"Counterculture McGoverniks" was what Newt Gingrich aptly called Mr. and Mrs. Bill Clinton on his becoming Speaker of the House in 1994, as Harvard's Harvey Mansfield reminded us in one of the most lucid essays ever written on the1960s. His essay is called "The Legacy of the Late Sixties," and it appears in a 1997collection edited by Stephen Macedo called Reassessing the Sixties. (Professor Mansfield warns his readers "not to expect a nonjudgmental treatment framed in the weasel words of social science," so you know it's going to be good.)
     The New York Times sprang to the Clintons' defense, Mansfield noted, with a flowery editorial "in praise of the counterculture." This editorial, he explained, revealed "by its very appearance in the nation's most prestigious newspaper how far the counterculture had become regnant."
     I quoted this astute observation in The Death of the Grown-Up (p. 66), adding:
    "To Mansfield, a paean to the counterculture in the 'newspaper of record' has instantly, glaringly obvious implications. To almost everyone else--those who have become or were born insensate to cultural revolution--his words are meaningless. Either reaction tends to prove that the counterculture has become the establishment culture."
    Which, of course, was his original point. And which has now been underscored so vividly as to approach absurdist satire. Thirteen years later, it is not just the New York Times upholding the counterculture. Now it's Hillary Rodham Clinton herself.
    Mrs. Clinton, the Counterculture McGovernik turned New York Senator turned Presidential (Very) Hopeful, along with New York's Other Senator, Charles Schumer, earmarked $1 milllion for a museum to ... Woodstock. These two U.S, Senators saw fit to tag one million of our hard-earned, humdrum, bourgeois and square bucks for the enshrinement of the pre-eminent symbol of the Countercultural Revolution against America--against adults, against parents,  against the Establishment, against the Greatest Generation, against modesty, against decorum, against normal, against democracy, against the military, against  manners, against the Silent Majority, against romance, against decent, against  music, against chastity, against rules, against self-restraint, against capitalism, against reason--and for the corrosively infantile cult of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.
    Of course, there were other considerations. As the AP reoprts:
    "Billionaire Alan Gerry is the force behind the [museum] project. He and his family have contributed almost $30,000 to Clinton and a committee headed by Schumer dedicated to electing Democrats to the Senate.
    "Gerry is a longtime major political donor. The contributions — $20,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and $9,200 to Clinton's presidential campaign — came just days after the earmark was inserted into the legislation.
    Yuck.
    Thanks to the efforts of Sen. Tom Coburn, Okahoma Republican,  Hillary and Chuckie's  million dollar kiss to Woodstock was wiped away from the larger funding bill it had been attached to. But the key point remains. A President Hillary would be a Queen of the Counterculture.