D A I L Y+Q U O T E Giuliani's sex shop crackdown R E C E N T L Y The attack judge By Jonathan Broder One federal jurist has shocked even hardened Washington insiders by suggesting that Clinton has declared "war" on the U.S. in his battle with Ken Starr (07/21/98) Ken Starr's heavy hitter By Maria Recio Ken Starr's point man has a track record of compelling reporters to testify (07/17/98) The secret life of a scandal By Steve Erickson Americans forgive Clinton and Lewinsky because they understand the truth about sex, lies and legal obsessions (07/16/98) All the president's guards By Jonathan Broder A new and damaging leak about Clinton's Secret Service detail re-ignites the firestorm enveloping Kenneth Starr and the White House (07/16/98) Seymour Hersh vs. the Pentagon By Lori Leibovich The reporter who broke the My Lai story is back, challenging the government's explanation of Gulf War Syndrome (07/15/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		The Year of Dreaming Dangerously This is the 30th anniversary of a series of tumultuous events that shaped a generation. To understand the activists of the '60s, you have to revisit 1968 and consider what it was like to those who lived through it. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BY STEPHEN TALBOT "Be realistic. Demand the impossible." --Student slogan, May '68, Paris There was a moment in 1968 when anything seemed possible. When suddenly, unexpectedly, it appeared that my deepest desires were about to be fulfilled. It happened when Lyndon Johnson, that towering contradiction, announced at the end of a televised address to the nation, "I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president." "I did a backflip," Tom Hayden recalls, "I was sitting in front of the television set and I fell over backwards." Todd Gitlin, another veteran of the '60s, was equally astounded: "You're often amazed when things you devoutly wish for actually come to pass, and this was one of those moments. It felt like we had won." I was a 19-year-old college student, staring incredulously at the flickering image of the commander in chief, when his words suddenly struck with the force of revelation. The war in Vietnam might actually be over! I might not have to make the fight-or-flight choice -- jungle combat or exile in Canada -- that had so tormented me, and thousands more like me. We were all like Yossarian in "Catch-22." We took this very personally. "They" were trying to kill "us." But now Johnson had abdicated. We were free. It felt, quite simply, like a miracle. Four days later, this mood was shattered. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis. The assassin, said to be a white man, had escaped. I went to a memorial service at my campus chapel, and when a black student -- an acting major with a resonant, baritone voice -- stood up, all alone, and began singing "We Shall Overcome," I started to cry uncontrollably. This had never happened to me before, and it scared me. I ran out of the church, stumbling across the campus; when I simply couldn't stop crying, fear and shame drove me back to my room, where I crawled into bed and stayed there, trembling, for hours. Perhaps there were other reasons why I broke down, but I know I experienced King's assassination as the murder of hope. I was hardly alone. "This just seemed like the definitive statement," remembers Gitlin, author of "The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage." "America tried to redeem itself and now they've killed the man who was taking us to the mountaintop." No wonder Washington was burning and troops had surrounded the U.S. Capitol. The fire this time. That's what 1968 was like: whiplash. A moment of euphoria followed by crushing despair. Events happened with such intensity, and in such rapid succession, they left people breathless. "There was blood everywhere," recalls the Rev. Samuel Kyles, who was standing on the motel balcony next to King when the assassin fired. "In the midst of all the chaos, I saw there was a crushed cigarette in his hand. Martin didn't smoke publicly but he started smoking privately because of all the pressure. The Vietnam pressure [King had denounced the war, incurring the wrath of the establishment and alienating some of his own supporters]. The pressure the FBI had on him. I took that cigarette, just took it out of his hand." It's a detail that lingers: A cigarette burning in his fallen hand. Martin Luther King Jr., the man, not the saint. A man who knew fear, and kept going. "At that point I had been so knocked out of my middle-class assumptions that I didn't know what would happen," said Hayden. "Perhaps the country could be reformed and Robert Kennedy elected president. Perhaps we would be plunged into a civil war and I'd be imprisoned or killed. It seemed impossible to tell what country we were in and what was about to happen." If that sounds melodramatic, just consider how the narrative arc of 1968 in America continued. N E X T+P A G E+| The new hope of Bobby Kennedy