Summers of Love: What the Media is Missing About the Summer of Love (by Glenn W. Smith at HuffPost)

[marmar]

Glenn W. Smith
Summers of Love: What the Media is Missing About the Summer of Love


On a dark Texas highway in November 1967, a fourteen-year-old boy rides beside his father in an old Chevy pickup. The radio's off; there's a mist on the road through which the headlamps cut tunnels of light. The boy and his father are headed south and west, to the border near Eagle Pass. They'll hunt deer the old way: walking, listening, looking, tracking. The boy's father grew up in the nineteen-teens on the Green River in Kentucky, just north of where John Prine tells us paradise lay. This is different country and a different time. Maybe the quiet old man is thinking about that. In his lap the boy holds a sketchbook. In his hand is a paint brush, dipped in orange day-glo. By the dim halo of the bulb in the open glove box, the boy paints the word, "Love."

Two years later, in the summer of 1969, the boy's a little older, and he's out water skiing with his friend, Danny, on the Llano River. Lyndon Johnson, now the former president, has a place on the Llano, and the boy and his friend notice the door to LBJ's boat stall is open. The friend steers the boat just in front of LBJ's dock. The skiing boy, slaloming, cuts hard in front of the open door. He looks over his shoulder and sees people in the back of the boat. He's soaked the former President and his party with the spray and splash thrown up by the ski's quick turn. In a flash the little black boats of the U.S. Secret Service surround both boat and boy and force them to a halt.

Welcome to the Summers of Love.

The media are well into one of their self-referential celebrations of past media spectacles. In this case, it's the legendary summer of the '67 San Francisco human be-in that attracted hundreds of thousands of disaffected youth to the Bay Area. Thirteen-year-old runaway speed freaks and hippie prophets preaching peace and love. Vibrant music. Flowers. Hair. Flowers in your hair. Before the Summer of Love arrived, it had already become something other than the wistful celebration of the power of innocence. It was a media event, and as such could not be innocent. Media events are marriages of convenience between promoters seeking an audience for their truths and an audience seeking escape from theirs. No one wears white.

The media look to find lost keys wherever their cameras are already pointing. They seldom hunt in those places the keys are most likely to be found. What the media retrospective fails to convey, because they are not looking, is the impact of the Summer of Love, and of the broader 1960s counter-culture of which it was part, on the values of a generation of American children who weren't in San Francisco. These are children, who, at home in the heartland with their families, found tunnels of light shining through the mists of media coverage.

We skipped the spectacle, but we listened to the hopes. We learned that what happened yesterday doesn't absolutely determine what is possible tomorrow, that social and personal transformation can happen, that compassion trumps competition and alienation, that we have a responsibility to ourselves and to one another.

Too many commentators and historians of that era focus upon the excesses, the childishly irresponsible acts that sometimes punctuated what were courageous, responsible and insightful protests. The counter-culture fought against an unjust war and social conformity. It opposed environmental ignorance, racial prejudice, and claims to authority based upon a fear of the Other that had poisoned the minds of America's rulers. They became like Dr. Strangelove's General Jack D. Ripper, who went mad worrying over the corruption by Communists of our "precious bodily fluids." Maybe the generation before us was right to be paranoid. They just couldn't see it was their own paranoia that was after them.

...(snip)...

Conservatives, aided by the superficial narratives of the media, tried to tell us for decades that we were simply spoiled, that we rebelled for the sake of rebellion, that we hated authority in all its guises, that we repudiated the past in an orgy of dangerous irresponsibility, that we believed in an endless, banal present with no tomorrow.

Bullshit. We didn't drop out, we parachuted in. And we're still fighting behind enemy lines for a vision of a world in which tomorrow comes, but it comes with unexpected glories and democratic possibilities. It wasn't an endless summer. It was the promise of multiple, pluralistic Summers of Love. It's proven goddamned hard to make it happen, and it will be no Age of Aquarius when it does arrive. No, utopia is not to be. But that's not really what we wanted in the first place. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/glenn-w-smith/summers-of-love-what-the_b_52015.html

[JeffR]

1. A tunnel of light is just what I found in 1967

listening to the radio and walking for the first time into Savannah's first head shop. I've been walking down that same tunnel ever since.

Great article. "Unexpected glories and democratic possibilities" are what make being a freak worth it. Always have, always will.

[villager]

2. it is a great article

I was growing up in the Bay Area then. My parents weren't hippies, but were liberal Dems, open to possibilities.

Of course, the following year's not-accidental "lone nut" assassinations would put an end to many dreams, many hopes of the system being able to heal/change itself short of cataclysm.

in '67 though, my young aunt --living with us as she went to UC Berkeley -- brought a new Beatles album into the house: "Sgt. Pepper," of course.

And now, on my computer radio feed from KPIG (being a nor cal boy in exile), I'm listening to Don Henley sing "the end of innocence."

coincidence?

[JeffR]

3. There's no such thing as coincidence

:)

[villager]

4. well. yeah.

Mr. Jung. ;-)

[JeffR]

6. sorry, another thing I picked up in the sixties

:blush:

[villager]

7. oh, don't worry. So did I.

:hi:

[JeffR]

8. for those who think Jung...

:beer:

[villager]

9. at heart? or just in general?

;-)

[JeffR]

10. In general.

You're as Jung as you feel.

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

[bemildred]

5. The mainstream media never had the slightest clue about the 60s.

And still do not, and it drives them mad with rage.

You walk into the room
With your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked
And you say, "Who is that man?"
You try so hard
But you don't understand
Just what you'll say
When you get home

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

You raise up your head
And you ask, "Is this where it is?"
And somebody points to you and says
"It's his"
And you say, "What's mine?"
And somebody else says, "Where what is?"
And you say, "Oh my God
Am I here all alone?"

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

You hand in your ticket
And you go watch the geek
Who immediately walks up to you
When he hears you speak
And says, "How does it feel
To be such a freak?"
And you say, "Impossible"
As he hands you a bone

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

You have many contacts
Among the lumberjacks
To get you facts
When someone attacks your imagination
But nobody has any respect
Anyway they already expect you
To just give a check
To tax-deductible charity organizations

You've been with the professors
And they've all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have
Discussed lepers and crooks
You've been through all of
F. Scott Fitzgerald's books
You're very well read
It's well known

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Well, the sword swallower, he comes up to you
And then he kneels
He crosses himself
And then he clicks his high heels
And without further notice
He asks you how it feels
And he says, "Here is your throat back
Thanks for the loan"

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Well, you walk into the room
Like a camel and then you frown
You put your eyes in your pocket
And your nose on the ground
There ought to be a law
Against you comin' around
You should be made
To wear earphones

Because something is happening here
But you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?