Holding its breath till this awful decade of the '60s ran its tragic course, the nation received comic relief in '69 when Ted Kennedy urged that the United States take steps toward alliance with China. The only one not laughing apparently was the President-elect Richard M. Nixon. The champion of the common man, Jesse Jackson, was jailed in Chicago for picketing the so-called liberal trade unions for their alleged discriminatory practices. It was a sound boom year: the SST Concord made its first experimental flight while the new 747 jumbo jet made its maiden voyage; youth turned on to raucous breast-beating politics.
Hope throughout this hopeless decade nevertheless had pulsated from Kennedy's inaugural address and Joe Namath's crystal ball to Peggy Fleming's winning the gold in '68 and Armstrong's giant step for mankind in '69—in between was the brash kid called Cassius Clay who inspired millions and then stepped to the beat of this infamous decade by disillusioning them with racial rhetoric and draft-dodging as the nation's distinguished conscientious objector while WWII's famous conscientious objector war hero medic, Lew Ayres, shook his head in sadness.
The incredible drama of Patty Hearst, the phantasmagoric horror of Jonestown and Time choosing "Women of the Year" as a result of the Roe ruling should have been enough for any decade. But these years of the '70s were pocked with frustration—"secret plan to end the war," Watergate, racial riots continued in schools, President Ford and his infamous "Drop dead New York," Carter's zero budgeting, spiraling inflation from the Arabs' ballooning the price of oil; and though Nam had finally come to a close, it never really ended. The seething decade was further plagued through '79 with the embassy in Tehran being attacked, resulting in the nightmare of hostages, and Ted Koppel becoming a household name. Insult to injury to the decade was inflicted by the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster. But the big bad, anti-business Democratic government bailed out Chrysler—of course, Mitsubishi was the true factor in making Iacocca a genius, and then there was Star Wars. But the most redeeming shining hour in the decade was the bi-centennial celebration; the nation patched itself together, though short-lived.
Copyright © 2005 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: December 16, 2005.
http://stevendedalus.joeuser.com