C’est le titre d’un article publié dans The economist. Article opportun, alors qu’en France, certains font un bilan plus que réservé de mai 1968… L’article souligne en particulier les progrès de la tolérance aux états-unis. les Etatsuniens sont aujourd’hui 94% à accepter l’idée de voter pour un candidat noir aux présidentiels contre 53% en 1967.
Le site de cet excellent hebdomadaire libéral britannique est consultable à partir de planete presse sur le site de Courrier international. Une partie des articles seulement est accessible en libre accès et…en anglais.
IF TIE-DYED fabric, joss sticks and finger cymbals are not your thing then you should avoid San Francisco at the moment. A flowery-haired throng is expected to attend a free concert in Golden Gate Park on Sunday September 2nd to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the “Summer of Love”. Hippie-era luminaries (survivors, some might say) such as Canned Heat, Country Joe McDonald and Wavy Gravy have promised to appear. Internet rumours that the gathering might be cancelled were reportedly dismissed by the organisers as the work of “Nixon’s retired dirty tricksters”.
Events have been held across America to celebrate the spirit of that heady summer, including a festival at Monterey, the sight of the first big outdoor pop-concert in June 1967 and forerunner of the era’s biggest gathering of stoned youngsters at Woodstock. Sunday’s “happening” takes place in the spiritual home of hippiedom. A “human be-in” at Golden Gate Park in January 1967 acted as both prelude and catalyst for the Summer of Love.
Timothy Leary, a psychologist and exponent of the psychedelic experience, invited the world to “turn on, tune in, drop out”. Tens of thousands of young “hippies”—a term coined by Herb Caen, a now-deceased San Francisco journalist—took up Leary’s offer and descended on the Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood of the city that year (a “huge invasion“, as the San Francisco Chronicle called it at the time).
It is not hard to see why the Summer of Love has been romanticised in popular culture. It was when the young “seemed to be deserting their scripts”, according to Todd Gitlin’s sweeping history of the 1960s. That summer represented the high point of the decade. The Beatles sang a tune about love that was beamed across the world in an experiment for satellite television. A growing sense of optimism that the world could be changed with the application of a little love hit its peak before it all started to go wrong in 1968. More than two-thirds of respondents to a PBS online poll earlier this year said they would liked to have gone to San Francisco in that carefree summer of 1967.
The decade still reverberates in the American psyche. The reaction to George Bush’s recent comparison of the Iraq conflict to the Vietnam war is just the latest example. Some are quick to point to the similarities between then and now: a Texan in the White House, an unpopular war, an actor in charge of California. But the differences are just as stark.
In 1967, segregationist governors were still in power in the South. Race riots convulsed America, killing dozens in Detroit and Newark. The federal budget deficit, at the high point of big-government liberalism, accounted for a smaller percentage of GDP than the rough estimate of $200 billion for 2007. America’s involvement in Iraq is more unpopular now than the Vietnam war was in 1967. In early August, 57% of Americans said that sending troops to Iraq was a mistake, compared with 41% who thought in July 1967 that it was a mistake to send troops to Vietnam.
Attitudes have certainly changed. Asked in February this year whether they would vote for a black person as president, 94% said yes. In 1967, only 53% of the electorate were prepared to make that commitment. Almost 90% said a female president would not be an issue for them, up from 57% in 1967. Cohabitation has increased and the very thought of states even discussing the idea of civil unions and marriages for gay couples would have been shocking to most in 1967.
A sizeable proportion of those enjoying the music on Sunday will be Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and wealthy San Franciscans born after that momentous summer. What was once thought outlandish has now become mainstream. Even presidents have smoked (though not inhaled) dope. Organic-food stores have spread beyond Haight-Ashbury to be found in most American cities. One thing has not changed though. The looser sexual mores once associated with 1960s youth still has the ability to raise eyebrows. Just ask one or two Republican senators.
Originally posted 2007-09-01 12:25:17. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Le directeur des Temps modernes et le réalisateur de Shoah raconte sa vie, du jeune juif résistant à Clermont Ferrand, au vieux pontife, gardien de l’héritage de Simone et jean-Paul, en passant par le visiteur curieux de la Corée du Nord et de la Chine maoiste. peut être un meilleur moyen de réviser son bac [...]
L’hebdomadaire Spirou poursuit la publication de Marzi de Marzena Sowa et Sylvain Savoia. Il s’agit d’un réçit autobiographique, évoquant les dernières années du communisme en Pologne, à travers le regard d’une fillette. Par le dessin et le thème, cette bande dessinée rappelle évidemment la série Persépolis de Marjane Satrapi. Le dernier réçit publié, Onze jours [...]
Une superbe histoire de l’Europe depuis la fin de la seconde guerre mondiale par Le professeur Tony Judt, né en 1948, ayant fait ses études à Cambridge et à l’Ecole normale supérieure à Paris. Il a enseigné à Cambridge, Oxford, Berkeley et à l’université de New York , où il occupe actuelement la chaire de “Professor of European [...]
0 Responses to “America changed for the better after the “Summer of Love””