University of Virginia Library

Teeny-Bop Boredom Breeds Revolution

By RICHARD LAURENT
And STEFAN BONFIGLIO

(The following is an introduction by the authors.–Ed.)

In line with the CD's policy of presenting any opinion, no
matter how absurd, insulting to the community at large, or
self-abusive, we have permitted the Messrs. Bonfiglio and Laurent
to perpetrate the outrage called "I Remember the Sixties" upon
you, the deserving contributors to the Student Activities Fund.
Their reasoning is so preposterous and accurate that we (there are
no I's here) hesitate to suppress it because the author's names are
not Anglo-Saxon: perhaps their being members of oppressed
minorities explains in part their outrage–not only their outrage,
but their indifference to the principles of logic.

When questioned by our reportorial staff as to their reasons
for writing the article, they put down their bottles and replied.
"It's on account of the fact that we ain't no live-ass honkies. I can
remember how my grandpapa come here in steerage, which means
I can call you 'fat-assed Anglo' but you can't call me no guinea or
no frog. And besides, the reason you're afraid of us is cause we
have white girlfriends."

Both authors exhibit complete ignorance of the social
processes at work during the Sixties, nor do they understand how
the Kennedy brothers brought a vision of the better life to
millions of disadvantaged Americans of all backgrounds. (Sure,
why not? It cost them no more.) It's a pity they missed Camelot.

Tony Peccavi

These are sad times; these
are the times that soc. majors
understand Hinduism innately,
and girls too young to
menstruate tell you they
remember Buddy Holly live at
the Fillmore East. The man
who defeated the Pink Lady is
in the White House, and the
Justice Department's repealing
the Bill of Rights; the Mothers
of Invention teach you to be
medium cool; MacDonalds,
which used to feature
forty-five-cent three-course
meals, now advertises "change
back from your dollar." There
are Ladies' Libbers in the
Jefferson Society, and the
dorm urinals have been
converted to flower-boxes
("Oh, are you supposed to use
these to wash your hair?")

The causes of this decay lie
in the Sixties.

In the middle of that
decade, magazines and
newspapers and television,
from Time on up, discovered
the "generation gap." There
had earlier been warnings from
these sources about
beret-wearing beatniks who
rejected the materialistic
American society of the
Fifties, but those dropouts had
been content to talk about civil
rights, blow their dope, and
sing protest songs.

By 1967, the emergence of
"flower power," "student
power," and all the weary,
weary rest of it–the flashing
lights and beads and
brightly-colored clothes, the
loud simplistic music, the drugs
and the Nehru jackets–were
the outward and visible signs of
a "bizarre transmutation of
middle-class mores," as Time
put it, referring to the hippies'
rejection of straight morality
and their trip - smoke -
and - be - merry attitude.

The psychedelic glow that
limned San Francisco seemed
to threaten all that Joe Blow
had been working for and
saving for ever since the war,
i.e., electric toothbrushes,
radar, fishing-reels,
remote-control
thirty-seven-inch television
sets, talking dolls, hot combs,
and Rock-'m-Sock-'m Robots
(TM by Marx)

Psychedelia

Children from Tacoma to
Tacoma Park watched
Haight-Ashbury scenes on the
six o'clock news, said, "Duh,
psychedelic," and began to
believe in The Revolution.
Hippyism thus spread from its
original Bohemian and
Haight-Ashbury adherents into
the white upper middle class,
with the consequent dilution
of the old counter-culture's
high and unrealistic principles
of Peace, Love, Truth, Beauty,
Acid.

Counter Culture; Principles Of Peace, Love, Truth, Beauty, Acid?

Sixteen-year-old girls,
whose predecessors in 1958
had worn white gloves to the
Prom and wept over the song
Teen Angel, were by the late
Sixties smoking dope twice a
week and listening to the Fugs
in the belief that they were
helping to overthrow capitalist
society. Teenyboppers who
pronounced "coop," "co-op,"
and "coupe" as the same word
became expert at reeling of
such phrases as "genocidal
repression of the enslaved
Third World masses," or, if
they had read a book on Marx,
"running-dog lackeys of the
imperialist power-structure."

Certain works of art became
requisite Marx Brothers
movies because they were
anti-authoritarian, the fantasies
of J.R.R. Tolkien because they
resembled a mystical acid trip,
Stranger in a Strange Land
because it predicted a
communal society based on
love-grok.

Furthermore, the
psychedelic revolution was
soon taken over and exploited
by poster-makers ("War is not
healthy for children and other
living things"), clothing
manufacturers (blousy shirts,
pre-faded jeans, sandals),
money-grubbing acid rock
groups (the song Crown of
Creation said of the older
generation "We cannot tolerate
their obstruction"), and by
whomever else could get on the
hippy gravy-train before its
passengers derailed it out of
boredom.

Possibly this rapid
dissemination of pseudo-hippie
culture among the young has
led to the current death of
activism. How can the
erstwhile revolutionary feel set
off from Middle America when
Republicans grow their hair
long and listen to Elton John
records?

But back to the Sixties. At
that time, middle-class
crypto-revolutionaries, who
earlier had been given material
objects to stave off boredom,
transferred their craving for
something new to political and
social causes. They had little
else to do. They had never had
to get a job, never had to do
chores, never had to work too
hard in school. (It was only
after a kiddy-science major
minoring in Children's lit gave
us a b.j. in a Rockingham
County cornfield that we
started to understand what
primary and secondary
education is all about.) They
picked up their parents' liberal
belief in the capacity of society
to reform itself, and added to
that a craving for power right
now.

Confrontations

For socially-involved
people, their persistence and
patience were alike remarkably
short. Whether fairly
significant change resulted
from their efforts and others',
as in the case of civil rights, or
whether little or none was
apparent, as in the case of the
rotting central cities, the
committed ones soon got
bored with their Cause.
However, as the luster of one
movement dimmed with time,
a new one would come along:
civil rights was followed by
Appalachia, by urban decay,
by student power, by Clean
Gene Mc C., by the plight of
the migrant workers, by the
wars in Biafra, Vietnam,
Bangla Desh.

Some of the Sixties
Radiclibs, faced with
non-success, became
discouraged and hijacked
planes to Cuba; others became
self-proclaimed anarchists and
blew up Banks of America;
some tripped themselves out
on mescaline. Most became
lawyers and hospital janitors
and housewives. All their
demonstrations, all their
placards and rallies and
dope-smoking and slogans and
songs and trips and be-ins and
confrontations have, despite
their arrogant hopes, resulted
in driving Joe Blow back to the
Fifties.

So long as he can buy a new
car every three years, send his
daughter to secretarial school
and watch the Redskins play
the Dolphins, Joe is not
concerned with abstract issues
like genocide, detente,
price-fixing, or political
scandals. Joe voted for L.B.J.
because a nuclear war would
have meant gas-rationing.

Sixties Radiclibs attached
this short-sightedness of the
middle class, yet they
themselves never had much
contact with their Causes. How
many of them had ever seen a
migrant worker or a
Vietnamese? How many of
them could have run the
universities they disrupted (e.g.
"Honk for Peace")?How many
had ever been cold or hungry
or in danger?They were the