Watergate, Warhol and the Birth of Post-Sixties America

Thu Apr 20 08:31:14 CDT 2006

On Apr 19, 2006, at 11:17 PM, Michael Bailey wrote:

> i liked the 70s
>
> finally pulled out of Vietnam
>
> Nixon impeached, surely a great day!
>
> GR published
>
> draft dodger amnesty; and the end of the draft!
>
> Church Committee
>
> 18 year old drinking and 55 mph  (probably a net zero effect on
> highway death between the two, come to think of it)
>
> detente and SALT Treaty
>
> women's lib
>
> OPEC gas squeeze - too bad it didn't last, we'd have domestic
> production, deep-well drilling and alternative power in place by now
>
> in many respects it was a high point (the decky-dance began with
> Republican regime change in 1981 - the lizards took over the helm)

for a brief decade  promiscuous Sex could be had conveniently,  
irresponsibly and safely.

this was not to last into the 80s

>
>
>
>
> On 4/18/06, David Casseres <david.casseres at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Having been personally involved in the anti-war movement, I disagree
>> strenuously.  I regard the 70's as basically a political coda to the
>> 60's, and a rather sad attempt to reinvent and mass-market the
>> cultural ferment, festivities and fester that previously belonged to
>> an alienated subculture.
>>
>> On 4/16/06, Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote:
>>> Yes, the 70s were when events of lasting importance occurred.   Opec
>>> gasoline squeeze,  Sexual revolution, Roe/Wade. Watergate. Pynchon's
>>> writing coming of age.
>>>
>>> Maybe the 60s actually took place in the 70s.
>>>
>>> That or in the 50s--Brown v. Board of Education, Rosa Parks, sit- 
>>> ins,
>>> On the Road, Howl.
>>>
>>> The 60s themselves were kind of a washout. Obviously no lasting
>>> lessons learned from Vietnam. The student revolution and anti-war
>>> demonstrations didn't do much to stop the war--the grownups got fed
>>> up with it of their own accord.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Apr 16, 2006, at 9:44 AM, Dave Monroe wrote:
>>>
>>>> The San Francisco Chronicle
>>>> The '70s -- America's low point
>>>> Reviewed by Joshua Spivak
>>>>
>>>> Sunday, April 16, 2006
>>>>
>>>> 1973 Nervous Breakdown
>>>>
>>>> Watergate, Warhol and the Birth of Post-Sixties
>>>> America
>>>>
>>>> By Andreas Killen
>>>>
>>>> BLOOMSBURY; 312 PAGES; $24.95
>>>>
>>>> Has America gotten over the '70s? Events from the
>>>> once-overlooked decade still seem to haunt the
>>>> country. Both the Deep Throat revelation and the
>>>> wiretapping controversies bring to mind Watergate. The
>>>> documentary "American Family" that ran in 1973 can be
>>>> seen as the forerunner to the current reality-TV
>>>> obsession. And of course plenty of people see the
>>>> specter of the inglorious end to Vietnam in any
>>>> American foreign activity.
>>>>
>>>> According to Andreas Killen's new book, "1973 Nervous
>>>> Breakdown: Watergate, Warhol and the Birth of
>>>> Post-Sixties America," the decade has had an outsize
>>>> impact on American culture. Killen, an assistant
>>>> professor of history at the City College of New York,
>>>> locates the unlikely year of 1973, which he refers to
>>>> as a low point in American history, as a watershed
>>>> year. Arguing that a number of current cultural trends
>>>> had their loci in the early 1970s, and especially in
>>>> 1973, Killen explores some of the bizarre and
>>>> sometimes overlooked events of the era: skyjackings,
>>>> POWs, conspiracy theorists, cults, the early
>>>> forerunners of reality TV and Andy Warhol's obsession
>>>> with celebrities. Using Nixon's paranoia and the
>>>> growing Watergate scandal as a thread throughout the
>>>> year, Killen writes an entertaining, if not entirely
>>>> convincing, cultural study.
>>>>
>>>> The book works well in its primary goal of tracking
>>>> cultural trends, and ends in 1976 with the Patty
>>>> Hearst affair and trial -- the ultimate amalgamation
>>>> of celebrity, POWs, conspiracies, cults and reality
>>>> TV. However, those expecting a full-out historical
>>>> analysis of the early '70s will not find it here.
>>>> Killen is heavily focused on the arts and
>>>> personalities. For example, there are extended
>>>> discussions on movies of the period, Warhol's
>>>> superstar Edie Sedgwick and the glam rock band the New
>>>> York Dolls, but the OPEC oil embargo and its
>>>> devastating effect on the economy are barely
>>>> mentioned.
>>>>
>>>> The work is divided into chapter-length explorations
>>>> of trends. Some trends are fully presented and serve
>>>> as a good study of the period. He takes the revelation
>>>> of the Watergate tapes and connects them with a rich
>>>> cultural brew of conspiracies, including some
>>>> conspiracy-minded movies and the year's top literary
>>>> work, Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow." He also
>>>> examines the bizarre fascination with cults, in which
>>>> Lyndon LaRouche, the Moonies and David Berg (founder
>>>> of the Family) all get to make an appearance. The
>>>> focus of the chapter on cults is not on the bizarre
>>>> and frequently dangerous ones but on the strange
>>>> behavior of one of the leaders of the anti-cult
>>>> crusaders, Ted Patrick. Patrick is quoted as
>>>> describing the cult's mind-control technique as "an
>>>> energy from the brain waves that comes down through
>>>> the eyes. ... This is what E.S.P. is. They're teaching
>>>> this in all the universities."
>>>>
>>>> However, others chapters lack both a full explanation
>>>> and a historical perspective. A look at how POWs
>>>> responded to being released after the Vietnam War
>>>> splits the returning veterans into two groups: those
>>>> who continued to support the war and America (in
>>>> Killen's retelling, primarily the elite pilots) and
>>>> those who were disenchanted after their experience --
>>>> the drafted Army grunts. That there was a split in the
>>>> POW ranks is definitely worth exploring. But outside
>>>> of a few isolated quotes, Killen does not provide any
>>>> real evidence that the second, disgruntled group was
>>>> actually a significant minority rather than just a few
>>>> people who could be quoted.
>>>>
>>>> In the same vein, Killen spends a chapter on power
>>>> shifts. A major example is how political power moved
>>>> away from places like New York City and began to be
>>>> concentrated in the Southwest, especially southwestern
>>>> California. While he provides an interesting story on
>>>> the growth of Orange County -- and especially on how
>>>> the city of Irvine was built -- he does not seem to
>>>> fully appreciate that the migration of political power
>>>> was a long-developing trend that had already
>>>> manifested itself much earlier. In the 1964
>>>> presidential race, both political candidates were able
>>>> to claim Southwestern roots. In reality, the Northeast
>>>> had been steadily losing power for years.
>>>>
>>>> Both of these chapters point to the hole in Killen's
>>>> central thesis. Are the '70s more important,
>>>> culturally or otherwise, than any other decade? Sure,
>>>> some events had an impact. Some people use Vietnam as
>>>> their reference point to advocate avoiding war and
>>>> foreign interventions. Others look back several
>>>> decades to the appeasement at Munich. Wiretapping?
>>>> Look at the LBJ tapes. POWs, cults and brainwashing?
>>>> All part of the Korean War. Did glam and punk rock
>>>> have more of an impact than 1980s hip-hop? The reality
>>>> is that it is pretty hard to single out any time
>>>> period as a dominant one. And while Killen provides
>>>> some good examples, it is easy to provide some
>>>> counterpoints.
>>>>
>>>> A further flaw in the work is that except for the
>>>> chapter on movies, the book mainly uses
>>>> contemporaneous commentators, rather than people
>>>> looking back with some perspective. Some of the
>>>> comments are completely unhelpful. New Yorker critic
>>>> Pauline Kael is cited for her comment that "the
>>>> country has never been more star crazy that it is
>>>> right now." Couldn't that have been said any time in
>>>> the past hundred years? And, in the only sports
>>>> reference Killen makes in a year of several noteworthy
>>>> sporting achievements (the Dolphins' completion of the
>>>> NFL's only undefeated season, Secretariat, the Ya
>>>> Gotta Believe Mets, the A's), there is the obvious
>>>> error in quoting a hagiography of Roberto Clemente,
>>>> who died on Dec. 31, 1972, calling him "perhaps the
>>>> most complete player of his generation." No. As every
>>>> Bay Area resident can attest, that would be Willie
>>>> Mays.
>>>>
>>>> It is clear that the '70s, like every other decade,
>>>> had a real impact on America. In "1973 Nervous
>>>> Breakdown," Killen provides and traces to the present
>>>> some good examples of this impact. He also gives the
>>>> reader an interesting primer on the American culture
>>>> of the time and some nice vignettes on some otherwise
>>>> forgotten phenomena. However, the book is a bit overly
>>>> ambitious in its goals. Killen does show that the '70s
>>>> were important, but there's no need to inflate its
>>>> influence on America.
>>>>
>>>> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/04/16/
>>>> RVG2KI4PIN1.DTL
>>>>
>>>> __________________________________________________
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>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> "After such knowledge, what forgiveness?" - Thomas Stearns Eliot
>