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c haPter 8

A New Kind of Democracy?

Political and Cultural

Developments in the 1960s

T

he 1960s has become something of a mythical period in American his-
tory, a time of love, peace, and hippies; sex and drugs and Rock & Roll–
an era used by advertisers to sell everything from blue jeans to retirement
plans with its music. It is a period also despised by political conservatives who
claim the values it promoted (“sex and drugs and Rock & Roll”) led to the
moral downfall of America. As recently as the 2008 presidential campaign, the
1960s was still a huge issue, as Barack Obama’s alleged involvement with a
radical from that era, Bill Ayers, became an issue, with the Republican Vice-
Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, trying to smear Obama by claiming he was
“pallin’ around” with “terrorists” from the 1960s like Ayers.
Even more, advertisers have found commercial gold in the era, using
famous songs and images like Easy Rider in an ad for Mercury Cougar,
“Fortunate Son” to sell blue jeans, “In- a-Gadda-da-Vida” to pitch investment
plans, and even images of Martin Luther King to promote everything from
McDonald’s burgers to the lottery. Amid all this, it is easy to overlook just how
critical, and serious, this time period was. It included a long, bloody and con-
troversial war in Vietnam, African Americans attacking finally seeing the sys-
tem of segregation, or apartheid, broken down, a time when the traditional