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Updated Below…

Instaputz points out this bit of mythbusting from that gimlet-eyed iconoclast and champion of intellectual honesty, Hugh Hewitt:

I played excerpts from Hillary’s speech from today, in which she references “hurling” her “bookbag” across her room at college on hearing of the assassination of MLK, as well as wearing a black arm band in a protest march in Boston in the aftermath of the murder.

Listeners are e-mailing skepticism about their being bookbags and arm bands in 1968. I have no opinion, being 12 at the time. E-mail evidence to

As for the first charge, Hugh is clearly right to be chary; a girl would never dream of putting her books in a bag, since lugging them around loose allows any lanolin-haired passing sheik to lay his raccoon coat over the puddle at her feet and and offer to carry her burden home. And that’s a possibility no smart co-ed could afford to foreclose, even at an all-female college.

Update: Tom Maguire calls Hugh’s willful cluelessness “a drollery” (he visited our comments to make the same point, because how often do you get to use the word “drollery” in a single day without getting slapped?).

World O’Crap appears irate and delivers photos of armbands from the 19th century. Well researched! But WOC is a bit light on the bookbag controversy – all we are offered is a Times piece from last fall that may be recycling Hillary’s lies.

A fair point. However…smart folks over at Instaputz have unearthed archaeological evidence of bookbags that predates living (or at least Hugh’s) memory. Here, for instance, is a 1950s-era Roy Rogers signature bookbag for sale on ebay:

Commenter William Ockham goes for the Classics approach, with this quote from Horace:

Although he ( my father) was a poor man, with only an infertile plot of land, he was not content to send me to Flavius’s school which the burly sons of burly centurions attended, carrying their book-bags and writing tablets slung over their left shoulders and paying their few pennies on the Ides.

While Maryc, in our own comment thread, posted this photo of Tom Brokaw modeling the latest in late 60′s biblio-transportation technology:

As for the second charge, that this whole black armband craze came in right around the time of Kangas and phat pants, Wikipedia offers this 1865 painting by Ford Madox Brown:

Poor orphans depicted wearing a makeshift black armband to mourn for their mother.

A commenter at Instaputz linked to this photo, proving that Jonah Goldberg was right: FDR was too obsessed with the latest fashion trends to bother solving the Great Depression.

Even worse, last September The New York Times joined Hillary’s conspiracy to send a remorseless, indestructible android back in time to scatter evidence of black armbands throughout our previously armband-free history, thus altering the timeline and putting Mrs. Clinton in the White House…

In the Turmoil of ’68, Clinton Found a New Voice:

The day after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was slain, she joined a demonstration in Post Office Square in Boston, returning to campus wearing a black armband.

…

When Dr. King was killed on the balcony of a Memphis motel on April 4, 1968, Ms. Rodham was devastated. “I can’t take it anymore,” she screamed after learning the news, her friends recalled. Crying, Ms. Rodham stormed into her dormitory room and hurled her book bag against the wall. Later, she made a telephone call to a close friend, Karen Williamson, the head of the black student organization on campus, to offer sympathy.

Ms. Rodham, who met Dr. King after a speech in Chicago in 1962, had admired his methodical approach to social change, favoring it over what she considered the excessively combative methods of groups like the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee…

After Dr. King’s assassination provoked riots in cities and unrest on campuses, Ms. Rodham worried that protesters would shut down Wellesley (not constructive). She helped organize a two-day strike (more pragmatic) and worked closely with Wellesley’s few black students (only 6 in her class of 401) in reaching moderate, achievable change — such as recruiting more black students and hiring black professors (there had been none). Eschewing megaphones and sit-ins, she organized meetings, lectures and seminars, designed to be educational.

Meanwhile, in the long hot summer of 1968, Hugh Hewitt organized a letter-writing campaign to protest NBC’s decision to cancel The Monkees.

Really? | 31 Comments »

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Hugh Hewitt: 1968? They Didn’t Even Have Cars Then!