I realize times have changed, that national media is more diffuse, that nothing as cinematic as the Patty Hearst kidnapping has taken place yet. But it’s still amazing that so many journalists (Joe Klein, for example) is looking for black panthers under his bed, while cheerfully shrugging off today’s political violence as isolated incidents.
Having not lived through the 60s this is something I only sort of understand, but there is a segment of white male "liberal" technocrats of a certain age who thought they were remaking the country into a "liberal" utopia, which may or may not have included women, and all was going swimmingly until dirty hippies and black radicals screwed the whole thing up. That maybe white male liberal technocratic quiet Americans probably fucked the whole thing up by embarking on our grand Vietnam adventure, or that there are any parallels to today, never occurs to them.
Also, angry bloggers.