Letters to the Editor
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The music sucked too
The one myth about the 60s that nobody seems to challenge: "all the great music" that was created during the era.
The only reason this proposition isn't immediately laughed out of the room is because the 60s have a Beatles-sized thumb on the scale. Take the Beatles out of the equation and you are left with very, very little. Take Motown, which had little to do with the counterculture, and you're left with even less, a compilation of popular music's most preposterously overrated acts: The Stones, The Doors, Dylan, Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, the Who. Even the genuinely great bands like the Beach Boys and the Velvet Underground only released a couple really great albums. And don't let the boomer revisionists fool you: most the music being made was along the lines of the Monkees and the Archies.
Not that the Beatles shouldn't count, but they were only one band. When all is said and done, the music of later periods is in general much, much better.
"Come on people now, smile on yer brother, everybody get together, try an' love one another right now."
BLEH
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Gustavo
I know my history; you just missed the point of my post. When did I say thousands didn't die in Vietnam? I didn't even utter the word Vietnam; I was talking about Afghanistan and Iraq. Perhaps I'm missing your point?
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The Revolution Was Televised
Technology made the sixties what it was: rock music, tv shows aimed at a youth market. Almost everything else happened before: drug culture, revolutionary subcultures. What was different was the mass cultural experience of hearing the Beatles on the radio and feeling that you were one of may doing it. That never happened before.
Computer technology has changed the culture since. Steve Jobs tried to celebrate "Us" at his festival, as some one who lived through the 60s would: throwing a big dirty rock festival. 20 years later, we watch music videos on YouTube, and write letters to the editor of electronic publications that will only ever be read by a handful. And that's what it feels like.
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TRenee
Nope, I think I missed yours. I reread your letter and I get it now. My apologies. Cheers!
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Here's the promise that the hippie-haters can sign
I the undersigned would rather DIE than owe those despicable hippies anything, even if the "anything" turns out to be a non-toxic treatment for metastasized breast cancer, or a cheaply grown herbal remedy that can block 99% of beta amyloid plaques, as opposed to only 30% using Aricept.
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timbuktom
Since the early 60s, space exploration has nearly stopped, due to the hip-yet-bogus 60s attitude that we could do more good here on Earth with the space money.
I disagree, the main reason manned space exploration slowed so much was that the propaganda value of "being first" declined greatly.
We beat the Soviets to the Moon so badly that they denied there ever was a race.. Essentially we won the race, declared victory and retired from the field.
The Apollo program was a barely achievable stunt, designed more for propaganda value than true scientific research. Yes, we learned a lot, but that was not really the impetus for the missions in the first place.
What we really and truly need now is some form of non-chemical-rocket based Earth to Space launching system.. A laser launcher, a Beanstalk or a Loftstrom Loop.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_propulsion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop
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Lynx
Isn't that kind of like saying thank God for Jim Crow because otherwise we wouldn't have had Martin Luther King?
Doo-wop? Now that's low. (Didn't that lead to Billy Joel?)
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Things of lasting importance.
Right-wingers want to believe that the 1960's achieved nothing of lasting importance, and occasionally like to try to persuade people that the 1960's achieved nothing of lasting importance. Establishment types are not actually able to confront their opposition because they'd lose any real discussion, so instead like to try to minimize their opponents.
The greatest achievement of counterculturalists of the 1960's was to teach people that they could be free.
They made distrust of The Establishment mainstream, which motivated The Establishment to co-opt what they could of the counterculture and try to make up for the rest with an enormous and expensive propaganda campaign for which there is no end in sight. But at most they have managed to persuade people that they are 'conservatives', when surveys do in fact show a large majority of people hold definitely 'liberal' values.
The achievements are subtle, and not particularly noticed because certain changes have become well-accepted. To this day, you still see management types wearing jeans on Casual Fridays, the Environmental movement is alive and well, 1960's music still dominates a lot of FM radio, you still hear guitar music instead of an organ in churches, and Pleasantville still has its rainbow colors.
We are stardust
We are golden
And weve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden -
Jason! (on music) Wrong!
Think of what came after the 1960s, and the early 1970s, which is part of the cultural 1960s: Disco and Rap. Yuk!
During the 60s: All sorts of great stuff you do not mention: Chicago, Blood Sweat & Tears, The Electric Flag, Mamas and Papas...
You write glibly about, "discounting Motown," but Yeow! The Temptations!!!
Miles Davis's late flowering!!!
I have to go for dinner now, when I am just getting started, but maybe somebody else will point you in good 1960s musical directions.
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The Children of Reagan Will Never Understand
The 60's was a great period to have experienced. From the music to the interest in Eastern Religion to the politics... it was a unique period where young people turned away from the material side.
People like De Groot will never understand the period properly and really, I don't understand his motivation asserting his ignorant point of view, unless he thinks it's an easy way to get published or to make a quick buck.
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Before 1965
Before 1965 no single woman could get on birth control pills and it was even difficult for married woman. A the land mark Supreme Court decisions in 1965 Greasley(sp) vs. of Conn. which ruled women no longer needed permission from their husbands to use birth control gave us the "privacy clause" in teh consitution and laid the ground work for Roe V. Wade!!!!
Now that's an achievement.