Political Memories

[Amerpie]

1) the Watergate hearings on TV when I was in second grade.
2) my grandparents talking about when Terry Sanford (former US Senator and almost Kennedy's VP) lived in our home town
3) voting for Ronald Reagan in 1984, to my everlasting shame
4) visitng Democratic party headquarters in a small NC town and getting Jimmy Carter
5) not undertanding why my mom and aunt thought Jesse Helms was such a bad guy
6) the deaths of LBJ and Truman being reported on TV
7) the one paragraph my high school world history class devoted to the Vietnam war
8) Oliver North and the impact he made on the country. We vets talked about that at work (at a NC prison)
9) Gerry Hart and Fawn Hall (not related)
10) The 1984 Jesse Helms TV commericials

[shockingelk]

1. mine

- Listening to Lyndon Johnson's funeral in the car with my mom
- Telling people my dad "worked for the H part of the HEW"
- Vague understanding that there had been a war in Vietnam, and it being over
- gas shortage / lines
- understanding there were nukes pointed at us
- the Bicentennial
- general understanding of inflation
- hostage crisis

[eyesroll]

2. Mine

(great topic, BTW)

1. Voting in the parks/rec building with my mom in 1980. I later found out she voted for Anderson. That's the only one of my mom's votes I know for sure.
2. 1984, drawing a Reagan/Bush '84 poster, and my grandmother telling me that "we don't vote for these people." Consider that my conversion to the Democrats. I was 9.
3. Watching the '85 inauguration at school. We had a potluck -- I remember the deviled eggs.
4. Oliver North, and why the hell was he on everywhere?
5. Attending a rally for Bush/Quayle '88, as a reward for my participation in a student-government contest. In the Twin Groves Junior High 88-89 yearbook, there's a picture of me holding a Bush/Quayle sign. It's the last one you will ever see. I wasn't a troublemaker then. Hold the line, cheer like you mean it, don't piss anyone off.
6. Getting the brush-off in '92, when I wanted to volunteer for the Clinton campaign. The local coordinator was not interested in underage volunteers. I've found that to be the exception, rather than the rule.
7. My AP European History's post-AP-exam obsession with the music of the Vietnam War era. The class itself only went to World War II.
8. Testing "far-left liberal" on a political quiz (not the Libertarian one) in senior-year economics class, to the surprise of no one. I was one of two in the class, and I held my own.
9. Most of the 90s, a blur. Slipping into complacency. I was in college and then a good job market. Nixon died, and one of the few Republicans on campus got drunk and ran around in a Nixon mask, stupified. Impeachment, all hail the Mighty Clenis. Late 90s, local campaign jingle, to the tune of the "Beer Barrel Polka" -- "Roll Out The Taxes! will tax you, again!" This same candidate did another jingle, that was just "tax tax tax tax" to the tune of that organ music you hear at baseball games.
10. Waking up the morning after election day, 2000, and then again on 12/13/2000, not sure what hit me. "Oh, fuck" entered my political vocabulary, and hasn't left.

[doni_georgia]

3. My list

1. Standing on the front porch watching Martin Luther King, Jr.'s funeral procession going past my house.
2. Seeing the Vietnam war on TV each night around dinner time - thinking it was a TV show.
3. Flower children on the street corners selling flowers.
4. Watergate
5. My cousin carrying a "Nixon is a Crook" sign at banner night at Atlanta Braves Game.
6. Being appalled that my parents didn't vote for Jimmy Carter.
7. Fighting with my dad over my Mondale sign I put in the front yard.

[Waverley_Hills_Hiker]

4. Some early memories...the earliest was..

....my mother come crying into the kitchen, "The Presidents been shot!". This was even before I started kidnergarden.

Then,

Humbert Humphrey on TV with those "Physical Fitness" PSAs.

Coming back from Germany to find my neighborhood engulfed in racials strife...watched an open housing march through Cragin

The riots of the 60s, Chicago under curfew

The 1968 riots on TV

"Percy For President"

LBJ coming on TV and crying (his announcement he wouldnt run?)

Shaprio running for governor & Olgivie, Mayor Daily, Humphrey, then George Wallace....political stuff at home (i made up some poltiical signs with my crayons, pencils, cardboad).

Voting w. my dad in the basement parish hall of St Stans B&M

The enviornmental movment and referenda in Illinois "Give Dirty Water the Works" (I guess for more treatment plants).

The Chicago 7 on trial on local TV news

The Weahermen on TV taking on the cops.

The "Incursion" in Cambodia, Nixon pointing out the "parrots beak" with those colored maps on (our new colored) TV (recall my Ma getting really angry at Nixon).

Reading the political pages of the Sun Times and Tribune, and seeing cartoons about the "Cooper-Church"

Mad Magazine and their "Hawks and Doves" cartoons and political parodys.

...and takes me up to being 12.