January 10, 2009

Getting The BAG’s Inauguration Coverage Started A Little Early

In honor of the 40th anniversary of the ‘69 Inauguration and Counter-Inauguration, photographer Peter Calvin lent these images to The BAG.

Whether you remember that year or it’s just historical interest, the ‘68 election was colored by the Tet Offensive, the signing of the Civil Rights Act, Johnson’s decision not to run for re-election, the murders of Kennedy and King, the Chicago riots at the Democratic Convention, and the extremely close 3-way race between Nixon, Humphrey and George Wallace. That was also the last year any candidate (Humphrey) won a presidential nomination without competing in the primaries. …Also, Saddam Hussein helped lead a coup which brought the Ba’ath Party to power in Iraq, and LBJ mandated all computers purchased by the government support ASCII character encoding.

So, the challenge (don’t strain yourself!) is to figure out which of these images depict the Inauguration versus the Counter-Inauguration. In other words, cast a long glance back to the hey-day of identity politics (not that weak stuff we’ve been slogging through for the past eight years) to figure out who is part of the D.C. revelry in celebrating Tricky Dick Nixon’s victory, and who is part of the “make love, not war”; “turn on, tune in, drop out”; “don’t fold, spindle or mutilate”; “Steal This Book” crowd.

Don’t forget tomorrow’s BAGnewsSalon, Looking at Michelle O, 5:00 – 6:30 pm PST, 8:00-9:30 pm EST. Please join us.

(images: ©Peter A. Calvin/petercalvin.com)