The next two panels of Sunday were both historical in a way: The History Channel brought us “1968 with Tom Brokaw,” with the former NBC anchor popping in only for the duration of the panel (he had a flight to catch), while AMC brought us the retro stylings of their new ’60s-set drama about the advertising world, “Mad Men.”
First up, Mr. Brokaw:
Brokaw began with a laugh, offering the anecdote that, when he first mentioned to Garry Trudeau that he was planning to do a special on 1968, the “Doonesbury” cartoonist responded, “What are you going to call this, the worst generation?” As it happens, however, Brokaw doesn’t even remotely feel that way about ’68.
“I think that journalists should write about what they experience, what moves them,” explains Brokaw. “’68 — the 1960s — the book is really about the ’60s. ’68 is the nerve center of the ’60s. It’s been an emotional experience for me because I’ve had to review my own life in the course of all this and think about the changes that I’ve gone through. And you have to remember that I arrived in California, working for NBC in 1966, just four years off the Great Plains, working-class family in small towns, a real product of the ’50s, thinking here I am in California, which is on the cutting edge of change, having no idea about how much more change was to come — good, bad, tragic, and triumphant. It’s been tough. This is a big subject. And I want to caution all of you that neither this two-hour special that we do on History nor my book will be the defining history of the ’60s, because we’re still in passage from that time. I am treating this as a virtual reunion, the people who went through it, what they thought then, what they think now. You’ll hear lot of voices. Unfortunately, this is one of those times in American life when everyone has their own prism, and they think what they saw, what they experienced, is the defining experience.”
When it comes to defining the most important historical event of ’68, Brokaw is darkly philosophical, suggesting that it’s the mere fact that we survived at all. “I don’t say that lightly,” he assures us. “This country was up for grabs in many ways. We had this war going on, with kids in the street, marching in Washington, National Guardsmen that you saw there in gas masks, facing them down, that we came out of Chicago where was a breakdown in the streets, and that we were able to have elections, and that people were able to accept the results of those elections, and Richard Nixon was inaugurated, and a lot of the country was unhappy, but a lot of the country had voted for him. And those who had not voted for him, had voted for George Wallace. People forget what a factor George Wallace was in that election. For me, at the time, there were two big lessons. One was how quickly it can change, the fundamental assumptions that we have about society and our government. And then, two, the resilience of the American people. ’68 was the beginning of the — profound distress of the American government, and we’re still working our way through that. That was accelerated by Watergate, but ’68 had a lot to do with it.”
(The folks at The History Channel also had a panel for a new series called “The Human Weapon.” I didn’t stick around for it, but here’s the description of the show: “Human Weapon” follows host Jason Chambers, a top-fighting welterweight champion and Bill Duff, a former professional football player and wrestler, on a remarkable worldwide journey. Over the course of their travel, they reveal the history behind the time-honored tradition of hand-to-hand combat arts. Jason and Bill verse themselves in these fighting cultures, grueling and punishing, to prove that they are worthy by going face-to-face in the ultimate test of their skills. I know, as a guy, I’m supposed to go, “Fuckin’ A!” But it just makes me shrug. Sorry.)
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