>If 1960's sympathizers sometimes seem indignant towards
>him, it is as much for his belligerent tone and demeanor as it
>is for his conservative views. In failing to concede even the
>smallest and most well-reasoned points of his critics, in
>constantly ducking and weaving to avoid the substance of
> their arguments, and in resorting to personal abuse and
>sarcasm wherever possible, one cannot help but conclude
>that Horowitz is acting out of bad faith.
Still, you have to admit that his presence has livened
up the list a bit, don't you?
Horowitz is doing something useful. He is a former 60s
radical who is pointing to the fact that the activists of the
time had their flaws and perhaps all was not well.
As a former activist of the period, I can easily see how the
60s have been mythologized in many ways.
I can recall a lot of lunacy & misbehavior by my fellow
radicals. In the spirit of "to get along, go along," I usually
didn't say anything about it.
Now, for the list's amusement, I'll tell a little story.
I was at the University of Oklahoma. There was this
SDS "regional traveler" who used to show up in town
from time to time. (Not wanting to embarass anyone,
I shall conceal his name). Anyway, there was this
popular cafe called The Town Tavern, and it had elevated
booths by the windows.
From the floor, you could of course see people's legs
and midsections under the tables. One day the traveler
decided he wanted to gross out the waitress at the Tavern.
The place was staffed by middle-aged working class people
-- the very types which young leftists needed to be winning
over.
The seam on the traveler's trousers had ripped open up
near his crotch, and he wasn't wearing any underwear.
When the waitress approached the table, he deliberately
crossed his legs in such a way as to expose a bare
testacle.
I noticed this because I was about to seat myself at the
booth at the time the little stunt was in progress.
I didn't ask him what his motives were for this little act
of lewd exhibitionism. He probably would have justified
it by saying that it was somehow "raising her conscious-
ness."
So there ya go. Outrageousness has won. Since the 60s,
we have had a "cultural revolution" of sorts. People
dressed in strange leather costumes with orange spiked hair,
tatoos, and pierced nipples can walk down the sidewalks
with their boom boxes blasting techno-garbage to announce
their anti-establishment rebelliousness. Noise-addicted school
children are now allowed to play their radios in classrooms,
for they are uncomfortable with silence. Many of them
cannot write a coherent, grammatically sound paragraph,
nor speak in phrases with any greater complexity than:
"Yo whuzzup"?
Meanwhile, the rich have gotten richer, the middle class,
has shrunk, and real wages have declined.
-- Michael Wright