My latest essay is about smoking and hippies. It starts out,
Cigarettes were cool. When you think about the 1960s, that probably does not occur to you, but it’s true. Early in 1964, the U.S. surgeon general issued a report linking cigarettes with cancer. But the anti-smoking attitude that prevails today was still decades away.
Apropos of little, one of my favorite stories from 67/68 from my parents, both of whom attended college in the South and were adjacent to but not deeply immersed in hippie culture. Abbie Hoffman was speaking on campus, and apparently wanted to get high after the talk. His speech was well-received, but no students came up after to chat him up. The campus was still pretty conservative in those days. So Abbie spied a couple of long-haired students in shaggy gray coats, and figured they must be a good source for weed. So he leaves the talk and trails them across campus, at a distance so he isn’t noticed by them or anyone else.
The punchline: he trails them right into the KA house, where the fraternity brothers are growing out their beards like Robert E. Lee for the Old South Ball! I’m not certain if the story is true or apocryphal, but I think it’s too good to fact-check.
In your HS in 1967 were the “cool kids” hippies? I guess I would be semi surprised about that.
I associate hippies with smoking weed. I think cigarettes were more sub-culture neutral? I could be wrong.
My anecdote: I still remember my mom’s friend apologizing because she didn’t smoke. “I’ve tried, but it just doesn’t agree with me…”
I wanted to read more about cigarette smoking through the years but the essay went in a different direction.
Cool kids were not hippies in high school in 1967. Maybe by 1969 it was cool to be a hippie in high school.
Of course you’re expecting that if I post I will be contrary and I want to avoid posting a needless expression of agreement.
It seems unjust when reasonable people like Christakis, Heying, and Weinstein find themselves in conflict with student or administration wokesters. However, I would guess these 3 people are against racism and are probably doing some part not to let society sustain it. Doesn’t that make them woke? Of course, woke might be a label they reject.
I estimate wokeness does create something valuable. What wokeness brought us is more discussion about whether policing can be somewhat more social work and less use of force. This might create more optimal outcomes for families and the economy. Marginal Revolution raised awareness that different personalities experience unfair job discrimination. Some of these personalities are said to have autism spectrum disorder. Although I’m not convinced this always deserves to be called a disorder, whatever it is, it is real. Is Marginal Revolution a wokester? (Theil thinks the 1.3 billion people in China are almost autistic. Is he a truth teller or fallen short of discerning the truth about a culture?)
Woke campus protests against speakers increase awareness of sensitivities. Speakers can always get a soapbox so there is no freedom of expression problem created by protests. A protest itself is an exercise of freedom of expression. The backlash against woke protest leads people to examine if they are too sensitive and need to toughen up. Of course this only happens to wokesters that are not in a woke bubble. This kind of controversy leads to the question of what practical purpose is advanced by provoking resentment and whether there is an alternative. If we don’t viscerally know the experiences of other people then how do we choose between changing the societal environment and carrying on as before?
Some wokesters will learn and change and mature so I’m not convinced the alarm about wokeism is completely justified.
Smoking Cigs. cool in 1967? Not anyone i know thought so back in Queens, NY
For HS kids under 18 (or 16?), smoking was illegal. Only cool kids and low-life did it – my low life older sisters were doing it and being cool and sexually liberated teens in HS. With parents and grandparents as smokers and drinkers and fun lovers.
Cool is far more photogenic than virtuous – which has been a big reason that movies and TV have moved towards less virtue and more anti-hero cool guys.
Humphrey Bogart had died in 1957 of lung cancer, but the family kids’ TV show The Flintstones were sponsored by cigs, or fags as the Brits called them. Lots of Depression surviving grandparents, like mine, started dying of cancer.
Death by cancer is mostly not cool. Nor is death by drunk driving.
Teens who try either seldom die on the first try. Not the first smoke, not the first drunk joy-ride.
Stan’s ~400 playlist of 1967 hits is great, altho no Doors until #96 undervalues one of the three great albums (along with St. Pepper’s and Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow with White Rabbit). Along with weed’s growing popularity, was the explosion of interest in LSD (“feed your head”).
Sex & drugs & rock ‘n roll (“is very good indeed” Ian Dury, dead at 57 of cancer).
The replacement of Good Character/ Virtue with the ideal of “cool” has been hugely underdiscussed as a social problem.
As I write this super square stuff, I’m feeling better about letting my kids rebel by cheating on computer game playing (and probably porn but they don’t tell their old man).
Smoking was certainly popular, but I’m not sure “cool” is quite the right description. (I wasn’t there, admittedly.)
For example, “The Joy of Cooking” – a fairly middle-class, midwestern cookbook – notes that “Individual ashtrays and cigarettes may be placed on the table….But if you are a strong-willed hostess, you may prefer to have the ashtrays and cigarettes placed on the table just after the dessert is served.” I’d take that to imply that normal “square” adults smoked, and viewed doing so as normal.