A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity by Bill O'Reilly

Author:Bill O'Reilly
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780767930963
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2008-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

Both Sides Now

Singer Judy Collins had a big hit with a Joni Mitchell song that said she looked at life from both sides. Well, I never got that chance in my childhood. There was only one side: conservative. It was dominant.

So, the Russians were bad, as were Castro and all communist “agitators.” Truth be told, my gang agitated far more than any communist could have, but we did it while loving America. On the Fourth of July, everybody flew the flag and went to a picnic. John Wayne and Audie Murphy were huge in the movies, and the blond, wholesome Doris Day was prettier than any woman on earth. Are we clear about this?

That was why the late 1960s were so shocking for many of us in the neighborhood. For the first time in my life, America was being portrayed as bad. That was unheard-of in Levittown. But the Vietnam War battered conventional thinking, and within a very short period of time, some kids who were once vocal right-wingers grew their hair long and started thinking Abbie Hoffman, cofounder of the Youth International Party (the yippies), was a cool guy.

I, the bold, fresh guy, did not fall into that trap.

Perhaps because politics basically bored me, I did not get emotionally involved with the “Chicago Seven,” Jane Fonda’s crew, or any other hysteria. In 1967, I did begin following the Vietnam controversy, but only from a distance. I kept my emotions out of it. That summer, I was still in an all-American, 1950s state of mind, life-guarding for spending money and training hard for the upcoming football season. But even in the barbecue haze of the suburbs, it was hard not to notice the Beatles morphing from clean-cut guys to wild-eyed “All You Need Is Love” gurus. Thank God Elvis didn’t crack.

Unfortunately, as many kids changed their look and style, some adults began badly misbehaving, overreacting to antiwar protests and the rapidly changing culture. I heard a lot of hateful stuff that summer from middle-aged adults who condemned good men like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others who were considered rabble-rousers.

That behavior disturbed me as much as seeing some of my friends stoned on whatever they could get. I never got the antiblack thing. New York Giants center fielder Willie Mays was my guy even after the team moved to San Francisco. Cleveland Browns running back Jim Brown was actually from Long Island. I idolized these men. So when some adults threw the N-word around and mocked blacks, I had a hard time processing it. If all races were cheering blacks on the field—and they were—why would anyone deride that race after the game? The antiblack crew in the neighborhood could never answer that simple question.

Levittown, by design, was all white. The real estate agents simply would not sell to blacks. There was no religious restriction, as Jews and Christians lived side by side, but the blacks in the area lived in a neighborhood called New Cassell, a few miles away.

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