In the sixties , new people around the world were getting involved in the counter - culture bm — and adults did n’t quite know what to make of these " hippies . "
In 1968 , cautious commentator William F. Buckley decided to get to the bottom of what it meant to be a flower child by engage the help of three so - called “ hippie ” expert : the world ’s most noted Beat novelist , Jack Kerouac , sociologist Lewis Yablonski , and Ed Sanders of the tilt band The Fugs .
Buckley begin the episode ofFiring Lineby sarcastically announcing , “ The topic tonight is the hipster , an understanding of whom we must , I guess , acquire or die sorely . ”
From there , the episode becomes increasingly surreal . Yablonsky is a detached faculty member , study the motion from afar , who at one point describes it as “ an extremist movement at erotic love . ” Sanders , meanwhile , is distinctly supposed to be the " hippie " illustration . Buckley , in fact , introduces him by bluntly require , " Are you a hippie , Mr. Sanders , and if not , wherein not ? " Buckley also make a point of repeatedly noting that Sanders had once published a magazine calledGutter [ Expletive ] . Still , Sanders is belike the most tier - head of the trio , reasoning that the hippies were disillusioned with government and fearful of being institutionalize to war .
Even amid Buckley ’s tantalization of Sanders , it ’s Kerouac who really slip the show . Thoroughly haughty of his cohorts , and possibly inebriated , Kerouac repeatedly interrupts other speaker , adjust their orthoepy of words like “ cadre ” and “ misanthropic , ” mime a “ ovolo down ” behind Yablonsky ’s back , and makes generally disgusted audio throughout . His result to questions are also the most unpredictable . For example , when take whether he thinks JFK ’s assassination had any impingement on the flower child movement , Kerouac reply , “ No . That was an stroke . I refer back to Count Leo Tolstoy who wroteWar and Peace . ”
Today , the 1968 “ hippie ” episode ofFiring Lineis something of a clock time abridgement , preserving a moment when the hippie movement in America was still new and shocking to people . What ’s perhaps most lurid today , however , is watch a literary great and the lead vocaliser of a stone striation appear on a conservative talk of the town show to politely talk about “ younker civilization . ” Check it out below :
