Hippie Era

Why do people keep blaming the ‘60s counterculture for Bill Clinton’s sexual misconduct? Powerful cigar-wielding men committing secret adulteries with big-haired, big-busted young women in their offices is pure ‘40s and ‘50s stuff: Read Cheever, Updike and O’Hara. The whole point of the sexual revolution was openness, honesty and equality.

And playful nonviolence: The effort to associate hippies with a Southern attorney general allegedly raping a woman brutally in a hotel suite only proves how desperate the reactionaries are to discredit a movement which--for all its flaws--has brought America more real democracy, artistic variety and intellectual freedom; nearer equality among races and genders; healthier air, water, food and consumer products; more tolerance for personal differences and more resistance to arbitrary authority; and (except among House Republicans and their fan club) far less invasion of privacy, hatemongering and sexual hypocrisy.

ROBERT N. WATSON, Los Angeles