The ’60s were a great time to be alive. The only problem is that neither Harmon K. nor Big Al were alive in the ’60s. Which means they missed all the leech-infested excitement of Woodstock and Vietnam. Things are just so much more boring today. Everything that was ever worth accomplishing was accomplished in the ’60s. It was the pinnacle of human history, when culture, science, and politics all aligned together in a magnificent constellation of grooviness.
Since the ’60s, American has been forced to undergo the ’70s, ’80s, and the ’90s. Nothing of note happened in this period, since everything had already been accomplished. Hippies and college students were largely responsible for this. As a matter of fact, only a few groups of people existed in the ’60s. Of these, the smallest was the geeks. Geeks could be immediately identified by such tokens as black-rimmed glasses, pocket-protectors, short pants, and slide-rules. Geeks were kinda cool, cause they sent a man to the moon. After that, there was nothing else for the geeks to do, so they became extinct.
A second group was the aforementioned hippies. The hippies represented all that was groovy and beautiful about America. They solved all the world’s problems. A third group was the hippies’ arch-enemy: the Man. The Man was big, rich, and white. He ran something called the “Military-Industrial Complex, Inc.” He used Rednecks as muscle. Rednecks were nasty white people who tried to live in the ’50s and were racist. Black people were friends of the hippies, and gracefully agreed to be bitten by rednecks’ dogs.
What ultimately happened was that, after a titanic struggle of good and evil, the hippies and college students emerged victorious and created the blissed-out world we live in today. Corporations were destroyed, Negroes achieved equality, and the planet was all blue, green, and pretty. Nobody had to lie in muck in Vietnam anymore. There were many flowers.
Records of this time, unfortunately, are scarce. Research for this history of the ’60s came from Oldies B97 FM, TV, and ‘Forrest Gump.’ Most historians agree on this account of events, since it explains very well the current situation of the world. There are not very many hippies around today. Pretty much the only hippies Big Al and Harmon K. see anymore are the dirty, college ones, going about looking lost and useless. It is unfortunate to see these latter-day hippies waste their lives in sloth and dreams, their only crime being having been born too late.
But what are these hippies supposed to do? The purpose of being a hippie in the ’60s was to be in the vanguard of progress: to protest injustice on the streets, to end war, to feed and clothe the poor, to spread learning, to safeguard the helpless earth from being crushed under the jackboot of Republicanism. But the ’60s hippies succeeded so well in their task, they have left nothing for their descendants to do.
It’s 2001. Look around you! Are mother’s sons dying in cynical wars? Men and women hungry and naked in the streets of Columbus or Calcutta? Children drinking arsenic in the tap water because a Republican president repealed clean water protections? Universities and public schools inadequately funded by Gov. Bob Taft and the state of Ohio?
Of course not! It used to be that America needed students, hippies, visionaries, dreamers, and concerned citizens to work together to make society fairer. We don’t need that anymore. That’s what we keep telling all these people who are going to “walk-out” of their classrooms at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, gather together at 15th and High, and march on the Statehouse to demand sufficient public support for higher education.
Harmon K. and Big Al don’t understand why this “walk-out” is such a big deal. In the great world the ’60s gave us, we don’t have a University President raising tuition 9 percent, a Republican governor cutting education spending, or an Ohio legislature thinking about using the poor’s gambling money to fund schools.
Sorry, kids. You were just born too late. There’s nothing useful to do anymore. Society has no problems. The walk-out is just some hippies trying to live in the past. We’re glad most OSU students have realized this, and will spend Wednesday driving SUVs, watching MTV, and drinking Starbucks.*
Harmon K. is a candidate for Dentistry IPC Senator. If you’re in the College of Dentistry, vote April 25-27. Big Al is likely in a Quebec City jail. Learn more about the walkout at www.geocities.com/staosu.
