, including Ohio, Teach Your Children, Find the Cost of Freedom. These were a little bit later. These were early (19)70s songs. Who would have a body of music? I mean, as we move up from the early (19)70s to in the (19)80s, people will associate Springsteen with, whether it is "Born in the USA", his remake of "War." Springsteen, has at least a half dozen or so songs which are relevant to the Vietnam generation of boomers. Although Springsteen may be a little bit post war. Joan Baez has a few Vietnam related songs, but she is more closely identified with civil rights. Peter, Paul, and Mary were involved in every social concern of the (19)60s. So they have, again, folk music, folk artists that there were not many pop artists who did not have any significant body of work that relates to John Lennon, obviously. SM (01:55:48): Right. "Imagine." HK (01:55:50): "Give Peace a Chance", "Happy Xmas (War is Over). And some Beatles songs have been associated with Vietnam. But I think that that is a bit tenuous. Was "Revolution" about Vietnam? No. Could you apply it to Vietnam? Maybe. SM (01:56:13): This leads me right into civil rights. HK (01:56:18): Okay. SM (01:56:18): The singers that you felt were the best in this area. You have mentioned Joan Baez. Would Nina Simone being there too? HK (01:56:28): Nina Simone was certain a voice for Blacks. But I do not think Nina Simone had a very high profile, let us see, on college campuses. And a lot of the folk oriented, whether it was Peter, Paul, and Mary, the Limeliters, I mean, folk groups like that sold albums because they were popular on campus. Nina Simone, a powerful voice, but not one that would be quickly associated with. James Brown had some very strong language. "Say out loud, I am black and I am proud." But again, civil rights, I think Joan Baez, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Pete Seeger, these were the people that you saw at demonstrations. These are the people whose voices, whose songs were sung. SM (01:57:32): Mahalia Jackson, would she be in there too? She was at the March on Washington. She was the female singer. HK (01:57:38): She was, and this may be where my perspective is too narrow. I was on campus and I saw civil rights primarily through the lenses of a student on a college campus. And therefore, I not only saw it through those lenses, I heard it primarily through college campuses. And as I said, Duke was at that point, a very traditional southern school. So while people in the room next door were playing Peter, Paul, and Mary, I do not recall ever hearing Mahalia Jackson or Nina Simone being played by anyone in my dorm or my fraternity house. So I have got to be careful to say they were not seminal musical figures within my sphere at that time. SM (01:58:37): I think a group that was very popular, because I know I saw them in 1966, was Little Anthony and the Imperials. And they were singing on white campuses, predominantly white. And back then, of course the lead singer had an unbelievable voice. HK (01:58:50): But Little Anthony, I do not know any songs that he recorded or sang in concerts that would have any civil rights overtones that could be considered in any way political. There was "Tears on My Pillow", "Shimmy Coco Bop." Good songs, but not ones that would- SM (01:59:17): Right. HK (01:59:20): The Limeliters or the Four Preps. I mention them because they sang about Vietnam in a humorous way. So there was a political message, but it was couched in such a way that you could choose to ignore it. You could enjoy the music without being caught up in the politics. SM (01:59:40): How about Diana Ross when she originally split from the- HK (01:59:43): Supremes? SM (01:59:44): Supremes and she "Ain't No Mountain High" enough. I mean, I love the words in that, and I was trying to figure if there was any meaning in the "Ain't no mountain high." Of course, that is the song that everybody identifies with her when she first made the split. And the other group that was very popular in college campus, the Chambers Brothers. And they are the time- HK (02:00:02): "Time has come today." SM (02:00:04): Time. Unbelievable. They were big. HK (02:00:09): That is post my experience. And I come back to the notion that if there is, beginning in the late (19)60s, there was a much greater ability to self-select. In other words, who were you going to listen to? You were not limited to a single one or 2:00 AM stations. College campuses was still a fairly homogeneous group of artists who were being invited because they were selling tickets. But I guess it would depend on what campus you were on. Duke was not a coffee house. So we had the Serendipity Singers, we had a couple of black groups, The Chiffons, but I do not recall any music. I graduated in (19)65, that had political overtones. Now I think that could well have begun changing. That is a difference. Let us say between a Bill Cosby and a Dick Gregory to Black comedians, artists. You would get a very different experience depending on which of those two would appear on your college campus. Duke would have been much more inclined to have a Bill Cosby, I think, than I think Gregory, at least at that point. Now, it was also amazing. My first time back after graduation was 1970. And I went to the maternity house and where five years earlier it had been beer and whatever you bought at the ABC store, it was mostly pot. In five years, the cultural climate had changed tremendously. A year later, the fraternity went off campus. Because the national did not allow them to pledge blacks. It was a fraternity with southern roots. And so that particular group decided that if we cannot invite anyone we want, then we will distribute themselves from the next. So Duke went through some very, very big changes in the late (19)60s. And I left really at that transition point to the transition between relatively apolitical and politicized in (19)65. The war was still often some far off place. And Cuba, as I said, was more the focus that people did not know where Vietnam was. Beer, pot had not yet made its way onto the college campus. So there was a sea change in the mid (19)60s, and I was a graduate student at GW living at home, commuting to my classes. And that is a very different environment within which to sort of keep up with what is going on. I was not into dorms. I had a part-time job. I was working, trying to do graduate birth. And so for those two years in Washington, I was in a very different environment. And those were pretty critical years itself. (19)65 to (19)67, I was in DC. And then in (19)67 I continued my graduate work in New York. And that again was a completely different environment and community. SM (02:03:40): How about the women's movement singers that kind of identified with that? I only mentioned one in particular, Helen Reddy, "Because I am a woman." And that was, we are talking the (19)72 to (19)76 period with that. And another singer at that time was Anne Murray, who was very popular. And Olivia Newton John came out around then too. So they were all three of those then. And those were three very popular female singers at the time with hit after hit after hit. HK (02:04:13): Although I am more inclined to pick out songs and pick out artists because they were very few women who would be seeing, it would be, I guess the (19)80s before you had Holly Ne and Meg Christian. Holly Near was in concert with Ronnie Gilbert, the Weavers. And they did a show which had strong feminist roots and overtones that when I was trying to teach students about some of the issues, I mean politicians like Bella Abzug, writers like Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan. But I had to pick out individual songs. I mentioned The Exciters, "Tell him." SM (02:05:10): See, I had never heard of them. HK (02:05:12): Well- SM (02:05:12): Oh, I heard that song. HK (02:05:19): "Tell him right now." SM (02:05:20): Yeah. HK (02:05:21): So it is, "You girl, need to take charge of your own life. Do not wait for him to ask you. You ask him." I thought for the most important songs was Loretta Lynn "The Pill." You have, what is it? You something. You have set this chicken your last time. Now that I have got the pill. I mean, Loretta Lynn was pregnant with her first child when she was 50 or 60. And somewhere in the early 70s, her song of her declaration, it ain't going to happen anymore, is "The Pill." And to me, that was a song which pulled it all together. Now, she was criticized by country audiences did not like it, but this was a personal statement on her part. What other songs would I include? Because it is one thing to pick on music where a man has written words that a woman is to sing. How much authenticity was there in Diana Ross's in the Get? Not Diane Ross Love Child, it is Diane or Diana Ross singing about implying that she was one of these and now she does not want to become the mother of another love child who has nothing. But did audiences find that authentic? I think The Pill by Loretta Lynn, they could say, okay, this is first story. This is how she really feels. So music that, how much of the anti, where music was authentic versus commercial. SM (02:07:11): A really good song from that period is The Love Unlimited Orchestra. They sang a song about women. We are the carryon, the generation after generation. I had it right out in my car, in fact. I play that. I Love Unlimited Orchestra. HK (02:07:27): Right. I cannot place it. And that is where I go to one of my references. But yeah, it is. SM (02:07:34): Barry White's love on unlimited orchestra. Yeah. But the women singer and the main singer is Barry's wife, who's one of the lead singers in the center. And it is a very good song. How about the- HK (02:07:48): So I guess I would put in that category of women who were influential and whose pictures I showed, what is her name? Bobby King, the tennis player. SM (02:07:59): Billy Jean King. HK (02:08:00): Billy Jean King. Yeah. And so it was okay, but there was, to my mind, precious little music to support. In other words, I Am Woman Becomes the Anthem. But that is, that is still pretty commercial. And I think that was playing with Billy Jean was carried in for her. Yeah. Tennis match with Bobby Riggs, for example. SM (02:08:22): See, I thought you were starting to say Bobby Gentry where she was a singer. Oh, it is Billy Joe. Yeah, she, yes. Well- HK (02:08:30): I mean, women's lib, there were songs about women's lib. One of the most forceful that went to number one was Harper Valley PTA. SM (02:08:37): Yes-yes-yes. HK (02:08:38): Jane Riley the day my mama socked it too. A bunch of hypocrites, et cetera. But you really have to go search for titles there. Maybe. I did not think there was that much Vietnam until I really began looking at it. SM (02:08:54): How about the environmental movement? Because Earth Day was 1970. And I always think of John Denver when I think of John Denver, Rocky Mountain High. And I think another one I think of is Michael Murphy Wildfire. Those are the two, when I think of the environment, I think of those two. HK (02:09:11): Whose garden was this, which I think is Tom Paxton. SM (02:09:14): Okay. HK (02:09:15): Or neighborhood, big yellow taxi. They took away the trees and put up a parking lot. So again, give me one second. SM (02:09:24): Yeah. And I am take a break here on this thing. HK (02:09:33): Okay, take a look. So this is the syllabus or the outline for my class. So here we have (19)69 through (19)72. I would begin each class with what I call the chart sweep, which is a couple of seconds of each number one. And that is, that has survived me. That will be on the web long after I am gone. All right, so shift in cultural values. Materialism, Mercedes-Benz. SM (02:09:59): Oh, wow. HK (02:10:00): And door number three. SM (02:10:05): Oh yeah. HK (02:10:05): Moon Landing, Woodstock, Vietnam, Kent State, death of a Beatle, interest in religion, radicalization and shift shifter extremes. Helter Skelter. The Beatles song called Free Charlie Manson. The underside where the Fugs, well- SM (02:10:26): That is what is his name. Ed Sanders. HK (02:10:28): Ed Sanders. SM (02:10:29): Yep. HK (02:10:29): Exactly. All right. And then we get new social concerns. Birthday, very commoner. SM (02:10:39): Oh wow. HK (02:10:39): Mercy. Mercy. New the Ecology. SM (02:10:41): Oh yes, that is right. HK (02:10:42): Rachel Carson. John Denver's version of whose Garden Women's Movement. Okay. I am Woman, the pill, unborn child. SM (02:10:51): C as in cross. HK (02:10:52): Anti-abortion. SM (02:10:52): Yes. HK (02:10:53): So Vietnam, winding down, Watergate, Morays in transition, the streak. Sex, drugs, rock and roll. Love to Love You babies on there. Welcome the Wild Side, Lou Reed. So these are my topical songs that I use. Disco sounds called The Decorative Excess and Self-Indulgence. Disco techs. Studio 54 YMCA. SM (02:11:20): Village People. HK (02:11:21): Yeah. SM (02:11:24): Yeah. HK (02:11:24): TV Ford. SM (02:11:27): Very Shaping. HK (02:11:28): Yeah. Sounds the past. This is the oldies guy. SM (02:11:33): Any Native American. I mentioned Bill Miller. Course, he does not have any hits. But he is a real popular Native American singer. And the other one was, I think America, the song America, the Horse With No Name. And then- HK (02:11:54): Yeah, the Group America Where the Horse, yeah. SM (02:11:55): Yeah. HK (02:12:01): Late (19)40s. This begins to get into it. I began with cowboy culture, the qualities of heroes, the cowboy, hoppy Jean and Me, Happy trails. Differences from the Midwest to country music. Wow. Black music, unless it conforms to white standards. So baseball role models television. Right. There is Arthur Godfrey slap her down again, my gosh. Fighting the Red Menace. And then next thing you know, we are in the early (19)50s, and so this is where I began playing portions of every one of the songs. Korea, TV. Here we go, teaching conformity. How do duty time? How do you do these dos and do nots? Ducking cover drills. SM (02:12:55): Dennis the Menace. HK (02:12:55): Good versus bad. Dennis the Menace, open up your heart. Religion and how important- SM (02:13:01): Winkler's house party just passed away. HK (02:13:03): Yup. And their impact on the elections, baseball- SM (02:13:09): Wow. HK (02:13:10): McCarthyism, country music. And then rhythm and blues, sex, drugs, rock and roll. And then here is where we begin to get old role models replaced from Eddie Fisher for Christmas to the Wild Ones and black then Trousers. And so this is how I taught American history and values. And here we get rock and roll and youth culture, juvenile delinquency with all of the stuff in between. So as you can tell, music becomes the- SM (02:13:45): Yeah, I even broke it down here, Latino issues. I think of when I think of that, I think of Jose Feliciano. If there are any- HK (02:13:56): The first Latino artist, rock and roll artist was at least, and if you go by the historians, Richie Balans with La Bamba and Right. That would be the first one. But until you get folks like Ricky Martin, I was never consciously aware of, I mean, what is her name? Selena? SM (02:14:22): Yeah. The one that died? HK (02:14:23): Yeah. Again, it was not music that ever appealed to me. It was not music that I had listened to. So it is one I would call the sub-genres, the niche musics that I am sure was very popular for some artists. But you can only listen to so much. Or I, let me put it this way, I chose to only listen to so much. And I chose things that connected me. I listened to Credence Clearwater, because that was late (19)60s. That sounded like mid (19)50s. And I listen to Bob Seger because that is early (19)80s that reminded me of Rock and Roll and John Mellencamp. Those are the musicians whose music is closest to what I consider my music. So there, there is worlds and worlds out there that I personally cannot relate to that that may have played as important a role in somebody else's life as this music played in life. SM (02:15:24): Well, you mentioned earlier, you already mentioned a lot of these people, but these people all really influence the boomer generation, the folk singers. Unfortunately, Phillips did not live very long, but took his own life. But Phil Ochs, Arlo Guthrie, these are popular on college campuses too. Pete Seeger, Melanie, Richie Havens, Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nero, who is I think unbelievable. Leonard Cohen. Still going strong. HK (02:15:50): Yep. SM (02:15:51): Of course, Joan Baez and I got Holly New here, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Donovan. And I think one of the songs that I really love about Elvis was in the Ghetto in the beginning, because I could listen to that all day long. And he started giving Soso messages and his music in the ghetto. And so these were all had an influence on me. And I am very fortunate to have seen all of these people, except I never saw Peter, Paul, and Mary. But I have seen all the rest of them. But I am very fortunate to have seen them live. These are just some, are some of the general questions I ask everyone now. These can be really fast. Just share your thoughts. HK (02:16:38): I am not used to, well, you can see that I am happy to talk for as much time as you will give me. SM (02:16:40): Well, yeah. Actually my interviews have actually been, all of them have been fairly long, with the exception of, because what has happened is we get into a lot of things and people say, well, we can go on. And I narrow these down though. But describe the following years in your own words, as a person who is affiliated with the boomer generation, I consider you part of it because I would concern anybody after 1940, really pre-boomers. But when you think of the years 1946 to 1960, forget the music. What does that period mean to you overall? HK (02:17:16): My first memories were 1946, my first ride in the car in Holland, that with his work for the government, had occasionally had access to a car. And my parents were looking for a place because our home had been bombed and they were. So I was farmed out to friends. And right before Christmas (19)46, they had evidently found a place and the dad came and picked me up in a car and there was a Christmas tree in the back. And I was three years old. That is the first thing I remember. I was in Holland from (19)46 until (19)51, going to school, learning about socialization, loving sports, loving music. I still have some of my report cards. It was a Montessori education. And my teacher described me as always busy, always with things in my pockets, always interested in things. So I thought, all right. They had me pegged off, pegged fairly early on. And that I am not singing a tremendous change. Going from a seven-year old in Holland and 10 days later, being in a country where I did not speak the language, it made family that much more important. We were a very close family. Meals together, vacations, holidays, weekends. That was true for the next 20 years. So family focused somewhat of an extrovert, and it did not take very long to become what acculturated, as I said, popular culture, bubble down cards, stuff like that was very important. Dad did not feel that TV was in our best interest. So we did not get a first TV until 1960, which is a long time after. SM (02:19:24): So you did not see 1950s TV then. HK (02:19:30): No, not quite. SM (02:19:32): Did not see Howdy Doody? HK (02:19:35): The neighbors crossed the alley, right. But no TV at home. So it was reading. I had always been a reader and still preferred books to publish. So the first couple of years in elementary school here, were adjusting to a different country. I can remember the point. And that would be seventh grade. So- HK (02:20:03): The point, and that would be seventh grade. So four years in, four or five years, in 1956 where I suddenly realized that I was dreaming in English and that I had switched cultures. My parents spoke Dutch to me, I answered them in Dutch, I spoke English with my brothers and with everybody around me. So I grew up bilingual. But in 1957, the dominant language became English and I concluded that from the fact that the soundtrack of my dreams had switched from Dutch to English. Now what is really interesting is I can go back to Holland for a couple of weeks and find myself dreaming in Dutch again. I have been able to maintain- SM (02:20:50): You have not forgotten what the language... HK (02:20:54): In fact, one of the nice things is that when I am in Holland, I get compliments on the fact that after 60 years that my Dutch is still very, very good. SM (02:21:02): Pretty good. HK (02:21:03): Yeah. SM (02:21:04): How about the years 1961 to seven? HK (02:21:07): Well, the most important years would really be from about (19)56 to (19)60. This is junior high school and high school. I look back on those days very positively and I mean, there are people who cringe at junior high and high school, I went to a public school in Washington. It was almost without exception, in fact, I cannot think of, I liked going to school, I liked learning, I did well. Now those are probably connected and I am not sure which causes which. Very active in high school, I ran track in cross country. I captained teams. I was treasury in student council. So, successful high school, had friends, went to parties. Adolescence was pretty easy. I collected records. I was invited to parties, at least it helped, the fact that I brought my carrying case, 45s and I have very pleasant memories. And from (19)56 to (19)60 each summer I can tell you what the most popular songs were. I kept a journal that is illustrated with sheet music and records. So junior high and high school, very positive. I got into the school I wanted to go to in 1961 and I had four very good years at Duke. Learned a great deal, had some excellent professors. As I said, it was still a fairly traditional campus at that point, although, what can I compare it to? But politically, Duke was not all that active. Got out, spent the next five years in graduate school, two years getting a master's at GW, again, a good experience. Three years in New York getting a PhD. Met my future wife and music was there. I took my records with me to school. I played them. I won contests. I established an expertise. So I feel fortunate that I can sit back and if asked, "What would you do differently if you could?" I really cannot think of anything. And there were obviously, I flunked an occasional test, got an F on a paper once. But when I think back, I have been incredibly fortunate. And if that creates difficulty, it is that somehow, I assume that my adolescence, my youth, my experiences are typical and in fact they are probably extremely atypical. Third of four children, upper middle-class family. International, we traveled extensively when I was a kid because my father was entitled to home leave. So every three years we would sail first class on ships like the Queen Mary, go to Holland, visit Europe, come back. I was encouraged to think of these as learning experiences. Dad would encourage us to learn about the currencies, to learn a couple dozen words in each language. When you go to Paris, you try and speak French, you eat French foods, you taste wines. And it took a long time for me to realize that this was not the way most of my classmates were growing up. SM (02:25:30): I am going to give you a test here, right, because a song that was very popular was Debbie Reynolds- HK (02:25:39): Tammy. SM (02:25:40): ...Tammy. What year? HK (02:25:41): The year is 1957. SM (02:25:43): Yeah. HK (02:25:44): Yeah. Shall I pull it out for you? Take me about less than 30 seconds. SM (02:25:48): Yeah, do you want to pull Tammy out. And the other one I have here is Jimmy Rogers and Honeycomb. HK (02:25:53): Honeycomb, right. SM (02:25:56): They were real big hits. HK (02:25:59): (19)71 to (19)74, I was overseas teaching, so (19)70, (19)71 in Asia. But for the next couple of years, my life was very different. I was living for 12 weeks on a military base in a different country. It was have notes, will travel. I had a VW Camper outfitted. I carried a typewriter, I carried a briefcase with notes for my various courses. I had some books with me. And if I taught Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings on Thursday night, I would hop into my car and if I was in Greece for example, I would start going to visiting various places. The car was a camper, so I slept in the car. But for four years I learned a great deal about teaching under an interesting set of circumstances, whether it was in the war or on the air base in Spain, for example, where textbooks did not arrive until the eighth week of a 12-week class that I had to teach a course in abnormal psychology, without a textbook. There were libraries on base, I learned to be self-sufficient. I learned difference between teaching undergraduate students and teaching adults. Saw the world. I learned that I could coexist with the military, which was important because I had military students. I was living on military basis. I disagreed with the war, which was still ongoing. But I tried to make sure that that did not have an impact on how I viewed my students because it would have been too easy to, we can tune them out because we are military and he is anti. SM (02:28:10): But this is a question I have asked everyone. There is two basic questions. Number one, when all the divisions that took place in America during the (19)60s and (19)70s, have we healed as a nation from all of these divisions? Or will most members of the boomer generation be going to their graves not healing like many did in the Civil War? This question came up when we took a group of students to see Senator Edmund Muskie in the mid (19)90s through one of our Leadership on the Road programs. And we thought he was going to talk about 1968 because he was the vice president for running Maine. And he did not even respond in that way. The whole issue of whether, we are talking about 74 million people here in the boomer generation. But do you feel, you, through the music, you have seen it, the music has talked about these divisions and the term, what we call the tremendous divide. Do you expect a nation or a group of so many people to heal? Or is it abort? HK (02:29:20): I do not know. I think the current cultural forces are, again, not to bring together, but to push further apart. That is an emphasis on differences, polarization. And I find that personally distressing because of the way I was raised. The emphasis was on find commonalities. And now we have papered it, any politician who tries to find commonalities is going to be voted out in primaries because Democrats do not, neither side wants to find common ground. Both sides are pushing to differentiate themselves. And to me, this is, now part of it may be Holland, small country, the amount of personal space, far less, always a greater emphasis on what you do needs to be consistent with society, i.e. that the notion of individual liberties are valued less than doing something for the common good. Again, I think that is a trend which is going in the wrong direction, that there may be an overemphasis. I think that we could get a whole lot further if there were more emphasis on common good as opposed to what is in it for me. SM (02:31:02): What did the Vietnam War teach you as a person? HK (02:31:08): It forced me to reconsider. It is very easy to be against the war when you are on campus and you are in a very safe environment, an environment that was very far removed from the realities of war. But, my lessons on war, were learned from my parents because they had lived through the Second World War and they remembered the First World War. Dad was not a pacifist, but he was certainly, he was wary of, I mean, he knew what war was like having lived in an occupied country. He had been jailed by the Germans. We were very lucky that we escaped alive. So there was nothing glorious. There was nothing positive. We see war films that there is nothing heroic about, but war is nasty. And dad would say one of the reasons that many Americans seem to have different attitude is, if the US had ever been invaded, and if the US had ever been occupied, then there might be a far lesser tendency to get involved in wars. That it is easy to support wars at a distance. And one of the big changes of course in the US was when the war in Vietnam, was brought home on television. When Americans began seeing death and destruction and villages being burned and people being shot. Those images to my mind, cannot help but change how you feel about a war. And so there is still people who argue that it was the TV and the media which turned country against war. Well, I do not see how a country could ever be in favor of war. You may support ... World War II was different, but to be in favor of war to me just does not make sense. It means you do not really understand what war is all about. Because having been in one, I do not think you would ever want to be in another one. SM (02:33:41): Coming from another country, but coming by the age of seven, as you even said earlier, you felt like you are America now as opposed to being in Holland. What are your thoughts on the boomer generation? What have been your thoughts throughout your lifetime when you were growing up with them, when you saw them on college campuses, not only those who served in the war, but those who were against the war, and then many of them did not do either, but did you have any perceptions about this generation of 74 million people? What were their strengths? What were their weaknesses? Can you do that? The people that you have known who are boomers? Some people say they cannot talk about 74 million, but they can only talk about the people they have known or seen, and then they are not afraid to talk. Yeah, just your thoughts on them. HK (02:34:37): It requires stepping back. I mean, boomers are simply the people I grew up with and the boomer generation lived at a time when I was alive and they were experiencing the things that I was experiencing. So it is easier for me, especially as an academic, to take a step back and talk about Gen X because that is not me. And I can look at them- SM (02:34:58): Born after (19)65. Yeah. HK (02:35:02): ...And I have spent considerable time looking at generational differences in terms of how they impact, let us say business. I have taught generational differences. I train now, corporations to understand why there may be difficulties when you are working with people whose experiences are so different. SM (02:35:24): Oh yeah. HK (02:35:26): Try working for an intelligence agency when the new people coming in expect to be able to bring in their PDAs and to text and to tell people about what they do, which is the exact opposite of the whole culture of, "No, you have a security clearance and therefore you cannot talk about what you do." So I studied that from a more or less subjective point of view. I supervised for many, many years and had to learn that you need to deal differently. But my expectation by and large was when you come to work for this organization, you have to go more than halfway to adapt to it. I mean, there are certainly new technologies. I was an early adapter of computers and there were people who were in government when I left in 2006 who were still not using computers. But I do not text. My cell phone is a jitterbug. I do not keep it on. Our daughter still does not understand how we do not want to be totally connected to everyone at all times. I am much more private in that. So when I look back on our generation, I think we have had incredible opportunities. The changes in technology, to me, the most important change is when I discovered the internet as a research tool. And I have made full use of that. But are we a great generation? It is not something I thought about. It may be interesting. I am helping plan my high school's 50th reunion next year. We have not met as a class since our 20th, so it will be 30 years- SM (02:37:25): Wow. HK (02:37:25): ...Between contacts with my high school classmates and just getting together with these folks may give me a perspective that I do not have right now. We certainly were more different from our parents than our parents were from their parents. So there were major changes that took place in the mid (19)50s. As I said, youth culture, youth was discovered by advertisers, by record companies, that there was this new market. And once that new market was discovered, who had to be treated differently. But how do I set myself apart? I do not know. SM (02:38:27): Well, one of the things is, I always ask too, a lot of boomers felt they were the most unique generation in history because when they were young, there was this positive feeling that they were going to do the change agents for the betterment of society, that they were going to end the war, sexism, homophobia, they were going to change the world from peace to love. Well, obviously that has not happened. And I have actually had some strong criticism of this generation from many different directions, although, and others really just praising it up and down. HK (02:39:04): I think that that is an expected conceit, that our generation is the best. We are the best. I certainly encountered this and you have been at the classroom long enough that for college-aged students, for many history begins at the point at which they become involved. In other words, do not tell me about the 1940s. I am not interested in anything that happened before I was born. Okay, that is the conceit that what you did is irrelevant and the only relevance is what I am experiencing or doing right now. Maybe you need to hit 60 or 50 at least before you realize that that is a little narrow. You begin to appreciate your parents more when you were raising your own kids and your parents become smarter as you get older. So I think a lot of the criticism is based on who is making it at what point they are in their lives. Yeah. Where did I hear this thing? I think my brother, my baby brother who is 64, sent this to me and a report of a conversation at a football game, a couple of college students giving somebody our age a hard time. We are the ones who have done this, this and this and what have the other done. And I think the answer was, "Well, my generation's the one that invented the computer that has allowed you to do these things right now. And what have you invented that has had a comparable impact?" I mean an iPhone or iTunes, these are nice things, but have any recent inventions changed how we think, how we operate, how we direct more so than the computer? So before you get too critical of the old generation, whether it is the boomers or whatever, what have you really accomplished? SM (02:41:21): Do you like the term boomer? This is a big question because I have mixed feelings on this too. What is great about the boomer generation is they can argue about everything and they do. Oh, but do you like the term boomer? It is like a lot of people that criticize the term boomer do not like the greatest generation for World War II or the Generation X or today's Millennials, or the Silent generation. HK (02:41:49): I look at it as a label. I have never particularly cared for labels. I am who I am. And labels are shorthand and sometimes labels become shorthand for lazy thinking. Somehow you can clump all of these people together. Now, boomers, the only thing that boomers share for certain is that they were born in the same timeframe. But beyond that you have got lots of stories that you can compare. But I think that my upbringing, my background and what I did with it is probably very, very different from somebody who could have been born on November 15th, 1943, just like I was. And so the only thing that we would have in common is we were born on the same day, but we were born in different countries in different families. And our experience from the time of our birth to right now has been very different. And so although we are both boomers, we may have nothing else in common except that birthday. So this is why this kind of in-depth oral history, I think you are going to find that you cannot accurately capture by a label like boomers. SM (02:43:10): I have asked the same people, is there a term they would use. And of course the terms that other people have used, the Vietnam generation, the Woodstock generation, the protest generation, the movement generation, they are all using adjectives to describe the boomers experience. HK (02:43:34): Maybe it is authors like you who have to try and put this together to pull out the commonalities and show where the differences are. That just because somebody was born and grew up in this timeframe, it does not mean that we can accurately predict A, B, C and D. The best instance of that occurred to me very late. I was teaching a course on music in wartime for the University of Maryland sometime in the early (19)80s, I think. And this went, the class required me to go back to the Civil War and just using the term civil war in my class, I got some very strange looks. And it turned out that some of my students had never studied the Civil War. They were familiar with the war between the states. And I said, "Okay, let us make this a teaching moment. Where did you grow up, Indiana? All right, what did you learn? Okay, A,B,C. Where did you grow up, Alabama? What did you learn?" And it was two entirely different histories, two entirely different notions of the same event because one person had been born and raised and taught in Indiana from a certain perspective, a certain textbook, somebody else had learned the same time period in a school in Alabama. Imagine what it is going to be like if you come out of the Texas school system a couple of years from now as opposed to, let us say the Massachusetts school system. These people will have very, very different concepts of some very important ideas, issues, et cetera. Were you taught creationism as opposed to evolution or intelligent design? If that is part of your background, that is part of your family and part of your education. Were you homeschooled? Were you taught public schools, probing schools? Your view of the world will be very much affected by what was there. And so the generation you are part of will end up being less important than, all right, within that generational timeframe, who was influencing you? Were your parents college educated? Did you go to college? But those are the questions that are ultimately more important. SM (02:46:09): The word that comes out here so often is context. And what makes this project I am involved in by interviewing people like you and others, is the in depth, not only the complexity, trying to explain the complexity of the times, but that everybody's experiences is unique and real and truthful and genuine. And by doing this, I am hoping to make these interviews into seven sections where there is learning, these are learning. I want high school students and college students to read this book so that I do not have to hear any more that the Vietnam War was before World War II. And I have heard that from, and these are students that had very high SAT scores. HK (02:46:57): Yes. SM (02:46:58): I actually, I had a student, well, I will tell you later, a person who got the highest score you can get in an SAT. She is the one that told me about the Vietnam War. How did she get through high school? I am just amazed. So just a couple more minutes here. Not much. This is almost done. I am not going to go any further. I am not going to ask you about other things. But is there any one event that had the greatest impact in your life? Just one event, a historic event, whether it be an assassination or is there any one event that had greater impact than any other? HK (02:47:37): Yes. And it would have to be the move from Holland to the US. And it was turning my world upside down, at seven years old, you would have a limited concept, but the idea of leaving your country, your friends, your school, and moving to a place where you know no one accept your own family members and where you do not speak the language. So that in retrospect, that had to be the key thing that had an impact. SM (02:48:19): Why did the Vietnam War end in your viewpoint? HK (02:48:21): Why did it end? Because it could not continue. One can come up with Congress refused to fund it. You could come up with we are losing or we certainly could not win. You could argue that by 1972, public opinion had turned so far against the war that politically it was untenable to continue. Probably some of each of those. And did it end in (19)72 or did it not end until (19)75? I mean, you can argue, when did the Vietnam War- SM (02:49:15): It was 1973 when we were holding out. HK (02:49:19): January (19)73. SM (02:49:20): Yeah. HK (02:49:21): ...Or was it (19)75, the Fall of Saigon? But I think America retired, got fed up. Congress would no longer fund. Public opinion had, not 180, but certainly the public opinion had shifted dramatically against the war. So all of those, I think, when you bring them together, spelled an end for the Vietnam War. SM (02:49:50): I have got a lot of those questions, but I am going to end it with this one. And that is being succinct, I think you only got about a minute and a half here. What do you think the lasting legacy will be of this generation? And when I say 74 to 78 million, we cannot even figure out how many were actually boomers right now, but what will be the lasting legacy once the best history books are written, say 50 years from now or when the last boomers have passed on. HK (02:50:16): Can I say what I hope our legacy will be? That we raised our kids well. In other words, that we raised a generation that respects some things that were not respected before. Equality, whether it is in voting rights, public accommodations, that we raised a generation which is more open-minded, more adventuresome, more willing to go out and explore the world. More global in terms of its thinking. And my regret is that right now I do not see that. So I do not think that what we believe we accomplished in the (19)60s has successfully been passed on and is now being taught by our children to our grandchildren. I think it is some of the same narrowness, some of the same generational differences. The gulfs are still there. So have we improved the country? Is the US better off now than it was in the (19)50s? In some areas, yes. But in some ways my answer's no, I do not think so. SM (02:51:35): All right. Thank you. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. Hugo Keesing Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Keesing, Hugo ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Popular culture—United States; Historians; Keesing, Hugo--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. Hugo Keesing is a Dutch-American popular culture historian, an educator and a pop music archivist who has an extensive collection of Vietnam war music. He has degrees from Duke University, George Washington University and a Ph.D. in Behavior Research from Adelphi University. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-05-01 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.74a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.74a Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 171:38 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/7df87c2ab888cdd3ec67f59289d86412.jpg ebeffdbc19ee8c70f9014f97fc206f18 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/11be79a6355f5661aa9e9db8eb3ab242.mp3 8eeeb87c626feac31d716352c8a64208 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;1997-02-15&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:15359,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:1},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,14281427],&quot;5&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;6&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;7&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;8&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;9&quot;:0,&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}">1997-02-15</span> Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Wally Kennedy Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Wally Kennedy, a native of Chicago, is a journalist, anchor, and an educator. He is currently a news anchor for the Philadelphia KYW Newsradio and has interviewed many people ranging from Joe Biden to Reagan Carter. Prior to joining KYW Newsradio, he spent twenty years as a television talk host. Kennedy is a graduate of Loyola Academy, and Columbia College, in Chicago.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:15105,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}">Wally Kennedy, a native of Chicago, is a journalist, anchor, and an educator. He is currently a news anchor for the Philadelphia KYW Newsradio and has interviewed many people ranging from Joe Biden to Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. Prior to joining KYW Newsradio, he spent twenty years as a television talk host. Kennedy is a graduate of Loyola Academy, and Columbia College, in Chicago.</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 103:36 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;American Woman; Baby boom generation; Civil Rights Movement; Students for a Democratic Society; John F. Kennedy; Vietnam War; Platoon; Catholic Church; Dr. Spock; Ronald Reagan; Healing; Vietnam veterans; Cambodian Campaign; Activism; Civil Rights protest; Ken Burns; Civil War; Empowerment; Parents; College; Birmingham campaign; Ted Turner; Tom Hayden; Jerry Rubin; Timothy Leary.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:14275305}}">American Woman; Baby boom generation; Civil Rights Movement; Students for a Democratic Society; John F. Kennedy; Vietnam War; Platoon; Catholic Church; Dr. Spock; Ronald Reagan; Healing; Vietnam veterans; Cambodian Campaign; Activism; Civil Rights protest; Ken Burns; Civil War; Empowerment; Parents; College; Birmingham campaign; Ted Turner; Tom Hayden; Jerry Rubin; Timothy Leary.</span> Subject LCSH Radio journalists; Kennedy, Wally--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Wally Kennedy Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: Kiernan Sullivan Date of interview: 15 February 1997 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM: 00:05 Make sure it is up. I-I am- WK: 00:06 This is a little, uh - This is a little less noisy in my office. SM: 00:09 Right. Well, one of the main projects I am trying to work on here is to try to evaluate the, uh, the boomers and their impact over the last 30 years. One of the inspirations to that [inaudible] to lead into the first question is, um, Boomer generation, um, when you hear about it in the news today, many times politicians will make kind of statements about the boomer generation is, uh, being the reason why we have all the problems today based on their lifestyles, the free love issue, the issue of drugs in America, they will, they will kind of pinpoint back to that era that look at a lot of the, um, the protests and lack of respect for authority that was supposedly happening in that time that is carried over today. So, my very first question to you, Wally is, what are your thoughts about individuals who generalize, uh, the boomer generation will, will pinpoint the boomer generation that will be the lightning rod for all of the ills of today's society. WK: 01:02 W-well, first of all, obviously, I-I would be defensive of people who are my age, uh, and in five or 10 years younger and five or 10 years older who have gotten this this, uh, name is the rumors. Um. I think that you have to water seeks its own level. And I think that we have, we have sought our own body. Um. I remember very clearly what it was like to grow up the 1950s in the early 1960s in America to then, and I think up until, until, uh, well, in the (19)70s, uh, especially, American government was, um, uh, somewhat repressive. I think our society was somewhat repressive. Uh, I think it was somewhat Puritan. Uh, I think it was controlled by the post-World War Two veterans. Uh, Bill Clinton is the first non-World War II veteran that we have ever had in the White House. And not saying that he is good, it is just that is just a fact of life. He was the first Boomer we have ever had in our house, in the, in the White House. So, I think that, first of all, to blame the ills of society on the baby boomers. I think it is a tremendous misnomer. Um, I think you have to take each revolution one at a time, um, for example, if and I can go into greater detail i-in other questions, but let us just say, for, for the sake of example, the sexual r-revolution, because that is, that is a flash point. Um, was there a sexual revolution? Yes, but this is pre aids. This is post pill. This is a period of time where the worst thing that could happen to you, if you were using the pill, or that your partner was using the pill, the worst thing that could happen to you is you would get a venereal disease, which was easily curable, easily curable by, uh, going to your doctor, getting a shot or getting a pill. And that was, that was the end of the consequence if, in fact, protection was being used and the pill is being used. Um, we now live in an era where if you sleep with the wrong person, you can die. That was not a reality in the 1960s but, but what brought that revolution about was really a convergence of, I think, of two or three different things. And I can, I can tell you one thing right now, I was brought up in a very religious Catholic home. I am still a practicing Catholic, and I will be probably till the day I die. But not only the Catholic Church, but America in general, was a very repressive sexual society prior to the 1960s, um, it was something that was not talked about. Uh, I love my father very dearly. He was a very well-educated man, but basically, I learned much more on the street about sexuality than I ever learned from him. And this is a man with a PhD and a woman and a wife who is, you know, college. Um, all I learned about sexuality I learned in the street. And I did think that there was a significant- [intercom interruption] That is something we are going to have to live with, unfortunately. [inaudible] Um, I think there was a significant resentment on the part of a lot of so-called Baby Boomers that all the all the information about sexuality, uh, had to be squeezed out of legitimate sources if they got it at all. So, is it any wonder that Playboy magazine or other instruments of sexuality skyrocketed during the 1960s because the thirst for good information, for something that is very natural and very legitimate, very in, in, something that is a part of all of us just simply was not there? I mean, you can scour textbooks that we used in high school biology classes in the 1960s and there would be vague references to zygotes, and you know that in many cases, they would not even use the term sperm, you know, which now rolls off the tongue. I mean, as a talk show host, I probably used the word 300 times in the last year, um, but there was a real, honest to God, vacuum of legitimate information that every young man and young woman deserved to have t-to say nothing about the fact that they were raging hormones and all that other stuff. But basically, we lived in a very repressive culture concerning that. Uh, we lived in a very repressive culture concerning the sexuality of women, which is, which was one of the, one of the fundamentals and what the genesis of the women's movement that started in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s, uh, before it became politicized, much of what the women's movement was all about was around the fact that women had literally, literally been kept in a second-class status, not only in terms of their power within our culture, but also sexually. Women were viewed as the sexual objects of men. They were viewed as, as the object to be enjoyed by men. And the idea that they could have a sexuality of their own and that they could enjoy sexuality was preposterous. Smart Women always knew that. Women who-who empowered themselves, always knew that. But the average American woman was-was not thought of as in terms of her sexuality. Her sexuality was looked at for two things. Number one, it was to police her man, and number two was to have babies. And so, if our-our generation, the people who graduated from college in the early in the mid (19)60s and to the mid (19)70s, had the audacity to say, wait a minute, there has got to be more to life than that. Then so be it. Are we responsible for a million teenage pregnancies? Are we responsible for, uh, for a million abortions in America? I doubt it. I do not think so. I think that is an awfully, uh, heavy burden to put on a generation of people. Are we responsible for saying that people are sexual? Yes, good, good. SM: 07:08 This leads me right into, um, the question dealing with, uh, your thoughts, uh, y-you deal with the sexual revolution here, but your basic thoughts on whether the boomer generation was a more of a positive or a negative, [inaudible background noise] and, um, in response, SM: 07:23 If you can list a, list a review of the, uh, things that you think were positive about the boomers and some of the negatives about the boomers. [intercom interruption] WK: 07:31 Well, I think it- I very much fall down in, in the direction of the positives. Um, first of all the positives: I think the single biggest positive to come out of the 1960s which was largely creation of the boomers in, in all men of goodwill and women of goodwill, was the Civil Rights Movement. Uh, America entered the 1960s with the status quo perfectly content to marginalize in every way, shape or form, black men and women and America entered the 1970s, uh, with largely because of Dr. King, but also because of the help of, of boomers, both black and white, um, committed to the idea that that was never going to happen again, and that the second-class status of African Americans, which to this Day still needs very close scrutiny, um, but that was forever changed. And I think that it was the boomers who said, Dad, why are those dogs going after those kids in Birmingham? Dad, how come those cops are turning those fire hoses on legitimate protesters in Alabama? And, and it was the boomers who raised those questions, I-I think that that is that is so-so I think in terms of long, lasting effects and positive effects, I think that number one would be the civil rights movement, although one could arguably say even in 1997 that there was still plenty of room for improvement. Um, second thing, um, I do not think that there is any question that we, we legitimately pressured the United States government into getting out of Vietnam. Unfortunately, too late. There has always been the argument as to whether or not had JFK lived after the 1964 election, would he have withdrawn the troops because he already saw the writing on the wall, because at the time, at the time that JFK was killed, about 150 advisors had already been killed, and all I know is that one of the joys of my life was that I had the opportunity to interview the late Dean Rusk after he had left government service, he went back to the University of Georgia, and he was on the, the law school, and I asked him that. Now I read different answers in print, but I told I will tell you that he told me face to face, that Kennedy planned to withdraw the troops from Vietnam after the 1964 election, and the only reason is that, that he kept them there is because he was hoping like hell that the South Vietnamese would take these people literally for what they were, which was advisors, take their advice and, and be able to mobilize a standing army which would be able to withstand the North that was point number one. And point number two was purely political. Kennedy was a political animal, and Kennedy realized that he was going to be probably running against Goldwater, who was this arch conservative, and he did not want to have to deal with Goldwater pointing a finger in his face, saying you were responsible for making South Vietnamese Communist. Because remember, back in those days, the single worst thing that you could be in the universe was a communist. So, if the domino theory were true and South Vietnam, South Vietnam had fallen, then Kennedy would have taken the burden for it, but Dean Rusk told me JFK was going to pull the troops from Vietnam. I think. I started my college career debating a member of the students for the democratic society. I ended my college career out in the street with them. Um, there, there came a point at which my upbringing and my knowledge and my looking at what was going on, just said, this is wrong. This is so wrong. And then there came the point where I think we all realized this government, which is a this was an absolute first, and you can give 100 percent credit to the baby boomers, although it has a lasting effect, and I think a very negative effect. The baby boomers were the first to say, “This government is lying.” Now, all the, all the, you know, the American Legion guys with their hats on, who, what, who fucked the big one [inaudible] would listen to us and say, [inaudible] these kids are patriotic. I mean, the American government does not lie. We know for a fact. We know for a fact the government lied. We know the President lied, we know Johnson lied, we know Nixon lied. We know that the body count was absolute horse shit. Um, so baby boomers, the college students at the time, were forcing the, the government to come clean. A-And I think Nixon put us in a position, and I think history has, has backed me up in this where, you know, he polarized the country to such a great deal that basically, we were on the we were on the brink of civil war. It was the young versus the old, and I was proud to be among the young. And do not think I did not have a number of set twos with my own with my own father, about this, because he was a World War Two veteran and the read. But the reality is that even he and most Americans by the time, by the time the Paris Peace Talks, came up with some kind of a conclusion, everybody was so sick of it and wanted it to end so badly, but they lied to us, so we were responsible for that. However, there is a downside, and the downside is this, we are responsible we are now in our (19)30s and (19)40s, not (19)30s. We are in our (19)40s and (19)50s. We are responsible for-for making our children believe that government can never be honest. We are responsible for constantly bringing up Vietnam, bringing up Watergate, bringing up government deception, to the point where you have one of the most popular shows on television, The X Files, the predicate of which is the government deceives. And the government, the government will do. The government is a power unto itself, and the government will lie and cheat and steal and do whatever it damn well pleases. And so that is a [inaudible] as so, many of the things that we did well, were advantages at the time. Now they have become disadvantages, because now you take your average 18 or 19- or 20-year-old, and sometimes they just flat out, flat out, do not believe what the government says, which is ironic, because the government is Bill Clinton, who's a who's a baby boomer. SM: 13:39 This gets right into the issue of trust, which is later on in [inaudible mumbling], go right into it. Um, there is a feeling that I have had for quite some time when I deal with college students, although I have been hiring for 18 years, that, um, college students today certainly question, just like we questioned when we were young. They want to have answers. But there is a I am wondering that this concept of trust, the psychologists will say that people cannot succeed, or one cannot succeed in life unless you trust others, you know, trust your parents, trust your family. You got to have a sense of trust. But many of the boomers came out of that era because of what happened with Watergate, because of the lives of Vietnam, because of many other, um, crises that have happened with political leaders, of lacking trust in the political process, uh, lacking trust in anybody in a position of power and responsibility, and that not only includes political leaders, but it includes ministers, head, CEOs of corporations. Um, a question I am kind of leaning at here is, um, how you know you referred to it here, but how important and how serious is this issue of trust in America today, not only for people our age, the boomers, for the parents of these young people, but the children of boomers, and in, in some respects, even, uh, the people World War Two, generation from the, uh, from World War Two, because, uh, they all experience what we all went through in the (19)60s and early (19)70s. And so, this issue of trust, where do you place that on the scale? Say, one to ten in terms of how serious it is in this country, or lack thereof? WK: 15:04 Oh, I-I think if I had to-to look at America 1997 I would, I would label lack of trust is, is probably one of the four or five most significant problems in our culture today. So, I am serious about our being somewhat responsible for the-the way America is today in, in a negative sense. I do not know that it is not I do not know that it that was our responsibility to pull back. I mean, we-we had Watergate, so we elected a Georgia, Georgia Peanut Farmer as president, and we expected him to cure all of our ills he did, and, and so therefore we became disappointed in him, and then we went with-with Reagan and the Republicans who, who told us what we wanted to hear. And now we know that with things like Iran Contra, there were convenient lapses of memory, where, where Ronald Reagan applied, and there was ample evidence to indicate that George Bush line. So, I think that, I think the trust in government issue is that if we set up a government whereby, in a democracy, the only way you can keep staying in your own government is by lying, or not necessarily lying, but telling people what they want to hear. Because, after all, elections are a popularity contest, so that that is that is a difficult dilemma, but at least, I think we are much more out in the open about it. I see like Senate races, though, like this. The Torricelli Zimmer race last year, um, turned my stomach, because it gets to the point where you have, you have two men who sink so low in their quest for-for high office, and it is high office representing the-the great state of New Jersey in the in the United States Senate is a high office, and it is a wonderful honor. To, to sink so low, and in this, this finger waving of who is more liberal? You are a liberal, you are a liberal, you are a liberal, whereas you, you had this, this overweight, blow hard Republican party spokesman with a three-hour radio program who has no challenge at all, and basically, he has turned the word liberal into one of the filthiest words in the English language. So, so, of course, if I am 19 years old, who am I going to trust? Who can you trust? Um, I also I feel sadly because I think that, that I hope I am wrong, but I but I think that one has to, as one gets older, one has to have a spiritual trust in a higher power, whether you call it God, Yahweh, Jehovah, Allah, one has to come to grips with why we are here, what we are here for. And I think that that was something that, frankly, you asked me one of the disadvantages of the boomers? We convinced ourselves that we put ourselves here, we convinced ourselves that we-we did all these wonderful things, and we convinced ourselves that we could do very well without that, without anybody's help, especially the help of a higher power, because we had religion jammed down our throats when we were kids, and once we became adults, we did not want to have to deal with it. And it is only when you get married and you have kids and you start raising your own kids that you really sc-scratch your head and say, okay, well, now what am I going to teach them? So, I think th-that that the-the removal of God or a spirituality from American culture is very-very attributable to the, uh, to the baby boomers, very much so, but we are not the generation that throws our babies in the toilet. It is 19-year-old that are doing that. It is 18-year-old that are doing that. We may be their parents, but I do not know. I-I rather suspect that if you ask me what I think is wrong with America today, I will tell you, lack of trust is, is a significant factor. I think, uh, a lack of respect for authority is a significant factor. But when you have got a president who's a skirt chaser, and then basically all the things that we have now come out to find out about even LBJ, I mean, Roosevelt had Lucy Mercer. JFK had more mistresses than you can shake a stick at Roosevelt had his ones on the side. And so now we come to find out that all these guys were kind of near do wells. And so therefore you-you wonder why we do not have trust. But I think that the country suffers from lack of trust, a lack of respect. And I think that one of the single largest issues in the country today is the fact that you have almost 50 percent of young adults growing up in a home where both parents do not live and-and we- SM: 19:29 Oh! WK: 19:29 -we sweep it under the rug, we pretend like it is and we do talk shows, and people get on and psychologists hypothesize how, you know, it does not really make any difference whether the father is in the picture. It does not really make any difference whether the parents are married. It does not really make any difference if you are married three or four or five times. No. You know, the eternal quest for love is-is nonsense. SM: 19:51 That goes directly back to the boomers then, and maybe their failure in terms of, um, being parents or, um, a-and the attacks I originally referred to at the beginning of the interview that, uh, maybe one of the weaknesses, there may be some semblance of truth to the problems today because of the way boomers think. A-and the, the question I want to ask right now is, have boomers shared? This is a very important concept here, sharing their experiences, sitting down with their sons and daughters and saying, this is the way it was, Mary or John. Um, have boomers transferred the issue of passion to their children. We all know today that volunteerism is very important amongst today's young people. They, they volunteer in high school and they volunteer in college. You are probably up to 90 percent of students coming in or close to it who are volunteering. But that does not get into the whole issue of desiring at some juncture to serve others, to want to become a politician, or to want to go into a position of responsibility to serve others beyond oneself. So, I am getting a what are your thoughts on that, in terms of, have boomers related to their kids? Um, and, and have they sat down a-and, and supposedly a quality boomer had was passion. Your thoughts on the passion that boomers had and whether they have been able to transfer this to their transfer this to their kids. WK: 21:04 Well, obviously I can only speak on behalf of my own, um, and my wife and I are, are the same age. We are both 48 and, uh, so we both, even though I did not know her when I was going through college, we both lived these things at very different levels. She was at Central Michigan University. I was at Columbia College in Chicago. So, in an urban setting, I was exposed to a lot more, but yet at the same time, I mean, they, they, they had their changes as well. Um, it would be irresponsible of me as a parent to not let my children know that, once upon a time, not too long ago, that a black woman or a black man could not drink at the same water fountain. It would be irresponsible of me to, in any way, shape or form, agree with that Reagan quote that Vietnam was noble. I think Vietnam was not noble. Vietnam was a mistake. It was a mistake. It was a mistake. We may have had good intentions, but the fact of the matter is, I cannot help but look at that wall now very cynically, and look at the names of 60,000 martyrs, and they were martyrs for LBJ, and they were martyrs for Nixon, and they were martyrs for this American jingoistic bullshit idea that we, that we are the people to tell the whole world how to run their affairs. I think that the world has done a tremendous job of discovering itself that communism left to its own devices, collapses under its own weight. That is what is happening in Eastern Europe. But, um, so as a parent, it would be grossly irresponsible of me not to let them know about what tremendous injustices existed as I was a young adult and I was looking at the world the same way they look at it. Now, they take these things for granted. I have got two daughters. I have got a 16-year-old and a 14-year-old. The idea that they can do anything they want, they take for granted. That is a given. If they want to be doctors, fine if they want to be you know, I have always told them, do not if, if you want to be a flight attendant, be a flight attendant, but for God's sakes, if you want to be a pilot, be a pilot. You know, whereas, whereas women in our age were told, oh, you want to fly? Be a flight attendant. And they were not even called flight attendants. They were called stewardesses, and they had to be lookers, and they could not gain weight and, and all that. So, I think it is imperative, and to any responsible parent to say, this is the way it was. And this is, this is what has changed. Kids are kids, and kids are going to take that information and process in any way they think they have. I [stuttering] my kids, all three of my kids, are far from perfect, and I have got one, as you all know, who's, you know, kind of trying to still discover himself, but he would no more involve himself any kind of in any kind of an act of racism or sexism or any of the isms then, then he would, you know, walk in front of a railroad train. Um, in my-my daughter, the middle child, is 16 years old, but mentally, she is much more mature, and, uh, we will hear comments made at the school that she goes to, which is a parochial high school that she considers to be homophobic, and she will stop right in their tracks, and she will turn around, and she will she will tell some kid, it is not faggot. SM: 24:12 Right. WK: 24:13 There are no faggots. You know, there are gay people and-and I am proud of her for that. SM: 24:19 That is good. WK: 24:19 So yes, I-I think that we have a duty. We have a responsibility. The last line in the movie platoon is [coughing]we have a r-responsibility to pass on to those who survived, uh, the stories of those who had not- i-in why they have that and what that was all about. So, um, I think most people I know, who are my age or thereabouts, in one way or another, tried to incorporate into their kids some kind of a sense of the decency that, that all of us, I think, felt. Uh, I think the Catholic Church has been maligned, and in some cases deservedly so, but I also think that the Catholic Church, I look at the Catholic Church as, as-as a major force of change, uh, in the area of civil rights, very they made it very abundantly clear by the mid to late 1960s I mean, some of those people getting the hell beat out of them down south were priests. SM: 25:29 Mhm. WK: 25:30 And, uh, you know, you have got the Bering brothers- SM: 25:33 Right, [inaudible] WK: 25:35 -and many of the and even some of the people around here who were arrested out of GE for trying to destroy the nuclear warheads were Catholic priests, um and that the morality, morality is such that every individual as Dr. King said, you know, the, the grandsons of slave owners and the grandsons of slaves should be able to stand side by side. And I, although we do not live in a utopian society, I think they were much, much closer to it. Um, it would be, what is the point? What is the point? I mean, I lived in the greatest era of the 20th century. Um, I do not a-and from what I have heard, I had no desire to live during the Depression, and I certainly had no desire to live during World War Two. But I can look back at my life now, and you know, hopefully there is a lot more of it left to live, but my God, what a great time to live. Uh, what a what a force of change we were. Um, you know, we were all brought up with Dr. Spock. And you know, when people would, you know, people would run to the drugstore when they would have a baby, and the first thing that they would get, besides the diapers, was Dr. Spock's book. And then it turned out, Dr. Spock came back and said, I screwed up. SM: 26:34 Yeah. [laughing] WK: 26:59 I loved him. I had him on two or three times he is a delightful old guy. And one woman called up and said, Dr. Spock, I hope, I hope that you-you are proud of yourself. You screwed up an entire generation. [laughter] Uh- SM: 27:15 Have you, have you changed your opinions of the, uh, the boomers as you have gotten older? Remembering those times when you were, uh, went to college for that first time and challenged that SDS member, and then you were out in the streets yourself, and toward the end, and now you are a TV, um, personality and had many different jobs, um, to the day. Have you changed or been pretty consistent, uh, on your thoughts on the boomers? And, uh, a-and secondly, one of the terms that many of us used at that time, and I would go into and that is, we are the most unique generation in American history. How would you comment on that? Some, as some people might say, an arrogant statement that we are the most unique, uh, different generation. WK: 27:54 Well, to be young is to be arrogant. You know, it is arrogance is an arrogance is a virtue that is especially endemic in the young. Um, I think at the time, I think that we were justified feeling that because, I mean, if you take that 10-year period of time, let us say between 19...1963 and 1973 we, um, made huge strides in the struggle for equality for all Americans. We, um, stopped the war that was terribly immoral and terribly unpopular. We brought out of the closet a-a very basic human need, which is sexuality. [getting up] Let me close this door [inaudible]. We were responsible for pressuring the Congress into removing a, uh, a president who was a liar. Um, so I would think that probably, if I had to guess, that statement was probably made sometime in the early (19)70s, because we were probably feeling our odds. And I think that every-every youthful generation feels their odds, see, I think the whole ballgame changed that when Reagan got it, because Reagan basically came in and said, “It is good to be a boomer.” Reagan basically came in and said, “Wealth is good.” And so, you had under Reagan, you had the, uh, you know, the, the movie hero the 1980s was Gordon Gekko. Wealth is good, you know. What? What is wrong if you want a BMW? What the hell is wrong with having a BMW? You know, if pe- if people are starving in Honduras, screw them. How many of you? How many of them do you know personally? And so, I think that through his charisma, which was considerable, um, Reagan, all of a sudden, took our-our, uh, our desire, which is uniquely American. I-I-I guess all people have a desire to feel good about themselves, but we really do, and he was certainly the most charismatic president since Kennedy, um, in-in, in my life, the two most charismatic presidents were Reagan and, uh, Kennedy, and Reagan came along and said, “What is wrong with being wealthy?” And, and so we had this tremendous period of prosperity. And I think some of us, as all of us grew in our jobs and grew in wealth and grew, you know, started having families of our own. I think all of us got kind of caught up in that BMW, uh, you know, okay, I paid my dues. Why should I have to worry about the other guy kind of thing? Um, and, and I do not know whether that is more a function of age, or what the political wind, or what the political climate is in America right now, so I think the Reagan kind of dampened the, that desire to change things. I mean, you know, Jerry Rubin became a stockbroker, you know, Abbie Hoffman became basically a comedian. Um, that the significant - there were no more significant strides to make. There were no wars, no more wars to be won. Um, by 1973 the feminist movement was well on its way. Uh the Civil Rights Movement was had really prospered. Uh, Vietnam, war was history. The, uh, the draft was history. So, yeah, I-I think that that is the relatively arrogant statement, but I think tha-that there is plenty of stuff to back that up. I do not see; I do not see the generation of today accomplishing those kinds of things. I mean, somebody comes out and says, “Oh, Tara Tabitha” [mic cuts out, fumbling to get it back in place]. You know, I-I can say, for example, in this in this field, in, in my field, um, when I started, th-there has been, as, as there had been in many fields, it has been tremendous change when I started being on the radio, which is where I started, was the domain of the white male with [intercom interruption] Uh, with the occasional exception of the very smooth voiced African American male, no women. God, you know, you would have a woman do a cooking show or something like that. [talking over each other] And then bit by bit, they put them in. And lo and behold, the, uh, the radio stations did not lose their audience, and lo and behold, they there were some that were pretty damn good. I do not see, frankly, the same quality of, of hunger, and I do not see the same quality of, of, um, well studied nature that coming out of the kids that are coming into the field today, I see people who want to be within five years, they want to be the six o'clock anchor, and they want to be making $800,000 a year. And when you tell them, yeah, well, that all starts if you are lucky, if you are lucky, you get a job as a production assistant in Scranton for 15 grand a year. And then they bristle. Interestingly enough, the ones that turn out, the ones that do not bristle and say, “Okay, I am on my way,” are usually the ones that do quite well. SM: 33:09 Strong work ethic. WK: 33:11 Yeah, very much so. And I, and I think that, um, we are, we are, to a very large extent, our parents. And I think that my appearance, li-like many people, my-my grandparents were immigrants. Uh, my, my parents were the son and daughter of Irish immigrants, and not working was not an option. I mean, I did not even know what the hell welfare was, and the idea that I would not want to work anyway. I mean to me, what I do is lazy enough to begin with. I mean t-to me, in my world, I just if you sit on your butt in a radio studio all day and make a living at it, my god, that was just like, you know. I mean, my grandfather was a blacksmith and on a day like today where it is 100 degrees outside, that did not mean he did not go to work. He went to work, and the horses had to be shod, and because it was hot, they would be irritated. And, um, [someone coming in] Hi, David, how are you? Dave Roberts: 34:19 Good. WK: 34:19 Dave Roberts, Steve McKiernan [inaudible] I-I think, um, I think especially if [mic cuts out] WK: 34:22 I think it was a que- I think it was just a question of, what were you going to do? I do not think, I do not think that there was ever a question of, you make up your mind when you get there. I think there was always a question, what do you want to do when you I mean, the most commonly heard question, I think, was, what do you want to do when you grow up? And, um, so, you know, a lot of guys went to med school, a lot of guys went to law school. Um, a lot of people, just like myself, got a bachelor's degree and said, this is it, Jack, no more. This is, you know, I do not want to do anything more, more about this. But, um, I-I think that that particular period of time is indelible. I think from, uh, 60 about 63 to about 75 was indelible. I was carried out. [talking over announcement] Um, you know f-for 80 different reasons, um. SM: 35:27 [inaudible] WK: 35:27 Yeah. SM: 35:27 One of the leading questions in this whole project gets into the issue of healing. Um, uh, you are the 38th interview I have had in this project. WK: 35:36 Mhm. SM: 35:36 This is one of the most important aspects of the interview, and that is, uh, when people visit the Vietnam Memorial. And Jan Scruggs and the things that he did, uh, the goal of that memorial was the healing process, to heal the nation, to, uh, not only the Vietnam, uh, population and their families, but, uh, the nation as a whole. But in going to the Vietnam Memorial the last six years, not only on Memorial Day, but Veterans Day, I sense a lot of there is a lot of healing that still has to come. Uh, you hear it, and some of the statements made against the president, uh, certainly they will never forgive Jane Fonda. You know, it is not 100 percent forgiving of some people, but- WK: 36:20 She was not even here. SM: 36:20 And I know that some Vietnam veterans wanted to know. They asked me if she was going to be there. I just said I did not know, but I-I like your opinions on this issue of healing. Um, the divisions were so strong at that time. Um, there is a brand-new book out by Jules Wilk around 1968 and I recommend it highly. It is an excellent book. Gets into that whole year and how important it was in American history. WK: 36:20 There were protesters down there on the Fourth of July. SM: 36:20 Right. SM: 36:42 Yeah, and, but see, the divisions were there, and everybody seemed to it was an us versus them mentality. And the question is, many people will say, um, that the us versus them has never subsided, but it continues today and is directly linked back to that period. Uh, what have we healed? Your thoughts? Have we healed from the divisions of that time? Even though the war is over, um, the movements and some have gone on, civil rights, some people, we have taken steps backwards, as opposed to forward. But, uh, have we healed from those tremendous divisions? Or are the boomers carrying these divisions in their psyche, probably to their graves. WK: 36:42 I would say that was the pinnacle year. The answer your question is, no, I do not think so. I-I do not think we have healed because I-I think that, um, it has made an indelible mark on all the men, especially who had to deal with in one form or another, if you were male, and, and you, especially like myself, had the unfortunate distinction of drawing a, a low number, you had to deal with this military thing. And I remember as I got into senior year in college, and I was really, really anxious to get out and pursue my craft. I was already on the radio, and I could not wait till school was over, and then I could go out to wherever, Green Bay, Wisconsin, or, as it turned out Flint, Michigan, and really do this thing full time. I remember the, the burden of having to do this military thing was just like a weight on my chest. Um, and then, fortunately for me, something totally unexpected happened, and I was able to get into a reserve, but I did my time in the service that way, and I did not have to go to Vietnam. Um, I think, though, that the healing and, and the anger, I think, very legitimately, you know, let us call a spade a spade. I was able to go to college because my father was a college professor. SM: 38:39 Are we okay Dave in, here? Dave Roberts: 38:40 Yeah-yeah, it is fine, it is fine. I will be out of here in a second. SM: 38:43 Okay, oh okay. [multiple people talking at once] WK: 38:44 I went to I went to college for two reasons, because my father was a college professor with and with, our family could afford it, and number two, because he was a college professor, I have been told since I was a little kid, that was something I owed my father. And I hated the first two years of college, those two years of college when I had all electives was just a whole different ballgame. Um, and of course, while I was in college, it became abundantly clear that being in college as opposed to being in Vietnam, was a place to be. Um, so when I was my second semester senior year, and I heard about this reserve thing, I-I obviously jumped at it, not believing it, and, and it turned out to be accurate. So, I-I did four months after, and then six months, six years in the reserve. Um, but I think by that time, I think that everybody that I was in with had pretty much solidified their feeling that, uh, the government was a liar. They lied. They just lied. They lied about body counts. They lied about not bombing Cambodia when in fact we were. They lied about ground troops being in Cambodia when in fact they were. Uh, and so every time, even now. A-a-and frankly, just as an aside, I do not know what I think about Quinn not going in because frankly I knew 80 zillion guys who would use any excuse they could get, and my attitude was more power to you. Um, you know, you did what you did. I knew guys. I knew a guy who, um, was-was a half an inch too tall to go into to pass the physical. He was that he was like six, six or something like that. And he nevertheless, the week before his physical, because he was 1A he did traction, just to make sure that he stayed too tall. Well, now think about it. Think about it. At that particular point, we had several 100,000 troops in Vietnam. They were bringing the body bags back faster than they could bring the soldiers over there. And so, think about it. So, a lot of guys were making a cottage industry out of not, not going in the first place. And second of all, I mean, there was just, there was a tremendous amount of distrust. But the healing is not just I am a man of the government. The healing is divisions that took place within families. I mean, there is a really good scene in Born on the Fourth of July, where Tom Cruise comes home in a wheelchair, and one of the sister’s whispers in his ear about the brother. He is against the war, and Tom Cruise says this is before his conversion as Ron Covack to the activist Tom Cruise says, "Love it or leave it. Danny, love it or leave it." And that is a-and that that was something that internally had to be dealt with. And I do not think it ever was. Like to a lot of people, the wall means a different thing. To me, it is just like I can still see my father standing at the top of the stairs when I was just, I was of the opinion, then maybe, you know, just for five seconds I thought, well, maybe I will go to Canada. I knew I would not do that because I knew I could not work in this opinion; I could not work in this field if I did. But he said, well, then get out now, because I will not harbor a federal fugi-fugitive because of you. If you do not answer your draft induction, you are a fugitive, and I do not want you in the house. And that is the only time in my life which was full of ups and downs that my father ever said if that is what you are going to do, get out. SM: 42:18 Yeah, um- WK: 42:19 The healing very much is internal. Um, the healing is most importantly now, what do you say to 60,000 families? SM: 42:27 76 million people were boomers. WK: 42:30 You know? What do you say? I mean, what do you say? And, and what about the guilt of US college grads who got to go to college? You know? Because basically, it was a poor, white and black kids war that is who was in the front line, and the college brats were not in the front line unless they were lucky enough to be in ROTC. And what they would do is, once they got their orders from ROTC, they take them, they came in the front line, and they come back in a body bag, 28 days later. SM: 42:53 This gets into the fact that people have written that 15 percent of boomers are truly active that were against war, gun violence protest, gun violence on movement, uh, so forth. They could be conservative or liberals, but they were activists during that time frame. WK: 43:08 I was never in, I was never in STS, um- SM: 43:10 But you went to protest them. WK: 43:13 I-I did. Earth Day. SM: 43:14 So, they were not part of that. WK: 43:16 Anti-war protest, absolutely. Um, Civil rights protest, absolutely. Um, and proud to have been part of all of it. SM: 43:26 It gets it gets into the real question of experience. And I may have mentioned this prior to, uh, setting up this interview, and that is, we took students to meet Edmund Muskie, and we had that time to meet with him. He had just gotten out of the hospital. And had a time to reflect on watching Ken Burns Civil War series. And somehow, in some way, when I asked this question to him about the lack of trust that the generation had in elected leaders and one in 1968 and we got into the whole issue of healing, and how many boomers do not trust their bosses still, as they have gotten older, it is this lack of trust mentality. He almost broke down and crying. He said, uh, I am going to basically say that we really have not healed since the Civil War. And he started talking about the Civil War generation going to their graves with bitterness for the other side. And then that threw a flame in me about the fact is, are the 76 million boomers, many have gone out and raised kids, had families, but they are all aging. Are they going to go to their graves with the same feelings that many of the Civil War generation had- was still the bitterness, um, lack of healing from within and-and some might say, “Who cares?” You know, you cannot heal for whole generation, but- WK: 44:29 There is a huge difference, though, you just put your finger on. He said that. He said that many of the people, many of the Civil War veterans, went to their graves with a bitterness, to the other to the other side. I-I worked in Atlanta, and, and I-I-I have said many times that I if I did not know any better, I would have thought that general Sherman's first name was "that damn", because that is what people would say, that damn Sherman. Uh, big difference, though, a very curious thing has happened with-with the Vietnam veteran. The Vietnam veteran is mad at the United States, he was mad at the VA, uh, he was mad at the army or navy or whatever service he was in. But what is very interesting is he is not mad at Vietnam anymore. He is not mad at the North Vietnamese. I cannot tell you the number of stories that I have seen about guys who have gone back and have broken bread with guys that, that they-they were their former prisoners or that kind of thing. They are a very curious thing has happened. We are not mad at them. We just, we just established, uh, with virtually no press at all. No press, uh, negative press at all. We just reestablished diplomatic relations with Vietnam. Our ambassador to Vietnam is a former Peoria. SM: 44:35 Mhm. Right-right. WK: 44:35 So, what is, what is confounding to me, and what is fascinating to me is the healing is all here. The healing in-in terms of being angry at the North Vietnamese and the South Vietnamese, I think the average person now says, “Okay, well, they are communist, and it is not our form of government.” And obviously, if you look around the world, it is, it is a form of government that is dying out. But nevertheless, their country, it is their goddamn country. I mean, how would we feel if Vietnamese showed up in Missouri? SM: 44:35 Mhm. WK: 44:47 You know? And how would we have felt if the North Vietnamese showed up to help this out? I mean, because that is what it was. So, what is interesting is the healing is-is virtually all internal. I have never been to the wall. I have driven by it, and when my time comes, I want to be there alone. Wow, I just do. I just want to be there alone, and, uh, because it is a very personal thing, and the war took its toll on every American family in different ways. And my mother would tell you that it is through God's goodness and mercy that neither of her sons got sent over there, and she may very well be right. But at the same time, we-we were, like everybody else, negatively affected by this debacle, wrapping itself in the flag, which I really, really, really mix in with his little American flag bow tie or, or, uh, lapel, you know, and with his you know. Now, all of all of his boys are best-selling authors, you know, but, uh, they in, in some of the dialog that was spoken in that Oval Office, which belongs to everybody, by the way, which, uh, Haldeman and Erin Lichtman and Dean seemed to forget for quite some time. You know, it was the end. All of us were the, you know, the kids and the commies and the commie you know, the commie influence and all that other stuff. And, uh, you know, Nixon, Nixon's kid did not go, at least. You got to say one thing for LBJ. LBJ is boys both went. SM: 48:01 That is right. WK: 48:03 Chuck Robb and Pat Nugent both went. Nixon's. You think Nixon's sons in law went, hell no. David Eisenhower, who I have an immense amount of respect for has got one of the great minds about history and is a delightful chap. He did not go. SM: 48:19 He served, but I think he was in the military. WK: 48:22 I do not even think, no, no, no, no, no [talking over each other] Really, whatever. And, and Eddie Cox was a Wall Street lawyer. Forget it. You know, we are real good at sending other people's kids to die. SM: 48:36 I guess. [mic noise] WK: 48:42 You know, maybe we are under underselling the value of Nixon. Nixon painted the picture to everybody who was over 35 and told them exactly what they wanted to hear. In that sense, he was not very different than Reagan, where the, the major difference between Nixon and Reagan- [intercom interruption]- realistically speaking, Nixon probably accomplished a hell a lot more than Reagan did. But the major difference between Reagan a-and Nixon is, is that, and it should not be important, but it is the personality, the warmth that the, um, you know, you just had a feeling with-with Reagan, that he was like, your father, you know, Nixon was like this guy. Nixon was like this annoying neighbor that you knew that he was right, but you just wish he would go away. And then after a while, you found out the guy was lying. And how typical of Nixon, how very typical of Nixon when presented with the facts of the Watergate burglary, which I do believe he knew nothing about until it was done, how very typical of Nixon to instead of just saying, guys, boy, did we blow it, I am going on TV tonight, and I am telling the American people that these people are associated with the Republican National Committee, and they are all fired, and we will not support them in any way, shape or form. They broke the law. And, you know, we win our elections fair and square. Would have been a one-night story. How typical of Nixon to turn it into a disaster. You know, to lie, to cheat, steal. You know. SM: 50:23 When you look at again at the boomers, uh, just you had had made a reference early on to the, uh, impact boomers had with respect to the civil rights movement. But, uh, your thoughts on how important the college students were in the protests on college campus with ending the war. I-I say this only in reference to an interview I had with Jack Smith, who said college students really did not have that much of an impact. The impact really took place when the body base came home and Middle America saw that the war had end. But, um, your thoughts on that at 15 percent of activists who were protesting the war and how much of an importance they were to ending it? WK: 50:58 Well, they were an ever-present force. Uh, I think that Jack's right. I think that, um, when there were several pivotal things in ending the war, uh, first of all, I do not think that one can underestimate the tremendous potency of Walter Cronkite in the 1960s, um, you know TV now you have got ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, um, CNN. In most homes, you had either Walter Cronkite or Huntley and Brinkley, but most homes, it was Walter Cronkite that certainly was ours. When W-Walter Cronkite made two visits to Vietnam, one of the early (19)60s and one in 1968 when Walter Cronkite came back in 1968 and basically opinionated that we do not know. I am not sure we are doing the right thing. Johnson said, Johnson said, that is the election. I am going to get beat. That is why he withdrew. Um, So I-I think that, um, the evening news stopped the Vietnam War. Now what portion of the evening news you choose to select as being responsible for that is up to you. I think that Jack Smith is right. Jack Smith's a veteran. Jack Smith is also a news man. And I think that, yeah, the, the nightly body count after a while, you would say, oh, well, you know the body count today was, we killed 5000 Vietnamese and only 300 Americans died. Well, more and more and more those 300 Americans were s-starting to show up on TV. We would see their bodies being carried off the airplanes. We would see their grieving families at the funerals. And more and more it came home, and more and more kids from more and more neighborhoods were coming back in those body bags. So yeah, Jack is, Jack is right in that sense, but I-I-I differ with him in the sense that the college thing was ever present. It was constant. It was there. I mean, I remember Northwestern University, which is like the bastion of Republican capitalism, Evanston, Illinois, um, was shut down. The main road, main road that goes through Northwestern University, of Sheridan Road was shut down right after Kent State, and there was a huge sign up over Sheridan Road that said something to the effect that, you know, go make your millions downtown, but remember the remember the kid, kids who died for-for the freedom of expression, and Kent State, I think, was when everybody started to say, Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Because I know even that-that is my parents said, “Wait a minute. They are shooting college students, unarmed college students. Come on.” And so, I think, I think Jack is right, that it, it was the daily procession of body bags, and it was the daily and also it was the daily student demonstrations. But I think that that the point at which this the war, any popularity of the war sunk to new levels was Kent State. When Kent-Kent State happened, that was it. Every American parent who had a kid off at college said that could be my kid, because they were just protesting the war. SM: 54:03 What, um, if there was a moment in your life, the most important moment in your life of, of this period, what was the what was the event? And now you are talking about your high school years and your college years and maybe your early adulthood years, but if there was one specific event that you could pinpoint and said, even to this day, it is hard. You might think about it. Uh, we might think about it every day, but it is one thing that you will never forget that had tremendous influence on your life. What was the event of that period? WK: 54:31 Chicago in 1968. Lived there, uh, at the time, I was working for a TV station there, uh, I saw these massive crowds. Uh, there was Civil War. It was Hubert Humphrey up in his suite at the Conrad Hilton kissing the TV, um, screen when they showed a picture of his wife, and it was, um, under educated under trained, overworked Chicago police officers’ downstairs who had been put on edge and on alert by the mayor, who had promised that, uh, by God, this convention was, um, going, to be orderly, and, uh it was that powder keg. And, uh, I-I am not sure, even though Humphrey lost, I-I am not sure that, uh, there is any one event in my mind that-that more closely illustrates what, what a near civil war there was, although Nixon exacerbated it, it was there already. Many of the protesters had come for the sure hell of it. I mean, many of them had come to, uh a-and I must say, l-let me play amateur psychologist for a second. I do not think it is an accident that the kids who were protesting the war were the same kids- He just won't answer that page. SM: 56:09 Mind if I [inaudible] WK: 56:12 No-no-no, I cannot, yes, I can, because you remember it too, but I cannot tell you how the life force was sucked out of an entire generation of young people on November the 22nd of 1963. This guy hit, and this is way, way, way before all this stuff about his mistresses and his ties to the mob and all this other stuff. I mean, think back to 1963, this guy was our hero. He was a war hero. He was good looking, he was charismatic, he was funny, he was witty, he was he, um, we know now that that even though he bumbled his way through, you know, the first couple, the first year or so, that he actually became quite an astute, uh, President toward the tail end of his, his presidency. Uh, through-through sheer dumb luck and determination, he, um, he capably handled the Cuban Missile Crisis, and at the time in which he was killed, his popularity was just through the ceiling. The thing that was unique about him was the fact that he was so appealing to young people because Ike was like your grandfather. Ike was this bald guy who won the war. We were not alive for the war, so thanks Ike for winning the war and keeping us from speaking German. Um, but Ike was and Ike was, I-I think history is judged. Ike was just a real mediocre president. Um, he was okay, but he was not great. Ike lied. Ike lied about the you too. SM: 57:42 That is right. WK: 57:43 But Ike was like somebody. Ike was your father's president. Jack Kennedy was our president. And when that life ended, I think for many, many, many of us, there was a need to express just the outrage, the anger. Um, we did it in good ways. Um, for example, I think that, that it is no accident that, that Jack Kennedy dies in November of 1963 in January and February of 1964 Th-The Beatles come to the United States of America, and in the phenomenon that nobody has ever seen before or since, just totally mesmerize American youth, because basically and, and take them out of their intense grief over the loss of this, of this guy that we love, and allow us to-to live, to have fun, because they were so fun and they were so funny. And so-s-so very talented. And we were influenced by their music, because their music transcended just it went from-from silly love songs to really, you know, to meaningful stuff. And they just, they wrote all kinds of new chapters about music and everything. And we were with them every step of their way. So, then we get to 1968 and in an April, Dr. King is killed, and which is, you know, a kick, kick in the face to every, not only every African American, but-but every American. And two months later, two, three months later, Bobby Kennedy's killed. So, with that as a background, the Convention was in August. Bobby Kennedy died June 4, and we had hoped that he would be elected, that he would, um, be a suitable replacement for his brother. He seemed to have almost, not quite, almost, the qualities of Jack. Nobody had the qualities of Jack, but he was a pretty good substitute. And, um, then he was assassinated. And so, by the time that convention rolled around, those kids were angry. Those kids were angry because basically, as the line went, all the good ones are gone. They kill all the good ones. And it seemed, and it seemed to be true. And so, they would shove people like Hubert Humphrey down our throats, or Richard Nixon. They would take all these old guys, and they would shove them down our throats and say, a-and there was no choice there. I mean, it was just like, you know, all these old farts and no, and nobody was saying, you know, Richard Nixon was saying he had a secret plan to stop the Vietnam War, which was such a secret, he kept it a secret for six years. SM: 1:00:15 [chuckling] Sure. WK: 1:00:16 Um, so I-I think you cannot talk about the boomer generation without talking about, in my opinion, the most significant besides the Vietnam War itself, the most significant disaster to the boomer generation was, uh, the assassination of Kennedy. SM: 1:00:33 You think today's young people when we say, uh, Ike was my father's president, today's young people say, well, JFK was your president, so I will say the same thing. WK: 1:00:43 Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. SM: 1:00:44 So, so it has no linkage at all. WK: 1:00:46 Well, yeah, but see, it gets back to the trust thing. It gets back to the trust thing because they, they cannot look at Bill Clinton and say “He is mine.” I mean, he can be on MTV from now until the cows come home, and he can he has a full head of gray hair, and he has got a teenage daughter, and he is the first baby boomer president and all that other stuff. And young people can say, well, he is my president, but you know what? They do not. They do not like him. I mean, they like him compared to the other old farts. I mean, compared to Bob Dole. SM: 1:01:12 [laughing] WK: 1:01:13 But-but you do not hear kids. You do not hear young people talking about Bill Clinton the way we talked about Kennedy. Um, he may be able to relate to young people, but basically, I think that people, young and old see him as kind of a cynical politician who will say anything to get elected, and now he is okay. I mean, he is enjoying, I mean, we are all enjoying this tremendous crest of, uh, of prosperity and-a-and I would think that he has got to have something to do with it, but the fact of the matter is, he is certainly no hero to the young the way Kennedy was to us. Um, and, and the Kennedy assassination cannot be underplayed as a pivotal, integral thing in forming what is called the boomer Generation, probably the first of, uh, the first leg of, of the table, I would say, um, you know, there was, there were the assassinations, starting with John. There was the Civil Rights Movement. And there was Vietnam. SM: 1:02:15 This gets right into the next question [inaudible mumbling], how much more time do we have, we okay, yeah? WK: 1:02:22 15 minutes or so. SM: 1:02:23 Okay, um, [inaudible] just take a pause here [talking over each other]. Yep. WK: 1:02:34 Set the course for future events and for the calamity that was to become the (19)60s. No doubt about it. No doubt about it. In the fact that most people look at the Warren report is, is fiction just exacerbates it. I mean, who killed him is really secondary, the fact that he was- SM: 1:02:55 got very general but you have heard this before in the best history books are written 25 to 50 years from now. What would be the lasting legacy of the boomer generation? In your thoughts, what is the lasting legacy? And how will historians treat us knowing that the best histories are 50 years after an event has taken place? WK: 1:03:14 Oh, I think they are probably they will look at it, look at us as intrinsically selfish because we did not win any wars, um, you know, we did not build the atom bomb, we did not build Empire State Buildings. Um, you know, basically all we did was we caused a hell of a lot of trouble and a lot of rockets in the 1960s and then we all became filthy rich in the 1980s under Reagan. Um, and I think that that would be a tremendous disservice to, uh, an entire generation of young men and women. Um, first of all, I think that there were a lot of people like me. We have either grandparents or great grandparents who came over from the old country. All of our parents, the single defining moment of their life was World War Two. For many of our parents, the second most defining moment of their life was, uh, the depression. So, these are people who knew hard times. Most of us did not know hard times. So, when you are worried about how you are going to feed your family? You do not have the luxury of worrying about whether or not a little a little black girl can drink out of a water fountain in Birmingham, Alabama. Once those needs were met, once the war was won, once America became prosperous, we had a relatively quiet period of time. You know, we went. We went basically 10-12, years with-with nothing other than the constant gnawing threat of the so-called Cold War, which at times would eat up, but basically i-it was just, it was just that it was a cold war. So, then we come along and, I-I swear, Steve, I-I think chapter one in this book is JFK's killing that is slapped every [inaudible intercom] every kid in America, and we became, then, at that point, more than just passive observers. And as, as things heated up and as we went to college, and colleges should be a bastion for activism, there has got to be a bastion for activism. I remember very clearly when I was emceeing that this very subject at West Chester, how most of the professors who were boomers, who are our age, were talking about. Well, it is not my job to get you a job. My job is to expand your mind. My job is to present some idealism. My job is to-to let you know, you know that once upon a time in the civil rights movement, you know, we were here, and now we are here, and in the women's studies movement, you know, this is where we were, and this is where we are, and they were all kind of lofty idealists from the 1960s while I understood perfectly what they were saying, I could not help but notice there was an enormous amount of anger in this, in the auditorium of kids saying, screw you! I do not know how to run a computer, [laughter] you know. O-or I do not have a job yet, you know. So, so take your (19)60s and stick it, because I do not have a job so and-and of course, they are all tenured professors, so they do not have to worry about a job for the rest of their life. There has got to be a place. There has got to be a safe place. And this is why I feel personally, and this is off the record. This is why I feel so sad about my son, because- SM: 1:06:39 Mhm. WK: 1:06:41 -we were also, you know, you talk about the college campuses a-as a as a nest of rebellion, we were really also the first generation of Americans who went to college. I mean, our parents, our parents really did not go to college. I mean, I-I am fortunate in the fact that both of my parents did. But I think if you take the average person, um, the average person did not go, I mean, you went to high school, and you went out and worked, and, um, most of our fathers came home from World War Two, and many, many of them, my own, included, like did a master's. When he went in, came back, got a second master's, and then got his doctorate. Um, many of them had gotten their butt kicked enough in the service to know that basically, the only true vehicle for success and the only true vehicle for getting out was, uh, education. So, but there has got to be a safe place for young people to express idea ideas, no matter how radical they are. Um, and, and the college campuses, obviously, I mean, not every campus was Berkeley, but [stuttering] and ironically enough, a lot of people would say that Kent State was not that radical of a school at all. SM: 1:06:54 Yeah. It is a very conservative school. WK: 1:07:42 Yeah. SM: 1:07:43 Most of the, everybody was surprised that that is where it hit- WK: 1:07:54 Yeah. SM: 1:07:55 -knowing th-that in Ohio, Ohio University was the most liberal of the colleges at that time that had the greatest problems, because I worked at OU, um, in the mid (19)70s, and Ron Kovack was actually kicked off the campus, and actually was arrested in Athens when he came there, and Vietnam Veterans Against the War and, uh, and then, of course, Ohio State was, geez, they had tremendous turmoil. So, Kent State was the big surprise that happened there. But he thought if it hit, if it had happened, it would have happened at OU or, um Ohio State University, because, they, they were, uh, hotbeds of turmoil. WK: 1:08:26 But I think that history may judge us as selfish. Um, history may judge us as, as not as altruistic as the current generation. And I think that there might be some degree of accuracy today. Uh, history may judge us as, I think, uh, as non-spiritual, and I think that there is also a degree of accuracy there. SM: 1:08:43 Have, have boomers carried their passion? Have boomers, I mean we are talking 15 percent of that active, and then, uh, 85 have the boomers carried the passion that was supposedly their-their most, best quality they possess? WK: 1:09:00 No, but I do not know w-whether that says [intercom] I do not know whether that is a function of the baby boomers being a disappointing generation, or whether that is just a function of age. Um, we are all very different and very different at 48 than I was at 18. You know, I have lived my life 30 years, and, um, I have actually been known to on rare occasions, vote for a Republican. Um- SM: 1:09:25 I am shocked. WK: 1:09:25 Yeah, well, WK: 1:09:26 I do not admit it to too many people, but, no, I-I mean, I vote for the person. I-I just [inaudible] I am, I-I guess one of the things that I carry over from the (19)60s is I-I am an independent. I cannot vote in primaries because I am I am registered as an independent. Um, but I think that probably people would say we, we got to the 80s, we made our money, we sold out. Um, a-and probably now the only way in which the true, the true dipstick of, of telling whether or not we had any effect is basically the way our children turn out. I am proud, proudest of my children, because I know that they would never, I know that all the "isms" are things that are not in their vocabulary. They will not be sexist, they will not be racist, they will not be in any way, shape or form, do anything to hurt another human being, um, just for the hell of it, or because it makes their life easier. SM: 1:09:26 [laughing] WK: 1:10:16 Yes, she does, yeah. SM: 1:10:16 Uh, last question before I give them just some general names for your responses and we will close the interview, and that is this issue of empowerment. Um, most students when they come to college, even today, when I was, uh, young and when you were young, hopefully, one of the goals is developing self-esteem in young people. That they have self-esteem they go on the world knowing that they can speak up if they see something wrong, like you already mentioned, your daughter does. Obviously, she has self-esteem. But, but the quality that a lot of young people do not have, and that is one of the goals of higher education, is not only preparing them for the world out there, hopefully they will continue to want to learn beyond, uh, just what they learn in the classroom, and that they have self-esteem and will be, uh, willing to speak their minds when the time comes forth. So, the question I am asking you is this: empowerment was a very important, um, adjective characteristics of the boomers. They felt empowered. Many of them did because they protested the war, they got involved in civil rights movement. And yes, many of them really bugged a lot of people. They, uh, a lot of us did it just for the sake of doing it. But there were a lot of since- there is a lot of sincerity there, even Vietnam veterans will say that, uh, if they, they are not so much upset with the people who were sincerely against the war. It is those people that tried to evade the draft and did all these other things, but there were sincere people out there. Empowerment. Has that concept of empowerment carried on into the boomer’s life as they have gotten older? In other words, they continue to speak up. And has that been transferred into their children, this sense of empowerment? WK: 1:11:40 Let me go back to Dr. Spock. Um, the, the pervading sentiment when- if you are a boomer, you grew up in the 1950s in the early 60s, the worst thing that you could do as a parent is to have a kid with a big head. The worst thing that you could do is have your kid be, uh, arrogant or conceited, or think that he or she was too good. So especially i-in-in coming from a Catholic school background, uh, if you did something, well, it was if it was acknowledged, it was acknowledged minimally. Um, you would look a-at my family, for example, and you would say, of the four of us, we have all done very well in our chosen careers. Uh, and you would say, gee whiz, well, your parents must have, have put you out in the world with a really good feeling about yourself. And I would say that is just simply not the case, um, nor is it the case of virtually anybody I know. Because I think that the responsible parent in 1958 or 59 was thinking that, basically, I do not want Johnny to have a big head. I want, I want to be able to control my kid. Um, I think, obviously, on some level, my family and every other family felt that they had if I work hard enough. I mean, one thing that we got from our parents was this idea the work ethic. I mean, success is 99 percent perspiration, 1 percent inspiration. I think that that came from our families. But I know very few people who were born and raised in the 1940s and 50s and 60s who came out of their family experience really feeling great about themselves. And I think a lot of what happened in college was, first of all, no more rules. Um, I mean, you had to show up for class. Uh, you were introduced to liberal thinkers in the in the person of many of the professors who taught us the classes. You were introduced to other kids who, um, it, it, it just was not high school anymore. But I think that there is a real it is a real misnomer to think that we were, that we came into the college world arrogant. I think that we all came into college world very frightened. And I think that we drew, we drew upon one another for our strength, and only in I mean, I-I went to college. First two years of college, I went to a city college, Chicago City College, and I began very quickly became act-active as Student Government, and it was in in being active with student government, I felt sensational about myself, probably for the first time in my life, because I was, uh, you know, when i-in grade school, in high school, I was usually, you know, in trouble for this, that or the other thing, little petty stuff, but-but-but never, you know, they could never this student leader that I was not college, and I felt terrific about myself. And I felt not only terrific about myself because I was student government officer, but I felt terrific about myself because of the people that I was with and the power that they gave me, and we all empowered one another. Then when I left the city college, which is a much more transient atmosphere for a permanent four-year institution, I was there, I-I felt good. The thing that really put me over the top, though, was getting my first job when I was working in this industry. Then I felt okay, I have arrived. But I think it is real misnomer to think that people went to college with-with big egos. I think that is nonsense. I think I think we drew upon each other's strength, and I think that if somebody said, hey, wait a minute. Look at this idiot, Bull Connor with these fire hoses, shooting these, you know, shooting these poor, you know, black protesters down in Birmingham. I think that if it came from our parents, it was one thing. If it came from another kid in the dorm, it was a whole other thing, then it really meant something. So, I-I do not think, I think, quite frankly, one of the je- one of the major, uh, one of the major shortcomings of the World War Two generation is the idea that, that, uh, oh, you do not want your kid to have a big head. Um, I think kids with big heads do not have problems. Kids with big heads do not wind up on-on psychiatrist couches. Um- SM: 1:15:40 That whole it is like trying to discuss ego, or that whole period couple years back, when they are talking about folks are coming out about if you have too much ego, that is bad. And, you know, it is like, well, you got to have ego, because that is confidence in yourself. WK: 1:15:53 Yeah, so much ego, it is not bad. There, there are people who, deep down inside, hate themselves, but they put on this arrogant, t-this kind of sachet of arrogance, um, because they are covering up for a deep-seated inferiority complex. There is a very different it is a whole different thing. I mean, even Christian teaching. I mean even if you and, and, and Christ has been so maligned and so-so misquoted, or, or the ideas that he espoused are so misquoted, um, if you looked at, at the heart of the Christian teaching, I mean, you know, um, Christ said, love one another as you love yourself. And, um, so I-I think that-that is a tremen- I think that is a tremendous misnomer, you know that these kids were all just arrogant kids looking for a place to hang out. SM: 1:16:39 I am going to ask, uh, this question here, which is basically throwing out some names. Just get your initial [shuffling sound] response to them, whether [intercom interruption], uh, just your thoughts on them and, uh whether they were impactful on uh- WK: 1:16:55 Mhm. SM: 1:16:55 America. First two, obviously Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden. WK: 1:16:59 Uh, Fonda, in the sense that she even to the people who are against the war, I think she crossed the line. When she got on, uh, Hanoi radio, there was a sense, even within the anti-war movement, I think that there was a sense of right and wrong. And I think that, that when she went on radio Hanoi and urged American soldiers to give up. I think that there was a sense that she, she had really crossed a line, um, and that she has not redeemed herself with her spelled body and her tremendous, um, workout stuff and [stuttering] punishment of all punishments, marrying Ted Turner. But I think that realistically speaking, I think th-that she, she, um, she crossed a line, I think with Hayden. Hayden's a really bright guy. Um, Hayden, Hayden, Ruben, all the guys who in, in the, uh leadership of the movement, I-I do not think that they ever had the mainstream college kids. I think they made, there was a lot of smoke and mirrors, but, uh, Hayden, I think, has made a significant contribution. [intercom interruption] As a, you know, as a California legislator, and, and, and to this day, you got to give the guy credit him and he still activist. He is still a liberal. He is still getting his ears pinned in you know, Richard Rierden, I guess, just kicked his butt in the election, or was about to kick his butt in the election, but, but [intercom interruption] Hayden di-did not become, uh, um, Jerry Rubin. Hayden never became a stock broker. SM: 1:18:27 Yeah, that goes right into the next two, which is Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. And I-I prefaced the Abbie Hoffman question by well aware that he killed himself several years back over in Bucks County. Yeah, manic depressive. He had $2,500 in the bank, [chuckling, stuttering] the social media said he had given all this money away to causes yet, and he had written a note on his deathbed that basically stated that no one is listening to me anymore, so I am not going to live anymore. And so- WK: 1:18:40 Oh, he was a manic depressive. I do not think anybody listened to him in the first place. I think he was the clown prince of the movement. Um, He was, I-I do not think that people said, well, what does Abby say? I think that people were much more in tune with Ruben and with some of the other people who are more serious than that. No, Abby was the outrageous guy, Abby was the guy who wrote the book, steal this book. I mean, Abby, Abby was every movement must have its clown prince, and Abby was the clown prince of the anti-war movement. SM: 1:19:15 But do you think, and before we get the next names here, that there are many boomers that may have continued to keep their idealism as they got older and whatever field they went into, and then, though they see that, even though he may have been the clown prince or whatever perceptions might be, that, wait a minute, today's college students are not listening or care as much about civil rights issues and racism and so forth as we did - the passion again - WK: 1:19:37 Because they think it is done. SM: 1:19:39 Yeah, they think it is done, or all- how about some of the other issues that so no one is listening anymore, and we are, we are getting older, and we are going to pass on and so they are going to be raising their kids in a couple years. So that, that, you know, I-I only saw that article, not so much caring about Abby Hoffman as I did. Was that symbolic of many boomers and their attitudes as they are approaching 50? WK: 1:19:58 No, because I think that he was caught in a time warp. Um, you find, I think that you find that with a lot of people, you find that with a lot of actors, for example, that th-they, they do one thing and they do one thing well, and when they are asked to show some versatility, they just cannot do it. So, I think that in every offense case, Abby was reliving the (19)60s, even though it was the (19)90s. And I think that he was really kind of caught in a time warp, um, you know, Hayden's, I mean, you have to give Hayden credit, at least for changing over the times. But he is still dedicated to, you know, mostly liberal environmental type causes. SM: 1:20:21 Uh, some of the Presidents, um, just, just give real quick commentary on Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, just, just some brief thoughts on all four of them. WK: 1:20:38 Okay, well, Lyndon Johnson was the guy who put the pedal to the metal about Vietnam. I mean, history has shown him. Um, Lyndon Johnson was, as most men are, a real paradox. Um, he was enormously skilled at playing the political game. It was Lyndon Johnson. [intercom interruption] It was Lyndon Johnson who got through most of John Kennedy's legislation. Posthumously. Uh, it was Lyndon Johnson who put through the, um, Civil Rights Bill, which had just been in the planning stages when Kennedy was assassinated. Um, it was also Lyndon Johnson who, b-before John Kennedy's body was in the ground, the night of Kennedy's assassination in the White House, called together the Joint Chiefs of S-Staff and said, boys, get ready, because we are going to step things up in Vietnam. Um, I think Lyndon Johnson was the was the quintessential southern politician. Uh, did it well, uh, realized by the time he died that the Vietnam had been a huge mistake. SM: 1:21:35 Kennedy and, uh, Richard Nixon? WK: 1:21:36 Y-you know, John Kennedy, this is, this is 1963 versus 1997 when we know, you know, he was a man of tremendous flaws and had an eye for women, um, I-I think he was idealism personified. I think that he was the first person to actively reach out to young people, including those who were even too young to vote. Uh, he was the fi-first person to, uh, bring up the, the notion of, uh, things like the Peace Corps of, uh, of government is what you make it, um, and you must make it. And everybody has an obligation. And not just the you know, not just what they told you the draft board that you got an obligation to serve. Kennedy said you got an obligation to, to serve and to give back. And I think that, I think the fact that he came from so much wealth and power added credence to his argument. Uh, and as I said, and I cannot underestimate this enough, I think that his assassination was the pivotal turning point in the 1960s I think that day came and we just went in a whole different direction than we would have gone had he had lived. SM: 1:22:40 Nixon and Ford. WK: 1:22:42 Nixon probably will go down as the most paradoxical of presidents of modern times. Um, you know, ultimately, ultimately getting a peace in Vietnam, ultimately opening up relationships with China, uh, ultimately, I mean, bussing was actually Nixon. Nixon, it was the Nixon administration that proposed bussing is an equitable solution to-to, uh, racial disharmony. Um, but you cannot divorce yourself in the end. And I think that the man was, uh, a very complex, very untrusting, um, very, very paranoid guy who was a real ultimately, toward the end, was a real, dangerous guy. Uh, Jerry Ford, [stuttering] not to use the- to abuse the analogy, but Jerry Ford is the second-string quarterback. Jerry Ford was the guy that you call him when your first-string quarterback just broke his arm. Um, a decent, honorable man who had represented the conservative Grand Rapids, Michigan district quite well for quite some time, um, who, under the circumstances, made a, uh, made a noble attempt at healing, and I think, did okay. Um, pardoning Nixon caused him the election, and it should have. SM: 1:24:06 The, uh, some of the civil rights leaders you made reference to how important Dr. King was in, in your life, but your thoughts on Dr. King and the Black Power advocates, Huey Newton's Eldridge cleavers- WK: 1:24:17 See the problem with Dr. King? The problem with Dr. King is not unlike the problem with Nixon and Ford, um, that you have got a real strong number one and there is, there is really no clearly designated number two. I mean, in Atlanta, I got to know a lot more about Dr. Abernathy, and Ralph Abernathy was a good guy, and it was really unfortunate that toward the end of his life, he saw fit to, uh, in his memoirs make some reference to Dr. King's supposed infidelity, which I thought is- was a cheap shot, and, and un-un-unlike the class that Dr. Abernathy usually showed. But the problem is that, you know, there are damn few Martin Luther Kings, um, and, and Ralph Abernathy certainly was not one of them, and I do not think that Jesse Jackson, at that particular point had the wisdom, uh, or the maturity to take over the mantle of, uh, the movement. I was disappointed, frankly, getting to know Andrew Young, uh, and what a magnificent man he is. Uh, Andrew Young could have stepped in and taken over, if the movement had not fallen into-into disarray. It is too bad that he was not clearly designated number two, because I think that Andrew Young was and is uh, uh, a very, very special human being. SM: 1:25:37 Black Power advocates? WK: 1:25:42 You know, Dr. King used to always say, you know, peace through non-violence. But I sometimes wonder if a lot of that civil rights legislation and a lot of that, uh, housing for people, and the things, the kinds of things that the Black Panthers were providing, would have been provided if it were not for the Black Panthers. Uh, in Chicago, uh, Mark Clark and Freddy Hampton were two black panthers, two of the leaders of the movement, and they were shot. They were shot to death, and they were slaughtered. And every piece of forensic evidence indicates that, uh, that is what happened. I mean, they did not. They were not reaching for guns. They were one of them was nude. They were both asleep, and there was a sheriff's raid at four o'clock in the morning, and both these guys were slaughtered. I think the black the black panthers, had a lot going for them, um, and they certainly lit a fire under Congress's tail to do something about some of the problems that they were addressing. Um, Eldridge Cleaver turned out to be a real disappointment because of his skirmishes with the law. Shooting judges, raping women, um, is not the way to empower oneself. Um, but I think that many of the goals of the black peace tone nation were, were commendable, and I think that in many ways they, um, just as the Muslim, uh, nation does now, meets very real and very fundamental goals. So, the very real and fundamental needs of the of the minority community. SM: 1:27:10 Goes right into Malcolm X, died in (19)65. WK: 1:27:17 Well, Malcolm X is, is a fascinating man, because, like so many other great men, he was not born to greatness, but, um, obviously as a person, as a Caucasian person, it is easy for me to say, well, the thing I really respect the most about Malcolm X is that after his pilgrimage to Mecca, he chose to see that Islam and, and Allah is color blind, and that all men and women of good faith who follow the Will of what he referred to as Allah, as we-we would call God. Uh, all-all of us are God's children, and that that espousing that philosophy ultimately probably cost him his life. Um, I think Malcolm X is one of the most important African and probably next to Dr. King is probably the most important African American of the 20th century in terms of leaders of their people. SM: 1:28:06 Timothy Leary, Ralph Nader, and again, I am picking these names out because they were of the time. WK: 1:28:11 Timothy Leary, too-too kooky to be mainstream. Tune in, uh, turn and drop out, too kooky to be mainstream. Uh, Ralph Nader, um, an interesting growth out of the 1960s basically, um, you know, General Motors spent 1000s and 1000s of dollars trying to, to get something on this guy, you know, find an old girlfriend, or find, you know, did he pay his taxes? Or, you know, do something to besmirch him. And he was totally, completely beyond reproach, um, and, and was squeaky, squeaky clean. And I think that consumerism was in the consumer movement was an interesting offshoot of the 1960s, um, that we were not going to take the same we were not going to buy cars that, that were bad cars, you know, and we were not going to buy appliances that would fall apart. Um, an interesting offshoot of the (19)60s, no more than that. SM: 1:29:03 How about, uh, George Wallace, and I am just mentioning the Hubert Humphrey and Barry Goldwater. WK: 1:29:09 Okay, George Wallace, uh, typical southern governor, just more of a loud mouth. Uh, his metamorphosis as a human being has been interesting to watch. Barry Goldwater was scary. He was a scary dude. He was a scary guy. Uh, I know he was the grand old statesman of Republican politics, but he was talking about dealing with Vietnam War in terms of using nuclear weapons. And that, to me, is scary. And, uh, it was, I was delighted to see LBJ win that one, um, as matter of fact, was working in the Young Democrats at the time, um, and who was the third one? SM: 1:29:43 Hubert Humphrey. WK: 1:29:45 You know, Hubert Humphrey and LBJ are almost interchangeable. Hubert Humphrey was, was an old Senate hand from the, uh, from Minneapolis who was a halfway decent vice president, but probably would have been a real mediocre president, but God compared to Nixon. I, uh, I do not know. We will never know. He did not win. So, Spear Wagner. Spiro Wagner was one of the most polarizing forces in America 19- in the in the 20th century, um, the, the spearhead of Nixon's attack against young people. Uh, A real, real, real scary guy, probably the scariest guy in the Nixon administration, be-because he was the one who forced older people to say, you were there with us or against us. Nixon did not do it as much as Agnew did. SM: 1:30:28 Muhammad Ali. WK: 1:30:30 Um, entertainer, um certainly one of the one of the preeminent figures, that of the of the 19-1960s but, uh, in terms of his lasting impact on culture, I do not think he has much. Entertainer. A magnificent boxer, um, an interesting, interesting, interesting man, probably, certainly the most interesting man that ever fought. But that is not saying a lot. SM: 1:30:58 Some of the women leaders, Gloria Steinem and, uh, Betty Friedan. WK: 1:30:58 You have to understand the women's movement, and I say this basically, having grown up in the Midwest and having lived in the South for five years, the women's movement was and is and always, probably will be perceived as an Eastern phenomenon. Now, on some level, every parent wants their daughter to be able to be the president united states. So, it was accepted to that regard, and on some level, they are all to be commended for being bringing to our attention the tremendous inequity that existed in our culture. But I do not think that there was ever a groundswell of support for the people wound around the block to get Gloria Steinem's autograph on a book, or, or Betty Friedan's autograph on a book. I think that they were thoughtful. They were thinkers. But I think that there was a, there was a perception that they were Eastern liberal thinkers who basically had a germ of a good idea, but, but, uh, it basically came from privilege to begin with. You know, tell-tell it to a woman in Kentucky who's a single mother raising three kids. You know, it te-tell her about the women's movement, and it was that, it was that kind of- SM: 1:32:07 Eugene McCarthy. WK: 1:32:10 Um, kind of a sign of how far reaching our, our hatred of the Vietnam War went, that we were willing to listen to this kind of non-entity of a senator. Uh, just it was one sole purpose, and his one sole platform was to get us out of Vietnam. SM: 1:32:27 And, uh, Robert Kennedy. WK: 1:32:28 As, as I said, Robert Kennedy was the great promise. Uh, Robert Kennedy was hopefully going to be the president that his brother was not allowed to be. Uh, Robert Kennedy was everything we believed in. Uh, He was progressive. He was not as charismatic as his brother. He had more of a temper than his brother, but he was the one who stared down Jimmy Hoffa, and he stared down George Wallace, and he was the one who sent the National Guard into the south, and he was a tough customer. And I think tha-that there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that had he have lived, he would have been elected in 1968 no doubt about it. SM: 1:33:01 How about George McGovern? WK: 1:33:03 George McGovern is a wonderful, uh, capable southern [stuttering] senator who represented South Dakota well, but again, falls into the McCarthy mold, where it was just- we were so desperate for anybody to say, let us end this damn war that that we settle for is very, very, very decent man. SM: 1:33:19 And the cu- finally, the, the people that are affiliated with Watergate, the John Deans of the world, the John Mitchells of the world, the, uh, group that were involved in the Watergate. WK: 1:33:32 They got caught. They got caught. John Dean sold out. He got caught. He kept a plea. He turned on his boss, and basically, he sang his song so he would not have to go to prison for more than a short period of time. Of that whole group, the ones I had the most respect for are Coulson and, uh, Liddy. Coulson, because I think time has [stuttering] time has certainly indicated that his conversion is very genuine. [mic cuts] I, um, I-I think in, in Charles Carlson's case, uh, time is- has proven that his-his conversion to Christianity is very genuine, and, uh, and has literally consumed his life. He is very comfortable with it. And I think Liddy in the sense that, uh, just as just as the left head is heavy Hoffman. The right now has Gordon Liddy, except Gordon Liddy is a real smart guy, he is a former FBI agent. He is a lawyer, and, you know, he is fond of saying, I am out because of he is a convicted felon. Uh, I am not allowed to own a gun. But Mrs. Liddy is very well armed. [laughter] Uh, Gordon Liddy. I mean, sit in a room with Gordon Liddy and talk to him. I mean, just he, when he was working for Nixon, he stood against everything I believed in, but he is a, charm, funny, uh witty- SM: 1:34:52 Got a book out, or he had a book out. WK: 1:34:54 Uh, and, and the thing I respect the most about him is he had ample opportunity to reduce his sentence, um, and he stuck by it, and he did every single hour. SM: 1:35:08 Um, Robert McNamara, WK: 1:35:11 Oh, this, this, I am getting closer to death, and I finally realized the error of my ways. So, I am so sorry I find, um, very disingenuous. Um, these guys knew what they were doing. SM: 1:35:24 Woodward and Bernstein, how important were they, names just stand out? WK: 1:35:31 They stand out. So, you know, it, it could be Smith and Jones. It could be, you know, Glick and Herman. Um, they stand out because they were very tenacious in a story that ultimately brought down the presidency. So, I think that time has shown Bob Woodward to be a decent author, a well, well written author, uh, one who still gets the good stuff. Um, some of his work is flawed, but a lot of it is good. I liked his, uh, his book on Clinton's first year, uh, the agenda is excellent. The book and the Supreme Court the brethren is very good. I-I think Carl Bernstein has not necessarily distinguished himself in the field of journalism at all. He, he, his flirtation with television was rather disappointing. His book about the Pope, uh, would that he co-authored, I forget who he c-co-authored it with, uh, was fairly well received, um, but I do not think that either one of them has necessarily turned out to be Pulitzer material. SM: 1:36:26 Um, the last two and then I am done, um, Dwight Eisenhower, and then the impact of the music that it had on the boomer generation. WK: 1:36:35 Okay, Dwight Eisenhower as a president or as a general? SM: 1:36:39 Just, just as boomers might think of him. WK: 1:36:41 Oh, well, the boomers would, would, would totally not care that he won the war or that he was the, the, um, commander in chief of the allied forces. Uh, but the one thing that he has in common with that job and also with the presidency, is a politician. He was a politician during World War Two, and he was a politician, uh, during the eight years that he was in office, he was America's grandfather. He was, I mean, how in the hell would you vote for? I mean, I can remember my parents having this conversation because they were lifelong Democrats, but voting for Eddie Stevenson, who was this aristocratic, very well spoken, um, you know, divorced man for presidency, you know, as opposed to Ike won the war, you know. And Ike was our grandfather. Ike told us, ever there, there now, everything will be okay. And, and by and large, from 1952 to 1960 everything was okay. Um, and then the last one was, who? WK: 1:37:38 Music, the music of the year, the [stuttering] Jimmy Hendrix- I do not think- SM: 1:37:38 all the great musicians and the music of that era. WK: 1:37:40 I think that the, um, the question about the music is always going to be which came first, the chicken or the egg? Did the music stimulate change, or did the change stimulate the music? And I think the answer is not to cop out, but I think the answer is both. Um, I go back to what I said about the Beatles, and I think that the Beatles were the most revolutionary thing about the 1960s and, and the fact that their-their popularity originally might owe, be owing in some fashion to the death of John Kennedy, may be an interesting sidebar, but the fact of the matter is th-that that not only did they own the 1960s but basically they ushered in an era were that anything, anything that was done by a British artist, just went right to the top of the chart, uh and some of it was terrific. I mean, you know, I mean, they ushered the way in for Led Zeppelin, and they offered the, you know, Jimi Hendrix was, was a guy with a lot of promise to he had a big drug problem that took his life. Janis Joplin was this kind of raggedy, but earthy and, and gutsy and ballsy, uh, funky singer who had, you know, same thing, she had a drug problem, and it ultimately took her life. Um, 1960s had more than its share of goofy love songs. I mean, not everything was, was the Eve of Destruction by Barry McGuire, you know, but, uh, certainly music played a significant role in it. You know, toward the latter part, much of the Beatles’ stuff addressed what was going on in culture. Um, there were certain artists like Joan Baez, who was not that popular, but, but whose music almost exclusively, uh, addressed what was going on in culture. Uh, interestingly enough, the crossover black artists, the Motown black artists, were the ones who would sing about, you know, things like love, universal stuff. Love, you left me. You broke my heart. Uh, where did our love go? The way you do, the things you do, things like that, but, but in that, in the quietness of that simplicity, there was a real revolution being born, white kids were really getting into black music. Instead of listening to Pat Boone sing fats, Domino's songs, or Elvis Duke, God knows how many songs that were originally done by black artists, there were now starting to hear black music by black artists and-and so in his own way [intercom interruption] In his own way, you, you have to give also a, a, a mention in the, in the 1960s to Barry Gordy, who's, who's personally a hero of mine, I-I one of my favorite interviews, if not the favorite in-interview of all time, because, um, it was not revolutionary music that sent the white kids to the to the record stores. It was, it was the universality of music. And then later on, groups like the temptations would do songs like ball of confusion. And later on, [intercom interruption] then and, and later on, uh, people like [intercom interruption] that Elias is a busy guy, uh later on, as these groups became very, very well established, they would, they would then bring in, you know, the social consciousness to the music. But originally it was all just, you know, it was, it was love songs, it was, you know, catchy tunes. And so, I mean, you really have to give you credit to Barry Gordon. SM: 1:41:00 I know big Marvin Gaye also did that, uh, controversial album, What’s Going On. WK: 1:41:04 What's going on, What's Going On. SM: 1:41:05 Got him in trouble too. WK: 1:41:06 What's Going On makes the hair on my knuckles stand up. Because basically what had happened was what Marvin had done really great rhythm and blues, bubble, not bubblegum, because Motown was never bubblegum. It always had an air of sophistication to it. But Marvin had done really great dance type music. And then just when Tammy Terrell died, who was a singing partner so often, uh, he just disappeared for a year, and he came back with What's going on. And What's going on was, o-oh, Barry Gordon hated it, you know, he hated it because he thought it did not have any sales potential and-and the fact of the matter is that Marvin had grown tremendously as an artist. And, uh, What's Going On was exactly the music for 1971. SM: 1:41:46 That is right. WK: 1:41:47 It was a hit. It was exactly what it was. SM: 1:41:50 I was here in Philly working for my brother in the summertime, for, uh, when I was in college, and I went over, I think somebody brought that out. I could not wait to play this. WK: 1:41:57 Yeah. SM: 1:41:57 Just every song on it brought goose bumps to you, it was right- WK: 1:42:01 Yeah, mercy, mercy me, you know. SM: 1:42:02 Right. WK: 1:42:02 Um, uh, so and I think that they, you know, do not forget, we did not start dealing with Vietnam in movies for seven or eight years after was over. SM: 1:42:19 Dear Honor was one of the first ones. WK: 1:42:20 Dear Honor, was one of the first ones, Coming Home was one of the first ones. The best one, though, was platoon, because it just, it was so raw, it was so in your face. It was so- SM: 1:42:23 Vets do not like that movie, though. WK: 1:42:23 Why? Smoking dope all the time. SM: 1:42:24 They feel it is, um, uh I am not exactly sure why they do not like it. They think it portrayed the Vietnam veteran and like- Yes, smoking dope, the killing, uh, is random killings, and that really upset them. And that was not all the look of Vietnam veteran was about, but images we did a program at our university with, uh, three or four Vietnam veterans, brought them back, and we had a Vietnamese student in our audience. We hired together Vietnamese students at Westchester. We brought Dan Fraley, um, who was one of the town people walked from the wall in Philly, and I interviewed him already, um, and Dennis fest, who had lost his legs in the war, and they were there, and they showed the movie, then they responded to the movie, and then it was all over. She was there in the audience, and she, you know, she came up and hugged both of them. Now, that was a memory I will never forget, because her parents were over there at the time when she was a baby. She does not remember, but, uh, she was a baby, and it was just a fact that she forgave that the American soldier. So, the memories- WK: 1:43:16 It is what I told you before, that is one of the real ironies of this whole thing. The Americans are not mad at Vietnamese. The Vietnamese are not mad at the Americans, so what gives? I got to go. SM: 1:43:31 Yeah, Wally. Thank you very much, uh. WK: 1:43:32 Okay, my pleasure. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Wally Kennedy Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kennedy, Wally ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Radio journalists; Kennedy, Wally--Interviews Description An account of the resource Wally Kennedy, a native of Chicago, is a journalist, anchor, and an educator. He is currently a news anchor for the Philadelphia KYW Newsradio and has interviewed many people ranging from Joe Biden to Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. Prior to joining KYW Newsradio, he spent twenty years as a television talk host. Kennedy is a graduate of Loyola Academy, and Columbia College, in Chicago. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-02-15 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.75a; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.75b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 103:36 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/1b0ef99ddb7a7e56b70f1074434cecf0.jpg 536c14a8456bb5ce32012c41c14be12d https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/5111a50ae3c22fbcf16b15f4621d181c.mp3 6929a256181a5f65964b01dcd873782c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js) This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2002-07-29 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed James J. Kirschke Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;James J. Kirschke is currently an English professor at Villanova University. Kirschke earned his Bachelor's degree from LaSalle College, and his Master's degree and Ph.D. in English at Temple University. He served in Vietnam until was medically retired in 1968. He recounted his experiences in an autobiography entitled Not Going Home Alone. He is also the author of Henry James and Impressionism, Willa Cather and Six Writers from the Great War, and Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816): Author, Statesman, and Man of the World.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:15105,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}">James J. Kirschke is currently an English professor at Villanova University. Kirschke earned his Bachelor's degree from LaSalle College, and his Master's degree and Ph.D. in English at Temple University. He served in Vietnam until he was medically retired in 1968. He recounted his experiences in an autobiography entitled <em>Not Going Home Alone</em>. He is also the author of <em>Henry James and Impressionism</em>, <em>Willa Cather and Six Writers from the Great War</em>, and <em>Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816): Author, Statesman, and Man of the World</em>.</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 1 Microcassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;John F Kennedy's Election; Nineteen sixties; Ron Castillo; Grace Slick; Baby boom generation; Nineteen sixties government distrust; Bobby Mueller; Disabled veterans; La Salle University in nineteen-sixties.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:14275305}}">John F Kennedy's Election; Nineteen sixties; Ron Castillo; Grace Slick; Baby boom generation; Nineteen sixties government distrust; Bobby Mueller; Disabled veterans; La Salle University in nineteen-sixties.</span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 91:45 Subject LCSH College teachers; Villanova University; Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Veterans; Kirschke, James J.--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. James J. Kirschke Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kirschke, James J. ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource College teachers; Villanova University; Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Veterans; Kirschke, James J.--Interviews Description An account of the resource James J. Kirschke is currently an English professor at Villanova University. Kirschke earned his Bachelor's degree from LaSalle College, and his Master's degree and Ph.D. in English at Temple University. He served in Vietnam until he was medically retired in 1968. He recounted his experiences in an autobiography entitled <em>Not Going Home Alone</em>. He is also the author of <em>Henry James and Impressionism</em>, <em>Willa Cather and Six Writers from the Great War</em>, and <em>Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816): Author, Statesman, and Man of the World</em>. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2002-07-29 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.76 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 91:45 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/d51080ba635afac48cc084b4d99954e0.jpg 14082c53d3626dedeacdac8d72c8f034 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/ac4e39dc523df40910ab7600cb0650a6.mp3 8efa2d6c0a1176632b0865a73e75ea51 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-07-30 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Jerry Lembcke, 1943- Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. Jerry Lembcke is an associate professor emeritus of Sociology at Holy Cross University. He has a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Oregon. He is the author of The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam, and The Legacy of Vietnam and Hanoi Jane: War, Sex, and Fantasies of Betrayal.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:7043,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,5099745],&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Dr. Jerry Lembcke is an associate professor emeritus of Sociology at Holy Cross University. He has a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Oregon. He is the author of <em>The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam</em>&nbsp;and <em>Hanoi Jane: War, Sex, and Fantasies of Betrayal</em>.</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Vietnam War; Baby boom generation; Service; VISTA; Peace Corps; Army draft; Larry Siegfried; Anti-War; Barack Obama; George McGovern; Birth control pill; Beats; City Lights Booksellers and Publishers; Terrorism \n &quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:4993,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;10&quot;:0,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Vietnam War; Baby boom generation; Service; VISTA; Peace Corps; Army draft; Larry Siegfried; Anti-War; Barack Obama; George McGovern; Birth control pill; Beat generation; City Lights Booksellers and Publishers; Terrorism<br /><br /></span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 144:35 Subject LCSH College teachers; Sociologists; Lembcke, Jerry, 1943--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Jerry Lembcke Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 30 July 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) JL (00:00:05): Jeremy. Excuse me. Jerry Lembcke. SM (00:00:14): I might be taking some quotes here too for your reaction to that. You write in your book, Hanoi Jane, that many of the attacks on her are oftentimes based on the need to explain our defeat in Vietnam through betrayal on the home front. Then you also add, "the emasculation of the national will to war." Can you explain what you mean by that in more detail? JL (00:00:41): Well, I think that the United States went into Vietnam, slid into Vietnam, with no idea that it would ever maybe be fighting a major war to begin with, and much less that it would lose its first war on foreign soil. The defeat in Vietnam was a very hard pill to swallow for a lot of Americans. Still is, I think. We were almost, I think, universally self-imagined to be the most powerful nation on earth. Our trajectory in the early (19)60s was even upward from those expectations. Indeed, materially speaking, we were far superior, should have been far superior to the Vietnamese. We had more gunpowder, gun power, better-trained, formally-trained troops and so forth. And yet we lost the war. I think that the country turned inward for explanations for why we lost the war. The short form on that is a scapegoat or scapegoats, alibis, excuses for why we lost the war, and looking for reasons internally. We were too weak. We were not manly enough. That is the emasculation part of it. Vietnam was an emasculating event, I think, culturally speaking for a lot of people, for a lot of people. Looking for reasons for that, looking for scapegoats for that kind of loss, I think you look toward the feminine side of the culture. You look to women perhaps, and Fonda, for reasons we might go into, Fonda fit the bill pretty well. SM (00:02:50): Bobby Muller, who you are aware of- JL (00:02:52): Sure. SM (00:02:52): He was one of the most vocal anti-war vets, once he came out of, after overcoming those terrible tragedy, losing access to his legs and everything. But he said he went into that war knowing that America was a good nation. We were a good nation. We did not do anything wrong. And he came out of that war feeling that we were the bad guy. If you talk to some other Vietnam vets, who also had similar experiences, though some of them will say, "Oh, Bobby. Bobby does not have the attitudes that a lot of other vets had. He just continues to think the way he did and a little bit more critical than he should be." But he has not changed much. Is that part of it too, that even we can use scapegoats with Jane Fonda, we can use scapegoats to the anti-war movement as prolonging the war. That could be a myth too. But really, United States was now seen as not a very good guy in world affairs. JL (00:04:08): Well, I came home from Vietnam having re-thought things that way. Maybe I was not quite as conscious of America as Bobby Muller was going in, a vague... I grew up in an apolitical environment, so I probably did not think about those kinds of those things very much. But to the extent that I did, certainly... I had uncles that fought in World War II. That was part of my sense that in World War II, there is still no doubt in my mind that we were on the right side- SM (00:04:41): Oh, I agree. JL (00:04:42): Of those conflicts. And so sure, going into Vietnam, I thought, "Well, the country goes to war. All the wars I have ever heard of the United States going into, we were on the right side. Why would not Vietnam be the same way?" But in the course of being in Vietnam, and for me, part of coming to that Bobby Muller kind of consciousness was I, being a chaplain's assistant and working for about half the time I was there for a chaplain who was opposed to the war. So if we are talking about religious righteousness, in a religious sense of righteousness, here is the priest, a Catholic priest, and he had worked in the mission’s field in South Asia before the war and had volunteered to come in as a chaplain, which "to do his stint" as he said. But he did not support the war. He was one of the first people from whom I heard, "We are going to lose this war." SM (00:05:54): And what year did you hear that? JL (00:05:56): 1969. SM (00:05:57): That is right in that (19)67 to (19)71 period, which is the real crazy time there. JL (00:06:02): Yeah. Here is the chaplain telling me, "We are going to win." And I suppose I said, "Why? Would you say that?" Or excuse me. He said, "We are going to lose. We are not going to win." His explanation for that was that these people do not want us here. That was his explanation for it. I felt like he knew what he was talking about because he had been in the mission’s field in South Asia. That was a key moment for me in... "Okay, we are on the wrong side of this war. And there might be a righteous side to this war, but we are not on it." As I was going along through this, my questioning became, I think, more sophisticated, more nuanced, to the point where even today I am not a pacifist principally. I think that in the case of Vietnam, I think there was a righteous side to that war. I think the Vietnamese cause was a supportable cause. But we were on the other side. We were on the other side of that. SM (00:07:19): What year were you there? JL (00:07:21): (19)69. I got to Vietnam, I think, New Year's Day, 1969. And I left about the 1st of February (19)70. SM (00:07:34): Were you drafted, or was it volunteer? JL (00:07:36): I was drafted. I was drafted. I was a junior high school math teacher in Fort Dodge, Iowa- SM (00:07:44): Oh, wow. JL (00:07:45): In 1968 and got snared by the Johnson administration's post-Tet call-up of more people. I had been deferred, of course, for college. And then I had been deferred for two years for teaching. SM (00:08:08): Your deferments are running out. JL (00:08:10): I was about to turn 25, and my friendly draft board in Le Mars, Iowa, which is Plymouth County, Iowa, they kept telling me with a smile, "But you are going to have to go eventually. Yes, we will defer you for one more year. But eventually you are going to have to go." SM (00:08:29): Had you been involved in any anti-war activity while you were in college? JL (00:08:30): No, not a lick. SM (00:08:32): Of course, as a teacher, you probably could not because you could lose your job. JL (00:08:35): Well, yeah. But no, I was not. I was political. I was not political right up into induction. I tried to stay out of... I tried to still stay out on the grounds that I was a teacher and that I was of better service to my country as a math teacher than I would be in the army. SM (00:09:04): Yeah, because that whole era was about service. And I got questioned about the different opinions about service, pro and con, later in the interview. JL (00:09:14): Sure. SM (00:09:14): Another charge is that protests at home prolonged the war. I mentioned that as previously. College students on college campuses are [inaudible] that helped lose the war for Americans took place within America so that the North Vietnamese only had to wait it out. Le Duc Tho, I think, was the one in his biography who states that, "We knew America was not going to stick." There was protests going on back in the United States and that they were not going to stay the long course like they were. And of course, they had always stayed the long course in their history, no matter what. JL (00:09:49): Sure. SM (00:09:51): But do you consider this also another one of these myths that we constantly hear, particularly amongst the people that are against the anti- war movement, the New Left and that group, that they prolonged the war by their protest? JL (00:10:06): Yeah, I do not think that that is true. I think that if anything, the protests shortened, shortened the war. I think we lost the war because we were beaten by the Vietnamese. We were not beaten by the anti-war movement. There is a chemistry there between the resourcefulness and the resilience of the Vietnamese people and what is going on back home, on the home front. There is no doubt that the anti-war movement initially, that some people in the anti-war movement saw the Vietnamese cause as a righteous cause and protest the war because of that. And you have got pacifists at home who are protesting the war because it is a war, who are not going to support any war. As time went on, I think, more and more Americans came to the anti-war movement, simply because of the length of the war itself. The war went on and on, and people could see no light at the end of the tunnel, and so begin to be won over to the anti-war cause, if not the pro-Vietnamese cause, but simply because this war is not going anywhere. People came to see it as being divisive, a drain on economic resources. But if the Vietnamese had not been doing well enough to at least fight the US to a stalemate, to a standstill, then a lot of this other stuff would not have been going on at home. So I think that, to the extent that the anti-war movement becomes a factor in the outcome of the war, that in turn is attributable to the Vietnamese themselves. So it is really back to the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese won the war, and they won the hearts and minds of a lot of American people. SM (00:12:20): There is no question that we could have physically won that war with all of our military capability and of course, that mentality of the - I forget the generals - and those bomb to the Stone Age, that that kind of mentality, "Yeah, we could have ended the war there just like we did in Japan, with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." But the key question is, they won psychologically, I believe. JL (00:12:45): Sure. SM (00:12:46): They won the psychological game. And it is because they knew who they were, and they knew their history, they knew their culture, and they knew that they were not going to be defeated, no matter what. JL (00:12:56): Right. SM (00:12:57): Whether it be the French, whether it be the Chinese, the Japanese, or any other, back in their history. JL (00:13:03): We are fighting, we are fighting on their terrain. The commonplace interpretation is that, "Well, then they know the hills and the valleys and then the jungles." That might have been true too. But I think it is more psychological. It is the emotional. They are fighting for their homeland, and we are not. So they are going to be more committed to that. They are going to stay the course for a long period of time. SM (00:13:37): You said you learned from the chaplain that this war was not going to be, that we were not going to win this war. But from the time you arrived on the airplane in Vietnam to the time you left, can you specifically state when you personally felt an experience, not necessarily with a chaplain, that said, "This is ridiculous. We are not going to win this thing. Or that something is wrong here, the strategy's wrong," and whether you were saying this to your peers? That maybe you were not saying it, but other soldiers were saying it. Was there a specific instance where... JL (00:14:13): There are two that come to mind right away. Maybe as we talk more, there might be maybe. But two things that come to mind. Very early on, I saw the remnants of the French presence there. And I had no clue whatsoever. I do not know that... I graduated from college in 1966, Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I was a math major. I had had one American history class. I am not sure I had ever heard the words "colonialism" or "imperialism". When I saw the first... I still have the photograph; occasionally I run across the photograph of a bridge. I traveled around my little Instamatic. It was a bridge that had a French word on it, probably the French construction company that built the bridge and a date on it. I think it was 1941. I asked the Chaplin about that. Probably I did not even know that word was French. But I asked, "What is this?" I began to learn. I began to learn about the French colonization of Indo-China. That was hugely enlightening for me. That was just a big light pole that went off. That was one thing. The other thing that does not quite fit into your question, but I think it belongs here anyway, was seeing the permanency of what the US was putting in place there. For the first six months I was there, I was near, I was in a small Army camp near Phu Cat Airbase, which was just west of Qui Nhon. Most Americans, still to this day, have never heard of Phu Cat airbase. But to get to our little Army camp, we had to drive through Phu Cat, had to come through the main gate and then go out on the other side, so we were in and out of Phu Cat all the time. I remember vividly the cement roads, the cement - not asphalt - cement roads, cement curb, curb and gutter. "Holy cow, this is built to stay." This is not like my little Army camp that is half tents and sandbag bunkers and stuff like that. This airbase permanence, its permanence. "What is going on? What is going on with this?" Again, a light bulb, began to ask, began, "Why would we be building, why would we be building this thing here?" And I suppose at some point even, not consciously, that French bridge, the permanency of that, and the permanency of this air base began to come together. And then seeing on the air base, seeing the swimming pools, the bowling alleys, a library, football pools 10 years from now, the Sioux Bowl. Now, when I hear about Iraq, I hear the same things. SM (00:17:41): And Afghanistan. JL (00:17:42): People who have been there - and maybe Afghanistan too - say the US is building these big bases. SM (00:17:48): This gets right into my next expression here, which is Ronald Reagan, I interviewed Jack Wheeler. I do not know if you know Jack. He was a fundraiser for the Vietnam Memorial, and he was in Vietnam. He had done a Triple Heart. Ronald Reagan, he said, "Listen to Ronald Reagan's speech in (19)84," because Ronald Reagan did not come to the Vietnam Memorial when it opened in (19)82, because it was politically feasible to be there or was not the right thing. But in (19)84, he came to the Wall, and Peggy Noonan had written a great speech for him. But he said, Ronald Reagan's famous 1984 speech at the Vietnam War Memorial, he said, "We will never enter a war again without making sure that we are going to win it. We are going to give the military everything they need." And basically, he was blaming it on the leaders of the time, plus we must be... When you figure this also out, if he had been president, he probably would have been tougher, even though Nixon was pretty tough. He blamed it on the leaders. And then he also believed that we must be tougher on the dissent. Like his years as governor, where he came to power fighting students in (19)64 and (19)65 in the Free Speech Movement and (19)69 at People's Park. Reagan came to power based on two things. Number one, his law and order mentality against the students at university campuses in (19)64, (19)65, and in (19)69, when Meese was with him. And secondly, on ending the welfare state. That was the mentality. So my question is, what are your thoughts on that speech? And is this a myth? Because you have already brought the fact that we lost the war, but he is saying that if we had put everything into it, like Jim Webb and others have said, we would have won that thing. But we just did not have the will. We did not have the strategy. We did not have the desire to, whatever. Is that a myth? Is what Ronald Reagan is saying, that if we put everything into it, we would have won? JL (00:20:07): I think, no. I do not think we would have won. I think we could have prolonged the war. We might have been able to occupy Vietnam in a reasonably peaceful manner for a while. But the Vietnamese would have eventually thrown us out. SM (00:20:32): You think, even if they had done, "God, this never would have happened." I think, was it Hershey that... Who was the guy that had the mentality of dropping bombs and putting them back to the Stone Age? Was that General Hershey? JL (00:20:46): Oh, no, that was... SM (00:20:49): Oh, what is his name? Come on, Steve. I see him. There is a biography out on him right now. But anyways, we would never do that. But if by some chance we had ever dropped one bomb on Hanoi, do you think they would have continued? JL (00:21:04): Yeah, I think so. I do not know. That is the thing. SM (00:21:15): See, there is only one major city. They did not have any other major cities like that. JL (00:21:19): Yeah. But again, it maybe depends on at what point that bomb was dropping. By the end of the war, Hanoi was pretty much evacuated anyway. The Christmas bombings in 1972- SM (00:21:31): Yeah, they really did not hit much. They were bad though. JL (00:21:34): They were bad. But everything was out of the city. They had moved manufacturing out of the city, decentralized it. They had moved schools and art institutes and this stuff. It was spread out all over. It became, by the end of the war, Americans, I think, widely recognized that a country that is not very industrial is not very susceptible to bombing, because there is nothing to bomb. In 1969, as a chaplain's assistant, I was out and about all the time, on the roads, either on the roads or in helicopters. I was in an artillery unit. I was assigned to an artillery unit. These artillery units get broken up into these little gun pods that are on hilltops and checkpoints just all over the place. The chaplain and I, on a weekly basis, we made our rounds to all of these gun placement sites. The ones that we could reach by road, we drove to. The other ones, then we would helicopter to. But my point here is that I do not think there was a bridge that was still standing in the central highlands where I traveled. All the bridges had been bombed out. We had come up to the river or the creek and down into it. Maybe there had been some gravel down there, so the water was not too deep, if there was water at all. But the bridge itself was gone. SM (00:23:18): Wow. JL (00:23:21): So what are you going to... I do not know, I do not know. SM (00:23:25): When you were with the chaplain, did you give Last Rites to many? Was that part of his role? JL (00:23:31): Yes. Yes. A few. Oh, Last Rites as opposed to memorial, not a memorial service. SM (00:23:36): A combination either memorials of those who had died, and then of course, Last Rites right at the spot. JL (00:23:43): Well, not right at the spot, no. At the hospital, the chaplain would follow up after a fight. We were never on the scene of a ground attack on an LZ or a fire base. We would come in afterwards. In fact, there was a few times when we stayed in a helicopter in the air until things were cleared out. People in combat roles do not want you around if you are not part of it. They really do not. SM (00:24:29): So then in combat- JL (00:24:31): Combat's work. It is a form of work. I came to see what these guys are doing like looking at a construction site. When people are working on a construction site, they do not want you wandering around looking at things, because you are in the way. You might get hurt. SM (00:24:52): So those Joe Galloway stories, I know journalists were allowed to go with these troops. But the Joe Galloway story's a rare one. JL (00:25:01): You know what though? You better follow up on a lot of these stories about journalists going out? A lot of that stuff is baloney, because you... Closer to the truth is that they could not, they could not, they were not allowed to. There are good exceptions. SM (00:25:20): So that is another myth. JL (00:25:23): I think that is a big myth. And it has grown bigger over the years. SM (00:25:26): Well, the Joe Galloway was the big one, because we were soldiers once and brave, and he was there. And I know the story about catching the last helicopter, and he was there. And he had to take a gun up. And that is true. But that might have been a rare case then. JL (00:25:43): One of my best friends, the artillery unit where I was assigned, was the press officer. Well, he was not an officer. He was a Spec/5, but he was the press liaison person for the artillery. You have batteries. That is different, a different terminology. The artillery also have group. Those are the 41st Artillery Group. He was the press liaison officer. And I asked him, I said, "What do you do?" I said, "I never see you doing anything." This is what he said. He said, "My job is to see that any journalists who make it out here to Group Headquarters do not get any further." SM (00:26:30): Oh, wow. JL (00:26:32): He said, "I give them a story and send them back to Saigon." SM (00:26:37): Does that include the TV people? Because Walter Cronkite and Morley Safer and Dan Rather, and the African American person from 60 Minutes, Bradley, they supposedly were out there with the troops. JL (00:26:53): In 13 months I was there and out and about all the time, never saw a journalist of any kind. And more importantly, never heard of one being there. And these are places where, if there had have been a journalist at LZ Uplift, they had have been talking about that for six months. SM (00:27:11): How about the photographers like Larry Burrows and I forget the guy. There is several. Kenley, James Kenley, I forget his name was. Let me get into this from here. You wrote the great book, titled Spitting Image. First, what was your main inspiration in writing it? And second, when it was shown that this myth had little visible facts, how did Vietnam vets respond overall? Let me finish my other comments here. "The image of the vets being spit upon is still out there because I know. I have heard from people that I thought would be a little more educated about this issue. Some vets continue to use it as an example of how they were treated when they came home. The image of vets was based due to My Lai and other atrocities. Many vets were upset that they were placed in situations that made no sense and cost lives, upset with the strategy. People were upset with the leaders, and the military leaders and political leaders and the anti-war protest protestors were really not against the troops." There was a lot here, but what has been the reaction of your book Spitting Image in the Vietnam veteran community? JL (00:28:31): Almost 50-50 from what I hear. That was the pattern to begin with, and it continues to be the pattern. About half the guys I hear from say, "Right on, this never happened. It is about time somebody wrote this book," even though I wrote it, now, 12 years ago. And just as often, I hear from people who are just outraged, just beyond themselves. SM (00:29:00): But the ones that are outraged though, are they people that say... SM (00:29:03): The ones that are outraged though, are they people that say, it happened to me? Or are they going from hearsay? JL (00:29:10): It is a bit of both, but quite often it happened to me. That is what I hear. And the stories seem to get wilder all the time. By that I mean less believable, less plausible, loaded up with more exaggeration. And the guys who are locked into that are really locked into it. And I think the exaggeration reflects a kind of desperation on their part to be believed. And they keep loading in more stuff. SM (00:29:48): Is this another one of those reasons why some, we lost the war, this is our way of blaming others for the situation we were a part of? It is not like the anti-war people protesting and prolonging the war or Jane Fonda should be sent to jail for crimes that she committed against the nation? JL (00:30:18): I think it is a victimization identity. A victim identity or almost an ideology is what they are hooked on. It is a twist in the culture. It is not rational. You cannot really make sense of it. But it is that to be a victim is a credentialing. In the same sense that having a Purple Heart is a kind of credential. It is a way of saying, I am the real deal. Because I have a Purple Heart. The spat upon story. I have to step back on that one. The Purple Heart, if you are wounded, in a sense you are a victim. You have suffered, you have taken a loss. SM (00:31:11): Right. JL (00:31:13): You extend that a little bit, give it a little bit of a twist. Being spat on is also victimization. And if you believe that the real war all along was at home, not in Vietnam, if you got a Purple Heart in Vietnam, that was one front of the war. SM (00:31:32): Let us change this, this the 30 minute. This is the 40. All right, bear with me. Okay. JL (00:31:43): Vietnam was one front of that war. You got your Purple Heart there. Many people would say the real war was at home and I got my Purple Heart at home when I was spat on. You see what I am getting at. It is identity construction and they are really locked into that. SM (00:32:13): I have also wondered if people are not, they were not actually spit upon physically, but they used the term I was spit upon. It is a term they used if I was treated like crap. I am wondering if people interpret it differently? JL (00:32:33): It might be that their own thinking started that way, but then that they congealed it, or what is the word I want? It became more graphic to them even that they really were spat on. And then they start telling the story that way. SM (00:32:54): Well, I have two examples. This is your interview, but I want to bring this in here. And that is, I have been at the Vietnam Memorial now since 94, both for Memorial Day and Veteran's Day. I sit down amongst a lot of people and let them know I am not a veteran right away. And I am proud, I am very close to a lot of the Vietnam vets and I care about them. And I sat next to a mother when John McDermott was there, the singer who was singing a song and she had tears in her eyes and she said "right above John McDermott's shoulder is where my son's name is." She could see it from a distance and you know something, "the anti-war movement, when my son was buried near Penn State," that is where they lived. "The anti-war protestors were screaming and yelling and calling all kinds of names, baby killers. When my son was being buried, it was a protest. And it probably was not against the person who had died, but it was against the military as a whole." And so she said, that is an experience she will never forget. And the second person I sat next to many years later, it was raining at the Vietnam Memorial, and she said to me, there was an experience. "My son was buried at Arlington and that was a fresh grave. And there had been a major protest in Washington." And she went out to Arlington to visit the spot where her son had just been buried with the dirt put over. And it was raining and they had put canvas covers over the spots. She went out there and she noticed that somebody was moving around underneath the spot. There was an anti-war protestor underneath that little tarp to protect themselves from the rain and laying right on her son's grave. And she was so upset with him saying that, "how dare you lay on my son's grave" and "I am just protecting myself from the rain." And she said, "You are a protestor?" "Yeah, I was a protestor." "Do you really care about the war?" "No, I was paid to come here to protest." He did not care about the war at all. It was just an experience I wanted to share there. One powerful Vietnam vet said, "that the real generation gap was within the generation itself, not between parents and children." I think we know that there was a generation gap between the World War II generation and their kids. That is a well-known fact. But I had never thought of it in terms of the generation gap within. I want your comments on these, those who served and those who evaded the draft. And we are not talking about people who protested the war. We are talking about people who evaded the draft. This same person thought that the boomer generation saw service is a good thing. Because Kennedy, when he gave that speech, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." I have interviewed several people that were inspired by that. And that service could be serving in the military, serving your country in the military or in the Peace Corps or VISTA or whatever. But the reason that same person says that he defines the boomer generation as a generation that was weak in service because they did not understand that when your nation calls, you go to war. The Peace Corps and VISTA is not enough here, if you are talking about defining generation. Being a service-oriented generation is that when you are called to serve, you do. And I will mention who this person was in a minute. This is based on the Lost Generation book and the symposium that took place with James Webb and Bounty Mueller and several others, Phil Caputo and everything. Basically it was James Webb who said, who was not even a United States senator, that said that "I do not consider the boomer generation, that generation that was raised after World War II as a service-oriented generation that we look of them as because of the fact that they evaded the draft, that there were many that evaded the draft just to save their own skin." And even James Fallows has written about the fact that he felt guilty that he had evaded the draft and he had not protested against the draft. And he has felt a big difference. And he has come to terms with that and has admitted his wrongs in front of vets. He has gained the respect to vets. I would just like your thoughts on that concept that the generation gap is as strong between parents and children as it is between young people within the generation, those who served Vietnam and those who evaded the draft. JL (00:38:13): A lot of people who evaded the draft went on to serve, if not this country, serve humankind in wonderful ways. My learning for this, there is a book called Northern Passage. SM (00:38:33): Yeah, I have it. JL (00:38:36): You have it? Okay. I reviewed that book for a Canadian... SM (00:38:39): Kind of a conscientious objectors. JL (00:38:40): Yeah, both all the people who went to Canada and what an enormous talent drain that was from the United States. Some of these people have become some of Canada's most creatively productive citizens. People working in the arts, people working in politics, people working in education. People in my view, the way I view service with a huge commitment to serve and to put your talent to good use. And I know a few people who evaded the draft and who did alternative service and things like that. And there is not a slacker among any of those people. And I go back to what I was about to say at the beginning here was that I think a lot of people tried to stay out of the draft. I tried to stay out of the draft because I thought being a teacher, being a math teacher in a junior high school was a much better way for me to serve the country. And I think that motivated a lot of those people. I do not think it was to save their own hides. I do not think those people were afraid in the usual sense of the term. Some of them were philosophically or morally opposed to the war. But again, they were not trying to stay out of hard work or something like that or to stay out of service because they did service. They did service in some other way. SM (00:40:28): When I was a senior Binghamton, I remember playing basketball in the gym, my junior and senior year on athletics. And I can remember all the conversations of the draft, the lottery numbers were coming up. I was actually 72. And students were saying, oh, I do not have anything to worry about because I am going to get an alternative service as a teacher. And I remember some of the students saying, why are you going to be a teacher? I do not really want to be a teacher. It just gets me out of the draft. And the question I asked Leon Botstein, I did not interview him for my book, but I interviewed him when he came to our Westchester University campus. And I asked him, do you think there is any link between the quality of education that went down after the boomer generation in terms of quality based on the quality of the teachers? And he did not really come up with an answer. He said, nothing has ever been written about it. But I knew that those people that were becoming teachers were going to quit as soon as they could get another job as soon as the war was over. This is not about you now, this is about, do you think there is any link between the poor quality of teaching that took place after the (19)60s, we are talking late, mid (19)70s and beyond, because the teachers were not dedicated enough to being good teachers and they were only there to get out of the draft, particularly male teachers, and then they quit once the draft ended? JL (00:42:01): I have never thought about that, because I have never heard anything like that. People get out of teaching because the pay is not very good and the conditions are pretty hard. I still say today it is the hardest job I ever had teaching junior high school math. That was a tough job. That was a hard job. And I think that is why maybe, I would have to think about the political economy of education for a minute, but it might have been in the (19)70s that funding for various education programs were cut, things like that. I do not know. SM (00:42:46): I think he was making reference. I think somebody needs to do a study of this because you may be onto something. Because there was a period that students were not as well prepared, not in elementary education. Elementary education has been sound from the get-go, something happens when they reach seventh grade. JL (00:43:03): People do not stay in teaching long now. I teach at Holy Cross College and we have quite a few students who go out of college that go into teaching but they do not stay. It is a gateway or a stepping stone, a holding pattern, just something else. There are not many who go into it and stick with it. SM (00:43:22): You are teaching in a great school though. JL (00:43:24): Oh, thank you. SM (00:43:25): I know all about Holy Cross and long before Bob Cousy. Because I read about that. JL (00:43:31): That goes back a long way. SM (00:43:32): Yeah. I was a kid and I saw Bob Cousy play at the Syracuse War Memorial when the Celtics came in and played the Syracuse Nationals and they were on an 18 game winning. We lived in Binghamton and my dad drove me up. It was a winter storm there and I will never forget. The Celtics were on an 18 game winning streak. And the Nationals beat them and I will never forget Tommy Heinsohn putting his fist up with his flat top as they were booing. And then of course Jim Loscutoff got a big fight. JL (00:44:01): Geez, I have not heard these names. SM (00:44:03): And Larry Siegfried called me... JL (00:44:04): Oh my god. SM (00:44:05): Larry Siegfried was an Ohio State guy. JL (00:44:07): Ohio State guy. Yeah. SM (00:44:09): My dad and I went up to him for an autograph and he said, get out of here you little runt. Yeah, Larry Siegfried, he was as mean in person as he was on the court. He got in a lot of fights with the Sixers. Larry Siegfried and the Sixers, and of course Loscutoff was their hatchet man. Have you had any thoughts about other myths linked to the Vietnam War? I would like to list two myths that I think are here. you have already talked about the spitting image myth and the image of Jane Fonda. We are going to get in and talk about Jane in a couple minutes. But these are two myths that I came up with. Nixon's Peace with Honor. Peace with Honor was what he said in his speech in 1973. Peace and honor. What we did to Vietnam by killing 3 million people and destroying the land and agent orange and generations and so forth. Honor? I think that is a myth. And secondly, the people of South Vietnam supported their leaders and made every effort to defeat the north. We had advisors there since (19)63. I remember when I interviewed the professor at Harvard, Hue-Tam, I cannot pronounce her full name, she teaches Vietnamese history at Harvard. And when I mentioned the fact that Thieu Ky Diem regime knew, that particular group, that they were puppets. She really got upset that I said that. And she went from being a friend, and I am not going to put this on the tape, but she got very upset. She said they were elected. Let me tell you that Diem, Thieu Ky were elected, whether you like it or not, the people voted them in. Well, I thought they were puppets, but it is her interview. JL (00:45:58): Yeah, sure. SM (00:45:59): And then she said, by the way, Diem put my father in jail. It is not like she liked him. What other myths do you see in Vietnam or anything linked in Vietnam? JL (00:46:15): I wish I had some time to think about that. It was only a few days ago or a couple weeks ago that I had one really good thing in mind, but I cannot remember now what it was. You are catching me by surprise. SM (00:46:30): You can email me. JL (00:46:31): Maybe it will come back to me, but something quite big, quite broad that I did not think anybody had taken a look at. There are smaller pieces that I think need to be looked at. The journalism one, the idea that journalists could go everywhere in Vietnam. SM (00:47:00): My batteries are going in pretty good. Yeah, I am fine. JL (00:47:11): The one that I get-get asked about occasionally is the stories of throwing prisoners out of helicopters. That the US took captive VC and took them up in helicopters and we would throw one out in order to make the others talk. And probably a couple of times a year I get an email from somebody saying they have heard this story, is this story true? And I doubt if it is, but it is certainly out there. But now the question about that for a scholar like me is not the story in itself. Maybe it did happen once. I think things like that could have happened. But how does that play in then to the American imagination? That is the myth. A small story that is really a building block for something that is quite larger. It is like the spitting stories. The spitting stories are really about the myth that we lost the war on the home from. That is the myth. Where does this prisoners out of helicopters? SM (00:48:28): I have read it in books. I have read it in history books on Vietnam. Very top-quality books where there is a scene in one where there is three prisoners taken up in the helicopter. And the guys knew in the beginning that they were only going to have one coming back no matter what. Speak up. Tell me the truth. You got to tell me the truth. Are you going to tell me the truth? You got to tell me the truth. I am going to throw this guy out here if you do not tell me the truth. You do not believe I am going to tell you the truth. That kind of stuff. JL (00:49:03): The story goes also that I have heard it half a dozen times, that you never counted prisoners when you put them on the helicopter because the number might not square with how many you had when you got off the helicopter. SM (00:49:19): Is not there another one here that Americans turned over their capture to the South Vietnamese army and they basically killed them all? I remember we had Country Joe McDonald on our campus during then and Country Joe brought up something, James [inaudible] was in the room and he did not say anything, but he made a reference. [inaudible] they know why there were no prisoners of war on our side. We got POWs, but there were none on our side. And then of course, nobody ever said anything more than we just went back to the conversation about other things. But I think he was making a reference where do we ever hear about POWs on the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese forces were there? And we did hand them over to the South Vietnamese army. Did they kill them? JL (00:50:13): I do not know that I have ever heard that they did. We tried to convert them, get them to turn over, turn around course. We did that. There were the tiger cages on Con Son Island, the South Vietnamese did imprison some people there. There was the Phoenix program that was an assassination program that we operated. SM (00:50:46): I think Senator Kerry was in that too. Was not he the one, the president of the new school? Was not he a Phoenix programmer? I think. JL (00:50:54): I believe so. I believe the story that he tells that he was a Navy Seal. He tells one of the stories. Yeah. I do not know. That is a good question there, actually. SM (00:51:06): These are stories to get down to the truth of things. It is always the context. From the truth to the reality or some of these personal experiences may be just a onetime experience and it may not be across the board. And we cannot get caught up in, what do you call it, stereotyping and generalizing reality. A personal experience may be true, but a general experience may be ridiculous. JL (00:51:30): Yeah-yeah. SM (00:51:31): You bring up in your book Hanoi Jane, the destruction of characters as a key to opponents of when the neocons or the people on the right, they try to destroy character. I mentioned just some names here and I would like you to respond because you talk about Jane Fonda. But certainly Daniel Ellsberg with what happened to him and Nixon trying to find his psychiatric files or whatever to try to destroy his character. Obviously Bill Clinton went through a lot with what he did many of it on his own behalf. John Kerry in 2004, saying that he lied about his military record trying to find the Achilles heel. And nobody's perfect to that, trying to destroy character. Could you talk a little bit more about that and particularly with respect to Jane Fonda? JL (00:52:30): What seems to bug some people on the right is what they consider unstable character. The character flaw that they see is instability, inconsistency. And I think the sources of that are religious or religious ideology. What comes out of the Old Testament and the New Testament is, stories of deception, stories of betrayal, that evil masquerades as good, the good people are tricked by, are fooled, are misled into following false gods, false saviors. People need to be aware of that. People need to be able to trust what they see and what they hear. Instability becomes a clue maybe that there is something that does not meet the eye going on here. She does not seem to be stable. She herself seems to be susceptible to other characters. She is easily wooed by this or that. Again, in the religious terms, somebody who follows one image of goodness for a while, but then changes and follows a different image of goodness for another while then becomes part of the problem. They are easily deceived by Satan, easily deceived by the devil. In political terms, then that person becomes a liability, a political liability, because the enemy can use that person as an inroad. And I think they might not articulate it that way. They might not even think about it that way, but you are asking me why they, the political right in America today is very infused with Christian conservatism. And those notions are fundamental. That is those ideas, those fears of betrayal, deception, that book of revelation Christianity is fundamental. SM (00:55:32): Is another way of saying it, when people are unpredictable. When you work someplace, you would like to have people around you and you can predict how they are going to act or react in a certain situation. But when a person is unpredictable, that sends all kinds of waves up. The person may not go with the flow, may not agree with us, may be against us, may just be at the center or whatever. And it seems like we need more of those kinds of people unpredictable than we need predictable because they make us better because they challenge us more. Challenge our ways of thinking. That is when I look at Jane Fonda and I think of Daniel Ellsberg and I think of John Kerry and I think of all the other people, I consider them unpredictable people who have a conscience and will speak their minds but not necessarily agree with the mainstream. JL (00:56:27): Well, Howard Zinn notably said that the problem is not dissent from authority. The problem is complicity with authority. We got the Holocaust because people were too obedient. People were unwilling or unable to resist authority. And I think that that is true, not universally true, but I think certainly in the last half of the 20th century, I think that that was true. And I think it continues to be true today. Another thing that factors into this with the Hanoi Jane, John Kerry, had all kinds of characters and the attack on their character is the difference between people whose worldview is based on belief as opposed to evidence. People who live in an evidence-based epistemology or live with an evidence-based epistemology or worldview way of knowing the world are going to change based on new information. New information changes your view of how things are. And that is a part of what makes the... JL (00:58:02): That is a part of what makes the educated people, the intellectuals, that is what makes them intellectuals. But it is also what makes them suspect by people on the fundamentalist, religious right wing. They are suspicious of people who know quote unquote. Who know as opposed to who believe. SM (00:58:30): Beautiful. Yeah. JL (00:58:31): Knowledge is one thing. Belief is something else. And that goes clear back to the suspicions about the French Revolution, the role of intellectuals in the enlightenment period of European history. And the religious based people were always, well, the Christian, religious based people were always kind of suspicious of people who thought they... SM (00:58:56): That explains intellectuals being killed throughout the decades. JL (00:59:02): And so that is why I think, I tried to make that point in the book. SM (00:59:05): You do a good job of it. JL (00:59:07): Oh, thank you. Because she is, people would not usually think of Jane fond as an intellectual, but she works in that world of ideas. SM (00:59:17): Yes, she does. JL (00:59:18): The world of ideas and images, and a world that affects how people view the world, how people feel about the world. And so, in the way I use the term intellectual, she is an intellectual. She does intellectual work. She is a part of intellectual America. And I think that adds to her... SM (00:59:47): Yesterday when I interviewed Dr. Baxandall, I brought this up about the 1950s. Because we are talking about boomers now, people raised after 1946. But I am going to preface this by saying that I believe people born between (19)40 and (19)46, (19)45 are in this group as well. Because most of the leaders of the anti-war movement were born before 1946. And probably about one third of the people I have interviewed cannot stand the term boomer to begin with. It is about a group of people, it is about an idea, it is about a period, and they have a problem with even the younger boomers. JL (01:00:20): It might be about a marketing demographic. SM (01:00:22): Yeah, marketing demographic. But I bring up the (19)50s, because I think the 1950s are a very important part of the psyche of just about all boomers, whether they were activists or not. And I said this yesterday, and I will say it again today for your response that in the 1950s it seemed like there were three things that stood out in my mind above anything else, there was a concept of fear. There were a lot of good times for young people in the (19)50s because the parents were home. But there was a concept of fear because the Cold War was happening, the threat of nuclear war may have been in the backs of people's minds. And of course, the McCarthy hearings that anybody of the early boomers saw on television, seeing these voices saying that, "Are you or are you not a communist?" And lives being destroyed, careers being destroyed, people committing suicide because they could not get a job. Those kinds of things. So a concept of fear. Second is that the concept of being very quiet. People were quiet, they did not speak up very much. Security meant everything to people seemed like in those times. And thirdly, I felt that we were naive. And I think as boomers have evolved, the naivete was hit real hard in the 1960s, because you started seeing that black and white television, there were no black people on black and white television, you saw what was happening in the south, issues with the women and African Americans, and certainly Native Americans, the black and white cowboy and Indian culture. So what I am getting at here is the kind of a do not speak until you are spoken to mentality, which was what the (19)50s was about. Then you get in the 1960s where fear is replaced by being assertive, quiet becomes outspoken and naive becomes, you see the injustices and you want to speak. You want to speak when you have something to say, kind of a different mentality. So I would like your thoughts on that. That the (19)50s was really the very important in shaping everything that followed. JL (01:02:40): The one thing that I would add to that, and I think you are onto something, there might be an intra generational thing here. The people who are a little older and maybe... People who are a little older... JL (01:02:59): What is this? Is this... SM (01:03:01): Not that one. Hold on. Actually, this does a better job. I got to get my 45 into this one. Okay, this cannot be used again. There we go. [inaudible] JL (01:03:23): People who are a little older and who maybe came to political consciousness in the late (19)30s maybe, or during the World War II years themselves, and were more politically conscious at a younger age, might have had that sense of the 1950s. SM (01:03:50): Right. JL (01:03:52): People Who are a little younger may have experienced the 1950s as years of economic security, of hope and promise. The idea that you would ever be unemployed, growing up in the 1950s at least where I grew up, unthinkable. That was the (19)30s. I grew up hearing about the old days. That was the 1930s. My parents were working class, by the way. My father went to seventh grade country school. SM (01:04:47): I heard all about the hobos and all the stories from my parents, my mom and dad. My mom's family did not have any hard time. My dad did because he was a son of a minister. JL (01:05:01): But what I am getting at here is that maybe the masses, so to speak, of the (19)60s generation come out of the (19)50s with a lot of audacity, a lot of strength right there. A lot of resilience. A lot of that might have been false, but they were, what is the term? Possibilists? SM (01:05:32): Possibility thinkers? JL (01:05:33): Possibility thinkers, yeah. So you put those two things together. People who have a little more political consciousness, the older people, with a large bunch of people who really are not afraid of anything. I was not afraid. I did not go to college for job security. I went to college because my parents thought I could have a better life if I went to college. It was not out of necessity so much as it was taking advantage of an opportunity. SM (01:06:15): Right. And that is what the GI Bill was all about, was taking advantage after World War II, of getting a degree and education. That is another quality too, that the (19)50s was the beginning of the importance of higher education. It was always there, but the (19)50s and the (19)60s to me are at the time when the higher education really blew. JL (01:06:36): Really took off. SM (01:06:36): Particularly in the (19)60s. JL (01:06:38): Really grew. SM (01:06:38): Yeah. Really big community college movement and everything else. I am going to get back to Jane Fonda here, because I think she is fascinating in so many ways. Fonda, I am going to read this. It is page 154. I know some people do not like me to read their stuff. I have got to get my glasses again. 154. So when something strikes me, I have to put it in the interview. And I have done it, with Dr. Lifton, I had so many things. Okay here it is. Actually, sometimes I ought to ask the author to read it, you want to read it? JL (01:07:24): I am willing to. SM (01:07:25): Yes. Some people are not. JL (01:07:27): Now I need to get my glasses out. SM (01:07:28): Yeah. To me, this paragraph on 154, I want you to respond to it because I think this is very important because when I interviewed Dr. Baxandall yesterday, a lot of things she said about her life and a lot of females were comparable to what you say about Jane Fonda in this paragraph, and about speaking up for the first time. So if you could just read this paragraph from there to there, and I will have it on record. And I think it is a beautifully written paragraph. JL (01:07:55): "In an April 1974 Playboy interview with her and Tom Hayden, for example, Fonda speculated that the rising hostility to her was due to her having violated feminine norms by speaking her mind in public places. Punctuating the point by saying she would quote, 'No longer accept the image of a mindless Barbarella floating through space.' Unquote. Intending to strike a pose of mindfulness through those words, she inadvertently and unnecessarily in the light of later interpretations of Barbarella, fed the perception of discontinuity in her career that critics would soon throw back at her. 10 years later, she was still putting distance between herself and the galactic warrior woman, telling Erica Young for a Lady's Home Journal interview, that the film and her role as an activist were contradictory." SM (01:08:49): Yeah, I think that is beautiful. And it is like speaking up. Dr. Baxandall yesterday told me that she was in meetings with men and she had all the ideas, and they took her ideas during the anti-war movement. She was the one that came up with the ideas, but they did not want her to speak. Do not speak until you are spoken to, but we will take every idea that you had, and we will take the idea and say that we thought it up. JL (01:09:15): Yep. SM (01:09:16): So it is like, this is a recognition too. This is obviously, when you talk about an intellectual, she is getting it. She is getting these things here, the stereotypes about women. Do you have anything else to add on that paragraph? JL (01:09:38): One of the things, it is the galactic warrior woman thing there. I think that is the most troublesome image of Fonda for a lot of people. And I think that has gone unrecognized, and I think it is unspoken. That is what bothers a lot of people about Fonda, is this outspokenness, but it is also the combativeness for gender and sexual roles in the roles that she plays in her films. There is a real continuity in her film career, certainly from Barbarella on. SM (01:10:27): Oh, yeah. Coming home was just like, whoa. Of course Klute, we all know Klute. I remember going to see all these movies, and Coming Home was, all I can say is, wow. And there is another one, it was... There were two movies. JL (01:10:48): Well, Julia is on my mind because I read in the course of working on the book, I do not know if I wrote it in here. Do you know the film Julia? Late (19)70s, she played the Lilian Hellman. SM (01:11:00): Yes. JL (01:11:01): And in there, one of the reviewers, or one of the critics said, "It is the first romantic kiss between two women in a major Hollywood film." Now that is pretty breakthrough, breakout kind of stuff. SM (01:11:18): And oh On Golden Pond too, which was (19)81, which is the conflict with her dad, and coming together. I remember going to see that movie and all the press. It was 1981. And of course her father was an interesting person as well. You bring it up here that he was really a liberal. JL (01:11:34): Quiet. SM (01:11:34): Yeah. So his influence on her way of thinking, that is... What you do in this book is, and I think it is very important with college students, is do not believe everything you read. The gossip columns, there is context to everything. Even though I do not like Newt Gingrich personally as a politician, I do not dislike him as a human being. And I can remember (19)94, and I am a liberal, and the Women's Center had put a sign up on the door, Women's Center I hate Newt Gingrich. I said, that is inappropriate. That is inappropriate. And of course, I had to do it with the administrator on the side because I did not want to embarrass the administrator in front of the students. But I did confront the students. The students thought I was... What are you, a conservative [inaudible] guy? So I just think, you do not know Newt Gingrich. You do not know him. I do not like his politics, but do not judge him. They said "Oh, he is just some southern [inaudible]." And I said, "Did you know that he was born in Pennsylvania? He lived the first 12 years in his life in Pennsylvania near Harrisburg." JL (01:12:38): Yeah. SM (01:12:39): He has also a PhD. You may not like his politics, but anyways. This is the question you may have already answered. How did you become the person you are? Who were your greatest influences in your life, and who were your role models? Who were the role models that you most admired in the (19)50s through the (19)80s? Basically, when you were very young who were the people you looked up to that kind of inspired you? You have already talked about the chaplain you served in Vietnam, but of all the personalities and figures of that period, when boomers were young in the (19)50s, (19)60s, (19)70s, and early (19)80s, who did you admire? JL (01:13:22): I think it was people in my family. Because as I have said already, I was not politically conscious at all. My parents were not political people. I did not have much of a sense of culture or popular culture in those years. So were I to think of a film star or a political figure or something like that, there would be nobody. So it would be my Uncle Clay, who was a medic in World War II, and was sort of the, I guess, family war hero. Although he was, I guess the kind of classic reticent war veteran who would not say anything unless you have asked him. And then it was all medical stories, no combat stories. And then as I began to come to political consciousness, then political figures became more important to me. And then it was mostly labor people. And I have a former life as a labor historian. SM (01:14:46): Probably know about Bayard Rustin then, do not you? JL (01:14:48): Oh, yes, Bayard Rustin. SM (01:14:52): We did a national tribute at Bayard in Westchester, and we brought in Norman Hill and Rochelle Horowitz and that group. JL (01:14:56): Yeah. And so I became, oh gosh, there were so many labor sort of labor people from the 1930s. My dissertation was a study of a CIO union... SM (01:15:09): Oh wow. JL (01:15:10): In the lumber and wood products' industry. So those were my... I was a little bit older then. It was after Vietnam when I was in graduate school in, I moved away from math and into sociology and history. But it was union organizers, the people who organized the auto industry and the steel industry, and of course, the lumber and wood products industry that... SM (01:15:40): So you were probably a Woody Guthrie fan then too. Was there a... JL (01:15:46): Yeah-yeah-yeah. Woody Guthrie. SM (01:15:49): And Pete Seeger and their music. And I think it was John L. Lewis, was that the guy that... JL (01:15:52): He was the head of the CIO. SM (01:15:54): He was a big, big guy. JL (01:15:56): Yeah. Really important. SM (01:16:03): What kind of feedback you have gotten so far from this book in terms of, did you hear from Jane Fonda at all? JL (01:16:10): Oh, she blogged about the book before... I saw the cover of the book for the first time on Jane Fonda's blog. SM (01:16:20): Oh, wow. JL (01:16:20): Her January 13th blog. And she liked it. And then she was on the Larry King show probably two months ago, and she mentioned the book on the Larry King show. SM (01:16:38): Oh, wow. Very good. JL (01:16:39): So yes, she has weighed in, and she is very... SM (01:16:44): Did you talk to her at all? JL (01:16:45): Not since the book came out? I did... SM (01:16:48): Interview her for the book? JL (01:16:49): Well, I did not interview her. This is preface. SM (01:16:54): I tried to get her to interview for my book, that is when she was with Ted Turner, so I have been doing this for... JL (01:17:00): Well, you should try again. SM (01:17:01): Yeah, some people think I should try again, because some of the feminists that I have interviewed are friends of hers. JL (01:17:07): This is the first sentence of the preface. "'Oh, So it is not about me?' Jane Fonda asked, when I told her I was working on a book about Hanoi Jane. Right, I replied, it is the biography of Hanoi Jane. A phrase laden with myth and legend that plays into people's memories of the war in Vietnam." SM (01:17:28): Yeah. JL (01:17:29): We were in Harvard Square. She wanted to talk to me. It was when she was working on her memoir. SM (01:17:37): Oh yeah, that is right. I have that book too. JL (01:17:38): And she wanted to talk to me about The Spitting Image and the film chapter in The Spitting Image where I wrote about Coming Home, the 1978 film Coming Home, because I had gotten into the film archives in Los Angeles for Coming Home. And she was interested in some of the things I wrote. So she, through her research assistant called me into the Charles Hotel in Harvard Square to talk to me about that. And then in the course of that, I said, "You might be interested in the new book that I am working on." And she said, "What is that?" And I said, "It is about Hanoi Jane." SM (01:18:22): Oh my gosh. JL (01:18:24): And that comment came out, and after about a two and a half hour sit down together, which was just wonderful, there was a knock at the door, maybe a phone rang first. And she said, "Yes, I am almost finished. Come on up." And Howard Zinn walked in. SM (01:18:49): Oh my gosh. JL (01:18:52): Yeah. SM (01:18:53): So he was there the whole time you were there? JL (01:18:55): No, he just came in just as I was finishing, just as Jane and I were. SM (01:18:58): Oh, okay. And you were with her for two hours? JL (01:18:59): Yeah-yeah. A little more than two hours, yeah. SM (01:19:02): Did you tape it? JL (01:19:07): No. The terms of it was that it was not to be an interview. That was the terms of it, that I was not to be interviewing Jane, because we were talking about the Spitting Image. If anything, she was kind of interviewing me to find out... SM (01:19:23): Oh, okay, JL (01:19:25): So where did you get this? SM (01:19:29): Oh my gosh. JL (01:19:33): Because I did not like that Coming Home scene in the film, when Bob gets off the, Sally's husband, Bob gets off the airplane. And he gets off the plane and he says, where are the protestors? They told us on the plane that there would be protestors here to greet us. And then as they drive away from the airport they are greeted by protestors, and Bob flips them the bird as they drive away. And so I wrote in the book, I said, "That scene, that is fictional. That never happened. That is not the historical truth." I have met her one more time actually, when the film No Sir came out, and I saw her again at that point, and she turned to somebody, it might have been Cora Weiss actually, who was... Did you interview Cora Weiss? SM (01:20:34): No, I do not even know who Cora Weiss. Is- JL (01:20:37): Carol Weiss was the woman who, she was one of the founders of Women Strike for Peace, but she founded the Underground Mail Service between the US and Hanoi. SM (01:20:58): Where does she live, New York? JL (01:20:59): New York City, yeah. SM (01:21:02): She retired now? JL (01:21:02): Oh yeah. SM (01:21:04): Oh, wow. JL (01:21:06): But anyway, Jane Fonda turned to her, and then pointed at me and said "He is the one who said, that we got the Coming Home scene all wrong in the film." So apparently she had been talking to... Because Fonda and I were both in that film, Sir! No Sir! You probably know that, right, or not? SM (01:21:29): No, you are in the film itself? JL (01:21:32): Yeah. Because of the book, The Spitting Image. SM (01:21:37): I got to go... JL (01:21:38): Yeah, you got to see that film. SM (01:21:39): No, what is it? JL (01:21:42): Sir! No Sir! SM (01:21:43): I think I saw it. JL (01:21:44): I would think probably you have. SM (01:21:47): I go to the Ritz Theater in Philly, may have been shown there. Well, that is interesting. I might try. Although one of her best friends, I am not sure if it was Holly Near or Torie Osborn, who I interviewed, they said she does not like to talk about Vietnam at all. JL (01:22:06): Fonda? SM (01:22:07): Yeah. JL (01:22:08): I would not be surprised. In my case, that is why we were talking, but I did detect some reluctance. SM (01:22:20): In a nation that professes that free speech and the right to protest is part of the definition of liberty. Why has our government been so rough on the people who challenge the system. And I use these examples of historic events through the time that boomers have been alive. We all know about the McCarthy hearings in the early (19)50s, the HUAC hearings in the late (19)40s, the stories about the Hollywood Ten, several movies have been out on that recently. The stories of COINTELPRO that are terrible. I have had several revelations of what happened to some people, and what they did to destroy lives and the infiltration, and they did not care. We just got to go get them because they are against us. I do not care what happens to them. No sense of humanity at all. This is a United States of America, and we have a constitution and we can disagree, but they are the enemy. And of course, in a simpler way, the enemies list. A lot of people seem to be very happy that they were on it, including the late Daniel Shore who just passed away. And of course Watergate, we all know about that. Why is it that the most articulate seemed to be the greatest threat? Yes, we do not murder activists like they do in other countries, but we tend to subtly destroy them through the issue that you talked about, the destruction of their character. And you are not one of us, you are a troublemaker, all kinds of labels to put out people. We are supposed to be in a democracy where people agree to disagree. JL (01:24:14): I am not sure I can make this compelling. When I am in the classroom I am more prepared for this. But the answer is, it is precisely because this is a democracy. It is precisely because the people are sovereign, that notion of popular sovereignty. SM (01:24:35): Give you this, especially on my 45. JL (01:24:39): In the context where the economy is privately held, there is no democracy in the economy. And so the two of these together produces a kind of passive-aggressive political culture. I do not know, if I just start talking, it probably becomes less clear. But it is that trying to reconcile those two, that makes criticism of that incompatibility so dangerous. And so criticism has to be shut down. Because the people are empowered for the ballot, then the people have to be dumbed down. The people have to be kept uninformed. SM (01:25:59): The term liberty means a lot to me, and I think it is a term we do not use enough of. We talk about other terms, but liberty, it is freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom to be who you are, freedom. And then we hear these kinds of things happening in the United States, and even leaders that we admire will destroy a person who disagrees. I heard stories about Al Gore, if someone went against him he would really destroy their careers. I do not know if that is true, but I heard about it. Just because they disagree with them, or said bad things about them or whatever. You got to have thick skin to be in politics. And it amazes me that democracy is a really good system, that we have a constitution that protects these things and that liberty is something we aspire to and we are proud of, and we do not kill people, but we can destroy them in other ways. That is what bothers me... SM (01:27:03): Them in other ways. And that is what bother me about that. And certainly the Vietnam War is that whole period. And the whole period the Boomers have been alive and they have seen these things throughout their lives. But it may be is part of the whole human experience throughout time too. It has probably been forever. And it may be for... It is just it confounds me and we go on, so to speak. But the breakup of the American society is due to the activities in the (19)60s and (19)70s. Now I bring up the breakup... Make sure I got my glasses here. The breakup of the American society due to the activities in the (19)60s and (19)70s. Newt Gingrich, when he came to power in 94, Mike Huckabee on his TV show. Glenn Beck all the time does this on his show. Hannity, Rush Limbaugh. I do not want always say conservatives. There are some liberals that do it as well, but they blamed a lot of the problems that we have in our society today in America on those times back in the (19)60s and the (19)70s. They say that the loss of family values, that fewer people are going to church. The divorce rate is skyrocketing, there was rampant sex. There was no commitment to the "love the one you are with" mentality. There was a drug culture. There was a lack of respect for authority. And we need to get all those values back because that is what the (19)50s were about. And that is what America's about. It is about... And just your thoughts on that because George Will, oftentimes in his books, make commentaries on this. And other people have written about it that they like to go back and whip that period, constantly whip it. And even Barney Frank, when he wrote his book, "Speaking Frankly", which was a very good book, he said that the Democratic party is going to survive and has to say goodbye to all those people that supported Montgomery. The anti-war movement and all the... He writes about it, and that was in the (19)90s when he wrote this book that the Democratic party is going to survive. It has to say goodbye to the anti-war people. So then that is a diehard, a liberal thing. JL (01:29:20): Well, Barack Obama was quoted in some way that is very close to that too, that the words there that you used goodbye to the anti-war movement. There is an internet site called Open Left. And they picked up on a conference paper that I wrote out of this. And it is in there that whoever edited that piece had a quote from Barack Obama that distances him. He is distancing himself from the anti-war movement. So that is interesting. Me putting those two together, the Barney Frank with Barack Obama, I think that maybe there is something there to pursue. SM (01:30:12): See, the book "Speaking", it is a little thin book, a great book that came out. And there is a biography on Barney Frank right now, but this is at the time he was younger. We are talking 15 years ago. It is a very good book. And I got it underlined and it is basically talking about the survival of the Democratic party. JL (01:30:27): Yeah. SM (01:30:28): And that McGovern, if you were linked to McGovern, you just simply kind of disassociated yourself with those kinds of... JL (01:30:36): I think the key word here on the view of the (19)60s that you are referring to here, I think the key word is permissiveness. That is what really bothered them. And some of that has to do with religious values. And again, things are already talked about, the instability unpredictability. I mean, those are almost antonyms or predictability antonym for permissiveness. You can kind of see those things. But there is a gender component too, to this permissiveness part of it that I think is important. The idea that maleness, that masculinity is about discipline, whereas the female side of the culture is more permissive. It is more fluid. It is more free ranging. And that we lost the war in Vietnam and America is losing its way because we have lost our focus. We have lost our discipline. And it is the quote unquote "feminine" in the culture that has percolated to the surface and did so big time during the war in Vietnam. And so what really cost us was culture. And of course that the culture was- SM (01:32:15): We all know what the pill did. And women had brought that up, this pill. It is crucial for women. And to deny that what was happening in the (19)60s was not happening in the (19)50s and the forties... Not the people that I knew. (01:32:37): Want to take a break here, Chris? (01:32:37): Where are we going on this one? This looks like... SM (01:32:37): Here we go. SM (01:32:53): This next question deals with the healing. I took a group of students to Washington DC in 1995 to see Senator Edmond Musky and the students and I came up with this question that they wanted to ask him based on the divisions that they saw on video. They were not alive in 1968 of the police and the students hitting each other. And they knew about the assassinations that year, Bobby and Martin Luther King. They knew that the president had resigned and they saw the burnings in the cities and so forth. So the question they wanted to ask is, do you feel that the boomer generation or that generation that was reared after World War II and was shaped by those first 20 to 30 years of the life and the divisions between those who supported the war and those who were against the war, those who supported the troops and were against the troop, blacks against whites, gays against straights, men against women, and all the other isms that we saw at that time. Do you think that because of all the tremendous divide that was happening in the Stratton atmosphere on every side that the boomer generation is going to go to its grave, like the civil War generation not healing? And I will tell you what must be said after I get your response. This is a whole issue of healing. And this is a lot of what I was going to talk to Dr. Lifton about, because he has written about healing with respect as the survivor concept and the whole concept of guilt and things like that. JL (01:34:44): Well, I think the notion of healing is kind of mythical because it is an idea that American society was- SM (01:34:55): No, that is that side. Oh, here we go. Wait a minute... Now that is the other side. It is an hour and a half, I am going to do this. I only started using two tapes in the last six interviews because somebody said if something happened to one, so... Go right ahead. JL (01:35:17): The notion of healing presumes that the society was, that there was a oneness or unity to the society. SM (01:35:28): Hold on one second, let us see which one. There is a... I guess that is... It has got to be here because I put the tape in here. SM (01:35:42): Very good. All right. Sorry. JL (01:35:48): The notion of healing presumes that there was a oneness or a unity to the society to begin with. And I think that the nine... Maybe some people coming out of the 1950s, maybe growing up in the 1950s, and I say it was only maybe, right, might have had that kind of illusion or an illusionary sense of America that was not already divided racially speaking or class wise. A lot of people of my age would remember Michael Harrington's book, "The Other America", is that what it was called? SM (01:36:39): Yes. That was the one Kennedy was in for... JL (01:36:42): A re-discovery, right, of poverty in America that had been there all along, but which a lot of things in the 1950s had sort of masked the presence of. People did not see it. So I guess what I am getting at here is that the notion of healing or the Boomer generation or (19)60s generation needing to heal has never been part of my thinking at all. Not at all. So will we heal or will we not heal? I guess I would be inclined to say that that is a wrong question. I mean, heading down that road probably is not going to produce anything that is very useful. SM (01:37:27): Somebody said that it might have been a better question by saying, simply put, those who served in the war and those who protested the war, whether they were going to be able to come to be, because certainly the wall was built to try to heal the Vietnam generation that served in Vietnam. And Jan Scruggs wrote "To Heal a Nation", that was his book. It was not only to heal the veterans and their families in a non-political way, but as he hoped would help heal the nation over this war that seemed to divide us so much. JL (01:38:05): Well, I have never felt like that there was a big divide between those who fought the war and those who opposed the war. I think that by the late (19)60s that there was a lot of mutuality between those two groups and large numbers of Vietnam veterans were coming home opposed to the war themselves. Some of them joined the anti-war movement. So I think the reality is one of more solidarity and unity than there is a wound between the two that needs to be healed. I do not think there is a lot of healing that needs to be done. Now on the margins, certainly there are people who came home from Vietnam, still very pro-war and very hostile to the anti-war movement. Chris Appy in his book "Working Class War" writes about that. More hostility that way than from the anti-war movement towards Vietnam veterans. Although again, on the margin, right, on the outer margin, I have heard some expressions from people who say that they were part of the anti-war movement and bad feelings towards people who fought the war. There was some of that. I do not know how much of that surfaced during the war years itself. I am not aware that it did. But in retrospect, there is some of that. But I think that is pretty marginal. SM (01:39:55): Musky did not even respond to 1968. I thought students thought he was going to talk about what was happening in the streets of Chicago and the divisions. He did not even mention it. His comment was, and he kind of gave a melodramatic pause, looked like he had a tear in his eye too, and he said, "We have not healed since the Civil War over the issue of race." And then he just simply commented that, and he had just seen the Civil War series with Ken Burns and it had touched him because 430 bows of people had died in that war. Almost an entire generation of men. So that is what he was referring to. The Boomer generation. Do you like the term or is... Do you like the term the Boomer generation? JL (01:40:40): No. As a sociologist, no. I think it is kind of meaningless. I think it is too broad. I mean, even the arguments go on about how to date it, right? SM (01:40:53): Yeah. It is supposed to be (19)46 to (19)64, but some people do not like Boomers also do not like the Greatest Generation. They do not like Generation X. Millennials... JL (01:41:06): I am a sociologist. And one of my favorite sociologists is Karl Mannheim, who wrote a book called "The Problem of Generations." And he wrote that generations are in some sense about chronology and time, but they are also about politics and ideology and culture. And so people born at very different times can be part of the same generation, culturally speaking. And I find that to be a very powerful insight. So young people who were active against the war in the late 1960s had a lot in common with people much older than them who were part of the anti-fascist movement of the 1930s and the 1940s, or who were union organizers in the 1930s. And likewise today as a college professor, occasionally I meet students who are very young. They are in their twenties today, but they strike me as people who would have fit in comfortably with people of my own age. Or we could go out and have dinner tonight, and it would not be as though they are 22 and they are with a bunch of people who are 65. Right? It would be a very free flowing conversation there. So those are some of my thoughts on generations. SM (01:42:44): It is interesting that some of the people within the Boomer generation, and I know I do not like, I am starting to not like the term either, but is that they thought they were the most unique generation of history because they felt, and I know this from talking when I was in college, we were going to change the world. We are going to make it better. We are going to end racism, sexism, homophobia, and bring peace. Nothing will ever be the same. That was kind of an attitude. Maybe it was kind of naive, hopeful, what is the term I want to use? But not realistic. So when you hear people within the generation say, we were the most unique, how do you respond to that as a sociologist? JL (01:43:25): I do not hear people say that very often. SM (01:43:27): I mean, when they were young, did you ever hear anybody? JL (01:43:30): No. SM (01:43:31): No? JL (01:43:31): Not that I remember. No-no-no-no. SM (01:43:35): Well, there was that... I went to Bingham tonight, a few students that you were saying about that. What the thing here too is something that Phyllis Schlafly said to me while I interviewed her, and David Horowitz has written about in his books, and that is the troublemakers of the (19)60s, probably making reference to the new left, run today's universities and are in charge of the curriculum. They run the women's studies, the gay studies, the Holocaust studies, the Native American studies, Latin American studies, black Studies, environmental Studies, and Asian American studies. Basically, they run it all. And it is not the way people thought back because they are not conservatives in any way. So just your thoughts on that the troublemakers of the (19)60s run today's universities? JL (01:44:24): He might be right that they run all of those programs, but they do not run the universities. I mean that is sort of the whole and part kind of thing. The whole is larger than the sum of the parts. You know what I mean? You got people running all these specific programs. But in some... I mean, again, as a sociologist speaking of this, it might be the very fact that liberals run these programs that insulates the people at the top who really run. There is a compartmentalizing that goes on, a divide and conquer. I think in some ways when it comes down to budgeting and those kinds of things- SM (01:45:16): I worked at Westchester and there is only two faculty members that are willing to admit they are conservative, and one of them is very big. JL (01:45:24): Well, liberal is different than left too. SM (01:45:27): Yes. JL (01:45:27): That is another thing. I quite commonly say to students when it comes up in classes that the colleges are run by centris, right? SM (01:45:38): A la Bill Clinton. JL (01:45:40): And it is not. People on the right and people on the left are a minority in the college and university system, and we are tolerated. Both the right and the left are tolerated. The center is quite large, quite powerful. And most administrators, in my view, come out of the center. They are pretty tolerant, which I think is a characteristic of centris, but that is different than left. SM (01:46:14): Yeah. Although left could run these programs though. JL (01:46:18): Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. Absolutely. SM (01:46:20): In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin and when did it end? JL (01:46:26): I do not know if I have anything unique to say about that. Anything that... SM (01:46:36): A year, an event that you think started the (19)60s or... And when did it end? Was there a specific event and what was the watershed moment? JL (01:46:46): When did it end? On that, the one thing I would say on that is, I do not know. I think it just bled away. I do not know. Those years I lived through self- consciously, quite self-consciously. And I do not know, I would be very reluctant even to try to think about- SM (01:47:11): Beginnings and ends? JL (01:47:12): Beginnings and ends. SM (01:47:13): How about the watershed moment? Is there something that "This is a (19)60s..." Or actually, "This is when Boomers were young." And... JL (01:47:23): Yeah... SM (01:47:26): Same thing? JL (01:47:27): Same thing. And I think that has to do with my biography. I think the way I lived that period of time, I think makes me not a good... I know you are not looking for a source on that, that is not the point. But I did not have the consciousness coming through those periods to think in those kinds of terms. SM (01:47:53): How important were The Beats in shaping the attitudes of the (19)60s? Because they were in the (19)50s and they were the group that oftentimes was looked at as the beginning of non-conformity- JL (01:48:04): Conformists and the hippies. SM (01:48:06): And intellectuals who are not going to be part of the status quo. JL (01:48:12): Well, somehow or other they did. The Beats influenced me as a kind of nonconformist intellect. I think my own coming to self-consciousness as an intellectual was influenced. Some of the first poetry I ever read period was Ginsberg, and that is The Beats. And so that is important. SM (01:48:45): His poem Howl was banned in 1955 from schools. JL (01:48:51): Yeah. SM (01:48:51): [inaudible] JL (01:48:53): Yeah. And going to City Lights Bookstore and the old Midnight Special Books when it was in Venice. SM (01:49:06): I was in the Bay Area for a while and I never went to City Lights. I do not know where the heck I was, but... JL (01:49:09): Those were important. Those were kind of pilgrimages for me. Well, when I was in graduate school in Oregon and just kind of beginning to find myself, to me those were "wow" moments. SM (01:49:23): Yeah. Ferlinghetti still runs the City Lights Bookstore. It is amazing. He is 92. JL (01:49:29): I would like to go there with Hanoi Jane. SM (01:49:32): I bet you-you can get there. JL (01:49:33): It could be... SM (01:49:34): Just, I think all you have to do is contact, because I know that Paul Krassner has been there many times. Do you know Paul? JL (01:49:44): I know who he is. I have never met him. SM (01:49:44): Yeah, he has led me on to some good interviews. We are getting close to the end here, but this is an important one too. In your own words, describe the America that you see during the times that Boomers have been alive. Now I know, let us just forget the term Boomer, but the generation that grew up after World War II. And as Boomers age, and Boomers are now 64 years old, the oldest ones and 48, the youngest ones. So there is no spring chickens any more within the Boomer generation. And also, they now realize the concept of mortality that they are not going to live forever. But I am just going to mention these years and just give me a few thoughts. Nothing in light, just immediate reaction. 1946 to 1960, what does that mean to you? JL (01:50:35): Post-World War II America, riding the wave of victories in World War II and global respect, supremacy, domination, to use kind of pejorative terms, but riding the wave of success and victory. SM (01:51:05): 1961, this is the period when Kennedy started, to 1970? JL (01:51:20): Second wave, new Deal. The New Deal comes into its own. SM (01:51:33): 1971 to 1980, the (19)70s? JL (01:51:40): A retreat, the beginning of the downside. SM (01:51:48): Do you also believe that when you define the (19)60s, you really, the first three to four years of the (19)70s are the (19)60s too? Because (19)70, (19)71, and (19)72 and half of (19)73 were still the (19)60s. So just like you cannot put generations, sometimes you cannot put decades. JL (01:52:07): Right. No, I would agree with-with that. Although as the war and the anti-war movement began to fade in or decline in importance during those years, the counterculture begins really to come into its own, begins to gain dominance, gain influence. SM (01:52:38): How about 1981 to 1990? JL (01:52:43): Oh, the retrenchment, pessimism, loss of optimism, reaction. SM (01:53:01): Conservatives might say, we are back. That is what Ronald Reagan used to say. JL (01:53:07): Yeah. SM (01:53:08): And President Bush said the Vietnam syndrome is over. I do not think it was, but when you look at 1991 to 2000, the year of Bush and Clinton, what do you think of in that decade? JL (01:53:26): The beginning of a new Cold War against the Arab world, the Islamist world, or some... Yeah, a new war period. SM (01:53:42): And then that 2001 to 2010 with George Bush II and now President Obama, that decade? JL (01:53:54): The decade of fear. SM (01:53:54): Terrorism. JL (01:53:56): Terrorism, fear. Yeah. SM (01:54:00): Now, terrorism was also part of the (19)80s with taking over of airplanes, and it was kind of evolving. And of course you had the Olympics in 72 where the terrorists came in. So you saw some signs and things were coming. What do you think of Boomers will do in their remaining years? A lot of people think that they are going to change the retirement. They have still got 15 to 20 years left because a lot of them have taken care of themselves. They will live longer, particularly females. Think you expect anything from them? I do not. JL (01:54:36): You do not? I do. SM (01:54:38): Yeah. JL (01:54:38): I expect reforms in healthcare. Elder care. Jane Fonda's new book, new project is on aging. And Fonda has always been on, I do not know, the cutting edge or she has always had a sense of what was going on. And that is not to predict that she is right. Again, that, that is not my point. But Fonda, as a public face of that generation of people and this age group that you are talking about here, I think that that is promising. I kind of bond as a bell weather of where our generation might go. SM (01:55:40): It is interesting. Dennis Hopper just passed away. He had that ad on tv, but you guys have got to plan because you are going to live a lot longer. That ad was under quite a time and he was kind of a symbolic of a generation, even though he is a little older and now he has passed on, you do not see the ads anymore. A question on the books of the period, there is three books I wanted to ask you on. SM (01:56:03): On the books of the period, there is three books I wanted to ask you on, seeing if they were good books or you read them and they were right on, or a piece of junk, basically. Theodore Roszak's book, The Making of a Counterculture. Did you ever read it and what did you think of it? JL (01:56:18): Sure. One of the books that educated me about the counterculture. I read it in graduate school when I was trying to understand the counterculture and what it was. I knew the counterculture through books like that more than I knew through participation in the counterculture. SM (01:56:40): How about The Greening of America by Charles Reich? JL (01:56:43): Read it. SM (01:56:45): Seen to be a classic book. JL (01:56:47): Oh, my. Gosh, it is so important for me, but I am at a loss for words to say what that was, because it was so long ago and I have never talked about it. I do not think I have... I have never heard that title. SM (01:57:05): Those two books are very influential to me too, and they were powerful. JL (01:57:09): But I do not remember how and why. SM (01:57:11): They were required in grad school to read. I interviewed Daniel Bell, the great associate from Harvard, and I asked him about these two books. He said, "They are terrible books. They do not have any ideas in them," because he is... Then I asked him, "Well, how about Eric Erickson's books?" because they are also very good, and the one... Oh, come on, Steve. Kenneth Keniston. He said Kenneth Keniston's books- JL (01:57:38): Youth and Rebellion. SM (01:57:43): Yeah, those were good. They were good. And then the other one was The Culture of Narcissism, which a lot of people... Christopher Lasch. JL (01:57:49): Yes. Yes-yes-yes. SM (01:57:50): That is where a lot of the Boomers were heading or whatever. JL (01:57:53): A lot where they were heading, uh-huh. All these are... SM (01:58:00): I am down to my last... Do you have five minutes more? JL (01:58:04): Sure. SM (01:58:07): These are just real fast responses to... This is what I did yesterday with Dr. Baxendale. And quick, real fast responses. What do you think of these people, or this? What do you think about The Wall, the Vietnam Memorial? Just a quick... JL (01:58:23): Do not like it, did not like it. Did not like it, do not like it. SM (01:58:30): In what way in particular do not you like it? JL (01:58:33): It evokes wrong feelings. It makes Vietnam veterans the victims of the war and shifts the sentiments away from the Vietnamese as being victims of our aggression. That is it. SM (01:58:59): What do you think of Kent State and Jackson State? JL (01:59:06): One thing I have never been clear on is whether they belong in the same sentence. I just do not know, because I do not know... Jackson State, I have never quite been able to get a fix on what that was about. SM (01:59:19): 10 days later [inaudible]- JL (01:59:20): 10 days later. Was it? SM (01:59:23): Yeah, it was. JL (01:59:25): Somewhat... SM (01:59:28): At Kent State, they have made an effort to make sure that when they could do their remembrance, that they conclude them both and they bring speakers in from both. Because it was a loss no one... Whenever I talk about Kent State, so predominantly white campus and black campus, they did not talk about it. There was also Orangeburg too, earlier on. JL (01:59:45): I wrote a large piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education this spring. I do not know if you saw this- SM (01:59:49): No, I did not. JL (01:59:49): ...if you know about that. Yeah, it was the cover. It was a cover story. There was the weekly insert. SM (01:59:59): Oh, yes, I know. I know. JL (02:00:00): It is very good. And my piece was the cover piece, April 26th edition, I think, of it. SM (02:00:09): And what was that on? JL (02:00:09): On Kent State. SM (02:00:11): Oh, really? JL (02:00:12): Yeah. The title of it is The Times, They Changed. The point of it was why is there so much quiescence on American campuses today, 40 years after Kent State? And what I was saying, it was not the students. It was not the students, it was the times. Sociologically. You know what I am saying? The times made the students then. The times today are making the students now. SM (02:00:46): Very good point. JL (02:00:47): With an emphasis on the management of higher education, the administration of higher education, and the proliferation of a lot of those programs that you mentioned is part of that. A lot of those programs came out of that time period. And the effect of a lot of those programs is a cooling out effect. It is to say would be activists, "Here, you have got your program, you have got your budget, you have got your offices, now get to work." And that has worked. And the thing that is worked better than any is study abroad programs. SM (02:01:33): No, they are good. Yeah, I know. Every student I know is doing it. Every student, for at least one semester, and I wish I had done it. JL (02:01:41): Usually their junior year. But it completely fractures campus politics. It completely fractures political organization on campus. SM (02:01:52): As well as the amount of work they have to do to survive. They got to work so they do not have time for other things. JL (02:01:58): Do not have time for other things. So all of that is in there. SM (02:02:02): A few more and then we are done. I find it interesting that the women nurses that were murdered in 1989 up in Canada, that the Women's Center will now have annual events just about on every campus in remembrance of those female students, think 11 or 12, yet universities have never remembered Kent State, ever. And they tried to not remember it at Kent State, but now it is [inaudible] you go back. And the [inaudible] University, the (19)60s was the homecoming theme a year ago. And I would have nothing to do with it, because I was there. They were making it look like everything was happy, rock and roll. And yeah, there is a lot of good, happy remembering times, but I think they were taking away from the serious parts of that particular thing. JL (02:02:51): Last... SM (02:02:52): Go ahead. JL (02:02:53): Well, last summer at this time, (20)09, 40th anniversaries of Woodstock were all over the US News media. Everybody was talking about Woodstock and, "Were your parents at Woodstock?" Huge big deal. What, three months later, 40th anniversary of the October moratorium. Not a word. Not a word. November moratorium of (19)69. Not a word. Very little leading up to Kent State, 40th anniversary of Kent State. There was not much. Kent State came very close, the 40th anniversary came very close to going with no attention. SM (02:03:43): See, I have been there the last four years at the events, and if it was not for the [inaudible] of the world and the people pushing on that student organization, which is about 15 people... JL (02:03:53): The piece I started to write on Kent State was, I was going to start out with Woodstock and compare 40th... SM (02:04:00): Most of my interviews have been long because of... Anyway. JL (02:04:15): Yeah. SM (02:04:18): How much time do you have? JL (02:04:19): I really should... As quickly as possible, we should wrap up. SM (02:04:22): Just real fast, just say one or two words. Free speech movement. JL (02:04:32): Well, very, very important as a run-up to the anti-war movement. SM (02:04:44): Freedom Summer. JL (02:04:45): I was not part of it. I knew it was happening. SM (02:04:55): Seemed to be a great education vehicle for many of the activists down the road. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, which is Dr. King's big thing that he came to prominence. Any thoughts on Emmett Till? JL (02:05:08): These are all things, the civil rights movement. I knew about it through the news, but did not have any involvement in it. SM (02:05:15): The March on Washington (19)63? JL (02:05:17): No. SM (02:05:18): How about 1968 as a year? What are your thoughts on the year? JL (02:05:22): Oh, well, I got drafted. I got drafted in 1968. My dad died in 1968. 1968 was a keystone year, a watershed year for me. SM (02:05:33): These other events, Chicago Eight trial, the Gulf of Tonkin... Well, that was (19)64. And Tet, which was a major- JL (02:05:42): Well, I got drafted because of Tet. I started paying attention probably with Tet that year. SM (02:05:50): These are two things that we are not very proud of as Americans, and that is My Lei and Attica. Just your comments on those two. JL (02:06:00): Attica, I followed quite closely. It was shortly after I got home from Vietnam, I am thinking, right? Was 1970, (19)71? SM (02:06:10): Yeah. And that is Governor Rockefeller. JL (02:06:12): Yeah. Yeah. Also, I was in graduate school, and what was then known as the Radical Criminology movement was quite powerful, on the West Coast anyway, because of the crim school in Berkeley. And so I started following criminology issues and crime issues quite a lot. My Lei was important because I had been to Vietnam and [inaudible]- SM (02:06:48): Clicking all day long here. This the last. Yeah, that is the last on that one. Okay, good. He has done. I am retiring him. I will not go over any more of these. There is quite a few. You can see I have quite a few here, and I am not going to go over these. The last question is when the best history books and sociology books are written when the Boomer generation has passed on. I say this because I drive to Gettysburg 10 times a year. I go to the battlefield to understand what it was like for that tremendous loss of what war's all about. And they have a statue there of the last man who participated in the Civil War. He died in 1924. I always sit there and I say, "Geez, the last person who was in the Civil War died in 1924." The books are carrying the message on. So the question I am asking, what will be the legacy of this generation that grew up after World War II in the history books, once they are long gone? JL (02:07:59): I think it is going to be a positive legacy. It is going to be positive. I think the legacy will be building on the best of what came out of the Greatest Generation. SM (02:08:19): Yeah, it is interesting because we are the kids of the Greatest Generation. JL (02:08:23): Yeah. Yeah. I think the Boomer generation might be the best and most important product of the Greatest Generation. SM (02:08:32): It is interesting because you told me already how important your parents were, and I know how important my parents were. So when we are critical of the (19)50s for all the things we have discussed about the things behind the scenes that were happening, I do not blame my parents. My parents did everything in their lives to give me the happiness and health, and devoted their lives to their kids. Do you feel the same way? JL (02:09:00): Well, see, I do not think I have said along the way, in fact, I maybe sort of implied that I... In fact, I said the (19)50s for me was a time of hope and promise and optimism. That was my (19)50s. SM (02:09:19): And that was my (19)50s. JL (02:09:23): I think because of my parents, and they were products of the thirties and the forties. So I think that is where I am. That is where I am. I know that my (19)50s was not everybody's (19)50s, right? SM (02:09:43): Yeah. Certainly African-Americans and certainly women, in some respects, although some women did have a happy 1950s because they were expected to be mothers. And very few, they ended up being teachers, but they all were expecting to be married by a certain age and raise kids. They did not think of other things until all these movements happened, and a lot of the people in the (19)50s really did not start thinking about these things until the (19)60s. But I do not think they ever blamed their parents, in most respects. Well, thank you very much. When I go to the Vietnam Memorial, and I have gone now since 1994 in honor of Lewis Puller, the one thing about... Speaker 3 (02:10:24): Hey. SM (02:10:26): Hey, how you doing? Speaker 3 (02:10:26): All right. Hey. Hi, Jerry. JL (02:10:28): Hi. SM (02:10:29): Let me see now. The people they dislike the most are still Jane Fonda, because you see the stickers they sell about Jane Fonda, the decals that they wear on their clothes. They did do not like McNamara, because a couple times I have been to The Wall and they had actually had McNamara's book there with bullet holes through it. And they did not like Bill Clinton. JL (02:10:56): They are not going to do that to my book. SM (02:11:00): No. And they did not like Bill Clinton when he came there. There was some booing, some of them booing because he did not... So there was that kind of thing. There is still that strong animosity toward Jane Fonda, and Lewis Puller and Jan Scruggs, and I think the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund have done a great job in terms of trying to do their best to heal from the divisions in America by bringing Bill Clinton to The Wall and bringing some others. I often ask the vets if they brought Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, what kind of reception they would get, although probably they would not do it, number one. If McNamara was alive, would he ever have had the courage to go there now, just to protect them? But I do not know if you have any other thoughts on anything I was saying or... JL (02:11:57): The only thought is that it is... I thought where you were maybe leading with this, is why do people like this hang on? I think it is a lost war phenomenon. It is what happens after a war is lost. People have a hard time letting go of it. They want it to come out differently. Lifton would be the one to talk about sort of collective trauma. So cultural expressions come from that and the people who then are held responsible for the loss of the war are not let go of in those memories. Those things hang on. They become hang-ups, in a sense, and people cannot get beyond those. And World War I, it is not quite like Vietnam, but the outcome of it is not conclusive like World War II is. First of all, it is not a very popular war in the United States, World War I. A lot of dissent. SM (02:13:15): Very short too. JL (02:13:16): It is short. A lot of dissent. And then 12 years or so after the end of the war, you got the Depression, and World War I veterans are still looking for their bonus pay and so forth. That all gets scuttled by the Hoover administration, so you have veterans marching on... So their sense of themselves as veterans and the controversy surrounding that, the controversy surrounding the war, the nature of the war, then causes them to think about what they did in the war, what happened to them in the war. And then, 10 years after the war, they are still living their lives as veterans yet, because they are looking for the bonus payments and so forth. So there is a messy post-war period after World War I, not after World War II, but it is pretty cut and dried. SM (02:14:24): GI Bill. JL (02:14:24): War is over, people come home, the GI Bill. The country moves on. America into its glory days. Vietnam, again, the post-war legacy of Vietnam, very much more like World War I. It is messy. SM (02:14:40): Then you had the blip of the Korean War, some people say the lost war, and they did not get a whole lot either. JL (02:14:49): Well, Korea sort of gets subsumed, I think, in World War II culture. People are still looking at World War II movies and watching Victory at Sea on television. SM (02:15:11): Victory at Sea. That is another thing that you grew up in as Boomers. JL (02:15:14): Boy, we sure did. SM (02:15:15): [inaudible] television, and that guy with a voice and... JL (02:15:20): All right, I got [inaudible]- SM (02:15:21): I am going to take four more pictures and you are out of here. I know you probably do not like taking a picture of your book, but I am going to... And then I have a mannequin of Jane Fonda. I am going to bring it out here. Sorry. There we go. Get that closer in there. You going to talk to Jane at all? Do you talk to her at all? JL (02:15:45): No. No, I do not. SM (02:15:47): There you go. Ready. JL (02:15:51): Have emailed a little bit. SM (02:15:54): Here we go. I am going to take a picture right here. Right at one. Two. And the last one but not least. Ready? Three. JL (02:16:06): This is for the before and after? SM (02:16:08): Yeah. You look a little more tired. Ready. That is it. Very good. JL (02:16:15): All right. SM (02:16:19): Well, thank you very much. Pleasure meeting you. JL (02:16:21): My pleasure. SM (02:16:23): I hope you do another myth book. Are you thinking of doing another myth book? JL (02:16:29): I am not. No. I am thinking of doing whatever I can to make this book successful still and get out of it everything that can be gotten out of it. One idea that some theaters are interested in, I have got one planned now and two others, the Fonda films that I use in this book, the idea would be a mini-series, maybe done over one long weekend or over a few weekends, and then me talk about why I think those films work the way they do in the culture, the way I write about them in the book here. There is two or three theaters, small community independent theaters, that are interested in doing that. So it is things like that that I want to do before I move on to something else. SM (02:17:27): Ever thought of going out with Jane? I mean, maybe do two or three... She probably charges an arm and a leg, but she is so rich she does not need the money. But going to a place like the Ritz Theater in Philadelphia. The Ritz Theater is the one, The Most Dangerous Man In America, which was the film on Daniel Ellsberg. JL (02:17:46): Great film. SM (02:17:46): The William Kunstler movie that the daughter came and spoke at the Ritz Theater in Philly. I know there is also a really good theater at Kent State, which is the Kent State Theater, which is really... This kind of stuff would go over well there, because they have a big following from the remembrance and everything. JL (02:18:06): I would love to. Any chance that I could have to do something programmatically with Fonda and the book and films I think is just a terrific idea. I think what it needs is a venue. SM (02:18:21): I know Dr. Greene. I only got to know him because of my dad before he died, was an athlete there. And Dr. Greene is the main historian at Cazenovia College. Got a book coming out on the (19)60s. Now he is kind of a conservative guy. But I am trying to talk to them about where I am going to donate all my stuff, my archives and stuff. And in my parents' honor. Everything is for my parents, because I love them desperately. He is bringing in James Kunen, who wrote The Strawberry Statement. So I could talk to him, because he does the interviews. So you might be a good person to come in and talk about Hanoi Jane. If I was still working at the universities, I would probably be bringing you in in a minute, but I am not there anymore. So I might mention your name to Dr. Greene in August. I am going to be up there just before Labor Day. And I am interviewing Minnie Bruce Pratt. I do not know if you know her. She is at Syracuse University, a distinguished professor. I am interviewing her and then I am going to go over there. But there is a lot about this, and I think the way you write this, it really can appeal to young people. And movies, doing it through the movies is how a lot of young people... Today we did a movie series and we discussed what the movie meant. And we get people there. We link to the academic classroom. So I think there is a lot here. And she reinvents herself many times in her life, and she also has an unbelievable sense of humor. I have seen her on TV. She is a very serious person when it gets to politics, but I am telling you, she also has a great sense of humor. JL (02:20:10): Yeah. I saw the serious side of her, the time that I spent with her. A real no bullshit kind of person. SM (02:20:20): What is amazing is that relationship with Tom Hayden. I can understand the Ted Turner one. I can understand the vet, Roger Vadim. I do not understand the Tom Hayden one. Tom Hayden, historically, everybody respects him as an activist and a great writer, assertive and everything, but he has not good with women. I have had several people say that they admire him as an activist and what he has done with his life, but in terms of how he treats women, it is not good. JL (02:20:51): Turns out his, I think, still current wife, Barbara is her name... I met Barbara when Barbara was in high school in Vancouver, British Columbia, when I was up there, mini tour with my first book, One Union In Wood, on the wood products industry. I had interviewed a then older guy up there. It is kind of serendipitous now, but she was there in this bar where I was with these other folks. A couple years ago, I was back in Vancouver for a memorial service for this older guy, and Hayden came to that with Barbara. And she said to me, she said, "I bet you do not remember me, do you?" And I said, "No." And then she told me where we had met. SM (02:21:55): Oh, my God. JL (02:21:56): And I had a great time with Hayden. SM (02:21:58): Oh, he is great, and he is great to talk to. JL (02:22:01): He is so [inaudible]. SM (02:22:03): He sits down like this and... That is the Hayden that I like to remember. That is the one I always want to remember. JL (02:22:10): I just love the guy. SM (02:22:12): Yeah. I guess he is just struck some of the women the wrong way. And I am not saying that Fonda criticism, but some of the feminists have known some of the things he has done. So they do not consider him a, what is that word, a big supporter of women, I guess, in the long run. JL (02:22:37): All right, my friend. SM (02:22:39): All right. JL (02:22:39): Got to go. SM (02:22:39): All right. Thank you. JL (02:22:40): Do you get a break before your next interview? SM (02:22:42): Yeah, I think it is at two o'clock, with Dr. [inaudible]. I have his... What time is it? JL (02:22:46): [inaudible]. SM (02:22:48): Oh yeah, half hour. Okay, great talking. JL (02:22:50): All right, good talking to you. SM (02:22:51): Yep. Have a safe trip back. JL (02:22:53): Thank you. Thank you. SM (02:22:54): And I will be emailing you, and maybe we can have a three-way conversation with Jane Fonda. JL (02:23:02): I am going to be... Well, I am not sure actually. I may be in Philadelphia [inaudible]. SM (02:23:12): If you are, let me know, because I am working on the book. I will be hibernating then, doing transcribing and... JL (02:23:16): Maybe get together. SM (02:23:16): Yeah. JL (02:23:16): Okay. All right. Bye. SM (02:23:16): Bye. Have a good day. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. Jerry Lembcke Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lembcke, Jerry, 1943- ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource College teachers; Sociologists; Lembcke, Jerry, 1943--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. Jerry Lembcke is an associate professor emeritus of Sociology at Holy Cross University. He has a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Oregon. He is the author of <em>The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam</em>&nbsp;and <em>Hanoi Jane: War, Sex, and Fantasies of Betrayal</em>. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-07-30 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.77a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.77b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 144:35