Blog Twelve: "Smokin' Somethin' Funny" (4/20, April 20, 2008)
Blog One: Rumors of our death are greatly exaggerated (March 10, 2006)
Blog Two: The “cleaning up” of Johnny Damon (March 17, 2006)
Blog Three: Seeing “redneck”--You might be a bigot if . . . . (March 24, 2006)
Blog Four: A hippie “martyr”? (March 31, 2006)
Blog Five: A Night at the Opera (okay, before the television) (May 19, 2006)
Blog Six: A Day at the Dictionary: The Mystery of the Missing Definitions (June 22, 2006)
Blog Seven: Paul's Addiction (August 7, 2006)
Blog Eight: Farscape: How Bigotry is Born (Sept. 10, 2006)
Blog Nine: Pelosi's "San Francisco Values"--Hippie-Baiting, Once More With Feeling! (Nov. 27, 2006)
Blog Ten: Peace Signs in Pagosa Springs: Sympathy for the Devil? (Dec. 12, 2006)
Blog Eleven: PBS’s James Taylor Benefit: The Hippie Dream Team Hits a Homer (Jan. 30, 2007)
4/20 "Smokin' Somethin' Funny" 4/20
“One important job of the next president will be to dig into Dick Cheney’s White House bunker and to learn exactly what kind of hallucinatory vapors the Veep has been inhaling . . . ,” writes the Country-Western populist Jim Hightower. Usually, we at Happily Hippie like Hightower, but we don’t like the stereotype lurking in his language: marijuana users are mentally incompetent. And that would seem to be what’s being said here; after all, how many allegedly “hallucinatory” things are there whose “vapors” can be inhaled? Sounds like a marijuana reference to us.
Another argument for that interpretation is that to make such ”jokes” about pot smoking is common in mainstream culture. In short, Hightower is hardly alone here; in America today, you’ll regularly hear people, when they want to make fun of something or indicate a lack of rational thought, lean on the line, “Yeah, whoever thought of that must’ve been smoking something funny!” This happens so regularly, in fact, it tends to be taken for granted. We, however, think these “jokes” are expressions of prejudice and destructive to society.
Bigotry is often about more than ignorance, but it’s in the dark realm of ignorance, that bigotry grows. Whenever we hear these “smoking something funny” lines, we think, “Gee, that person has probably never smoked marijuana in her or his entire life--has absolutely no experience with it.” For example, though Hightower refers to pot, apparently, as a "hallucinatory," anyone with any experience with the drug will say it simply isn't so--not unless the marijuana has been "dusted" with something else that is hallucinatory.
There’s a documentary about Rastafarian icon Bob Marley; in it, a British journalist interviews Marley, who is smoking marijuana during the course of the filmed conversation. After the interview, the journalist exclaims in a Robin Leach-type voice that Marley was, “stoned out of his mind!” Yet, anyone who saw the interview would conclude that Marley, though often soft spoken, was lucid and articulate throughout--and a heck-of-a-lot calmer than our verge-of-hysteria interviewer.
And notice how this leering at pot smokers is self-serving, illustrating another aspect of bigotry: it’s self-serving by allowing the speaker to place her or himself above others--”At least I’m not one of those muddle-headed, silly, inferior stoners. Yes, I am so very superior. Ah, the joy of smugness!”
Obviously, what many of these water-cooler comics are doing is taking their experience with alcohol (probably ample) and transferring it to marijuana, therefore assuming that someone under the influence of pot is more or less drunk. Yet these are two very different drugs with very different effects on users and abusers.
And far as we can tell, what reliable research shows is that neophyte pot users show some impairment of higher-level skills (i.e., trying to play chess or something) and no measurable impairment of lower-level skills; “veteran” smokers show no decrease of skills in either area--they long ago learned to adapt to any sense of disorientation shown by new users. And there is, in addition, some research showing marijuana usage leads to a temporary increase in intelligence.
So, if the truth is so far from the image, why do so many believe, and routinely recite the belief, that pot smoking leads to confused, foolish thought? The answer, of course, is that the belief is a stereotype--a socially constructed and encouraged notion. Stereotypes of pot smokers are stereotypes of hippies and usually vice versa. These same stereotypes also directly parallel and stereotypes traditionally used against ethnic minorities in America, things like subhuman and primitive, stupid and inarticulate, dirty, protestor, un-American, “against god,” welfare bum, promiscuous, childlike, lazy, abusive parent, criminal, drug addicted and others.
So, what’s really happening here is that by assuming all those under the influence of marijuana are addled, American society--with its history of ethnic chauvinism, racism and intolerance--is again engaged in ethnic stereotyping and persecution, still making stupid yet socially acceptable “jokes” about ethnic others. And as Hightower’s comment illustrates, it permeates the culture.
Rumors of our death are greatly exaggerated
The cliche that hippies “were just a thing of the sixties” is pervasive. Of course, "the counterculture" originated in the last half of the sixties, but it’s never died, and in many ways, it has prospered. Oh, how apparent that prosperity should be to anyone who watches the world prepared to see it. Examples from just the past few months are many.*
First, last fall, "Spamelot," a Broadway sendup of Monty Python’s "In Search of the Holy Grail," won the 2005 Tony Award for Best Musical on the Great White Way. The Pythons, of course, were associates of the Beatles and have long been considered countercultural.
In October, Time had Dr. Andrew Weil on it’s cover, hailing him as America’s most-trusted authority on alternative medicine and health (see image). Weil, I think, would safely be considered countercultural (he did research on marijuana effects while at Harvard, and much of the diet and activities he advocates, such as meditation, have, here in America, at least, countercultural roots and influences; I think his beard is countercultural, and reportedly, he used to have ponytail-length hair). What a pleasant contrast Weil makes to the stereotype of wicked hippie degenerate subverting innocent youth: a hero helping people.
Then, in November 2005, in one of those electoral results "respectable" politicians consider embarrassing, voters in Denver, Colorado legalized marijuana. Not all pot smokers are hippies, and not all hippies are pot smokers, but marijuana and the counterculture are certainly interwoven, and it would be hard not to interpret the vote as a victory for the counterculture.
That same month, 60 Minutes did a story (see transcript) on a remarkable project being carried out in the western United States: a private company has apparently trumped NASA and is now but a few years away from commercial space travel. The money behind the project? The entrepreneurial vision? Sir Richard Branson, the UK’s most flamboyant and successful business star, is often described by periodicals like the New York Times as "countercultural."
In December , Time (1/2/06) had to figure out who would be their prestigious Person of the Year for 2005. Well, they picked three people, and on their cover, there between Bill and Melinda Gates, stood countercultural Bono, lead singer of Ireland’s U2, international statesman and advocate for Third World poor, among others (see image).
In February, U2 and their manager, Paul McGuinness, were awarded the 2005 Ambassadors of Conscience award by Amnesty International, presented in Chile’s National Stadium--once infamous as a brutal detention center used during the 1973 military coup--by former political prisoner and now Chilean president-elect Dr. Michelle Bachelet.
Are we in time for the Winter Olympics? You bet, and among the many superb athletes, particularly from the United States, I think, were a number who might be considered countercultural. US downhill skier Bode Miller is possibly hippie since his parents are countercultural, but the question is probably moot since he had a disappointing Olympics. But those Olympians who in my opinion are more clearly countercultural, they cleaned up.
The cover of Life, for instance, (February 10) showed US Gold medallist Apolo Anton Ohno (see image). He’s Japanese-American, and I would say there’s some hippie there too. He has longish hair, a goatee, a headband, and a hole in his earlobe where he apparently sometimes wears an earring. I tell you this, if I showed this photo to someone unfamiliar with Ohno, there’s a good chance the viewer--conditioned to think of hippies as exclusively of the sixties--would assume the photo was taken in 1968; most viewers would think "hippie" as they saw Ohno’s photo.
Also, there was the silver-medal-winning US ice dancing team of Tanith Belbin and Ben Agosto. Female counterculturists are sometimes harder to identify, and I wouldn‘t assume Belbin is hippie, but most would probably consider Agosto countercultural, considering his beard, earring and hair tied back in a ponytail.
Apparently, snowboarding has some roots in skateboarding, and many young hippie types are "boarders"; as Sports Illustrated (2/27/06) put it: "Snowboarding is a sport with a proud heritage of 'freethinking, creative people who often fall a bit outside the status quo,' says Mark Sullivan, publisher of Snowboard magazine." So, snowboarding seems to have a countercultural connection.
Not surprisingly, then, a lot of the US snowboarders looked countercultural. Gold medallist Hannah Teeter had a psychedelic pattern on the bottom of her board, and her language seemed countercultural, telling an interviewer how she’d had a chance to "really chill out" and how something else "blew me away." Time (1/23/06) notes she now eats organic food ("it makes me feel purer and more powerful"). I also bet that if I did with the photo of Teeter on the SI cover (see image) what I’d described doing above with the image of Ohno--discovering what percentage of viewers would, having no idea who Ohno or Teeter was, use "hippie" to label that image--you’d get a high rating.
2006 gold-medallist snowboarder Shaun White also looks pretty hippie with his long, bushy red hair. Sports Illustrated calls him "the flying tomato" (2/20/06) and comments, “One of them [who falls outside the status quo] is Shaun White, the guitar-playing , skateboarding hair farmer and reigning men’s halfpipe gold medallist” (2/27/06), In fact, White is not just a skateboarder, he’s "one of the best skateboarders in the world." Austin Murphy of SI calls him "the Michael Jordon of extreme sports" (2/20/06) and speculates that White‘s skateboarding background is partly why he’s so formidable. There may be other countercultural Olympians too, particularly among the snowboarders.
Most recently, Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central‘s The Daily Show was selected to host the Academy Awards. Reportedly, Stewart once told former Secretary of State Madeline Albright that if she wanted to hang out with him she needed to get a bong and a Grateful Dead album, so, again, the "countercultural" tag seems warranted. Stewart’s performance wasn’t reportedly of Billy Crystal-esque proportions; still, it’s an honor to host the Oscar’s; for someone in Stewart’s field, top of the heap.
As mentioned, these many examples are not from the sixties; they’re from the last six months. And they show not a dead counterculture or one that’s mere nostalgia, but a thriving, vital segment of society.
Three last things:
First, as a society, we’ve been trained like Pavlov’s Dog: When the mainstream media speaks of "the Sixties" or "hippies" or "the counterculture," we’ve come to associate that with Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix laying dead from a drug overdose. The mainstream media’s message is often straight out of "Forrest Gump": the sixties, particularly the rise of "the counterculture," were a national disaster. The flip side of this slander is that the astounding degree to which the counterculture and individual hippies have succeeded is seldom acknowledged.
Bear in mind also what the above examples tell us about the veracity of demeaning stereotypes. Yeah, we‘ve all heard it before: "You know, if only those dirty, lazy hippies could stay straight long enough to get up off the couch, they might accomplish something! But that’s what the pot does to them: doctors call it ‘amotivational syndrome.’ They just don’t care about anything but staying stoned all the time so they can escape reality." Well, speaking of being "out of touch with reality." What we see here is a rich harvest of accomplishment. And could those goals have been achieved, those dreams realized, without discipline, diligence and hard work? When we hear the H word, instead of thinking "slacker," perhaps we should think "achiever."
Finally, America has long treated hippies as if they were alien, not "real Americans," as pampered parasites who took from a great nation and never gave back. Sometimes, they’ve even portrayed the counterculture as a sort of Trojan Horse and assumed we’re all "un-American" and "anti-American." Now, gaze upon the pantheon of countercultural Olympians mentioned above. Are not these some of the best Americans? Does not the nation owe a debt a gratitude to these many medal-winning athletes, to these national heroes, to these hippie-Americans.
FN--Remember, identifying someone as "hippie" or "countercultural" does not necessarily mean that person uses or abuses drugs, legal or otherwise.
The “cleaning up” of Johnny Damon
Johnny Damon was perhaps the most prominent star of the 2004 World Series-winning, Curse-breaking Boston Red Sox, partly because of his look: long hair and a beard. In fact, the entire team had a sort of hippie image; their theme song, for instance, was "Hair," the signature number from The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical of the same name. Damon became to hippie-Americans what past prominent ethnic-minority players had become to their respective ethnicities: a proud symbol of their part in a larger nation, in its national game, in their group‘s achievements. I know, for example, of a hippie restaurant where in the kitchen hangs a picture of Damon.
Red Sox management apparently decided Damon was past his prime, no longer cost-effective, and he has now signed with the New York Yankees for $52 million over four years ($12 million more than the Red Sox offer). The Yankees, however, are notoriously "conservative," and they "do not allow facial hair below the upper lip, they do not allow long hair . . ." (Sports Illustrated, 2/13/06). As such, Damon was forced to make a choice: be shaved and shorn, or forgo the new, better-paying contract.
Why is that noteworthy? Well, in Chapter Four of Happily Hippie, I point out how we sometimes think the counterculture has faded because its outward signs seem so often to have been muted; in particular, I note the intense pressure placed on men with long hair to conform. That pressure, that coercion, is in fact what’s known as "forced assimilation," a.k.a. "ethnocide." So, what’s really happening here is intolerance: Damon is being de-hippified. A man who’s come to represent--in the minds of many counterculturists and others--hippie culture will, by the engine of job discrimination, have his ethnic identity muted.
"Morphing Johnny Damon" Sports Illustrated billed their piece (2/13/06). Yes, and it’s an ethnic morphing--a forced ethnic morphing. One of the reasons Americans love baseball--have loved it through the decades--is because the game and its players have represented them, have represented so well the ethnic/cultural diversity of the larger nation. Although the Yankees are far from alone in enforcing this rigid dress code, the policy is ethnocidal. Ultimately, it makes the game less inclusive, less representative, less American--less.
Seeing "redneck"--You might be a bigot if . . . .
One problem with being hippie, one challenge of having made that ethnic choice, is the currently limited use of related language. That is, we often seem to lack the words we need to describe our world. For instance, there are obviously a great many hippie haters in the world, but what should we call them? I tend to use phrases like "hippie hater" or "anti-hippie bigot," but for many in the counterculture, the term of choice has been "redneck." You can sometimes hear it in countercultural music as, for instance, when Elton John sings in "Honky Cat," "But I quit those days and my redneck ways; oh, a change is gonna do me good . . ." As it’s used by such speakers, "redneck" has come to mean a mean-spirited, violent, socially conservative bigot, probably racist and certainly a hippie hater.
Problem: As I’ve noted in Happily Hippie, America seems to have more unrecognized ethnic minorities than just the counterculture; in particular, Rastafarians and what I’ll call "Country-Western people" (after their music). Now, among Country-Western people, "redneck" has developed an entirely different meaning: it’s become a slang way of identifying themselves: "Proud to be redneck" says the bumper sticker. When comedian Jeff Foxworthy does his "You might be a redneck if . . ." routine, he’s addressing an audience, usually of Country-Western people who are in effect making in-jokes about their ethnicity. Ultimately, it’s a celebration of ethnic pride.
Now, over the last forty-some years, hippies and Country-Western people have been pitted against each other. We’ve probably both assumed at times, perhaps, that we were a sort of natural enemies. The most infamous example on the Country-Western side would probably be Merle Haggard’s hostile "Okie from Muskogee." But Merle Haggard himself has apparently changed dramatically (he now performs at Legalize-it benefits), and we should also bear in mind that there are a number of counterculture/Country-Western hybrids--Willie Nelson is an obvious example though there are a number of others. So, it’s wrong to assume all Country-Western people are bigots, that they all hate hippies.
Further, when hippies types call Country-Western people "rednecks," we are ourselves engaging in a sort of bigotry: we’re usually generalizing in a negative way about them, we’re being disrespectful regarding their culture, and while insiders may comfortably call themselves certain things (blacks calling each other "nigger," hippies calling each other "freaks," etc.), when outsiders use the same language, it functions like an epithet.
Point: Don’t use "redneck" to describe anti-hippie bigots: find different language. And don‘t assume a cowboy hat means a hippie hater. The key to ethnic groups getting along is the same as for people getting along: treat others respectfully; insist on being treated respectfully. That historic rift between the counterculture and Country-Western culture can be healed but only by both parties moving beyond destructive stereotypes and cultivating a mutual respect. Used by outsiders to Country-Western culture, "redneck" does exactly the opposite.
Recently, 60 Minutes (Feb. 26, 2006) aired a fascinating segment called "The Prince of Pot." It explained the plan of the United States government to apprehend one Marc Emery, editor of Cannabis Culture magazine (see transcript). Well, as it turns out, Emery is more than the editor of that periodical: he’s also been selling marijuana seeds through the mail to customers throughout the world, including the United States. Emery is open about this, proud of his work, calling himself "The Johnny Appleseed of Marijuana." "Emery believes that marijuana is a wonderful, healing drug,” correspondent Bob Simon reports, “and that to criminalize it is just plain silly."
The 60 Minutes piece was fair, I thought. Thus while US federal attorneys consider Emery one of "the most wanted men in the drug world," Simon showed how Emery doesn’t fit the greedy, violent drug-kingpin stereotype: "He awaits his fate in a simple apartment — he’s never lived the lavish life of a drug dealer, since he claims to have given most of his money to the cause." Nor did Emery show a speck of dishonesty in discussing his activities: he was absolutely candid and forthright. Generally, he came across as a person of character and conviction; Simon notes, "To his supporters, he’s a hero, the leader of the marijuana legalization movement. He has even run for mayor of Vancouver, twice." Scarface this guy ain’t.
And as the piece progressed, it became apparent how much courage Emery has, how much he may suffer for his beliefs and the acts that stemmed from them. You see, Washington wants him arrested and extradited, and if a new, conservative Canadian government caves in to US pressure--what he does is only “technically” illegal in Canada--they may well get him. If they do, they’ll try to put him away for life. Simon correctly calls Emery a "martyr":
While Emery, with the help of his supporters, is fighting his extradition to the United States, he says he’s resigned to the possibility of prison and even sees a potential benefit, if it brings more attention to the legalization struggle.
"I am blessed by what the DEA has done," Emery said. "I'd rather see marijuana legalized than me being saved from a U.S. jail."
"Your language is pretty much that of a martyr," Simon remarked.
Emery--not eager to wallow in self-pity, apparently--sidestepped the label, responding, "The language I like to use is one of a person, a leader who’s confident and prepared to accept the punishment that noble purpose will bring about."
But Simon is right: in his motives, in his persecution, in this prosecution, Emery is a "martyr." Two things might be said about that:
First, Emery’s martyrdom is yet another way in which the counterculture behaves like an oppressed ethnicity or nationality. I mean, think of the Irish nationalists and how many martyrs they created. Or look at the many African-Americans who suffered or fell to defend and advance their group’s human rights. And much the same could be said about any number of ethnicities. In the struggle against racism, ethnic chauvinism and colonialism, martyrdom has become so intertwined with ethnicity that it’s become a sort of evidence for it; in turn, that the counterculture is producing martyrs is yet another way it behaves like an ethnicity--more possible evidence of its ethnic nature.
Lastly, there’s a related term that’s accurate and appropriate here: "political prisoner." Actually, Amnesty International’s term is “prisoner of conscience” which they define as, "People confined because of their beliefs or because of their ethnic origin, sex, color, or language, who have not used or called for violence" (emphasis added).
Now, Emery’s not a real criminal in the sense that there will never be a shred of hard evidence that he actually did anyone any damage--no graves of murdered drug rivals, no innocent bystanders of gun battles never fought, no offshore banks accounts filled with blood money, no gutters filled with dead addicts who overdosed on marijuana.
Rather, the government’s argument will be, "Emery broke the law, and he must be punished." But as I show in Happily Hippie, marijuana is illegal not because of its health effects but because of who uses it--if you want to persecute a group, you go after their substances. America’s first drug laws, for instance, were anti-opium laws used to persecute Chinese immigrants and Chinese-Americans. In the past, pot prohibition was used to persecute Mexican immigrants, Mexican-Americans and "race mixers," such as black and white jazz musicians; today it’s used largely to persecute hippies.
So when all is said and done, Emery is being persecuted as part of an ethnocidal campaign, for being openly and defiantly countercultural. And, yes, that would make him a political prisoner, a prisoner of conscience.
A Night at the Opera (okay, at the television anyway)
Some evenings, I have the television on in the background as I work. And even with my limited range of channels, what Wednesday-evening TV reveals about hippies and the counterculture is, in its humble way, striking. *
Often when I ask people about “hippies,” I get a sort of knee-jerk response about hippies being some group that existed in the sixties; we are relegated to that era the way Flappers are assigned to the Roaring Twenties. Yet in other situations, often when people seem less self-conscious, you’ll hear them referring to “hippies” here in the present. Case in point: CBS‘s most-recent incarnation of The Amazing Race has a team of two best friends who appear countercultural. Better still, that’s how the other contestants see and refer to them. For example, members of other teams were shown saying things like, “I bet the hippies don‘t make it“ and then “We hate the hippies!” after the counterculturists pulled off a coup of sorts. Even the show's ads refer to the team as "hippies." The two, BJ and Tyler, look late-twentyish; so, at the end of the sixties, probably neither had been born.
Then there’s ABC’s Lost, which claims to be the most-watched show on television. A leading character is big, burly, sweet-hearted Hugo “Hurley” Reyes (Jorge Garcia). With his shoulder-length hair, sideburns and, in some photos, a necklace, he looks countercultural, and I’d be willing to bet if we showed a photo of Reyes/Garcia (Garcia looks the same out of character) to an unfamiliar audience, most viewers would use “hippie” to describe him (access Hugo/Garcia images). Apparently, he’s also a rock ‘n’ roll singer. So, is Garcia “a sixties throwback“? Hey, he wasn’t born till 1974.
On one of my local channels, later at night, they broadcast That Seventies Show, which sometimes features implied pot-smoking scenes where several of the characters sit in a circle, and we see smoke rising from off the floor; it also features Tommy Chong playing a hippie stereotype. The show’s title speaks of the past (though curiously, not of the sixties), but it’s current and continuing popularity speak of today. For the past year or so, incidentally, this station has been pairing That Seventies Show with the obviously countercultural Dharma and Greg, as if the station were consciously targeting a hippie demographic.
It’s not on Wednesday’s, but the WB’s new Tuesday-night hit Pepper Dennis also has a countercultural character: Pepper’s “kid” brother. In a recent episode Pepper accidentally gets high after eating some of her brother’s pot brownies. With his longish hair, sideburns and manner of dress, he looks like a hippie type in his early-twenties.
And let me add one more: ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition host Ty Pennington looks countercultural to me: he wears a necklace and has a lower-lip mustache ("soul patch"?); he also grew up skateboarding, which often seems to indicate counterculturality. Helping lucky, needy families rebuild their homes for free, Pennington is a delightful contrast to the stereotype of the parasitical, selfish, non-productive hippie. When the sixties ended, by the way, Pennington was five years old.
So, you tell me: Are hippies really “just a thing of the sixties“? Look around you. You’ll see us on television; you‘ll see us almost everywhere. People who insist hippies existed only in the sixties--they’re not living in the real world.
FN--Remember, identifying someone as "hippie" or "countercultural" does not necessarily mean that person uses or abuses drugs, legal or otherwise.
A Day at the Dictionary: The Mystery of the Missing Words
An ongoing theme of Bloggéd Be @ Happily Hippie is the invisibility of the contemporary counterculture to the larger society. There’s a word for that peculiar inability to see what should be obvious: scotoma. Of late, I’ve heard the word used to describe not being able to see what you don’t have a concept for.
Post-sixties hippies exist, yet society seems unable to see that. What, we might wonder, is the source of that scotoma? Ethnic-hippies theory would first note that invisibility is a trait sometimes affecting traditionally formed ethnic groups, such as Native Americans, and then argue that America’s inability to see post-sixties hippies is often the deliberate product of bigotry and attempted ethnocide.
Enter Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, copyright 1986. And it’s a big bugger too--as we might expect a prestigious dictionary to be. I know because it sits on a stand near my office. One day, curious and with a moment to spare, I decided to look up some book-related words: hippie and counterculture. Now, I’ve seen a number of such dictionary entries; they often seem in some way inadequate or biased, but in this trusty tome, the definitions weren’t even there.
No, I didn’t miss them; I checked different spellings--nothing. I cringe at flower child since it seems to invoke stereotype even more than hippie, but I checked that term too--nothing! Could the editors have forgotten? Not likely. In the first place, the editors and editorial panels that create dictionaries aren’t likely to make such a mistake--and certainly not three times in the same dictionary. Second, the words hippie and hippy actually do appear; the former is defined as "a small heap," the second, "having or resembling large hips." So, obviously the editors didn’t omit all the words in question, just particular definitions of them.
"Okay," you’re thinking, "it must be an abridged dictionary, and many would consider those missing words and definitions slang, wouldn’t they?" No, the 1986 Webster’s Third New International Dictionary advertises itself as “unabridged”; it should include informal language.
"Well, the sixties were over with in 1986, so maybe that would explain the absent definitions? After all, everybody knows, Hippies were just a thing of the sixties." Well, even if that were true, it still wouldn’t solve our puzzle: all dictionaries include words from the past, labeling them “archaic” if they’re old enough. Not to mention that a decade down the road, Newt Gingrich would be brandishing countercultural with a demagogic fury. So in 1986, counterculture and its variants were words not only with a past but with a future.
At this point, we’ve run through all the possible explanations but one: those definitions don’t appear in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary because its editors have removed them.
Are these editors--there are literally hundreds them at various levels--a gang of censorial reactionaries? Well, the lead editor is one Philip Babcock Gove, Ph.D., but we know nothing in particular about his politics and affiliations. The proof, I think, is in the pudding: the definitions have disappeared--MIA. And those disappearances had to have been deliberate.
Is it coincidence that 1986 was a part of what we now call the "the Reagan Years," a time when the rising right was castigating the counterculture? The neo-conservatives blamed America’s ills on hippies and wanted us gone--off the social stage. A renewed and ferocious War on Drugs was at the heart of a larger campaign by the powerful to make the counterculture disappear--my personal recollection is that this was about this time when the "hippies-are-officially-has-beens" thing kicked in with a real vengeance. That larger campaign--it and only it will explain the missing definitions: the editors in effect said, "Not only do we refuse to accept the notion that such things exist today, we refuse to admit they ever existed."
But by attempting to say nothing, the dictionary’s editors have said much. They’ve spoken about ethnocidal tendencies, in particular, the desire of America’s powerful and “respectable” to get rid of the counterculture; the first and best means of doing this, they often believe, is to deny it--much the way an immature mind deals with any number of things it finds "distasteful." So they expunge definitions from American English just as they would remove the things those definitions refer to--hippies and the counterculture--from American society.
It was sometime in the eighties. I was upset with myself: I have a need to be productive, and I wanted to get more done. But it was a hot, wearing summer, and I had a tendency to be a sleepyhead. I wanted some kind of help, a mild stimulant, perhaps. Then, one day as I was pushing a grocery cart past the coffees and teas, I spied it: a large glass jar with a bright-yellow, generic label: Instant Tea. “Hmm,” I thought, “what could be easier than that? You toss a teaspoon or so into some water, stir, add ice, and away you go. It’s inexpensive, and millions of Americans use it every day. I mean, my parents use it; my grandmother uses it. How bad can it be? I’m going to buy a jar and try some.”
Well, I was happy with my new drug. I would wake up relatively early, make a glass, and within seconds, I felt wide awake, ready to take on the world. And I was getting things done. “Great stuff,“ I thought, and soon, instant tea became a regular in my pantry.
This continued for some months before I started to notice some annoying side effects: while that first glass in the morning seemed righteous, after 45 minutes to an hour, I needed a second glass. And while the second glass was good, it wasn’t quite as good as the first. Come to think of it, the third glass wasn’t quite as good as the second. And the fourth glass wasn’t quite as good as the third . . . . Years later when a recovering friend explained the psychological aspects of his cocaine addiction, I related to his coming-down-the-stairs description--each new dose doesn’t get you quite as high as the last; by the end of the night, you‘re burned out and can’t “get off” anymore.
Also, iced tea gave me an edge--but not necessarily a good one. I was pushy and irritable. Clerks would take one look at me, sense my annoyance and impatience, and shudder. Ever seen the WB’s Gilmore Girls? Well, I was like Paris Geller: I scared people. I recall with embarassment how rude I sometimes appeared--even, often, when I was trying very hard not to be.
The thing is, I was in pain. No, I’m not speaking of psychic pain though I know I was carrying around a certain amount of anger. I’m speaking of actual physical pain: all that caffeine was giving me headaches.
And it all got worse: When the headaches became serious, I would try headache medicines. But I found only Excedrin-type products helped; the key ingredient, it seems, was caffeine. Yes, the only way I could escape my caffeine-induced headaches was to take more caffeine; I was like the alcoholic who drinks to relieve a hangover--”Hair of the dog!” a neighbor used to bark at breakfast as he’d sip on a Bloody Mary.
And after a while, it seemed like I’d had a headache for weeks; I had to do something. But what? I realized I was acting like a drug addict: I either had too much caffeine in my system or not enough, and it was like I was trying to do maintenance doses--and not succeeding. I never felt good anymore. I looked around and saw the peculiar clutter I now lived with: there on the kitchen table, there on the desk, there on the radiator shelf--a partly drunk glass of tea, the dregs thickening at the bottom. Like little toxic-waste dumps, like a junkie’s used syringes, they littered my apartment. “Okay,” I concluded, “let’s get this stuff out of my life.”
For the next three days, I went through withdrawal. Oh, it wasn’t gut-wrenching like the withdrawal from heroin or something, but it was physical withdrawal--a sort of extended hangover. I haven’t drunk instant tea since, and looking back, it occurs to me that it's to caffeine about what crack is to cocaine--a degraded form of a substance that may not be that safe to begin with.
Yeah, I was an addict, and in addition to all the symptoms mentioned above, I know I was an addict because, even today, my body remembers: if I open a jar of instant tea and sniff, at the very top of my head, I feel a sharp pain--a tiny, intense headache like someone had poked my brain with a hatpin.
Would I ever go back to caffeine? Not on your life. I’ve learned ways to energize myself that aren’t drug induced. Clerks no longer fear me, and I find it far easier to behave the way I’d like to behave.
Why have I told you this? I think it’s a good example of how drug abuse isn’t necessarily the province of countercultural drugs; as likely as not, it‘s the province of legal and socially sanctioned substances. As a nation, our double standards on "drugs" don’t just unfairly target certain substances: they help blind us to the potentially harmful legal ones right in front of our faces.
Last Saturday, I discovered television’s bush-league attempt to combine Star Trek and Star Wars: Farscape. This episode had our space travelers landing on a supposedly hippie planet, resulting in a showcase of stereotypes and anti-hippie prejudice.
Well, for starters, our voyagers (the good guys) enter an apparently countercultural scene--a groovy nightclub! Yeah, it’s swinging party scene, man, with lots of deafening music and male extras wearing headbands. Their drinking and carousing attests to their hedonism. And when their leader--a repulsive woman with a snow-white face filled with varicose veins and surrounded by anemic-looking dreadlocks--greets them, her inebriation is obvious: long pauses between each syllable as if she were really high. “The Princess,“ as she’s called, gives orders and is what passes for leadership here (obviously, hippie types aren’t very good at organizing anything). And funny, even though the atmosphere is allegedly anarchistic, it has a dictator, doesn’t it? So, not only is the counterculture hypocritical, it doesn't really belong in a "free" society either.
In case viewers haven’t yet made the countercultural connection, after the voyagers leave the club, one mutters a derisive comment about "that Woodstock back there." Yeah, right . . . hippies. I get it!
It gets better: it seems the hippie residents are being forced to grow a plant (read “marijuana“) for a dominating alien power known as the Peacekeepers (the bad guys). The entire hippie economy is based on it, and they labor in the fields wearing Asian straw hats (“coolie” hats) as they work. It's all very primitive and Third World (a suffering-peasant-in-Red China stereotype) and parallels the fears of bigots who believe this is what the United States would look like if the counterculture had its way.
The plant is a drug to which the whole planet is addicted and as it turns out, the plant produces a byproduct that the bad guys are secretly using for fuel. Oh, I get it! Sort of the way that marijuana allegedly fuels international terrorism?! But the hippie types are too naive, trusting, and stupid to understand this, so the truth has to be forced upon them: they’re not in touch with reality.
In keeping with the stereotype that all hippies types are mindless sheep looking for some guru to give them orders, one of our heroes now angrily lectures them about “blindly following” evil others. And when the truth about The Peacekeepers is finally made clear, the gullible hippies can only bleat, "But we can’t defend ourselves against them; we have no weapons . . . " That’s right: all hippies are weak, pitiful pacifists, and like the denizens of this world, they need strong outsiders to fight for them--helpless little children and, again, hypocrites.
One of the voyagers is briefly happy there, but his compatriots explain that he’s just under the influence of the drug--yeah, he’s not in his right mind; that’s the way people are when they’re “on” drugs. Later, the once-content creature ruefully admits his happiness “wasn’t real.” Yes, like hippies and the entire counterculture, his experience wasn’t a part of the “real world”; it wasn’t legitimate.
Why beat up on this hapless show? Silly as it is, it has something important to tell us:
First, it’s a fine example of how mainstream media tend to stereotype the counterculture and encourage prejudice; it also reveals what some of those stereotypes and prejudices are.
More importantly, the show indirectly shows us that today the counterculture functions in society like an ethnicity: First, this Farscape episode evidences attitudes consistent with an ethnic prejudice. Second, we tend to think of ethnicities as living things (even genocide usually has survivors); if hippies died with the sixties, how then do we explain a studio’s production of anti-hippie propaganda here in 2006? The answer: the need to stereotype hippies hasn’t died because the counterculture lives.
Finally, Farscape shows how bigotry is born and reinforced. Obviously, this show is fairly adolescent, and no doubt, that’s what a good portion of its audience is: adolescents. They’re young people learning how to think about the world--who to admire, who to despise and feel superior to. Farscape teaches them to disrespect the counterculture; some of those who viewers will end up disrespecting--will be encouraged to victimize--are, by the way, fellow adolescents, young hippies. The show’s ugly and inaccurate generalizations, its stereotypes, its cartoonish accusations--these are the ugly stuff of prejudice and ethnic chauvinism.
Pelosi's "San Francisco Values"--Hippie Baiting,
Once More With Feeling!
The thing about ethnic-hippies theory is, it works. That theory--which says that hippies exist post-sixties and today are in fact a prominent ethnic minority in the United States and elsewhere--has a corollary: unscrupulous politicians have and will demagogically exploit anti-hippie prejudice to win elections just as they‘ve historically done by exploiting prejudice against other American ethnic groups. I call it "hippie-baiting." I have shown how in the past Republicans have successfully hippie-baited particular Democrats and on occasion the entire Democratic Party (see "Hippie Baiting: What Makes Modern American Politics Tick"). And despite the well-worn clichè that hippies were just a thing of the sixties, I’ve predicted that hippie-baiting will continue here in the 21st Century (see "A Note to Publishers"/"What’s Remarkable About Happily Hippie").
Enter the spate of accusations immediately preceding the November mid-term elections: The GOP tried to sway voters by noting that if the Democrats won the US House, the new Speaker would be Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco. Thus, outgoing GOP Speaker Dennis Hastert launched an attack on Pelosi’s "San Francisco values"; he was soon joined by other prominent conservatives such as talk-show host and "culture warrior" Bill O’Reilly. According to O’Reilly, in addition to embracing big-government and gay rights, these "values" are politically far-left and San Francisco is "a place where Christianity if often mocked and demeaned."
So, what we have here is a sort of political stereotyping--all hippie types are far left, and all far leftists are hippies (often, by the way, the same trick is played with hippies and liberals). The anti-Christian charge is certainly aimed at gays and secular liberals, but remember that many conservative Americans also see hippies as anti-God. And of course, O’Reilly’s later reference to "setting up city-wide pot shops" is clearly directed at the counterculture.
Yup, hippie-baiting--be afraid of the counterculture, be very afraid. Those Democrats are the pawns of wicked hippies, or at least in their morally relative, permissive universe, liberals have gone as soft on hippies as they have on crime--after all, the two are really one in the same, aren’t they? And hippies, well you know how they are. Ever seen the beginning of the film Independence Day? Menacing alien spaceships are hovering over the White House. Below are naive, pacifistic "protestors," including one very noticeably hippie man with a headband, long hair and a beard; he’s wearing a tie-dyed tee-shirt. And these people--just before they and the White House get incinerated, anyway--they’re waving welcome signs! Yeah, that’s the way those hippies are. They can’t be trusted to defend America--and neither can those darn, weak-kneed, cozy-with-the-counterculture Democrats!
"San Francisco values"--these are yet another chapter in conservative America’s sad and shameless attempts to manipulate voters by invoking demeaning stereotypes of hippies and appealing to anti-hippie prejudice. The GOP strives to put on a face of multi-cultural inclusiveness, but the old dog is still doing the same old electoral trick: demagogically appealing to bigotry, to the very worst in America.
Peace Signs in Pagosa Springs: Sympathy for the Devil?
This piece has been moved to Happily Hippie: The Column and now has read-to-me audio and images.
PBS’s James Taylor Benefit:
The Hippie Dream Team Hits a Homer
2006 MusicCares Person of the Year, James Taylor, a tribute now touring PBS stations across the country, should make any self-respecting hippie want to stand up and cheer. The list of performers reads like some musical Dream Team: Bonnie Riatt, David Crosby, Jackson Browne, Sheryl Crowe, Dr. John, Carol King, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, India Irie and many others. Jimmy Buffet delivers a video tribute and comedian/actor Cheech Marin speaks. Actress Lisa Kudrow (Friends' Phoebe), I believe, is in the audience. Yes, the show is a powerhouse of household-name artists, but more importantly, this is what today hippie-America looks like.
Are these people really "hippies"? Well--bearing in mind that whatever seed once sprouted in Haight-Ashbury has grown and evolved--yes. Jimmy Buffet’s band, for example, is called "The Coral Reefers," and Cheech Marin of course hails from stoner comic team Cheech and Chong. Many of the males present have counterculturally long hair. One 2004 editorial attacked "hippie James Taylor" for doing John Kerry fundraisers, so the public often sees Taylor and Company as "hippie" or some derived euphemism--“That kinda sixties crowd, you know?” No, not all in attendance are "hippie," "countercultural" or whatever troubling term we so often seem bent on avoiding,* but clearly this is a "sixties" event.
But if the counterculture ended with the sixties, then how, here in 2006, do we explain this vibrant, ultra-successful group of hippies? What we're told belongs in a museum is alive and kicking pretty hard.
The program also portrays a positive--yet accurate--image of modern counterculturists. TV programs and movies still stereotype hippie types as drug-lord thugs in league with terrorists; hippie "rock stars" have been stereotyped as hyper-promiscuous drug abusers--that or as the vain, spoiled little boy seen in the recent television ad for Wausau Insurance. And apparently, much of America doesn’t believe hippie families even exist--"Heck, they’re so busy hopping from one bed to another and getting abortions and being on drugs, they don’t have time for that!" But there in the audience sits Taylor, son in lap, the Walking Man as family man. Sure, he's had his drug-abuse issues, but he's survived and matured into a widely respected artist, one of America's best singer/songwriters, and as Bill Clinton notes at program’s start, "a national treasure."
And it’s not just Taylor; the many who honor him also look good. David Crosby, once almost destroyed by drug abuse, appears--like today's counterculture itself--hale and hearty. Overall, instead of irresponsible, lost-little-sheep "flower children," we see a mature and powerful group of highly accomplished hippie-Americans. Though the ghosts of Jimi and Janis may still haunt the aisles, here is something healthy and thriving, something impressive.
It gets better: The show is a charity event now being used to help PBS. A common stereotype is of hippie as spoiled, welfare-bum beggar, but here we can see the same truth so often touted on boxes of countercultural foods crowding your grocery's Natural Foods aisle: many hippies have a strong social conscience and give generously to charity. Consult your dictionary if need be, but I’m pretty sure that’s the opposite of parasite.
Plus, the show is ethnically and racially exemplary. Not only does Taylor perform a tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., "Shed a Little Light," but several non-hippie African-Americans are present--some as honored guests, some as performers--and India Irie, who sings a wise song about the secret of happiness, seems a black hippie, if not a Rastafarian. As Country-Western ambassadors, The Dixie Chicks drop by along with hippie-Country Western hybrid Keith Urban. So, joining this hippie celebration are some of our ethnic American neighbors. Such welcoming, respectful inclusiveness defines our eclectic culture and shows us at our best.
And although some viewers wouldn’t notice, the program depicts a counterculture that’s not anti-military either, something The Washington Times and other bigots regularly accuse us of--"Yeah, you remember all those cowardly hippie protestors spitting on our brave boys returning from Vietnam?" Well, Sheryl Crowe sings--yes, she has performed for American troops abroad. Bruce Springsteen also performs--yes, he has been a fundraiser for and promoter of veteran’s rights.
Of course, in particular the program impresses upon us the immense musical contribution the counterculture has for forty years made. The average American often thinks she or he hates hippies; yet, as often as not, the tune she or he hums on the way to work has its roots in the counterculture. Music is one of the things that makes life worth living; for so much memorable hippie-American music, we, the nation, should be grateful.
Last are the values the program imparts: social conscience; respect for others and for other cultures and ethnicities; thoughtfulness and wisdom sometimes borne of error; community; warmth; wit and humor; gratitude--yes, I’m going to say it; please don’t gasp--family values (I mean it in the non-homophobic sense), and--oh yeah, can you say "global warming"?--respect for the environment. And anyone familiar with modern hippie culture easily recognizes what I’m talking about: these are the same values we see expressed daily in our countercultural communities, our ethnic enclaves.
"Dusty has-beens"? "A bunch of losers"? "The pathetic gray-haired remnants of a long-lost cause"? Hippie culture may not have produced Utopia, but as this Taylor tribute shows, it has been an overwhelming success--a blessing to its members, an asset to the nation, a boon to humanity.
FN--I do not necessarily buy the notion, by the way, that either Bill or Hillary Clinton are countercultural though the ex-President clearly has a taste for hippie music.
