Nobody Sticks it to the Man Anymore
the beats
beating
the beat
of downtrodden
paranoia
reefer madness
and
fuck you, man
Jack Weinberg
said don’t trust
anyone
over thirty
right?
hippy children
dropping out
of suburbs
and other cracks
on the road
with love
for love
but
not for Big Bro
a flower
in the barrel
of a long
gun
as the crow flies
an angry generation
of punks
kicking
kicked jumped
up & down
scream & spit
in the face
of falseness
and everything
fucked up
laughing
at a world
they sure the fuck
didn’t create
while the media
invented
their own versions
of each
of these groups
noted
filed
corrupted
spit back out
and now
the so-called
anarchists
lobby
for the man
fighting for control
and to be
controlled
while
polishing
the shiny brass penis
of war
or not war
or whatever
they’re
told
to think
crying
to suck
Big Mama’s boobies
begging
for the comfort
and charm
of
a new world order
as the sunshine
fades
as the jokes
become less witty
and amazing
music
factory made
(it’s all good)
auto/fucking/correct
for all the writers
who were never
taught
to
type
and the painters
weeping
for
safe
passage
against
an honest brushstroke
let someone else
fight
you
haven’t the guts
to see it
through
let
someone else
make your movie
let
the next generation
say fuck you, man
you built
the wall
around yourself
the moment
you agreed
to the group-think
that politicians
need
to take care
of us.
Flower Power -- Bernie Boston
The 1960s has become identified as a decade of youth protest against middle-class norms, lifestyles, and attitudes. "The Man" was a term used to refer to "the establishment." (In 1841 Ralph Waldo Emerson claimed "there are always two parties, the party of the Past and the party of the future: the Establishment and the Movement.") The regarded every government as a manifestation of "Big Brother," the manipulative, omnipotent ruler in George Orwell's novel, "1984." The so-called hippies adopted a natural lifestyle that adopted communal living, practiced free love, and forsook the militarism and materialism of their elders. Jack Weinberg, who was the chief strategist for the University of California, Berkeley's "Free Speech Movement" (he coined its name) in 1964. In an interview with the "San Francisco Chronicle" he thought the reporter assumed that the radical students were being directed behind the scenes by Communists and told him "we had a saying in the movement that we don't trust anybody over 30. It was a way of telling the guy to back off, that nobody was pulling our strings." In a 1965 essay "How to Make a March/Spectacle" Allen Ginsburg promoted nonviolent protests by handing "masses of flowers" to policemen, press, politicians, and spectators; this was the beginning of the Flower Power movement. In 1967 the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam organized a massive "March on The Pentagon" in Washington, DC, and George Edgerly Harris III, an 18-year-old actor from New York who had moved to San Francisco in 1967 (and later, as Hibiscus, formed the gay avant garde psychedelic hippie theater group The Cockettes)emerged from the crowd of demonstrators and started putting carnations in the barrels of the soldiers' rifles. (In 2008 Paul Krassner, one of the founders of the Youth international party [Yippies] and a member of novelist Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, claimed the young man was "Super-Joel" Tornabene, a fellow Yippie.) The moment was captured on film by "Washington Star" photographer Bernie Boston, but his editor consigned the photo to a "page deep inside the magazine," as Boston put it; nevertheless, the picture was nominated for a Pu;itzer Prize.
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