Now it's a monster and will not obey

No, you are NOT expected to listen to all 7 minutes.

Offering this as Exhibit A, in my efforts to prove to people that revolutionary talk was all the rage in 1970, the year Bill and Bernadine were cooking up bombs in Greenwich Village and blew up three of their friends... and for the record, those are the only people they ever killed. Themselves.

As I said in the comments of my post titled the Bradley Effect, everyone got in on the act.

I wrote the following, in that thread, which I am reproducing here:

Did you ever hear the song "Monster" by Steppenwolf? I mention it (as a totally random example) because I first heard it at a redneck* party with a bunch of bikers drinking beer. I thought, WOW, since some of them were enthusiastically singing along with it, even the ones with confederate flag tattoos. And this was Bill Ayers' era.

[Mike commented on the thread]: "but that that class of radicals think different from mainstream America."

Speaking of 2008, you would be right... in fact, any time after Reagan was inaugurated, you would be right. BUT AT THE TIME???? You are dead-ass wrong. As the poet-laureate of the age so memorably sang, "There was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air." Hippies, bikers, housewives who frequented the same beauty salon my grandmother did, my neighbors, et. al. talked about revolution as if it might be inevitable, and there was even a revolutionary faction of ex-GIs against the war. Even serial killers (think: the most famous of our time) believed in revolution and made that part of their psychosis. IT WAS VERY DIFFERENT THAN NOW, and even my Republican grandfather from West Virginia thought there could be revolution.

Can I ask how old you are, and if you were there at the time? How old were you in the 70s?

As I wrote [in my Bill Ayers post linked above], I am getting fed up with the rewrites of history by people who have it wrong in countless ways. In addition, you are applying the morality of NOW to the morality of THEN, and as we all know, 20/20 hindsight is perfect.

And I offer the lyrics, also, to "Monster" (below) for those who can't get through the whole song. Musically, starts off like gangbusters alright, great middle-section, then at the end, turns into a sing-along... but again the SING-ALONG aspect was the POINT. Regular people, not Weatherman, but REGULAR PEOPLE bought this album and used to SING ALONG!!! The video I have selected, however, is pretty good. There are several versions, suggesting this song is as much of a landmark in other people's lives, as it was in mine.

This song represents so much. I wondered, as a teenager, if it meant there really might be revolution, which excited me. I was a working class kid from Ohio, and that's what I thought. The concept of revolution was not APART from the masses of mainstream America, at that time... just as now, "ordinary, mainstream America" is suddenly learning the intricacies of Wall Street economics, whether we really want to or not.

Dammit, stop rewriting history!


*one of those words I am allowed to use, but you aren't. :)


~*~

Words and music by John Kay and Jerry Edmonton

(Monster)
Once the religious, the hunted and weary
Chasing the promise of freedom and hope
Came to this country to build a new vision
Far from the reaches of kingdom and pope
Like good Christians, some would burn the witches
Later some got slaves to gather riches

But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
And she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light

And once the ties with the crown had been broken
Westward in saddle and wagon it went
And 'til the railroad linked ocean to ocean
Many the lives which had come to an end
While we bullied, stole and bought our homeland
We began the slaughter of the red man

But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
And she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light

The blue and grey they stomped it
They kicked it just like a dog
And when the war over
They stuffed it just like a hog

And though the past has it's share of injustice
Kind was the spirit in many a way
But it's protectors and friends have been sleeping
Now it's a monster and will not obey

(Suicide)
The spirit was freedom and justice
And it's keepers seem generous and kind
It's leaders were supposed to serve the country
But now they won't pay it no mind
'Cause the people grew fat and got lazy
And now their vote is a meaningless joke
They babble about law and order
But it's all just an echo of what they've been told
Yeah, there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watchin'

Our cities have turned into jungles
And corruption is stranglin' the land
The police force is watching the people
And the people just can't understand
We don't know how to mind our own business
'Cause the whole worlds got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who's the winner
We can't pay the cost
'Cause there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watching

(America)
America where are you now?
Don't you care about your sons and daughters?
Don't you know we need you now
We can't fight alone against the monster

When did Bill Ayers turn dangerous?

Bill Ayers, mugshot from 1968.

~*~

The current red-baiting of Senator Barack Obama, using the figure of (EXCUSE ME!?) Bill Ayers, is patently hilarious.

Palin Turns to NYT, Citing Article on Ayers:

At a fundraiser this morning in Englewood, Colo., Palin cited an article in today's New York Times as evidence that Obama "sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country." The Alaska governor was referring to William Ayers, one of the founding members of the Weathermen and someone who once served on a charitable board with Obama in Chicago. The group conducted bombings in the 1960s in protest of the Vietnam War; Obama has denounced Ayers' involvement in the group.

"Well, I was reading my copy of today's New York Times and I was really interested to read about Barack's friends from Chicago," Palin told the crowd. "Turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man who, according to The New York Times was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol.' These are the same guys who think patriotism is paying higher taxes. This is not a man who sees America as you and I do -- as the greatest force for good in the world. This is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country. This, ladies and gentlemen, has nothing to do with the kind of change anyone can believe in -- not my kids and not your kids."

OMG! Bill AYERS! I suddenly feel like an insider, all in-the-know as an ex-hard-lefty.

The Yippies used to talk about Bill Ayers.

Back then, Bill was hardly known as the dangerous man he is today, hosting scary coffees for black men who might be president. No sir, back then, he was usually being roasted as the boring and besotted-with-Mao author of the interminable Prairie Fire Manifesto (1974), publicly credited to the nebulous and shadowy "Prairie Fire Organizing Committee"--Weatherman operating underground throughout the 70s.[1]

"A single spark can start a Prairie Fire!" the first page of the bright red (and what color did you expect?) book reminded us. And boring it was, with lots of programmes and Dr Feelgood socialist ideas, all tediously written in committee-vetted gibberish. Telltale sloganeering sentences would appear seemingly out of nowhere, and (as a survivor of many ideological slug-fests over the written word) I could see that this one bizarre sentence/non sequitur was probably the result of some torturous meeting in which copious bloodletting had occurred; accusations of bourgeois childhoods and summer homes flying left and right. (Even now, I shudder to think.)

Bill Ayers was mostly known as a boring writer, and such a dork he almost got himself blown up with the rest of the kids-playing-with-matches (see below).

Bernadine Dohrn, from the film
Weather Underground (2003)

Bill was widely regarded as hapless and devoted follower (Linus of the Left, they called him) of beautiful Bernadine Dohrn [2] love of his life, center of his world, the Queen of his Revolutionary Universe. Bill took heavy hits all through the 70s among people I knew in radical-left circles who called him a pussy-whipped, lovesick fool. They shook their heads and hooted in derision when his name came up. Bill AYERS??!!

And so, I find myself doing the same thing: That Bill Ayers?

In fact, no less than David Horowitz and Peter Collier, in their landmark sellout book Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties (1989), quoted some Weatherman groupie as saying "All of the power in Weatherman flowed out of Bernadine's cunt," which is one of those lines you simply never forget.[3]

I find it interesting to see interpretations of historic events, once again changing to fit the times. Bill Ayers was once perceived as an ideological lefty theory-nerd all romantically hung up on wild Bernadine, who then got all mixed up trying to light a fuse (KAPOW!--Marxism by the Marx brothers!)... and NOW...what? huh!? ...he is this big dangerous "terrorist" in a Sarah Palin speech ... while his wife Bernadine, the one always running the joint, isn't mentioned at all, is she?

And the pump don't work cause the vandals took the handle.


~*~



[1] This PFOC claims to date from 1975, and so apparently is connected to Ayers, Dohrn, et. al. Good luck finding the connection on the website, though!

[2] Best fiction about Bernadine Dohrn is Marge Piercy's novel VIDA (1979), which is a fabulous feminist soap opera about the Weather Underground, highly recommended. Also, I believe this novel captures the melodramatic, passionate personality of Dohrn very well. (The Bill-character doesn't rate too well, as might be expected, and the Diana Oughton-character emerges as a vicious little android-bomber.)

[3] This would have been after the death of his first girlfriend, Diana Oughton, in the infamous Greenwich Village Townhouse Explosion. Pop culture freaks will appreciate the excellent TV-movie based on Oughton, titled KATHERINE (1975), featuring the amazingly talented Sissy Spacek, looking exactly like Oughton. Hapless-Bill is played by none other than Henry Winkler, a dangerous radical if there ever was one.

What was especially creepy about this movie title: At the time it was made, the remaining Weather Underground members who escaped the explosion were still at large, among them Katherine Boudin. Also at large was radical Katherine Ann Power. The title of the movie must have scared them both to death.

Also see Underground (1976), a documentary directed by Emile de Antonio, Haskell Wexler and Mary Lampson, later subpoenaed by the FBI in an attempt to confiscate film footage for information on the Weather Underground, then still in hiding.

[4] The 80s movie inspired by Ayers/Dohrn, adding some kids and domestic problems, was Running on Empty (1988).

EDITED TO ADD: Ayers script hopes to gain from Obama (Politico)