reality check

[calimac]

A few days ago I posted about a prescient article in the December 1958 Esquire, predicting that we'd have a Black person on the Supreme Court about 1968, in the Senate about the same time, and in the White House in 2000. That wasn't all of it, either; it also predicted that John F. Kennedy - and it named him specifically, not in a long shotgun list - could get elected President in 1960.

I was in the university library today on other work, and I thought, maybe I should look this article up and make sure it isn't an internet hoax. See if it's really there and actually says all those things. It is, and it did.

While there, I looked briefly at another predictive article in the same issue: "Where is the beat generation going?" by Norman Podhoretz. (It's not online, but it was later reprinted in a book called Kerouac and Friends, ed. Fred W. McDarrah.) I don't much care where the beat generation was going, but it'd be interesting to see if this crystal ball matched the other.

Well, Podhoretz rants against Kerouac's writing for a while, and dubs the Beats a superannuated gang of sullen teenagers, but - sounding like Holden Caulfield (who'd already been around for several years at this point) - he puts the real blame on "the flabbiness and spinelessness of contemporary American middle-class culture." They are, he says, simultaneously too rigidly conformist and not authoritarian enough, which is a neat trick. Apparently, the young people, having nothing solid to rebel against, are just rebelling against everything. But I was impressed by this bit of screed - remember, this is 1958:

The pall of conservatism and hypocrisy that has been hanging over America for the past decade can only get blacker and fouler in the next few years, and the liberal middle class will probably react by sticking its head deeper into the sand and by growing mushier and globbier by the hour. This means that American youth will persist in believing that the only two alternatives in life are Zen Buddhism and drug addiction on the one hand, and wholesome suburban boredom on the other.

Well, that does kind of call a lot of what happened, doesn't it? Except that Podhoretz goes on to claim that inarticulateness is the hallmark of the Beat - Marlon Brando playing Stanley Kowalski, or Elvis mumbling into his microphone [for years I thought the second line of "You ain't nothin' but a hound dog" was "a-heep a-hap a-hoo"] - and that, and sullenness, were not the mark of the hippie, who was either blissed out or articulately angry.

For another mixed prediction, here's Gore Vidal trying to guess, in early 1963, who will run for President in 1968. Not 1964, 1968. His guess is: Bobby Kennedy vs. Nelson Rockefeller, and though of course it didn't happen, RFK is a smooth guess. He does specify that he's assuming no deaths and no military debacles, which is odd because it was one of each which made RFK's candidacy. I doubt there'd have been so much groundswell if it hadn't been for the urge to restore the dead JFK (had he still been alive and President, would people really have wanted another Kennedy right away?) and the anti-Vietnam bandwagon. A similar mixture paints his picture of the Republicans. Blah blah Scranton blah George Romney blah blah. He assumes that Nixon is out for good. If only. And he's absolutely certain that Goldwater could not possibly be the 1964 nominee, though he is dead on in his guess about what would happen if Goldwater got nominated anyway.

So despite a mixed record, Esquire was clearly a good place to go back then if you wanted a glimpse into social and political trends. I need to look at more issues of this period.

Comments

[k6rfm.livejournal.com]

I pretty faithfully read Esquire in the later '60s. It was easy, because the motel I was working at as 2hd shift desk clerk (4pm-midnight) subscribed to it; but I did find it worth the time. The "Dubious Achievement Awards" were always funny, and I remember good interviews with Jimmy Carter and John Lennon, though my memory may be mixing in the Playboy interviews there.

I do remember a great description of the 1968 Miami Republican convention, but I don't remember who wrote it.