Chris Mathews said.
To me it seems that Kent State was a turning point from the '60s to the '70s. The anti-war movement became far more confrontational, the country was a-changing.
It was as if Chris Mathews completely forgot about or didn't know about Chicago Democratic Convention in 1968. How much more confrontational can you get. The Weathermen/Weather Underground formed in 1969 whose "goal was to create a clandestine revolutionary party for the violent overthrow of the US government and the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat." Okay, I answered my own question. But Chris Mathews should know this. Kent State was not the turning point, but then Chris Mathews was "in Africa in the Peace Corps in Swaziland."
And then there is the music. Chris Mathews says:
The pop music was split between the upbeat '60s feel...
(Clip of The Jackson Five performing on "The Ed Sullivan Show," May 10, 1970)
MATTHEWS: ...and that unmistakable '70s sound.
(Clip of Simon & Garfunkel performing)
Simon and Garfunkel has albums from 1964 until today. If anything I think of their sound as distinctly sixties not seventies. Chris Mathews even fails to appreciate that "The Jackson 5 were one of the biggest pop-music phenomena of the 1970s."
Enough of Chris Mathews ignorance. And then there is Andrea Mitchell who says:
Ms. MITCHELL: I was on the beat in Philly, and I remember with the incursion--incursion, not invasion--my younger brother called me from the Penn campus and said, `Hey, we're all going down to Independence Hall. There's a protest against Richard Nixon.' And I said, well, I'm sort of curious, and I went down and started talking to some cops that I knew--whom I knew, and they said, `Are you here covering it?' And I realized I was watching my brother and all of these college kids, many of whom I knew, were graduate students I'd gone to school with, and all of a sudden that's when I realized I had crossed a divide, I was on the opposite side. I'm an observer. And from—since then...
She later said "And from then on I was an observer of events, never again a participant." To me Andrea Mitchell lost her scruples/morals to move from participant to observer. It is bad enough that she occasionally reports on economics while married to Alan Greenspan, but to stop participating in the anti-war movement so she could become a reporter is incomprehensible.
No one suggested that the person who gave the order to fire and those who complied should be tried for giving and acting on illegal orders. Yes Kent State was a terrible event. Worse, Kent State was an illegal event. Even worse, no one was prosecuted. Not once was Kent State discussed with the proper perspective!
Shame on Chris Mathews and his guests.
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