sooo.. I'm flipping around the channels and the History channel is talking hippies

[Lerkfish]

you remember the history channel? No amount of Hitler is too much Hitler?

well, so anyways, as a person who lived (albeit a youngling) during the hippie era, I was rather shocked to see the history channel revisionism.

apparently, the hippies and yippies made a tactical error when they allowed themselves to get beaten up by chicago police on national television... apparently, their "wild-haired looks" worked against their cause, and frightened "real americans" Into wanting law and order and therefore electing Nixon.

whu-what?

or more appropriately, wtf?

there was more....oh, there was more....

apparently, after their failure in chicago, Hippies and Yippies finally had a victory...in technology... when Jobs and Wozniak inventing the apple computer.

um? really? that bit of capitalism was a victory for hippies?

I mean, wtf?



shouldn't the history channel at least TRY to sound like they know what they're talking about?


sheesh!

[knowbody0]

1. it's all perspective

I was there, and these descriptions are familiar.

sigh.

[NV Whino]

2. Being accurate doesn't seem to be a requirement for the History channel.

[Deep13]

4. Jesus, no kidding!

I get especially annoyed by their reliance on Biblical stories as historic fact, especially when it is contradicted by actual evidence.

[EC]

3. Nixon got in because the Democratic party wouldn't

put in an anti-war candidate and Nixon said he had a "secret plan" and guaranteed the end of the war...not because of the hippies...if anything when parents saw their kids being beaten by the cops for just being there, the parents became more anti-government and started believing their kids...


But then again the History Channel has been leaning red for a long time...

[JDPriestly]

5. You mean, they couldn't find a former hippie to help them tell the story?

The hippies are a forgotten generation. That needs to be changed. Surely there are some former hippies on DU who could tell some really good stories. Where are you? And what are you doing that is more important than telling your story? Or are you embarrassed. I honestly think that is the problem. Also, a lot of hippies can't remember some of the best parts of their own stories.

[navarth]

7. Oh please

And you were doing so well with that post.

Please tell me how many former hippies you know that can't remember their stories.

You didn't really mean that, did you? Please tell me.

[county worker]

18. Here's one. The thing that really pissed me off was the opening of the GAP store in

Haight-Ashbury. I stood on the corner where the Grateful Dead's picture was taken for their album and across the street a GAP store was being opened. Of course the mandatory hippie dissidents were there with "the gap is crap" signs.

On edit: that was in the early 70's and I was showing my new fiance around. A girl I knew saw me and came up to give me a kiss and her shirt was unbuttoned and she wore no bra. That pissed my fiance off and she never wanted to meet any more of my friends even though we use to get off work on Fridays and get stoned and screwed the night away.

On further edit. My brother lived in an apartment above a bakery and we had our own private FBI agent who sat out back in his car all day. This apartment was a known crash pad for those "traveling and living off the land". One night I was alone there with a girlfriend doing the wild thing and the door was shaking. Some stranger was trying to get in to crash but I wanted to be alone with my girl friend so I locked the door. This hand came through the mail slot trying to reach the door knob and I stabbed it with a butter knife. We were left alone for the rest of the night.

[msedano]

6. probably not hippies

I remember hippies as dirty, lazy, opportunist assholes. Except the hippie chicks, who were generous, sexy, and naive.

the folks who got political may have dressed in the beards and roman sandals that weren't OK in Muskogee, but anyone with a stick of motivation and willingness to expend energy on politics was not a hippie. see above.

mvs

OH, check this out, a political demonstration from 1966. we UC students from across the state converged on capitol Sacramento, "dressed for success" to convince the california legispigs that no tuition should be their position. We won.

[Fumesucker]

13. Wow, mighty broad brush you've got there..

Careful some of that paint don't slop on ya'..

:eyes:

[stillcool]

15. So you're saying that all those..

involved in the Women's liberation movement, ending the war in Vietnam, and the equal rights movement were a bunch of "dirty, lazy, opportunist assholes"...except for the 'chicks'?

[msedano]

20. merely callow echoes of what you've read?

No overgeneralization at all, no broad brush as I include men, too, in my recall of differences, vast differences, between hippies and counterculture people. "hippie" is the indiscriminate term.

illustration, counterculture people.
dress informally in tie-dye, indian batik, colorful beads. attend love-ins / be-ins. march against the war (involves lots of work. gather. wait. listen. move out. walk, walk, walk the several blocks or half mile to an assembly site where drums, cymbals, weed proliferate and folks generally enjoy themselves. afterwards, they go to a restaurant and, if not ignored by the waitstaff, order, pay with their own money, leave a nice tip, and go home to study or get ready for tomorrow's work day.

illustration, hippies:
still asleep back in the crash pad, wondering where everyone is. typical speech: "hey, anyone got one rolled?"

[Fumesucker]

21. You apparently view the world in black and white..

To most of us there are shades of gray..

You are making a distinction between groups that exists mostly in your own mind and in any case blended together in a non-binary smooth continuum.

[msedano]

27. Manicheanist, moi? Solipcist, vous.

Shades of gray exist, indeed. But, "mostly"? That is, qed, a shade of gray.

But I don't buy it.

Back in the day that there actually were hippies, I lived in Isla Vista where the world was divided in two. Students. Non-students. the distinctions I draw emanate from the "up close and personal" every damned day interaction with hippies. Granted, there were folk in the region who worked their asses off growing vegetables, chickens, marijuana, and lived that alternative lifestyle that some called by that broad-brushed term, "hippie." No. These people were farmers with tie-dyed curtains and macrame shirts.

As another poster noted, the perception by an older generation, or those unable to enjoy the pleasures of the 60s, called all of us "hippies." But had someone done that to my face, I woulda kicked their asses for them. I believe such a response would cure them forever of their stereotype of peace-loving hippies.

Irony of ironies. The night before I left Santa Barbara for the United States Army--I was the last draftee of the involuntary draft era--my long-haired friends and I were cruising State Street one last time when a cowboy asshole in a beat up pickup rear ended me then maneuvered around me. As he sped past the coward screamed, "fuck you, hippie!"

[carlyhippy]

22. But back then, counterculture were considered hippies by the middle aged establishment

they were all "dirty lazy hippies" in their eyes. I was a child in the 60's but grew up in the counterculture. People protested for change, it just doesn't occur here today, maybe the 60's counterculture crowd needs to show everyone how it is done.

[madrchsod]

8. "beatniks are out to make it rich..oh no must be the season of the witch"

donovan -"season of the witch"- 1966

now it`s the hippies that made it rich

i watched part of that today..it sucked

[Speck Tater]

9. This from those fine folks who bring us Bigfoot and Flying Saucers 24/7. nt

[islandmkl]

10. if my man Wavy Gravy wasn't narrating, then it is a shamumentary...

and, as always, there isn't anything more predictable than a bunch of non-hippies explaining the hippie experience...

from all directions....

if you don't get it, you just don't get it...only rovian-type history can come up with 'the hippies f***ed it all up'....

[XOKCowboy]

24. Amen to that..

Wavy would have been the best to tell of the "hippy" experience. Others who would have been good would include Dr. Tim, Robert Anton Wilson and Jerry Garcia but they're all gone now. Baba Ram Das is still alive I believe but why bring in people who were actually there and part of the movement. Muddies their "perspective".

[snooper2]

11. I saw that yesterday, they had the National Review Editor

And some quack from the American Enterprise Instutute giving - ( commentary ) throughout the whole thing..

What a fucking joke...

[arcadian]

12. The 1960s didn't hit the Mid-Atlantic and Southern U.S. until about 1972

By that time the West Coast crowd had all found Jeeezus.

[BuelahWitch]

14. An ex bf of mine who was also an old hippie said basically the same thing

He said the violence in Chicago plus the fact that the Democrats were thrown into disarray by the death of Bobby Kennedy contributed to the Nixon win.
Lots of people were terrified of the combination of the hippies, the Yippies and the Black Panthers.

Edited for dyslexic typing.

[peacetalksforall]

16. Sounds like it was written and produced by Michelles' Malkin and Bachman

with consultation and funding from Katherine Harris and Ann Coulter.

[Taverner]

17. "...and the UN defeated Charlie Chaplin and the Nazis UN-Nazifiying the world!"

Yeah, kinda like that

[pepperbear]

19. another example of how a movement got lost on madison avenue.

[mitchum]

23. And that movement also grew thanks to Madison Avenue...

lots and lots of Boomers "joined the movement" because of the exposure it received...and because they were, and still are, obsessed with attending "the church of what's happening now"

[Lerkfish]

25. thanks for all the replies

[Deja Q]

26. That sounds familiar... might have been on pbs or the internet too...

Especially when you mentioned Nixon and the Apple computer bullshit. (Hippies were AGAINST technology... d-u-frigging-h.)

[spanone]

28. i was there and i think nixon was a backlash