"Framing the Sixties"

The Use and Abuse of a Decade from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush

If you were there, ya might oughta read this. I read all I can about the '60s. Trying to remember them. Actually, I remember 'em pretty good until I got outta the service in '66. After that it's sorta blurry...

The '60s are still with us. I think we're gonna be in the 'hangover' phase for a long time yet to come.

Truthout

Forget such pesky things as Jim Crow and equal rights for women. All but the archest of archconservatives will concede that tinkering was needed to correct egregious racism and sexism. This shift led, von Bothmer continues, to a bizarre splitting of the 1960's into two parts: the good sixties and the bad sixties.

The good sixties, he writes, ran from 1960 to 1964 and included John Fitzgerald and Robert Kennedy, the nonviolent resistance of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the Peace Corps, the Civil Rights Act, the 1963 March on Washington and the activists who pushed for racial integration as part of the beloved community.

On the flip side, he continues, are the bad sixties, which ran from mid-decade to the fall of Saigon in 1975. Among the markers of this period: the sexual revolution, Roe v. Wade, escalating protests against the Vietnam War, the Stonewall Rebellion, urban riots and the growing influence of groups such as the Black Panthers and the Young Lords.

About half of those oughta be in the 'good' '60s. Your choice.

Bush, a man with a history of substance abuse who had skirted active military service in Vietnam, was so successful in tarnishing Kerry that he skated to victory. By presenting himself as a God-fearing, born-again Christian who was family-oriented and believed in tradition, he represented the good, nothing-to-fear years of pre-1960's mythology.

Obama, not born until 1961, represents a shift from this good/bad dichotomy. That said, the right wing continues to dredge up the sixties in its attempt to blame them for every flaw in contemporary life. The so-called culture wars continue to rage and, perhaps nostalgic for the good 1960's - before queers took to the streets, before women flooded the workforce and before a family of color lived in the White House - have taken on new urgency. Indeed, conservatives seem ascendant.

Some things haven't changed - I didn't like the Repugs and Birchers then and I don't like the Repugs and Rightards now.

I guess I'm just older and better lookin'.