![]() 9 Nothing did more to expose this gap than the 1968 Tet Offensive. Stories like CBS’s Cam Ne piece exposed a credibility gap, the yawning chasm between the claims of official sources and the increasingly evident reality on the ground in Vietnam. 8 Editors frequently toned down their reporters’ pessimism, often citing conflicting information received from their own sources, who were typically government officials. However, American journalists in Vietnam quickly realized the hollowness of such claims (the press referred to afternoon press briefings in Saigon as “the Five o’Clock Follies”). They cited numbers of enemies killed, villages secured, and South Vietnamese troops trained. The United States was winning the war, officials claimed. government imposed no formal censorship on the press during Vietnam, the White House and military nevertheless used press briefings and interviews to paint a deceptive image of the war. President Johnson berated the head of CBS, yelling over the phone, “Your boys just shat on the American flag.” 7 Marines burned the South Vietnamese village of Cam Ne with little apparent regard for the lives of its occupants, who had been accused of aiding Vietcong guerrillas. In 1965, CBS Evening News aired a segment in which U.S. Americans confronted grisly images of casualties and atrocities. Vietnam was the first “living room war.” 6 Television, print media, and open access to the battlefield provided unprecedented coverage of the conflict’s brutality. In one protest, hundreds were arrested after surrounding the Pentagon. By 1967, antiwar demonstrations were drawing hundreds of thousands. With no end in sight, protesters burned draft cards, refused to pay income taxes, occupied government buildings, and delayed trains loaded with war materials. Stalemates, body counts, hazy war aims, and the draft catalyzed an antiwar movement and triggered protests throughout the United States and Europe. As the war deteriorated, the Johnson administration escalated American involvement by deploying hundreds of thousands of troops to prevent the communist takeover of the south. Perhaps no single issue contributed more to public disillusionment than the Vietnam War. Vietnam War protestors at the March on the Pentagon. It seemed as if the nation was ready to unravel. Onto these brewing dissatisfactions, the 1970s dumped the divisive remnants of a failed war, the country’s greatest political scandal, and an intractable economic crisis. For some, the United States had not gone nearly far enough to promote greater social equality for others, the nation had gone too far, unfairly trampling the rights of one group to promote the selfish needs of another. While many Americans in the 1970s continued to celebrate the political and cultural achievements of the previous decade, a more anxious, conservative mood grew across the nation. There, drugs, music, and youth were associated not with peace and love but with anger, violence, and death. If the more famous Woodstock music festival captured the idyll of the sixties youth culture, Altamont revealed its dark side. His lifeless body was stomped into the ground. Pissed off and high on methamphetamines, Hunter brandished a pistol, charged again, and was stabbed and killed by an Angel. Then, a few songs later, in the middle of “Under My Thumb,” eighteen-year-old Meredith Hunter approached the stage and was beaten back. Mick Jagger stopped in the middle of playing “Sympathy for the Devil” to try to calm the crowd: “Everybody be cool now, c’mon,” he pleaded. The Angels, drunk and high, armed themselves with sawed-off pool cues and indiscriminately beat concertgoers who tried to come on the stage. To save money, the Hells Angels biker gang was paid $500 in beer to be the show’s “security team.” The crowd grew progressively angrier throughout the day. Inadequate sanitation, a horrid sound system, and tainted drugs strained concertgoers. Altamont was supposed to be “Woodstock West.” 2īut Altamont was a disorganized disaster. 1 Only four months earlier, Woodstock had shown the world the power of peace and love and American youth. ![]() On December 6, 1969, an estimated three hundred thousand people converged on the Altamont Motor Speedway in Northern California for a massive free concert headlined by the Rolling Stones and featuring some of the era’s other great rock acts. Deindustrialization and the Rise of the Sunbelt
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