Tom Brokaw Does 1968 (Poorly)

The dominant trope driving Tom Brokaw's interpretation of the meaning of 1968 for the History Channel goes something like this: The "Greatest Generation" had set up a period of quietude and tranquility that the tumult of the 1960s rudely shattered. He blames the "excesses" of the 1960s, not surprisingly, on the Left and on the kids, and indirectly on the Democratic Party.

Brokaw sees protest as the irritant and the status quo, (even with its mass murder in Southeast Asia and racial strife at home), as infinitely preferable. He argues that the "conservatives" of the Republican Party were synonymous with decorum, good manners, and dignity, while the left-wingers in the Democratic Party should be identified with mayhem, sex and drugs, and "excess." He itemizes the "excesses" of the '60s, including drug use, revolutionary politics, and wild kids waving "Viet Cong" flags, but he never really examines what led these idealistic young people to become so alienated in the first place.

Brokaw's convenient narrative fits in well with the recent explosion of books and articles casting the history of the Vietnam War-era in a Cold War triumphalist light. Brokaw implies that it was the overly tolerant Democratic Party and the Left that played nursemaid to a youth culture that alienated people, such as his father, who didn't necessarily support the war but wanted America to be as great as it had been in the 1950s. With nowhere else to turn, Brokaw argues, these true-blue Americans turned to George Wallace, Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon.

Brokaw covers the 1968 election closely but never mentions Nixon's famous "Southern strategy," which played the race card dividing blue-collar whites from African Americans for Republican electoral gain not only in the Deep South but also throughout the country.

Brokaw proudly alludes to his working-class father, a salt-of-the-Earth character right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. But he fails to emphasize that the kids doing the killing and dying in Vietnam were also from the working class. The average age of a GI was 19, (in World War II it was 26), and the boys who died in Southeast Asia were in large part the draftee sons of bricklayers, farmers, carpenters, truck drivers, factory workers, and other trades. They were plucked from the relatively happy and privileged life of America in the 1960s, with all of its opportunities, only to be sent into a hellhole in a distant land to fight for a corrupt, brutal, incompetent military regime in Saigon. The political system at home did not allow them to vote in an election, (the voting age was still 21), but they could be sent off to fight and die in Vietnam. Brokaw gives these issues short shrift.

The American political system in which Brokaw believes so wholeheartedly was totally unresponsive to the calls for ending the war. Democracy in America failed to provide an outlet for the expression of popular will, which in 1968 clearly wanted to end the war in Vietnam. This lack of responsiveness on the part of our national political institutions precipitated a legitimacy crisis. Brokaw papers over the social and cultural manifestations of this crisis focusing instead on the Left's "excesses."

Brokaw should qualify his documentary by stating for his television viewers that he is presenting the "white middle-class view" of 1968. He leaves out the experiences of so many people who do not fit into his South Dakota farm boy "greatest generation" narrative. He's okay on the Where, What, Who, and When, questions, but he ham-handedly drops the ball on the "Why?" questions -- the stock and trade of historians.

For example, in Brokaw's 1968 there are no "isms." There is no "racism" that is pernicious and multi-layered in America, North and South. He implies that after the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 the civil rights movement should have declared "Mission Accomplished," packed up its bags, and gone home.

There is also no "imperialism" or "militarism" in Brokaw's view of 1968, even though the protests of the period were directed against these forces that, although not unique to the United States, are as American as Apple Pie. The Vietnam War exposed so many unseemly aspects of America's role in the world and its capacity for military aggression. It is astonishing that Brokaw can so vapidly dismiss these aspects of the American way of life in his recent telecast when we are currently witnessing these tendencies play out again in Iraq.

And what about the "excesses" of the federal government? Not only did Lyndon Johnson unleash B-52 jet bombers as never before on a small agricultural nation, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched a host of domestic spying programs -- COINTELPRO -- that targeted, harassed, infiltrated, and subverted many of the nation's legitimate civil rights and peace organizations. The FBI's COINTELPRO even targeted Martin Luther King, Jr., who is one of the heroes in Brokaw's narrative. Brokaw never mentions J. Edgar Hoover or COINTELPRO in his trite discussion of the "excesses" of the '60s. Isn't illegally spying on tens of thousands of innocent Americans who were exercising their Constitutional right to dissent "excessive" on the part of the government? Again, it is astonishing that Brokaw can ignore COINTELPRO when we are currently experiencing a new wave of illegal government surveillance.

"To many," Brokaw intones, it seemed as though "the social fabric was unraveling" in 1968, and this, he explains, was how Richard Nixon was elected. Brokaw's narrative is neat and clean: Nixon appealed to the social conservatives who were repelled by the "excesses" of the middle-class youth movement. Nixon promised to bring America back to that fabled (and non-existent) tranquil period of quietude of the 1950s that is Brokaw's point of departure. But Brokaw fails to mention Nixon's "Southern strategy" of divide and conquer that played on pernicious American racism, and that Nixon himself was a fraud and a liar. Nixon's "law and order" mantra turned out to be nothing more than hypocritical window dressing and pandering. For Brokaw, it is simply irrelevant that Nixon was a crook because it doesn't fit into his preconceived trope. In an era when we've witnessed politically inspired firings of U.S. attorneys, along with a whole host of other scandals coming out of the Bush Administration, how Brokaw can ignore Nixon's criminality in any honest interpretation of the politics of 1968 is beyond me.

The Nixon tapes expose the true nature of Brokaw's paragon of virtue who plays a starring role in his morality play. For example, one tape reveals Nixon seeking to use the IRS to punish Democratic Party fund raisers, telling his aide H.R. Haldeman: "Bob, please get me the names of the Jews, you know, the big Jewish contributors of the Democrats. All right. Could we please investigate some of the cocksuckers?" And this is the Republican leader Brokaw implies restored decorum and good manners to the nation after years of left-wing "excess?"

Brokaw also treats George Wallace with kid gloves. He never really explains to his viewers that in 1968 Wallace was a bigot and a racist and his running mate, Air Force General Curtis LeMay, had promised to bomb Vietnam "back to the Stone Age." The ticket for the "American Independent Party," which carried five states in the Deep South, sounds pretty "excessive" in its platform, but really examining Wallace and Nixon would interfere with Brokaw's clean narrative of "excess" followed by redemption; the unruly and unjustified "irritation" of civil disobedience, (the engine that won workers, blacks, and women their rights), followed by the Republicans' re-established good order and quietude.

Finally, Brokaw's political analysis (or lack thereof) of 1968 is undermined by a well-known fact: Democratic nominee Vice President Hubert Humphrey's poll numbers shot upward dramatically in mid-October when he began distancing himself from Lyndon Johnson's war policies. His numbers were rising to the point where he might have overtaken Nixon if he had come out against the war earlier. Brokaw doesn't address the implications of this fact. Instead, he argues that the Left and its "excesses" had alienated Middle America, (or what Nixon called the "silent majority"), because most Americans were more against the protesting kids than they were against the war. But this doesn't explain Humphrey's surge when he began denouncing the war, as well as Nixon's strategy of claiming he had a "secret plan" to end the war. By November 1968, candidates from both parties had to pander to an electorate that wanted peace.

Brokaw is tough on "hippies" and protesters, soft on Wallace and Nixon. Patrick Buchanan gets a lot of face time and Brokaw recognizes that since 1968 the conservatives in this country have largely dictated the agenda. But is the country better off for it? Brokaw lets that question drop with a thud. He knows that the nation has descended into deep malaise and crisis under three decades of Republican tutelage, which runs counter to his narrative of redemption, (i.e., the right-wing of the "Greatest Generation" redeeming the nation from the "excesses" of their unappreciative, spoiled kids).

Forty years later, we have a huge national debt, (about $9.8 trillion), a debilitating occupation of an Arab country, gaping current account deficits with the rest of the world, an economic meltdown awaiting due to reckless de-regulation and privatization, and a government that seems unwilling or unable to tackle any of the nation's most pressing problems. All of this governmental ineptitude and corruption seems natural under Republican rule because the Right never really believed in the power of government to do anything positive anyway so it becomes a convenient self-fulfilling prophecy.

Making matters worse, the right-wing baby boomers, like George W. Bush, Paul Wolfowitz, and Grover Norquist, who got draft deferments and were out waving the American flag when most of their generation was protesting the war, have created the worst mess for the nation since at least the Civil War. Brokaw's underlying assumption is that the country is better off under conservatives because their values mirror the values of his father and those of the "greatest generation" more so than the baby boomers.

Brokaw accepts the premise that America is more "conservative" today, but one could just as easily argue that the workforce is simply more insecure and scared today; the cold hand of the market has disciplined their wayward children far more severely and effectively than their parents ever could. Compared to 1968, the U.S. economy is a shell of its former self, and the new status quo that Brokaw lauds limits opportunity even while the government has grown more authoritarian and nakedly imperialistic.

Our kids today have it a lot harder than we had it -- we had far more support from the government in the form of educational and economic opportunities. There is relative quiet in 2008, even with an unpopular foreign war dragging on, because the conservative agenda has helped facilitate fear in the population on all levels, and its cynical brand of divide-and-conquer politics have demoralized would-be idealists. For over 30 years now the Republicans have told young people not to bother dreaming of creating a better world in the future. "Idealism is Dead," they say in word and deed. Better to pile up material goods and be obedient consumers than act as politically engaged citizens.

There is nothing "great" about a generation -- "conservative," "liberal," or otherwise -- that tells its kids to stop dreaming of a better world, and holds as its creed that government cannot do anything positive for the people, that we should focus on what we cannot do as a nation, instead of what we can do, (or must do). Just look at the lack of "vision" of the current crop of Republican presidential candidates. At least in 1968 young people had hope and could dream of a better planet and a better future. Brokaw comes down on the side of the stern father shaming those unruly children for their "excesses," while he ignores the damage to the nation his "conservative" heroes in his morality play have brought about.

Comments

[Kungfublood]

That's right kids just fit in crush your emerging personal perspective ,identity and ideals like he did and remember the B. man has all the integrity money can buy.

[Joseph A. Palermo - Huffpost Blogger]

Okay, fair enough, Bush was protecting Texas from a possible attack from Oklahoma during the Vietnam War -- the evidence that "most" people wanted the war over by 1968 is in the polls -- I didn't mean they were out with signs marching, just not supportive -- Tet changed public opinion permanently -- as for the current allusions, Brokaw was giving a big wet kiss to the Republicans and conservatives with this documentary because of the "irritant" - redemption theme, which is false in any case. What is it about the last 40 years with the Right setting the agenda that has brought our country to "greatness"? We're pretty much a decaying empire now with no vision for the world -- and after Katrina and Abu Ghraib, most polls show the American people don't want the government to behave this way, yet it does, just like during the Vietnam War.

[Joseph A. Palermo - Huffpost Blogger]

One thing I didn't get into with the post was the falsehood of the "greatest generation" -- it was the Left of the "greatest generation" that regulated capital and created a welfare state out of the Great Depression -- but afterwards, we had Joe McCarthy, and the stockpiling of H-Bombs on missiles (which was the craziest thing any generation could do), and George Wallace and Bull Connor were also from this "great" generation, and the Beats and Folkies were going full bore, and that generation is just as complex and divided and messed up as any other generation -- for instance, even during WWII the US was allied with Josef Stalin, so clean morality plays make terrible history.

[Joseph A. Palermo - Huffpost Blogger]

I just ordered the Watergate Plus 30 DVD and the Kurlansky book! Thanks for the references, you people are awesome! Happy Holiday!

[outnow]

Tom Brokaw is truly a two-dimensional person. I saw him on TV talking about the sixties. He arrived a little late, it seemed. He was never into it, he still doesn't get it. Mr. Brokaw meets the stereotype of the uninspiring news caster who dutifully repeats what's written for him.

I will be sixty next year, The sixties were a wonderful time. The values of our fathers who fought WW II left us with stilted sexist and racists views about life. In the fifties we all had to hide under our school desks to practice for when the nuclear blasts would come. Playboy magazine began its exploitation of women in the fifties.

The war was a lie. I'm glad that young people can look back but they cannot be a part of what happened in that magical time when we thought that peace could triumph over wars for profit, that love could triumph over hatred and racism, and that we could all love one another.

I had to protest an ugly war, to resist the government's slaughter of civilians, to witness the effects of napalm and agent orange. How dare some fool like Brokaw even claim to have been there. Was he at Monterey Pop? Was he in Big Sur? Did he attend UCLA where the student movement was met with violence. Did he play music?

Brokaw is just a mouthpiece for the establishment which continues to kill and maim, fails to provide justice, and fattens the rich through unnecessary wars. I doubt if he was in Vietnam.

The sixties were the only relief I have ever had from the oppression Brokaw calls home. He wouldn't understand and he doesn't understand. He isn't alone.

[Jangelique]

I have to admit I enjoyed the music, but that was ALL. I was expecting more substance. TB was right about ONE thing though, that so much of what shapes today can be traced back to 1968, and that if you have no clue about what happened in the 1960's, you can't POSSIBLY understand what's going on today. I can't be the ONLY one who wonders what today would look like if Sirhan Sirhan had missed, or if the weather in Memphis had been rainy that April evening.

[Cognomen]

I remember feeling fortunate to have "Watergate Plus 30: Shadow of History" available to administer immediately afterward as an antidote to the anti-history I had just witnessed.

[YankeeCanuck]

Thoughtful review. The "why" of things is contained in Mark Kurlansky's "1968 The Year That Rocked the World."
Here's a review:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2001837363_kurlansky16.html

[rienzi]

Hey Hume:

I guess what it boils down to for me is that, as a grandkid of a boomer, I, with most of the people I know my age, are confused by the legacy of the 60s because so many are fighting the same battle but in a different era.

Like I said - to me, the 60s are not an angry memory - they are just a bunch of black and white photos and second hand stories. I revere the legacy, I really do.

However, the excesses didn't exist then - they exist now, and threaten the victories of the 60s. Simply put, we have been hard wired, as young people, to do simple things, like treat people equally and fairly without respect to race, ethnicity, creed, etc. There have been laws in place like this since before we were born - WE KNOW NOTHING ELSE.

However, it's all muddled when we see again "Civil Rights" people, like Jesse Jackson, take a stage and decree the blurring lines amongst races, the apathy within the "black community," and the slow retreat from policies put in place in the 60s.

But the question we all want to ask, as young people, is, simply, "isn't that what you wanted? what you fought for? to be a racially neutral society? to treat no other race better than another?"

What again boomers dont get is that, simply, on the whole, we as young people don't give a fuck about race, or religion, or creed, or sexism. Yes, pockets of it exist - but as an institution, the mass discrimination that one existed on an institutional level will die, if not with us, than with our children or grandkids . . . that battle was fought and won - it's over.

So that's why I want 60s children to stop going on television, pushing for an extentoin to racial quotas in hiring or walls between races in the name of "cultural" purity . . .

To all warriors of the 60s: this is the society you fought for, so deal with it!

[Rescisco]

This is sad. It was indeed a time of tumult, but also a time of hope. The idealism of the era made it as unique as the imperfections (excesses?) and the conflicts we remember. This was probably the last generation to truly dream and the first generation to see its dreams brutally shattered before it reached its mid-twenties. It was as if in an instant, a defining moment, the nation saw its greatest hope and experienced the death of all hope all at the same time. In a very real sense, the assassination of that dream (then and now) has resulted in a steady and uninterrupted decline that has seen the U.S. lose its soul. It is amazing that we still try to kill something that died so long ago. It is equally amazing that no generation since has dared to dream anything contrary to the right wing baby boomer nightmare.

[aisling]

Thanks for this critique of Tom Brokaw's book. I never did like his delivery of anything ,much. There is something phony about him. I was very much a part of the protest movements of the 60's. I was a mother of 4 children, living a very "proper"life, as the wife of a Wall Street lawyer, and a member of his politically famous family.I saw the corruption from the inside as my father-in-law was high up in both JFK's and Johnson's administrations. I met the players. I knew the lies and deception first hand, and the hubris. Tom Brokaw sounds like a broken record, with this "greatest generation" thing he keeps peddling. What a ridiculous simplification of the history of this country and the millions, before and after his "great generation", who have led honorable lives,often sacriificing a great deal to maintain their integrity.There was certainly great acts of courage in the 60's and 70's on the part of those who protested against the corrupt military,industrial complex and who exposed the political deceit and power driven coarseness of the leaders. Thanks again.

[Jackalheadedgod]

Tom Brokaw derived the majority of his wealth from his over sized paychecks from NBC/GE, makers of weapons systems and darlings of the Pentagon. He received that pay for shilling disinformation to us each night at dinner time. WTF does he know?

Martin Luther king was murdered on my eighteenth birthday. Tet. Bobby. Nixon. Ohio. Chicago. The whole world is watching.

It was a time when the people did not yet fear their government. Unions still meant something. The US led the world in manufacturing and racism was still rampant among the greatest generation, in spite of their heroism in WWII.

The quiescence of the fifties was shrouded in Cold War and black list rhetoric. The good old days had their problems, but at least young people felt that they could make a difference and in so believing brought the country around to their way of thinking. Following that awful war we came together for a brief moment and enjoyed each other. Now junior is the agent of division and fear, but soon he will be gone and we must take the initiative again and deliver our country to sanity.

Whatever you might think of 1968, it was one hell of a dynamic year and no one commentator, especially as flawed a one as TB, could possibly tie it all up in one TV show. Read and think for yourself. You'll be glad you did.

[saami]

Another good book about 1968 is "The Year the Dream Died Revisiting 1968 in America" by Jules Witcover. Brokaw was part of the problem not part of the solution. 1968 was the most bizarre, the most heartening and the most heart rendering year imaginable. I felt terrified and encouraged, enraged and uplifted. We really believed that peace and hope for mankind was possible. Today all I feel is betrayed by my government and angry at the passivity of our citizens while our freedoms and liberty are stolen by G.W. Bush and his minions in the name of security.

[bdogg]

Joe¦you sure hit the nail on the head with your analysis of Brokaw"s puff-ball, white bread trip down memory lane. It makes the "Revisionist History" channel"s earlier weak attempt to chronicle the entire decade look detailed and insightful by comparison.
I can"t wait for a similar treatment of the 70"s. A decade where everyone "knew" Nixon was a degenerate scumbag beyond redemption. When everyone "knew" the war in Nam was a horrible waste of life and treasure¦and fascists" hacks like Pat Buchanon (who characterizes 1968 as the worst year in American history) and Robert Novak were relegated to the back burners of the media, only to re-emerge in the "me" era of the Regan regime to usher us back into repeating all the mistakes of the past.
The problem with the 60"s was not that the left went too far¦it was that they did not go far enough! If they had, the right wouldn"t have been to re-take power in the 80"s by creating the "climate of constant fear" that they have been able to use so effectively to this day.
What is really amazing is how someone like Brokaw, who lived through all of this history, mingling with the power elite, and documented it (in a talking head kind of way) could still look back and be so blinded by the gauze of his white, upper middle class Midwestern upbringing. You would think that age and experience would have removed those rose-colored glasses by now. At least Peter Coyotes" puffery devoted 5 minutes at the end to a few of the great things spawned by the progressives (the environmental movement, civil rights ect¦). Brokaw seems to see 1968 as the end of a bad dream the county was having in between the glorious 50"s (unless you were black, a woman or pretty much anybody other than a rich white man) and the election of Nixon (a true fear mongering product of the 50"s¦.."red scares" and all).

[rulerragingmain]

Thank you...Thank you... Thank you...

Tom Brokaw is a symbol of the brainwashing of America. A piss poor actor with a little talent except for pretending to be something he never was, a journalist. A lot of older Americans swallow him whole because he was an anchor on a major network. Tom Brokaw is an amateur pretending to be a sage. "The Greatest Generation" is the stupidest title ever given a book. His "Greatest Generation" was no greater than any other generation in history, before or after, but the title gets this sychophant a pat on the head by the likes of George H.W. Bush who remember "the good old days" of the fifties through rose colored glasses and a scotch induced haze. The "Greatest Generation " seems to have produced more than it"s share of alcoholics who in turn produced a generation with more than it"s share of cocaine & marijuana addicts (anything can be addictive) who in turn produced more than it"s share of bulimics, skin-heads and slackers. See, we"re all great.

Brokaw "intoned" (the word was invented for him) on Charlie Rose as how in the sixties/seventies he spent weekends in his bellbottoms and beads and the week in his 3 piece, button-down, wingtip uniform conforming to whatever conformity required. He pretends to be "everyman" but in reality is a paperboy with a speech impediment and the shiniest shoes in class. He lives in a perpetual high school talent show.