William F. Buckley Meets (Possibly Drunk) Jack Kerouac, Tries to Make Sense of Hippies, 1968

The first mod­ern use of the word hip­pie can be traced back to 1965, when Michael Fal­lon, a San Fran­cis­co jour­nal­ist, used the word to refer to the bohemi­an lifestyle emerg­ing in the city’s Haight-Ash­bury dis­trict. (Appar­ent­ly, Fal­lon took the word hip­ster used by Nor­man Mail­er and then short­ened it into hip­pie.) By 1967, the mass media could­n’t stop talk­ing about hip­pies. It was the Sum­mer of Love in San Fran­cis­co, the defin­ing moment of the coun­ter­cul­ture, and the rest of the coun­try was scratch­ing its col­lec­tive head, try­ing to make sense of it all. Who bet­ter to do it than William F. Buck­ley, the emerg­ing voice of con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­ca?

In this clas­sic 1968 episode of Fir­ing Line, Buck­ley tries to demys­ti­fy the hip­pie move­ment with the help of three guests: Lewis Yablon­sky, a pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­o­gy and crim­i­nol­o­gy at Cal State-North­ridge; Ed Sanders, the activist poet who helped form The Fugs; and then Jack Ker­ouac, author of the Beat clas­sic, On the Road. In many ways, Ker­ouac inspired the hip­pie move­ment. And he, him­self, acknowl­edges the rela­tion­ship between the Beats and the hip­pies. But, in watch­ing this clip, one thing becomes clear: in style and sub­stance, he and the hip­pies were also worlds apart.…

Don’t miss Yale’s lec­ture on Ker­ouac and On the Road here.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

Ken Kesey’s First LSD Trip Ani­mat­ed

William F. Buck­ley Flogged Him­self to Get Through Atlas Shrugged