The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left, With a New Preface

Rating:
Summary: Garbage
Review: This isn't the only book Todd Gitlin has published about the late 1960s anti - war / counterculture movement.

He is dead wrong here about CBS, the New York Times and other "establishment" media deciding from the get - go to portray the flower children as an "oddity." On the contrary, the major media gave the scruffy baby boomers their own voice. Abbie Hoffman regularly gave press conferences at which he railed about the non - existent "children for breakfast program" while he was surrounded by microphones clearly labeled "CBS," "ABC," etc.

At your local public library you can find oversized index books for the New York Times from 1968, 1969 and 1970 that list numerous citations for Abbie Hoffman.

Mr. Hoffman ended up like the character of Alex in "The Big Chill." Jerry Rubin eventually forgot what his mother told him about looking both ways before you cross a busy highway. Musician David Crosby, who warned his fans that President Nixon was coming to get them (reaching more people than any journalist), eventually served six months in solitary confinement for narcotics. Then almost 20 years later (with Bush in the White House) he got busted for narcotics again.

Mr. Gitlin treats those guys as heroes in this book. He needs to accept the inevitable. The only person in the 1960s who was free, white and over 21 to whom we owe thanks is Lyndon Johnson. He almost singlehandedly criminalized racial segregation in all stores, restrooms (1964) and real estate offices (1968). He pressured the U.S. Supreme Court to desegregate public schools "at once." It did. Yes, Johnson allowed 56,000 Americans to die in Vietnam, but then he retired from politics, suffered from depression, died prematurely and left us to pick up the pieces.

Time to move on. Mr. Gitlin, you are wrong about the Establishment stilling the voices of the baby boomers at their peak of anger. It never did. They screamed and complained on network television and in widely read newspapers. The sane ones waited 20 years until they came to power. Bill and Hillary studied hard, treated their many professors with respect, and eventually confronted their dirty linen about inhaling, draft dodging and fraudulent savings and loans. The dream is over, Mr. Gitlin. Find out what it's about.