History Quote of the Day
posted by on December 24 at 16:27 PM
In today’s Sunday NYT “Word for Word” column, there’s an excerpt from an exchange between Henry Kissinger and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Kissinger is meeting Brezhnev in Moscow in 1972 during a secret summit about the Vietnam War.
I won’t bore you with the whole thing. But I love how cocky Brezhnev is. Brezhnev is saying American foreign policy is reckless because the American people didn’t suffer during WWII like the Russians.
He caps it with this fantastic line:
The average American is just not familiar with this, has not gone through this, and his mind is conditioned entirely differently…Americans find life too dull. Rock and roll is dull…”
“Rock and roll is dull” !
Where did that come from?
Here, the Nixon administration is completely freaked out and grappling with the counterculture explosion, and this 65-year-old Soviet guy just levels it.
Shit Kruschev, you were a fucking visionary! You knew Rock n' Roll was dull light years before indie rock hit the scene!
(I kid...sort of)
Of course he's right about Americans being a bit cavalier regarding foreign policy because our geography has always insulated of from the true hardships of wartime, but still... Why is it the first thing I picture after reading that is a cartoon of KISS fighting the Soviet Army in Red Square? Fuck Kruschev.
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