Ever feel like 2018 is 1968 come back from the grave? Hello Darkness, my old friend, Simon and Garfunkel sang in the 1960s, I've come to talk with you again. Fifty years on, as 2018 winds down to a sour expiration, like the taste of acid reflux, it's worth remembering that 1968 is the year that gave us Night of the Living Dead. Gave us riots in Washington, Chicago, Baltimore, Kansas City, Wilmington, Louisville, and Chicago for a second time, just to be sure.
This was the year we got the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and even Andy Warhol, just to be sure. The Israelis lost a submarine on January 25, killing 69. The French lost a submarine on January 28, killing 52. The Soviets lost a submarine on March 8, killing 98. And the Americans joined in on May 22, when their own nuclear submarine went down, killing 99.
And, of course, The Graduate, with a Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack, filled theaters at the beginning of January, with Disney's The Love Bug closing December. Oliver! won the Oscar for best picture. Rock Hudson headlined Ice Station Zebra. The Troubles in Ireland began. As much as 2018 seems a curdled year, clotted and congealed, 1968 was far worse. Its horrors may seem to have returned, but compared to the Real Thing—I'd like to teach the world to sing!—2018 has only the pale ghosts of the violence, emotion, and absurdity of 1968.
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