1968 - Mark Kurlansky [206]
On social issues, however, his position was clear. Despite a reputation for womanizing, he took strong stands on women’s issues, including liberalizing abortion laws, and he was also an outspoken advocate of rights for homosexuals. Prior to the April election, Trudeau had always been seen in a Mercedes sports car. A reporter asked him, now that he was prime minister, whether he was going to give up the Mercedes. Trudeau answered, “Mercedes the car or Mercedes the girl?”
When Trudeau died in 2000 at the age of eighty, both former president Jimmy Carter and Cuban leader Fidel Castro were honorary pallbearers.
The Beatles also surprised everyone with their lack of stridency, or lack of commitment, depending on the point of view. In the fall of 1968 they released their first self-produced record—a single with “Revolution” on one side and “Hey, Jude” on the other. “Revolution” carried the message “We all want to change the world”—but we should do it moderately and slowly. The Beatles were attacked for the stance in many places, including the official Soviet press, but by the end of 1968 many people agreed. By the fall, when there is usually a sense of renewal, there was instead a feeling of weariness.
Not everyone felt it. Student activists returned to school hoping to resume where they had left off in the spring, while the schools hoped to go back to the way things were before. When the Free University of Berlin opened in mid-October, the women’s dormitories had been occupied by men for most of the summer. The university gave in and announced that the dormitories would henceforth be coeducational.
At Columbia, the radical students hoped to continue and even internationalize the movement. In June the London School of Economics and the BBC had invited New Left leaders from ten countries to a debate it called “Students in Revolt.” Student movements seized on this opportunity. Opponents such as de Gaulle talked of an international conspiracy, and the students thought this might be a good idea. The fact was, they had mostly never met one another, except those who had gone to Berlin for the spring anti-Vietnam march.
Columbia SDS had decided to send Lewis Cole, as Rudd said impatiently, “because he chain-smoked Gauloises. ” In truth, Cole was the group intellectual most fluent in Marxist theory. Cole and Rudd were being regularly invited on the better talk shows such as David Susskind and William Buckley.
At Columbia, SDS students felt the need for an ideology that fit their action program. Martin Luther King had had his moral imperative, but since these students hadn’t come from religious backgrounds, this approach did not suit most of them. The communist approach of being part of a great party, the great movement—was too authoritarian. The Cuban approach was too militaristic. “There was an idea in SDS that we have the practice but the Europeans have the theory,” said Cole. Cohn-Bendit had the same view. He said, “The Americans have no patience for theory. They just act. I was very impressed with this American Jerry Rubin, just do it.” But at Columbia, where the students had been so successful at getting attention, they were feeling the need for an underlying theory that could explain why they were doing the things they did. Cole admitted to a feeling of intimidation at the prospect of debating with skilled European theoreticians.
The London meeting was almost stopped by British immigration, which tried to keep the radicals out. The Tories did not want to let Cohn-Bendit in, but James Callaghan, the home secretary, interceded on his behalf, saying that exposure to British democracy would be good for him. Lewis Cole was stopped at the airport, and the BBC had to contact the government to get him in.
Cohn-Bendit immediately clarified to the press that