Jan

2

1968: Always Something Next

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\\\\n\\\\n\\\\nby Michael Winship\\\\n\\\\nAs two of those who view New Year\\\\\\\’s Eve as the ultimate Amateur Night, this year we hunkered down safe at home in the West Village, just out of stampede range from the madding crowd to the north in Times Square.\\\\n\\\\nBut on Tuesday, New Year\\\\\\\’s Night, Pat and I emerged from the fallout shelter and ventured uptown to see a month-old Broadway play called “The Farnsworth Invention.”\\\\n\\\\nWritten by Aaron Sorkin, who created “The West Wing” and wrote Tom Hanks\\\\\\\’ current film, “Charlie Wilson\\\\\\\’s War,” it purports to tell the story of how, as many allege, David Sarnoff, the chairman and president of RCA, stole the idea for television from an eccentric inventor named Philo T. Farnsworth.\\\\n\\\\nThe reviews of the play have not been especially kind, and as a semi-historian of television, I could quibble with some of the facts, but to hell with all that. We enjoyed it. Great acting, direction and script.\\\\n\\\\nAt the end of the first act, following the 1929 stock market crash and a series of other calamities, Sarnoff\\\\\\\’s secretary tells him that in similar straits her father used to tell the family to stop worrying because there was “nothing next.” Sarnoff, whose family was chased from Russia by Cossacks when he was ten, replies that his father said, “There\\\\\\\’s ALWAYS something next.”\\\\n\\\\n \\\\n

\\\\n\\\\n\\\\nLately, much has been made of the fact that 2008 marks the 40th anniversary of the tumultuous year 1968. A History Channel documentary by Tom Brokaw, Tuesday\\\\\\\’s New York Times column by Bob Herbert, various articles and media commentaries — all have made the point, that, as Herbert wrote, “One of the astonishing things about 1968 was how quickly each shocking, consciousness-altering event succeeded the last, leaving no time for people to reorient themselves. The mind-boggling occurrences seemed to come out of nowhere.”\\\\n\\\\nThere was always something next.\\\\n\\\\nEven in upstate New York, where I was a teenager engaged in general asymmetrical warfare on a local level — home, school, hormones, etc. — the national and international happenings of 1968 were startling and relevant.\\\\n\\\\nAs I rapidly approached draft age, the Tet offensive, when the North Vietnamese army and Viet Cong attacked up and down South Vietnam with seeming impunity — even invading the grounds of the American Embassy in Saigon — felt especially germane to my future existence.\\\\n\\\\nSo, too, the burgeoning candidacies of Democrats challenging Lyndon Johnson and his war. Eugene McCarthy, Bobby Kennedy — I was a Kennedy fan, but the entire antiwar movement was new, exciting and more than a little confusing, especially to someone who just months before had clung to a daydream of war fostered by too many John Wayne movies and the true tales told by that Greatest Generation, our parents.\\\\n\\\\nJohnson\\\\\\\’s stunning announcement on March 31 that he would not run for reelection was followed just four days later by the first of 1968\\\\\\\’s two devastating assassinations. I remember watching the nightly CBS News when Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot and killed. Walter Cronkite broke into Walter Cronkite — the regular news was on tape — to announce King\\\\\\\’s death.\\\\n\\\\nAfter that assassination, my older brother came home from college early for Easter because the streets of Baltimore were on fire, as were inner cities across America. Bobby Kennedy stood before a largely African-American crowd in Indianapolis, urged calm and quoted Aeschylus: “Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”\\\\n\\\\nAnd then, two months later, he, too, was dead. The day of his funeral my high school band competed at a music pageant in a nearby town and I could not watch the service at St. Patrick\\\\\\\’s Cathedral in Manhattan. But when I got home, the slow funeral train was still making its way south to Washington and Arlington National Cemetery, where Kennedy would be buried next to his brother Jack.\\\\n\\\\nThat summer, I went off to school in England with a students abroad program. Swinging Britain had just peaked and London\\\\\\\’s Carnaby Street stores were headed south toward tacky. Even the Beatles\\\\\\\’ Apple boutique shut its doors after giving everything away, and one night Paul McCartney showed up and spray painted “Hey Jude/Revolution” on the wall, just days ahead of the record\\\\\\\’s release, before anyone knew what the words meant.\\\\n\\\\nFrom a distance, my friends and I looked on as the political campaigns continued and at the Democratic convention in Chicago police beat and tear-gassed protesters who shouted, “The whole world is watching.” Then it was home to America. Richard Nixon shouted “Sock it to me?” on “Rowan and Martin\\\\\\\’s Laugh In” and the next thing you know was elected president.\\\\n\\\\nOn Christmas Eve, the Apollo 8 astronauts sent home pictures of our planet from lunar orbit and quoted from the Book of Genesis. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” they read, and we thanked God the awful year was at its end.\\\\n\\\\n2008 begins with similarities to 1968: a wide-open presidential race, a controversial bog of a war, a country at unrest, beset by violence and a near autistic, national dysfunction.\\\\n\\\\nThe final words Robert Kennedy spoke that awful night in Indianapolis seem as appropriate, poignant and necessary as they were forty years ago. “Let us dedicate ourselves,” he said, “to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.”\\\\n\\\\nAmen. And Happy New Year.\\\\n\\\\n___________________________________________________________\\\\n\\\\ncopyright 2008 Michael Winship\\\\n\\\\nAll newspaper editors want to know what their readers like. If you would like to read this feature in your local newspaper, please do not hesitate to share your enthusiasm with your local newspaper editor.

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