1968, a retrospective

[Individualist]

For those of you who weren't around then and those who want to revisit that time, Tom Brokaw is hosting a retrospective at 9 pm EST tonight on the History Channel.

"Tom Brokaw hosts this retrospective of the year 1968 and examines, through interviews and archival footage, how the events of that turbulent year changed America. Included: the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy; the Democratic National Convention. Among those commenting: Andrew Young; Bruce Springsteen; Arlo Guthrie; Tommy Smothers; and Jon Stewart."

www.tv-now.com/thegrids.aspx

[annabanana]

1. Brokaw didn't live it, though... too old.

I wonder if he shares the "pushed offstage too soon" syndrome that some others seem to?

[seemslikeadream]

2. Jumpin Jack Flash would not be the song I'd choose to mark that year

[seemslikeadream]

6. Revolution

Would be more like it




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c7PNZiKjTE

[Individualist]

7. ...either that, or Eve of Destruction.

Nixon was elected in November 1968.

[KharmaTrain]

22. Eve Of Destruction Was 1965...

For me Abraham, Martin & John was one of the most memorable tunes from that year.

[jph6t]

20. Whose version of Jumpin' Jack Flash was used for the 1968 commercial?

In the commercials for "1968 with Tom Brokaw" a cover of Jumpin' Jack Flash was used (had a more bluegrass sound). Does anyone know whose cover this was and/or what album the cover was from?

Here is a link to the commercial in question.
It's the History Channel program "1968 with Tom Brokaw":
http://youtube.com/watch?v=71-eYf_VtAg

The song was also played during the opening credits of the program itself, but the version played during the opening credits is the standard Rolling Stones cut (not the same one from the commercial).

[Kansas Wyatt]

3. I made it on the very last day of that year.

New Years Eve, 1968 is my birthday. Thanks for the heads up, I'll be watching.

[blues90]

4. he's just selling his book

Every bodies got to have a book these days .

[Individualist]

5. It was the names of those commenting that got my attention, not Brokaw.

[DemoTex]

8. What about Tet '68? Will Brokaw show the footage his NBC aired of the execution?

Eddie Adams (AP), of course, won the 1969 Pulitzer for this still photo of ARVN Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing Viet Cong Captain Nguyen Van Lem on February 1, 1968 in a Saigon street. What many forget is that as Adams snapped this picture (electrifying the world!), a NBC News crew captured the sequence on 16-mm movie film. That film segment was shown two nights later on the NBC News Huntley-Brinkley Report.

Eddie Adam's photo and the NBC News footage set the stage for the rest of Tet '68 (not pretty) and LBJ's fall, and became the legal tender for the anti-war movement worldwide.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

9. I remember seeing the news footage on the network news of that guy getting shot

And I remember seeing footage of Vietnamese Buddhist monks dousing themselves with gasoline and setting themselves on fire in protest over the war. Those types of horrific images probably wouldn't be shown on American TV today (at least I haven't seen many graphic images of people getting killed in Iraq on American TV).

[DemoTex]

11. The public self-immolation of Trich Quan Duc was in 1963. I remember that well. Many followed.

But do you remember the first (and perhaps only) self-immolation of a US citizen on the steps of the Pentagon in view of Robert S. McNamara? I do. Quaker Norman Morrison immolated himself on November 2, 1965, on the steps of the Pentagon. Just before the set-piece battles in the Ia Drang (X-Ray, Albany) began. It shook McNamara to the core (see The Fog of War, among many others).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Morrison


Trich Quan Duc
Saigon, 1963

[seemslikeadream]

10. But it's all right now in fact it's a gas

or so Brokaw would have you believe

[Individualist]

16. Apparently they decided to skip that

when covering the Tet Offensive in the retrospective.

I remember when that was shown on the newscasts.

[mmonk]

18. Yep, there was a working press back then.

[Paladin]

12. That Was My High School Graduation Year

Got a 40th reunion coming up in Austin, TX next spring. God, where do the years go?

[Raine]

15. Mine too

and inspite of getting out of high school (which I was thrilled about) it was a horrible year and time period. I can't believe either that it's been 40 years! :wow:

[readmoreoften]

13. You mean all that stupid baby boomer stuff? Forget about this culture war liberalism...

:sarcasm:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

14. It was the best of times and the worst of times.

The year of revolution and shattered illusions in Chicago.

The French students almost pulled it off.

[goodgd_yall]

17. WIth Brokaw hosting, it will most likely be a distortion of 1968 n/t

[question everything]

19. Missed that. However, recently I ran into this summary

Nearly any one of the events that went off in 1968 would have been enough to dominate another year. To list what actually happened that year even today boggles the mind, and spirit.

The year began with sales of the Beatles album, "Magical Mystery Tour." In retrospect, it was a premonition. In late January, North Korea captured the USS Pueblo and crew members. A week later, the North Vietnamese army launched the Tet offensive. On Feb. 27, Walter Cronkite announced on CBS News that the U.S. had to negotiate a settlement to the Vietnam War. On March 12, during the New Hampshire primaries, President Johnson received 48.6% of the vote to Sen. McCarthy's 41.9%. President Johnson declined to put his name on the presidential preference ballot, and Sen. McCarthy won 20 of the state's 24 delegates. aided by antiwar students that Sen. McCarthy called his "children's crusade." Two weeks later, LBJ announced on TV that he would not run for re-election. One week later, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. It was only April 4.

There were race riots everywhere. On April 24, students occupied five buildings at Columbia University, protesting the war. In May bloody student riots erupted in France, likely witnessed by the impressionable Mr. Sarkozy.

On July 3, Valerie Solanas shot Andy Warhol in a New York City loft. The next day, Sirhan Sirhan assassinated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In August, the Soviet Union occupied Czechoslovakia. Seven days later, antiwar demonstrators at the Democratic convention fought pitched battles with the Chicago police.

[Le Taz Hot]

21. Goddess,

You forget how much was going on at any given time back then.