ertainment
VXON G HU4
FINE CHINESE DINING
Invites You To
A wonderful adventure in fine dining" — Danny Raskin
Featuring Gourmet Oriental Cuisine
Excellent
Lunch
and
Dinner
Selections
7 Days
a Week
II a.m.-
Midnight
Complete
Menu
Carryout
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Certificates
Available
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We Cater
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Parties
27925 Orchard Lake Road, north of 12 Mile • Farmington Hills
248.489.2280
14151E0
Franklin's
Ar tin the
14 Mile Road
a.
a.
13 Mile Road
. 111111111
696
Monday
Labor Day
10am - 5pm
Franklin's 28th
fine art fair on the
village green
A part of the Franklin Labor Day cele
ton
FOOD &
SPIRITS
A FAMILY TRADITION SINCE 1 98 4
yowl, 110_66, the iReArtaxdi
OPEN FOR DINNER TUESDAY - SATURDAYS
103 W. WALLED LAKE DRIVE, CORNER PONTIAC TRAIL • WALLED LAKE
(248) 624-1033
C20
August 21 • 2008
Bradford Plummer
tory. President Lyndon Johnson had just
vaporized Rep. Barry Goldwater en route
to re-election, and scores of new liberal
fter the first-ever televised
Democrats had swept into Congress to
presidential debate between
enforce racial equality, expand health-
Vice President Richard Nixon
care and declare war on poverty.
and Sen. John F. Kennedy in 1960, a
Few pundits at the time realized,
survey in Philadelphia famously found
however, that beneath the surface, all
that TV viewers deemed Kennedy the
the social upheavals of the '60s were
winner, while radio listeners favored
making vast swaths of Middle America
•Nixon. In reality, the poll in question was susceptible to a new brand of right-wing
shoddy and unreliable (even if Nixon's
cultural populism. It was Nixon, master
sweaty, unshaven mug had looked grue-
of symbolism, reader of undercurrents,
some on the small screen).
who knew exactly how to exploit this
But that didn't matter to Nixon. The
lurking resentment — and, in the pro-
lesson he gleaned from defeat that year
cess, redraw the nation's electoral map.
was that optics were everything, that he
Histories of the '60s are hardly in
had to be far more ruthless about con-
short supply — the Watts riots, the
trolling his image from
Summer of Love, Attica, Kent
there on out.
State ... familiar events, all.
And so he was. While
Even so, Nixonland manages
staging his big political
to distinguish itself bril-
comeback in the 1968
liantly. Perlstein's talent for
Republican primary
scene-setting, his cinematic
Nixon scripted every
style, serves to illustrate how
campaign event, hand-
the turmoil of the era would
picking his audiences
have actually looked and
with the help of 28-
felt to the average American
year-old media strate-
— showing, rather than just
gist (and future Fox
explaining, why so many in
News head) Roger Ailes RICK MILSTEIN
the "silent majority" became
— and trounced his
alienated from the reigning-
On the eve of the polit-
chief Republican rival, ical conventions, Rick
liberal consensus.
Michigan Gov. George
In a gripping chapter on
Perlstein's Nixonland
Romney, who naively
the 1968 Democratic conven-
pinpoints America's
believed that voters
tion in Chicago, Perlstein
rightward drift.
might like a little off-
mines old newsreels to offer
the-cuff candor. Later,
a frame-by-frame recon-
Nixon would become the first president
struction of what TV viewers would
to hire a full-time communications
have seen from their living rooms: New
director and told his economic advis-
York delegates waving "Stop the War"
ers to work closely with public relations
signs; demonstrators in Grant Park
guru William Safire. Message first, policy chanting, "Kill the pigs"; newscaster
second.
David Brinkley sitting agog while police
Still, Nixon's mastery of the shiny
stormed the convention hall.
surface of politics would've taken him
Perlstein also punctures many long-
only so far if he hadn't also possessed
standing myths about the decade, such
another, less-noticed skill — a gift
as the notion that disgruntled lefties
for reading the darker, subterranean
caused all the mayhem of the '60s. Far
moods of American voters. And it's that
from it: Right-wing Cuban exiles were
aspect of Nixon that sits at the center
firebombing more than a dozen loca-
of journalist Rick Perlstein's Nixonland
tions in the summer of '68. Minutemen
(Scribner; $37.50), a rich new history
vigilantes tried to burn down a pacifist
of the 1960s that tries to pinpoint the
farm in Connecticut, ending in a shoot-
origins of America's rightward drift over out with the police. In a ghastly account
the last four decades.
of the 1967 Newark riots, Perlstein
Once upon a time — say, late 1965 — writes how the local police gunned
it was possible to believe that American
down unarmed civilians in the streets,
conservatism was two sweeps of the
spilling more blood than the rioters
broom away from the dustbin of his-
themselves.
Featurewell.com
A
. ri 2!:
•
Sq. Lake
The Divided States
Of America
THE RISE OF A PRESIDE.
AND FME FRACTURIAR OF AMERICA