In 1968, a gallon of milk cost $1.07, a dozen eggs $0.53 and Newsweek was only 50 cents.
This incarnation of Newsweek isn’t slick, but what it sacrifices in looks, it makes up for in content. On March 11th, readers got their money’s worth.
Letters include one from Jeffrey L. Farrow, Americans for Democratic Action national delegate protesting the ADA National Board’s support of Eugene McCarthy, “But supporting McCarthy is a political fantasy…” he writes.
Another letter from a resident of New Hampshire responds to a previous Newsweek article titled “The Consumer’s Pinchpenny Mood.” She writes: “In other wars we’ve been urged to retrench. Now it appears that we’re supposed to blow everything, feel like it or not.” The writer speculates that people don’t want to spend money because their neighbors are in Vietnam.
In his column “Defeat,” Walter Lippman writes: “The Vietnamese war is, I have always believed, unwinnable. The most worrisome question now is whether our people are prepared to understand clearly and realistically the difference between the failure of this intervention and a genuine defeat in real war.” He also notes that Johnson’s goals, the settling of a continent, were grandiose. “If we are the global policeman, then we have suffered a disaster. If we are in fact a great power among powers… then we will have made a costly but not an irreparable mistake.”
George Romney’s withdrawal from the race left a vacuum for the anti-Nixon crowd. It was a hole that Nelson Rockefeller was more than happy to fill. “And Then There was Nixon” spells out the steps from Romney’s departure to Rockefeller’s subtle hints that he would be “ready and willing to serve the American people if called.” Nixon has spent the last two years becoming presidential material. Gone is the old Tricky Dick, and Rockefeller will have to prove if he’s up for the challenge of competing with the new Nixon.
The National Affairs section notes Robert McNamara’s departure from the Pentagon. McNamara “has become increasingly moody and discouraged over the Vietnam situation once referred to by his critics as ‘McNamara’s War.’” Johnson gave McNamara a Medal of Freedom during an emotional ceremony. The article also notes that a second ceremony was a comedy of errors: President Johnson got stuck in a Pentagon elevator. When he finally arrived at the ceremony, the sound system failed. Historians with a sense of humor find the fiasco symbolic.
If anyone doubted that Chicago Mayor Richard Daley was influenced by the White House, all one would have to do is look at the 1968 Illinois Senate race. Newsweek noted that it was the Johnson Administration who ordered Daley, also state Democratic boss, to help Republican Everett Dirksen keep his Senate seat. Johnson owed Dirksen for his backing of the Civil Rights bill. Instead of picking popular Adlai Stevenson III to challenge Dirkson, Daley tapped Attorney General William Clark for the ticket. Clark had little name recognition.
The “Roots of Riot – Call to Battle” takes a firm look at the Kerner Commission report that had just been released. Newsweek devotes a large section to the report’s findings on the police and guardsmen managing the summer riots. It highlights the indiscriminate shooting done by the authorities, in which innocent people were killed. It quotes Dominick Spina telling the Kerner Commission, “As a matter of fact, it was so bad that, in my opinion, guardsmen were firing upon police and police were firing back at them.” The article also notes that unlike the white middle class, ghetto residents have no access to city officials, so the onus ends up resting on police to act as ombudsmen for the city. Police don’t understand the life in the ghetto, and bigotry is also an issue.
“Surveying Summer ’68,” an accompanying story, describes conditions in what Newsweek believes are the cities with the highest probability of riots in the coming summer. Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Washington, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco are listed. Cities are making headway in some areas. Many have established community relations projects, according to the article. Help has also been improved for the unemployed, and it notes that many communities are suffering from what it terms “riot fatigue.”
Also worth noting in this issue: Milton Friedman’s column, “The Draft” in which he writes, “Must we continue to add to the strain on our society by using a method of manning our armed forces that is inequitable, wasteful and basically inconsistent with a free society?”
“Here Come the Yippies” takes a light-hearted tone, describing the group’s pranks and follies. The article ends by stating, “There may be some laughs yet in the U.S. this summer.”
“Chicago reinforced its reputation for having the most segregated public school system in the North last week.” So says the brief story titled “Apartheid in Chicago.” The school board voted down a plan to bus black children to all-white schools.
In the entertainment section, a review of Peter Brook’s film, “Tell Me Lies.” The film is called “openly propagandistic.” The film is called “an odd collage of re-enacted events, documentary footage, didactic Brechtian song and improvised discussion.” The reviewer believes that it will fail to change the mind of those who see it, but to those of us in 2008, it still sounds interesting.
