1960’s remembered, fun times with Hippies & Yippies
Sometime during the mid-1960s, came the long-haired, pot smoking, psychedelic drug taking “flower children” that were known as the hippies. Hippies protested about…well, just about everything! I was one of them, so I ought to know.
First up on the hippie protest list, there was “The War” (in Vietnam, don’t ’cha know). It was the hippie cause-célèbre.
When the war ended in 1973, we didn’t really know what to picket about anymore. There was a brief time-out when people scrambled to find another cause and it didn’t take long to focus on Watergate, our new cause-célèbre.
Close to that time, the yippies were born. Many have forgotten about yippies but they deserve a mention since they differed in an important way from hippies.
Hippies thought love and peace would solve the world’s problems, while yippies insisted that violence was necessary first.
Charles Manson was a perfect example of the yippy mentality because of his delusional interpretation of the Beatles’ song, “Helter Skelter.” According to Manson, a violent race war would materialize out of thin air, after which society would radically restructure and we’d all live blissfully ever after…
Good ol’ psychotic Charlie!
I was reminded of all this the past week after watching the demonstrations in downtown Los Angeles. Other famous yippies from that era – Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and lest we forget, the Symbionese Liberation Army, responsible for the Patty Hearst kidnapping.
Let’s look at a few more old photographs from that era…
On a different note, I got a very odd email from the folks at YouTube about a video I posted back in September 2023. The video had accumulated less than 50 views in the past two years, so it wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire.
YouTube deleted it, stating I’d violated their “community guidelines.”
Perhaps so.
Sorry to have brought up the unpleasant subject of suicide, but life is full of such off-color topics. Don’t come after me simply because I mentioned what a particular actress did at the end of her brief life.
Refer to my February 2024 blog about Carole Landis at this URL: https://keithstheatre.com/2024/02/
What was clearly more bizarre was YouTube’s follow-up email. It intimated that if I’m contemplating suicide, I need to seek professional help.
You can just bet my psychotherapists will be salivating when they hear about this.
Most people here in sunny California have at least one therapist. Never one to be outdone, I have three, don’t ’cha know…
Until next time…
