Love, Peace, Death, And Some Really Bad Spin

Are you as fed up with anyone comparing this presidential campaign to anything that took place in the 1960s as I am?

Are you also tired of our corporate media using the spat over what Hillary Clinton supposedly said about needing a president to enact civil rights legislation, or words to that effect (here), and subsequently running with that to ever-more-absurd dimensions?

Good. Then allow me to bring some highlights (?) to you for our amusement more than anything else.

A week ago, we had David Brooks of the New York Times trying to create the following faux equivalency in another attempt to demonize the Clintons (though Bill set himself up for that treatment a bit – here)…

The (Sen. Ted and Caroline) Kennedy endorsements (of Barack Obama) will help among working-class Democrats, Catholics and the millions of Americans who have followed Caroline’s path to maturity. Furthermore, here was Senator Kennedy, the consummate legislative craftsman, vouching for the fact that Obama is ready to be president on Day One.

But the event was striking for another reason, having to do with the confluence of themes and generations. The Kennedys and Obama hit the same contrasts again and again in their speeches: the high road versus the low road; inspiration versus calculation; future versus the past; and most of all, service versus selfishness.

…

(Ted) Kennedy went on to talk about the 1960s. But he didn’t talk much about the late-60s, when Bill and Hillary came to political activism. He talked about the early-60s, and the idealism of the generation that had seen World War II, the idealism of the generation that marched in jacket and ties, the idealism of a generation whose activism was relatively unmarked by drug use and self-indulgence.

Well, it’s nice I suppose that Brooks actually likes Ted Kennedy for the moment, as opposed to calling him and Sen. Robert Byrd “Chicken Littles” as he did here for comparing Iraq and Vietnam.

And working off that, we have Rick Perlstein in the Washington Post today telling us…

The Library of Congress, which houses the photo archives of Look magazine and U.S. News & World Report, holds hundreds of images of the violent confrontation between cops and demonstrators in front of the Chicago Hilton at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and, from the summer of 1969, of Woodstock.

See, the Clintons were part of that drug-taking, self-indulgent generation, along with a hell of a lot of other people, of course, ignoring Obama's own history on that; not trying to slam the man, just stating facts (and of course, we’re in the mess we’re in now totally because of confrontational, baby-boomer politics – riiiight), but Obama represents the era of “marching in coats and ties” (the impression that Woodstock was violent is definitely communicated there – and if Brooks were a pundit back then and Obama were a politician, the former probably still would not have liked the latter anyway).

There’s one problem with that argument, and that’s the fact that Woodstock was a pretty peaceful gathering considering half a million people showed up, according to Max Yasgur, the owner of the farmland upon which the concert took place in New York (and of course, who can forget the brouhaha some months ago from “Straight Talk” McCain about Hillary Clinton proposing a Woodstock museum, which probably would make a lot of money; that grandstanding moment which I would consider pretty idiotic actually helped return his campaign to the spotlight, unbelievable as that may seem).

And to hark back to the ‘60s once more, we have Chris Kelly of HuffPo all over The Mittster here for saying last June that he wished he’d fought in Vietnam, when he also said in 1994 that he had no intention of serving anyway (funny – say good night, Willard Mitt; looks like you’ve concocted “a penumbra of angst” for good).

Update 2/7/08: You have to admit that it takes a certain brand of chutzpah to both bail out of a presidential race (hat tips to Atrios and Prof. Marcus) and slam the Democrats at the same time; can't wait for the blog post on this one.

Let our pundits take the comparisons to the ‘60s as far as they want; I’ll play along for now. But if we get to the point where Obama shows up to a rally wearing a Nehru jacket and Hillary does so adorned in tie dye, then we’ll know the whole thing has gone too far.

Oh, and speaking of connections to the ‘60s, I’m sure we all heard about the passing of this guy who, as far as I could tell, was nothing but a professional “hanger-on,” sponging off celebrities every chance he got.