Colleen O’Connor: Bring back sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll

I once taught an upper division course on the 1960s at UC Riverside.

The students were hanging from the rafters. Few colleagues understood why the course was so overenrolled. So, I asked the students to write what they expected to learn from the course.

The most popular and often cited answers were “Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.”

More than just a little dismayed that the 60s had been redefined, diminished, and dismissed as one long self-indulgent acid trip, I laboriously, and sometimes hilariously, taught the great moments and the great struggles.

I plunged into the drama, the riots, the politics, the fear, the faith and the war.

The Civil Rights movement (complete with black and white footage of Sheriff “Bull” Connor and his attack dogs and water canons; riots in Selm;, anti-Vietnam war demonstrations all over the country; the assassinations of President John Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy; the women’s movement (Billie Jean King beating Bobby Riggs in the famous “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match to demonstrate unequal pay in professional sports, and absolutely no college sports scholarships for women); the environmental movement; Caesar Chavez and the Chicano farm workers movement; Ralph Nader and the consumer movement; the removal of two Presidents from office (Johnson and Nixon) over the Vietnam, Cambodian, and Laotian wars; the passage of the War Powers Act; Medicare; and the Peace Corps. These are only a partial list of seminal events of the ’60s.

My young, bright students, knew almost nothing of this history of the ’60s. They assumed America had always been like the movie star ’80s. The fact that most young ’60s-era college kids (most likely their parents’ age) were not pot heads, dead beats, draft dodgers, bra burners and sex addicts, came as something of a shock to them. They only knew the American history taught in most high school texts at the time, i.e. history as patriotism.

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At the conclusion of the course, the University evaluations brought forth some great comments. These sons and daughters of the “baby boom” generation left the classroom in awe of what was accomplished by a generation who still believed that they mattered and that “we” could change things. As one commented, “I feel as if I missed something really big and important. I feel left out.” Or even more often, “Now I understand what my mom is always talking about.”

The more compelling fact that the ’60s produced some of the most significant political, economic, and cultural changes actually moved these heretofore naïve youngsters. They had little or no idea that their very presence in the classroom, and my presence as their professor, came because of the fights of the 60s.

So it is with near blinding frustration that I face the same willful ignorance today, by those attempting to again characterize the ’60s as something, we need to “get beyond.”

Once again, the opinion making class is attempting to redefine, diminish, and dismiss the “baby boom” generation of the 60s.

Even President Obama reiterated the theme in his campaign: “There is no doubt that we represent the kind of change that Sen. Clinton cannot deliver on. And part of it is generational. Sen. Clinton and others, they have been fighting some of the same fights since the 1960s. And it makes it difficult for them to bring the country together to get things done.” This about a generation that got an enormous amount done.

Even more alarming is the attempt to link the “baby boomers” to “excessive entitlements,” a drag on the deficit [Social Security and Medicare], “uncool,” and in need of rationed health care. In short, to blame them for much of today’s deficit, looming budget obligations and assorted ills they didn’t cause.

A new cultural war is being fought along ageist lines. The young, hip, and usually ill-informed, are to push their elders out of the way—lest student loans, high paying jobs, or party favors be endangered. In other words, an American version of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Those without any knowledge of history are encouraged to turn against those with deeper memories that might endanger “the new establishment.”

As the Generation Xs and Ys twitter, tweet, blog and email, while their parents roll their eyes, forgo retirement, or keep volunteering around the planet, a singular question remains unanswered. Why is Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton—that icon of the 60s baby boomers’ women’s movement—now more popular than President Obama (71 percent vs. 57 percent, according to the latest Gallup)?

Perhaps, the era of the “we generation” is to be relegated to the “dust bin” of revisionist history. If so, then I say, bring back the 60s—-sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll— and TAX THEM!

Editor’s Note: The decade referred to as the 60s usually ends in 1974 with Nixon’s resignation

Colleen M. O’Connor is a former college history professor, the director of the “Faces of San Diego 2000″ family photographic history project and co-editor of Eleanor Roosevelt: An American Journey.  She is an SDNN political columnist and can be reached at CoConnor15x(a)Yahoo.com

Tags: 60s, Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, Kennedy, Nixon, SDNN

This entry was posted on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 6:54 am and is filed under Columns, Local News, Military, Politics & Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.