A different kind of party
As “the hippies partied” young men were dying in Vietnam:
Meanwhile, 8,429 miles around the other side of the world, 514,000 mostly young Americans were authentically serving the country that had raised them to place society over self. The casualties they sustained over those four days were genuine, yet none of the elite media outlets were praising their selflessness.
…
So when you hear talk of the glories of Woodstock — the so-called "defining event of a generation" — keep in mind those 109 GIs who served nobly yet are never lauded by the illustrious spokesmen for the "Sixties Generation”
The image above is from an interesting and short article from Stars and Stripes about the fighting in the Hiep Duc valley that August. Read it all.
I’m sure all of Bravo Company would rather have been listening to Jimi Hendrix.
Unfortunately, the partiers run the government now.
BTW: This link has the names on the Vietnam Wall of those killed between Aug 15th and August 28, 1969.
August 17th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Interesting blog. Arguably, the biggest legacy of Woodstock is its huge impact on the real children of the sixties: Generation Jones (born 1954-1965, between the Boomers and Generation X). This USA TODAY op-ed speaks to the relevance today of the sixties counterculture impact on GenJones: http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20090127/column27_st.art.htm
Google Generation Jones, and you’ll see it’s gotten a ton of media attention, and many top commentators from many top publications and networks (Washington Post, Time magazine, NBC, Newsweek, ABC, etc.) now specifically use this term. In fact, the Associated Press’ annual Trend Report forcast the Rise of Generation Jones as the #1 trend of 2009.
Here’s a page with a good overview of recent media interest in GenJones:
http://generationjones.com/2009latest.html
August 17th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
I’m a GenJones by age (45). I’ve felt like Poland or Belgium, in the middle between two warring parties (old people and hippies). My destiny has been to pay for old people but to never receive similar benefits when I got older. The generation that time, but not the IRS, forgot.
August 17th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
“yet none of the elite media outlets were praising their selflessness” Oh, really? Could we see some data to support that claim?
I remember in 1965 writing from Vietnam a praising letter to a New York Times columnist after a piece he did on the war.
Kolb seems to regularly make such a claim, without supporting it, for all wars as he writes in the VFW house organ which he edits. VFW could extol the virtues and sacrifice of the service members without accusing competing journals of ignoring the sacrifice. I for one don’t believe that the “elite media” (a clue that he might have a political bent) ignored the sacrifice.
I also don’t quite see the point in comparing Woodstock to Vietnam. Sure, people in the US (including Dick Cheney and George Bush) were doing different things and sure those things had some effect on their lives. We certainly couldn’t expect them to stop their lives for the distant elective war. Did we stop for Iraq? In both cases, our national leadership said that we could go on with no need to sacrifice.
August 17th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
65 to 69 was a marked change in media attitudes towards the war. Kolb talked about a specific period (Aug 1969). You cleverly change a few years back to a less hippiest time. Good debate tactic, but we are onto your methods!
Cheney supporting a family and Bush in the TANG hardly compare to drugs and rock and roll. It’s clear you aren’t over that vicious strain of GWB43 flu you had until January this year.
Kolb was not writing against the hippies but against a media that didn’t serve the soldiers and the nation. A media that has failed us relentlessly since 68 or so.
August 17th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Of course, #3 forgot to mention Clinton, who actively gamed the system so s not to serve his country. He does, of course, mention W, who was a fighter pilot.
Woodstock- bad music ( witha few exceptions) bad venue, dirty, smelly hippies. What’s the big deal? Overromanticized crap.
August 17th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Clinton draft dodging. Gore being placed in a safe job to enhance his political ambitions. Sure… #3 left them out. But that is the kind of fevered thinking that GWB43 flu gives you ESPECIALLY when built on a base of a nasty bout of RHM37
I look back at the 70′s and 60′s and think “take a shower!’.
December 21st, 2011 at 10:37 am
[..YouTube..] LOL a lot of people play it under 17 i’ve seen kids that were 9 play it.