Categorical Aperitif

What? Tom Brokaw managed to write an almost-700-page book on The Sixties full of interviews with people who lived through them that barely mentions the Vietnam War?

Since Brokaw's book consists mainly of more than 80 interviews with veterans of the '60s, his biases are primarily revealed through his choice of interviewees. Democratic Party activist and businessman Sam Brown is cited twice in the book, but a seminal '60s figure like Tom Hayden is ignored. Sen. James Webb's portrayal of the war as solely a military battle, and of antiwar protesters as cowardly and unpatriotic, receives five or six times as much space as anyone else interviewed. The experiences of brave anti-draft leaders like David Harris, who went to jail out of moral opposition to the war, and courageous people like former volunteer chief Don Luce, who risked his life for years to bring civilian suffering to public attention -- including exposing the "tiger cages" and other torture of tens of thousands of political prisoners -- are not included.

Veterans like Colin Powell, Bob Kerrey, Wayne Downing and John McCain, who do not mention U.S. murder of civilians, are interviewed at length. The views of equally well-known veterans who bravely exposed and opposed the murder -- like John Kerry, Bobby Muller (whose organization won a Nobel Prize for the land mines treaty) and Ron Kovic (author of Born on the Fourth of July) -- are written out of Brokaw's history. Les Gelb, a former Department of Defense official who worked on the Pentagon Papers but kept silent, is interviewed. But Daniel Ellsberg, the former government official who bravely copied the papers and leaked them to the press, is not even mentioned, much less interviewed. War opponents like George McGovern, Gary Hart and Bill Clinton are only quoted about the war's aftermath -- not the crimes that led them to oppose it.

Sigh. A book on The Sixties that doesn't mention Daniel Ellsberg. And thousands of people—lured in part, let's be honest, by Brokaw's celebrity (he was on the teevee, so he must be smart)—will buy this and think that it gives them some understanding of the era.

We've found a new use for celebrity "journalists" as mythologists-by-proxy.