Gather No Moss:

Vietnam and the Political Evolution of Rolling Stone Magazine

Madeline Cohen College of Arts and Sciences

University Honors in History Major: History

Spring 2011 School of Public Affairs

Professor Aaron Bell Minor: Political Science

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Abstract

In 1967 Jann Wenner founded Rolling Stone magazine. A tribute to the flourishing rock

and roll culture of the 1960s, Rolling Stone began as a purely musical publication. However,

Rolling Stone changed profoundly in the early 1970s and began publishing a host of political

pieces. Today, Rolling Stone is known for its politically radical articles and controversial

exposés. This study seeks to identify why and how Rolling Stone shifted from a magazine about

music to a political powerhouse. Sifting through the magazine’s archives from 1967-1975, the

findings point to something much larger than music which occupied the American conscience at

the time: the Vietnam War. The following analysis of Rolling Stone during the war indicates that

American failure in Vietnam and the antiwar movement at home strongly affected Wenner and

fundamentally changed his magazine. This change has allowed Rolling Stone to become the

robust political voice that it is today.

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Introduction

The Vietnam War profoundly affected American culture. It was the first truly televised

war, bringing the gruesome realities of battle into the American home. As Americans became

disillusioned with the war in Vietnam and lost hope for any form of traditional victory, a

powerful antiwar movement broke out. Especially popular with the youth, antiwar protests often

coincided with music festivals and the movement as a whole was pegged to hippie culture, rock

and roll, and the New Left. Caught in the middle of it all was young Jann Wenner. A rock

enthusiast and student leader at the University of California Berkeley, Wenner started Rolling

Stone magazine in 1967 to follow the rock explosion of the late 1960s. Over the course of the

war, Wenner’s magazine became increasingly critical of American policy in Vietnam and

supportive of dovish Democrats and liberals. Soon Rolling Stone was no longer just a music

review; it was a political and social critic as well. Using the Rolling Stone archive, scholarly

journals, and the broader history of Vietnam journalism, this essay seeks to document the

changes the magazine underwent during this critical period, which solidified Rolling Stone’s

place in both popular culture and politics.

There are many historiographical debates surrounding journalism in the Vietnam War

era. Historians argue over everything from the media’s level of allegiance to the government to

whether or not the pessimism expressed by the press during the war contributed to America’s

defeat. The history of Rolling Stone itself is a bit less contested. There are several interesting

studies of the magazine which outline its development, including its transition from a purely

musical magazine to a political voice within the media. The political transformation of Rolling

Stone magazine is situated at the intersection of these two distinct histories; the story of

journalism and the antiwar movement during the Vietnam War, and the history of the magazine

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itself. Only by positioning the issue in both of these contexts can the arguments about Rolling

Stone and Vietnam be analyzed.

The most important source which will answer the question ‘how did the Vietnam War

revolutionize Rolling Stone magazine?’ is of course Rolling Stone itself. From its conception in

1967 to the end of the Vietnam War period, the number of politically oriented articles in Rolling

Stone increased dramatically. Furthermore, these articles became less focused on political issues

found in music or hippie culture and more on national elections, antiwar protests, and the

Vietnam War itself. Rolling Stone did not, however, exist in a vacuum. It is critically important

to examine articles and reports from other news media in order to place the magazine in the

broader context of journalism during Vietnam. Presidential speeches and congressional records

will serve as a chronological parallel to the reports coming from the media. Finally, Rolling

Stone’s role must be located in the larger picture of the antiwar movement.

The history of Rolling Stone is as relevant now as ever. Many critics believe that

journalists did not fulfill their expected role as watchdogs in the months leading up to the 2003

war in Iraq. Reporters were expected to ask the tough questions and view the government’s

position through a critical lens. Instead, the media generally tended to toe the Bush

administration’s line. This idea that journalists are responsible for helping readers understand the

motives, or ulterior motives, for war stems in large part from the Vietnam era. Vietnam led to a

change in American attitudes towards war. During World War II, a feeling of heroism and glory

pervaded the United States. The war effort swept across the country and gained immense support

among both the media and the people. American feeling towards Vietnam demonstrates a radical

shift from this victorious atmosphere to a mood of hopelessness and defeat. As the war escalated,

the national consensus broke down. In turn, the media conveyed these doubts to the public.

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Rolling Stone was one of many media outlets that strongly criticized, and eventually called for an

end to, the Vietnam War.

More recently, the Rolling Stone article “The Runaway General,” which was published in

July of 2010, led to the dismissal of General Stanley McChrystal as commander of U.S. forces in

Afghanistan.1 In his interview with Rolling Stone, McChrystal repeatedly blamed the president

and vice president for America’s lack of success in the war in Afghanistan and made a range of

inappropriate remarks regarding the Obama administration. Later, in November of 2010, Rolling

Stone contributor Jeff Goodall wrote an article titled “The Dark Lord of Coal Country” which

exposed Massey Energy CEO and Chairman Don Blankenship’s greed, corruption and abuse of

power.2 One week later, Blankenship resigned. Though coincidence is possible, it is likely that

the exposé at least contributed to Blankenship’s decision to step down. Rolling Stone magazine

continues to provide the type of political commentary that it began in the 1970s during Vietnam

and consequently continues to affect American domestic and foreign politics.

The story began in 1967 when Jann Wenner started Rolling Stone. A student activist and

a member of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Wenner had been a part of the vast

student movement that permeated American college campuses in the 1960s. However, his

objective in creating Rolling Stone was not to dissect hippie culture or promote the ideas of SDS,

but instead to capture the burgeoning rock culture of the sixties and bring it into mainstream

society. Consisting mostly of album reviews and reports from music festivals, the first issues

present the magazine as purely a music publication. However, by the end of the American

intervention in Vietnam, the magazine was decrying the war, writing features on returning

veterans and supporting political candidates like George McGovern and Jimmy Carter. Why did

1. Michael Hastings, “The Runaway General,” Rolling Stone, July, 8 2010.

2. Jeff Goodall, “The Dark Lord of Coal Country,” Rolling Stone, November 29, 2010.

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Rolling Stone go through such drastic changes? What seminal events surrounding Vietnam

helped transform Rolling Stone? How did Rolling Stone’s political coverage change over time?

These are critical questions which will put the history of Rolling Stone and its political

inclination in perspective. In the late sixties and early seventies, events such as Bloody Thursday

in People’s Park (1969) and the Kent State shootings (1970) as well as controversial reports from

prominent journalists like Seymour Hersh, stirred up a wave of dissent in America. Jann Wenner

could not turn a blind eye. He recognized that change was brewing in America and that politics

were becoming a larger part of everyday life. The Vietnam War and the protests, shootings, and

massacres that resulted from wartime abuses and antiwar sentiment had a significant impact on

Jann Wenner and ultimately changed the face of Rolling Stone magazine.

The Media and Vietnam

Lyndon Johnson’s decision to officially commit American troops to the conflict in

Vietnam (U.S. military advisors arrived there in 1955) came in 1964 with the Gulf of Tonkin

Resolution. With support for the war coming from the president and Congress, the news media’s

coverage of the escalating war in Vietnam was generally positive. According to political scientist

W. Lance Bennett, the media’s adherence to the government’s word can be explained by the

indexing hypothesis. The indexing hypothesis states that journalists give government officials an

informational advantage by accepting their word at face value and awarding them significant

time and space within the media. Journalists cover the ideas and opinions of the government,

marginalizing more “radical” voices in the public sphere and emphasizing those supported by the

majority. Therefore, when a consensus exists among the political elite (in this case, the president

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and Congress) the media disseminates their ideas.3 Indexing is clear in the case of Vietnam.

Before Tet, William Hammond says, reports sometimes criticized certain tactics or decisions, but

not the American presence in Vietnam as a whole.4 Todd Gitlin explains that in 1965 the New

York Times was hesitant to support the antiwar movement. When reporting on one SDS protest,

the Times misleadingly equated the fifteen-thousand man march with a one hundred and fifty

man pro-war counterdemonstration. Gitlin argues that this is “a staple…of coverage of the Left,”

especially in these early days of the war.5 Editors viewed any show of support for the leftist

antiwar movement that was not balanced with coverage of pro-war protesters as a contradiction

to the government’s official story. As Gitlin reasons, “most reporters derive their pictures of the

world from factions of the government; to accord legitimacy to an alternate reading of a policy

issue would cast doubt on the adequacy of the reporter’s usual sources.”6 As long as the U.S.

government was undivided on Vietnam, so in turn was the media.

Though President Johnson began the war with significant support, the national consensus

on Vietnam began to break down as early as 1966. That year, chairman of the Senate Foreign

Relations Committee J. William Fulbright published The Arrogance of Power, breaking with

Johnson on Vietnam and rescinding his previous support for the war.7 One year later, Secretary

of Defense Robert McNamara told Congress that the United States was failing to achieve its

objectives in Vietnam.8 At the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the party was

deeply divided. Peace candidates Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern were popular with

3. W. Lance Bennett, “Towards a Theory of Press-State Relations in the United States,” Journal of

Communication 40, no. 2 (1990): 103-125.

4. William M. Hammond, "The Press in Vietnam as Agent of Defeat: A Critical Examination," Reviews in

American History 17, no. 2 (1989).

5. Todd Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left

(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), 47.

6. Ibid., 53-54.

7. J. William Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power (New York: Random House, 1967).

8. Marilyn Blatt Young, The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990, 1st ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 207.

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the rank and file, but the party leaders preferred Hubert Humphrey, Johnson’s vice president.

Humphrey eventually won the nomination as protesters clashed outside of the convention hall.

The convention was a turning point; the elite consensus on Vietnam had visibly broken.

In this period, while Rolling Stone was still establishing itself as a musical and cultural

phenomenon, reports were coming out of Vietnam that seemed increasingly negative in tone and

which portrayed the war as a bloody and useless battle. In accordance with Bennett’s theory, as

discord erupted in the government, the media followed suit. Journalists no longer pushed antiwar

views into the margins. Rather, they covered them as part of the mainstream index of official

interpretations. After the Tet Offensive in 1968 Walter Cronkite, “the most trusted man in

America,” called Vietnam a “stalemate.”9 Then Seymour Hersh broke the story of the My Lai

massacre on November 13, 1969. In a series of articles, Hersh told the story of Lieutenant

William L. Calley Jr. and his unit who were accused of and tried for the premeditated murder of

hundreds of innocent Vietnamese villagers. American soldiers raped, shot, burned and

dismembered women, children and other defenseless civilians, though they met no armed

resistance and found only three weapons in the village.10

Illustrating another devastating aspect

of the war, Karl Fleming wrote a piece for Newsweek in 1971 titled “The Homecoming of Chris

Mead.” Mead was a GI who returned from Vietnam in 1971, discharged just three days after his

twenty-first birthday. “I’m not even interested in food anymore” said Mead upon returning to a

home-cooked meal his first night back. He explained to his parents, “I know what I was fighting

for: nothing.”11

This is the setting for Rolling Stone’s entrance into the political world. A

9. Daniel C. Hallin, The “Uncensored War”: The Media and Vietnam, 1st ed.. (Berkeley, CA: University of

California Press, 1989), 6.

10. Seymour Hersh, “Lieutenant Accused of Murdering 109 Civilians,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November

13, 1969.

11. Karl Fleming, “The Homecoming of Chris Mead,” Newsweek, March 29, 1971.

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government, a nation, and the media divided over Vietnam, and more pointedly, a growing

impression among all three that the United States could not balance its new war at home with the

war in Vietnam for very long.

A Chronology of Politics in Rolling Stone

In discovering Rolling Stone’s place in politics, it is necessary to consider the history of

the magazine. Founder Jann Wenner, a student at the University of California Berkeley,

participated in several student demonstrations, befriended radical professors and witnessed

firsthand the antiwar movement in California. The importance of Wenner’s environment must

not be underestimated. In the early 1960s, California was the epicenter of the growing antiwar

movement. The state was home to numerous organizations such as SDS, the Young Socialist

Alliance, the Peace Action Council, the San Fernando Valley Peace Center and Campus Women

for Peace, among many others.12

The Vietnam Day Committee organized a teach-in on the

Berkeley campus in 1964 that lasted thirty-six hours and, according to R. Jeffery Lustig, created

“a new political space” in which to challenge establishment policies and political structures.13

From San Francisco to Los Angeles to Fresno, thousands of antiwar protesters gathered in

hundreds of different demonstrations which sought to change the way the system worked, not

just in California but in America as a whole. Antiwar coffee shops sprung up around military

bases and student volunteers set up draft information stands outside of high schools and

colleges.14

By 1969, a group of Marines at Camp Pendleton had rebelled against their superior

12. R. Jeffery Lustig, “The War at Home: California’s Struggle to Stop the Vietnam War,” in Whats Going

On? California and the Vietnam Era, ed. Marcia A Eymann. and Charles Wollenberg (Oakland, CA: University of

California Press, 2004), 59-67.

13. Ibid., 62.

14. R. Jeffery Lustig, “The War at Home,” 64-72.

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officers and active-duty servicemen were leading protests in San Francisco and San Diego.15

California was a hotbed of political protest and Berkeley was at the heart of the American

antiwar movement. It appeared inevitable that Jann Wenner would be part of it.

However, Wenner had only one focus in starting Rolling Stone: rock and roll. Everything

else was secondary. In his book Gone Crazy and Back Again: The Rise and fall of the Rolling

Stone Generation, Robert Sam Anson explains Wenner’s philosophy. Rock, to Wenner, was “the

energy core of the entire culture, the one means whereby the young [could] express their

rebellion creatively.”16

The predominant youth culture in the sixties, the one whose story Wenner

believed could be told through rock, was mainly concerned with drugs and freedom from

authority. It was 1967, the Summer of Love, and Wenner was working not far from the heartland

of hippie culture, the Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco. Though the hippie youth promoted peace

and opposed the Vietnam War, these political concerns were far from their primary interests. In

fact, the idea of any central cause, something that demanded authority and organization,

contradicted the basic beliefs behind this flourishing counterculture. What was important to

many of the students, including Wenner, was LSD and rock and roll. The first issue of Rolling

Stone focused entirely on music, featuring album reviews, an article on John Lennon’s acting

debut, the now famous “random notes” on musicians’ lives, and a report on embezzlement at the

Monterey Pop Festival. In a statement about his upstart magazine, Wenner said “we hope we

have something here for the artists and the industry, and every person who believes in the magic

that can set you free.”17

15. Ibid., 73.

16. Robert Sam Anson, Gone Crazy and Back Again : The Rise and Fall of the Rolling Stone Generation,

1st ed. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981), 19.

17. Anson, Gone Crazy and Back Again, 8, 18-20.

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As the sixties unfolded, music and politics began to intersect more and more often. The

Woodstock music festival in August of 1969 was tagged “three days of peace and music.”

Individual artists too were speaking out. John Lennon and Mick Jagger publicly expressed their

anti-establishment sentiments. However, Wenner and others at the magazine recognized that “the

irony was that, if the revolution did come to pass, the first to go ‘up against the wall’…would be

the privileged class to which the Rolling Stones belonged.” The stars were not the

revolutionaries of the future, Anson argues; their real politics were nothing but “sex, dope and

lavish autonomy.” According to Anson, Wenner’s distaste for politics was proof of a

longstanding chasm in youth culture, the “cleavage between two revolutions, one of life-style,

and the other of politics.” While political action demanded dedication and a large time

commitment, all that rock culture required was “copious free time.”18

In 1967, the year of Rolling Stone’s birth, the magazine contained virtually no trace of

politics. Elections, the civil rights movement, and student protests were nowhere to be found.

Instead, album reviews, the latest Beatles gossip and music festival news filled its pages. Only

two articles mentioned Vietnam that year. The first was a small news story about The Byrds,

which reported that the band had dumped guitarist David Crosby, an outspoken critic of the War

in Vietnam.19

The second was a short description of singer Joan Baez’s arrest during an antiwar

demonstration in California, tucked in between other artist updates and a concert

advertisement.20

Neither of these pieces indicate Rolling Stone’s stance on the Vietnam War, nor

suggest that it had one at all.

References to Vietnam increased the following year. In 1968 Jann Wenner wrote a two-

page feature titled “Musicians Reject New Political Exploiters” accusing the Yippies (members

18. Ibid., 83.

19. “Byrd McGuinn Dumps Crosby,” Rolling Stone, November 9, 1967.

20. “Joanie Goes to Jail Again,” Rolling Stone, November 23, 1967.

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of the antiwar Youth International Party) of exploiting music to gain popularity instead of

gaining it through a substantive platform. The article briefly discusses other antiwar groups who

were equally critical of the Yippies, but according to Wenner none of these political endeavors

could really capture young people’s attention. The youth want “no part of today’s social

structure, especially in its most manifestly corrupt form, politics,” he explains. Instead, Wenner

argues that rock and roll was the vanguard of the youth movement. He concludes, “rock and roll

is the only way in which the vast but formless power of youth is structured, the only way in

which it can be defined or inspected.”21

Here, Wenner lent tepid support to the antiwar

movement as a whole, but clearly emphasized the importance of rock and roll over politics.

Another article from 1968 by Ralph Gleason, about hippie culture in the East Village,

Chicago, and Haight-Asbury, touches on the antiwar movement as part of the broader

countercultural revolution. However, Gleason’s main argument is a critique of “elders” who

were hypocritically trying to control and suppress youth culture.22

Similarly, other articles from

1968 referenced the Vietnam War and the antiwar movement, but the crux of these stories was

still music and culture. One news blurb reports that Country Joe and the Fish were jumped in a

Chicago motel by a group of GIs who were angered by the band’s antiwar lyrics.23

Another

piece, a review of artist Edward Kienholz’s antiwar sculpture The Portable War Memorial,

claims that the piece would have “great impact.” The remainder of the review describes the

sculpture and lauds its aesthetic value.24

Finally, a lengthy feature on drugs in the army focuses

almost entirely on the different types of marijuana, cocaine, and opium used by American

21. Jann Wenner, “Musicians Reject New Political Exploiters,” Rolling Stone, May 11, 1968.

22. Ralph Gleason, “Perspectives: The Final Paroxysm of Fear,” Rolling Stone, April 6, 1968.

23. “Country Joe sees Viet Action,” Rolling Stone, September 28, 1968.

24. Thomas Albright, “The Portable War Memorial Commemorating VD Day,” Rolling Stone, December

21, 1968.

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soldiers. One GI alluded to the antiwar movement when he explained that marijuana united the

“unwilling conscripts” in Vietnam. The rest of the article presents quotes from soldiers on the

lack of good rock and roll music on the radio there.25

There is almost no mention of politics in

the magazine in these first two years.

Then things began to change. In 1969 Rolling Stone published a special issue called

“American Revolution 1969.” In his opening note on the issue, Jann Wenner writes “politics are

about to become a part of our daily lives, and willingly or not, we are in it.”26

Wenner recognized

that music and rock culture could no longer be isolated from politics. Student protests and

antiwar rallies across the nation had incorporated music into their demonstrations. Joan Baez

performed at SDS rallies and artists such as Phil Ochs, Peter, Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger, and

John Denver performed at protests from Washington, DC to California.27

Songs like I-Feel-like-

I’m-Fixin’-to-die Rag, Where have all the Flowers Gone? and Give Peace a Chance became

symbolic of the antiwar movement. “The new political movements we feel around us can no

longer be left at the periphery of the artistic consciousness,” Wenner continues in his

introduction.28

The rest of the eight-page special issue is an article by Michael Rossman, a leader of the

Free Speech Movement and campus reform throughout the 1960s. “The American Campus is the

violent Intersection of old and new,” declares Rossman. He affirmed the growing strength of

SDS as an antiwar and anti-imperialist entity and described student sit-ins against army

recruitment and chemical weapons research on university campuses. “A mass consciousness is

awakening” in the youth, he writes. Black students were fighting racist school policies and

25. Charles Perry, “Is this Any Way to Run the Army?-Stoned?” Rolling Stone, November 9, 1968

26. “American Revolution 1969,” Rolling Stone, April 5, 1969.

27. Melvin Small, Covering Dissent : The Media and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement, Perspectives on the

Sixties (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 36, 116-118.

28. “American Revolution 1969,” Rolling Stone.

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campaigns for educational reform broke out across the country, but repression came from above,

from the old. Colleges expelled and arrested students while the government jailed draft dodgers.

One photo accompanying the article shows troops releasing tear gas at Berkeley. Another reveals

policemen violently arresting a young man, restraining him in a chokehold with a billy club.29

While much of the article argues for educational reform rather than an end to the war, its political

focus and radicalism shows that Wenner was expanding the editorial content of Rolling Stone.

In addition to increasing its coverage of the war, the magazine also began to run other

political stories in 1969. Ralph Gleason wrote a piece called “Perspectives: Is There a Death

Wish in U.S.?” which detailed the rising violence in America in the late sixties, including clashes

at a Hubert Humphrey rally and police brutality inflicted on college students during campus

protests. While conscious of the rising political problems in the country, Gleason preferred

cultural solutions to political ones. He argued that political programs could not be as effective as

Bob Dylan’s lyrics or Allen Ginsberg’s poems. “The Beatles aren’t just more popular than Jesus,

they are also more potent than the SDS,” he writes.30

This article shows Rolling Stone beginning

to experiment with political coverage, but remaining true to its belief that only music could really

change the world.

Later in the year, Rolling Stone published a series of open letters between John Lennon

and British journalist John Hoyland on the antiwar movement and the “coming revolution.”

Hoyland severely critiques Lennon for his nonviolent approach to the peace movement. He

writes, “What we’re confronted with is a repressive, vicious, authoritarian system”.31

This

exchange of leftist opinions on the government and the war illustrates another step in the

29. “American Revolution 1969,” Rolling Stone.

30. Ralph Gleason, “Perspectives: Is There a Death Wish in U.S.?” Rolling Stone, April 5, 1969.

31. (Author’s emphasis); “The Dear John Letters,” Rolling Stone, May 3, 1969.

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magazine’s political development, but Rolling Stone’s political transformation would soon

accelerate even faster.

In his book Rolling Stone Magazine: the Uncensored History, Robert Draper argues that

“Bloody Thursday” in May of 1969 had a substantial impact on Jann Wenner. Built on

Berkeley’s campus in 1969 as an open forum for peace and politics, People’s Park was an

important part of both the student movement and antiwar protests in California. But California

governor Ronald Reagan saw the creation of the park as an encroachment of communist

sympathizers on university property and on May 15, 1969, he sent police officers to fence off the

park from the public. A protest ensued. After protestors threw rocks and sticks the policemen

turned violent, downing protestors with buckshot. The officers blinded a man, wounded dozens,

and killed James Rector, a student. Twenty-five of the officers were injured. The next day

Reagan sent two thousand National Guard troops to occupy Berkeley. The day was thus labeled

“Bloody Thursday.” Similar political movements exploded across the nation and often

transformed into violent and chaotic scenes. In the wake of the People’s Park incident, Wenner

realized that “we have reached a point in the social, cultural, intellectual and artistic history of

the United States where we are all going to be affected by politics.”32

In response Rolling Stone published “The Battle of People’s Park,” a four-page feature, in

their June issue. Describing the protest, the death of James Rector and the days following Bloody

Thursday, the article is clearly sympathetic to the protestors. A parade and vigil were held in

honor of the dead student a week after the protest. “Guardsmen put on their gasmasks. Then

came the whack and whine and whir of a hulking brown Sikorsky helicopter carrying a bellyful

of National Guard tear gas,” the magazine reports. Photographs supplementing the article show

32. Robert Draper, Rolling Stone Magazine : The Uncensored History, 1st HarperPerennial ed. (New York,

NY: HarperPerennial, 1991), 123, 130.

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tear gas settling over the town, a deputy officer shooting at a running student and James Rector

dying from his buckshot wounds as the policemen walk away. The piece ends on a tense note, as

the helicopters continue to circle over Berkeley and the student newspaper promises “we will

have that park.”33

Coverage of People’s Park continued later that month, with an update on “peace talks”

between the university and the Berkeley City Council on what to do with the park. “As it stands

now the Guard still occupies the park, the fence is still up” the article points out disapprovingly.

In 1969 the People’s Park incident was a small part of the greater movement for peace which

Rolling Stone was covering in increasing depth. Another article from that year tracked John

Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “bed-ins” for peace. The couple stayed in bed at a Montreal hotel for

seven straight days in protest of the war, bringing media attention to the cause.34

From coverage

of small protests such as this, Rolling Stone moved on to more prominent demonstrations such as

the October 1969 Moratorium. The Moratorium was a creative antiwar tactic that hoped to

accomplish more than the traditional marches and rallies by disrupting schools and businesses. It

called for all citizens opposed to the war to leave work or class on October 15 for however long

they could and join fellow protestors at events and gatherings in their respective towns and cities.

Approximately three million Americans participated in the first Moratorium.35

One Rolling Stone article on the Moratorium describes how record companies, radio

stations and record stores closed early or let employees off to participate in the protest. The piece

also details how the antiwar movement affected record sales, generally hurting them as young

people spent more and more time engrossed in politics and less time in their homes listening to

33. John Burks and John Grissim Jr., “The Battle of People’s Park,” Rolling Stone, June 14, 1969.

34. Ritchie York, “Boosting Peace: John and Yoko in Canada,” Rolling Stone, June 28, 1969.

35. Melvin Small, Covering Dissent, 92-93.

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records.36

An opinion piece by Greil Marcus titled “Two Moratorium Days: So What?” was the

first outright antiwar-focused article in the magazine. “The Vietnam War has been and remains a

profoundly vicious act of crime. We have destroyed the better part of a nation, its culture, its

history, and large numbers of its people—intentionally and systematically,” writes Marcus.

Criticizing the majority of moratoria protests for lamenting the loss of American lives while

ignoring the Vietnamese victims, Marcus argues that the moratoria did not go far enough.37

From

People’s Park to the Moratorium, Rolling Stone was stepping up its antiwar reportage. These

articles defended students and protestors and emphasized the demonstrations themselves rather

than the music that may have accompanied them. However, as Draper explains, Wenner’s main

interests remained with music and rock stars and an overwhelming majority of articles in 1969

focused solely on music.

Direct coverage of the antiwar movement would grow in breadth and depth as Rolling

Stone moved into 1970. “The New, ‘Fairer’ Draft: It Sucks” announced the title of an article in

April of that year. The review of the Selective Service System’s new lottery format for the draft

concludes that it was no “fairer” than the previous system. It was still “a form of involuntary

servitude” the reporter declares, “still being used to send men off to fight an illegal and immoral

war that we’re supposedly trying to extricate ourselves from, even as we continue to shuttle men

off to kill and be killed.”38

The antiwar nature of the story is undeniable. Without a byline, this is

not an opinion piece credited to an organizer or activist, but rather a news story. Rolling Stone

presented the piece as fact and consequently began to define itself as a staunchly antiwar

publication.

36. “The Beat Goes On,” Rolling Stone, June 28, 1969.

37. Greil Marcus. “Two Moratorium Days: So What?” Rolling Stone, December 13, 1969.

38. “The New, ‘Fairer’ Draft: It Sucks,” Rolling Stone, April 16, 1970.

Cohen 18

As the year rolled on, the lottery draft would prove to be only one of America’s many

growing problems. In April, President Nixon announced that the United States would send troops

into Cambodia in order to weaken North Vietnamese supply lines. In his address, Nixon

promised “this is not an invasion of Cambodia,” but that is exactly what it was.39

More than

31,000 American troops marched into Cambodia, assisted by more than 43,000 South

Vietnamese troops. They met almost no North Vietnamese resistance.40

Nixon’s lies were

transparent. In response, protests erupted on college campuses across America. Greil Marcus

and Langdon Winner spent the spring of 1970 on campuses in California, reporting their findings

back to Rolling Stone. The pair described anti-ROTC protests at Stanford and Berkeley and

random violent clashes between students and police. After Nixon’s announcement, students at

Stanford successfully shut down the university. Likewise, at Berkeley, the administration closed

the school after police tear gassed the campus in response to student demonstrations and riots.

Students and faculty at Berkeley took the opportunity to “reconstitute” the University. They used

its space and resources to promote the antiwar cause. Supporting Berkeley’s move, the reporters

write “We have to move beyond ‘protest’…to a kind of disruption that frees us from normalcy

and permits new kinds of action, learning and knowledge.”41

Rolling Stone’s outright defense of

student protestors would surge even higher a few weeks later, in the aftermath of the antiwar

movement’s greatest tragedy.

“A Lot of People Were Crying and the Guard Walked Away” reads the title of Rolling

Stone’s first article on Kent State. Contributor John Lombardi described the events in agonizing

39. “President Nixon announced ‘Cambodian Incursion’” …Next Stop is Vietnam, Bear Family Records,

2011.

40. Richard Reeves, President Nixon: Alone in the White House (New York: Simon and Schuster: 2002),

208.

41. Greil Marcus and Langdon Winner, “How We Spent Our Spring Vacation,” Rolling Stone, June 11,

1970.

Cohen 19

detail. On May 4, on the campus of Kent State University, National Guardsmen met a group of

students protesting Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia. It was a school day and the campus was filled

with students heading to class and going about their business. When the guardsmen launched tear

gas at the students, some threw the canisters back in the direction of the guards. Suddenly, a

group of guardsmen knelt down in formation and fired into the sky and at the students. “35

rounds going off at once, and bodies were falling all around,” Lombardi reports. The bullets

paralyzed one student and injured several others. Four students died. In addition to describing the

horrific events with overwhelming sympathy for the students, Lombardi gives several different

first hand perspectives on the shooting from students, faculty and local townspeople.42

The

following month Rolling Stone ran another article on Kent, this time detailing how the massacre

had affected music. John Morthland explains that after Kent it was no longer just the musicians

who were against the war; the promoters, the record companies, and almost everyone involved

turned antiwar. According to Morthland, music helped everyone get through the insanity that

was the war. The entire industry felt the weight of the anti-student crackdown as well. Festival

groups could not obtain permits; local governments simply would not allow such large

gatherings of young people. “The music is a large part of this revolution we talk about, and the

repression comes down on the bands too,” Jefferson Airplane manager Bill Thompson told

Morthland.43

In addition to these articles, the magazine published a poem for Allison Krause, one

of the victim’s of the Kent shooting. The massacre clearly shook the editors at Rolling Stone,

who responded with coverage of the Kent State aftermath for the next several years. If the

42. John Lombardi, “A Lot of People Were Crying and the Guard Walked Away,” Rolling Stone, June 11,

1970.

43. John Morthland, “Kent Aftermath: Teen Turmoil Poison at B.O.” Rolling Stone, June 25, 1970.

Cohen 20

magazine had demonstrated tacit support for the antiwar movement before Kent, it became

explicit after the tragedy.

Rolling Stone continued to cover clashes between the antiwar movement and the

establishment for the rest of the year. One news story told the tale of Roger Priest, a Navy

enlistee who privately published an antiwar newsletter and was subsequently followed and

secretly investigated by up to twenty-five government agents. The Navy court-martialed Priest

and accused him of sedition, though the charge was later dropped. Ultimately they found him

guilty of disloyalty and disaffection, a conclusion which contributor Derek Shearer finds unfair,

considering the newsletter was written privately and did not involve Priest’s naval work.44

With

further criticism for the American authorities, the cover of the June 11 issue reads “On America

1970: A Pitiful Helpless Giant.” Inside were reports on “scenes” from Ohio, Mississippi, New

York, Connecticut, Washington, Georgia, Florida, and, of course, California. “Jackson State:

1,000 Rounds in 7 Seconds” sorrowfully depicts yet another campus shooting. Students gathered

outside of a Jackson State dormitory when, according to one student, police released “a thousand

rounds in seven seconds, with automatic weapons, all kinds of shotguns, rifles, pistols, handguns,

everything.” Students speculated that Cambodia, anti-ROTC protests and racial tensions between

black students and white citizens all contributed to the tense atmosphere that night.45

Following

this article is a map of the United States accompanied by a chronological timeline of Nixon’s

policy decisions, escalation in Vietnam and antiwar movements in 1970. Stars that dot the map

indicate where major protests and events took place. Captions on the timeline include “January

27-A former Army officer reveals that the Army has 1,000 agents working in 300 offices in U.S.

just keeping tabs on protestors” and “May 6-U.S. and S. Vietnamese troops now numbering

44. Derek Shearer, “His Father Wore an OM Button,” Rolling Stone, June 11, 1970.

45. “Jackson State: 1,000 Rounds in 7 Seconds,” Rolling Stone, Jun 11, 1970.

Cohen 21

50,000 attack Cambodian sanctuaries at six points along a 250 mile border.”46

With a large

portion of the issue dedicated to the Vietnam War, the antiwar movement, and related violence,

Rolling Stone staked out its claim in the tumultuous melee of political voices that engulfed the

media in 1970. By the end of the year it was clear where Rolling Stone stood on the war.

Rolling Stone began to contribute to the political conversation in more ways than one that

year. There is a visible shift in the magazine’s approach to political issues as it began to cover

national elections, antiwar protests, and the progress of the Vietnam War itself. Lee Catterall

covered the 1970 midterm elections for Rolling Stone; applauding the addition of several dovish

Democrats to the House of Representatives but lamenting the reelection of the majority of the

Senate’s hawks.47

Ralph Gleason also feared the hawkish nature of American politicians in 1970.

He called Nixon and Vice President Agnew irrational actors who perverted the Constitution.

They “deny everything and go straight ahead doing what they say there are not doing,” he says.

Echoing his earlier statements, Gleason declared that music and art were the real solutions to the

political chaos of the “illogical” Nixon presidency.48

Rolling Stone’s political coverage evolved even further the following year. It no longer

tempered its political articles with overtones of music and pop culture. In “Johnson Down, Nixon

to Go,” Timothy Crouse sketched a portrait of Allard Lowenstein, an ex-congressman and

political activist who worked to mobilize the youth vote against Nixon in the 1972 election. The

lengthy feature included tables, statistics and photographs tracking Lowenstein’s work.49

Another piece tracing the path to the election, by Chet Flippo, reported from the Young

Americans for Freedom convention, an annual conservative youth conference where students

46. “The Rolling Stone Top 40,” Rolling Stone, June 11, 1970.

47. Lee Catterall, “Peace Movement Election Roundup,” Rolling Stone, December 10, 1970.

48. Ralph Gleason, “Fighting Fire with Fire: An end to Logic,” Rolling Stone, May 28, 1970.

49. Timothy Crouse, “Johnson Down, Nixon to Go,” Rolling Stone, August 5, 1971.

Cohen 22

argued over their preferred candidates, including Nixon, Agnew and Reagan.50

Ralph Gleason

also lent his voice in 1971, changing his tune and writing more purely political pieces. In

“Politicians and the Public Trust” he explained how Johnson and Nixon corrupted the public

trust by lying to the country on numerous occasions and expanding the war in Vietnam. This lack

of trust, Gleason argues, led to apathy among young voters and created “civil dropouts.”51

In a

second article he accuses Nixon of lying and contradicting himself in his “lust for public office.”

Gleason hoped candidate George McGovern would defeat Nixon and change this culture of

power in Washington.52

Kent State also returned to the pages of Rolling Stone in 1971. One year after the

shooting, Joe Eszterhas reported from the campus in Ohio. Dean Kahler, the student who was

paralyzed from his waist down during the shooting, spoke from his wheelchair. “We all have to

come out and work against this war,” he said to a crowd of students and faculty at the memorial.

Eszterhas pointedly notes that the school declined to invite the parents of the four dead students

to the memorial service because the university president did not think it would be “beneficial.”

This transgression was the first of many that Eszterhas uncovers in his article. For example, the

Washington Post refused to run an advertisement commemorating the death of Allison Krause

because it said she was shot by the National Guard (an undisputed fact). Furthermore, the FBI

concluded that the guardsmen fabricated the need to shoot at the students, as they were not

surrounded and their lives were not in danger, and yet there were no repercussions for these

guardsmen or their leadership. Instead, President Nixon blamed the students for the deaths

because they started the protest. A grand jury proceeding against 25 students and faculty

50. Chet Flippo, “Caucus Fights in the New Right,” Rolling Stone, November 11, 1971.

51. Ralph Gleason, “Perspectives: Politicians and the Public Trust,” Rolling Stone, September 30, 1971.

52. Ralph Gleason, “Perspectives: Men who would be President,” Rolling Stone, November 25, 1971.

Cohen 23

members held the victims and not the shooters officially responsible.53

Eszterhas’s article is

essentially an exposé on the aftermath of Kent and an illustration of Rolling Stone’s continual

concentration on the antiwar phenomenon.

1971 was not just a year to look back on previous horrors. The war was still raging in

Vietnam and the new year brought newsworthy events of its own. In April, Senator Fulbright and

the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on the chaos and war crimes that

pervaded Vietnam. John Kerry testified before the committee. He called the U.S. justification for

Vietnam “the height of criminal hypocrisy” and explained how American soldiers had “raped,

cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up

the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies…” The climax of his speech was a poignant question:

“How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”54

Joel Kramer covered similar

hearings for Rolling Stone, which Congressman Ron Dellums organized during his first month in

Congress. Kramer quotes some of the veterans who were shaken as they relived their

nightmarish experiences in Vietnam: “This is the first time I’ve been able to talk about it. I didn’t

tell my wife about it until last night,” said one vet, “I don’t know how I did those things”

lamented another. “Ghoulish confessions” of killing women and children, torturing civilians and

losing their moral frame of reference followed.55

Veterans admitted to the systematic killing of

Vietnamese civilians, which Kramer explains stemmed from endemic racism that the military

drilled into its soldiers from day one. In addition to continuing its negative coverage of the war,

Rolling Stone also continued to support the antiwar movement and its constituents through 1971.

53. Joe Eszterhas, Ohio Honors its Dead, Rolling Stone, June 10, 1971.

54. John Kerry, “Testimony to the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations,” April 23, 1971,

PBS, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/psources/ps_against.html.

55. Joel Kramer, “American War Crimes Confessed,” Rolling Stone, May 27, 1971.

Cohen 24

Sandy Burton’s feature on a man named Harold Willens depicts a retired marine and

entrepreneur who took time out of the office to drum up antiwar support among other

businessmen. Willens called himself a “constructive revolutionary,” promoting the idea that

capitalism and social revolution are compatible. Burton commends Willens’s “sacrifice” of time

and money to create the Business Executives Move for Vietnam Peace, the first antiwar

organization of businessmen.56

The praise continued with a 1972 feature on journalist and antiwar activist I.F. Stone by

Thomas Powers. Powers introduces Stone as a man who strikes the perfect balance between

idealism and skepticism. Stone, he argues, possessed a certain objectivity on the war that other

reporters failed to grasp because he never identified with the U.S. government or supported its

decision to invade Vietnam. In the interview that follows, Stone explains that in America, we

think it is okay to kill the enemy because we dehumanize him. We view our enemies and the

realities of war in the abstract. Stone argues that this is very dangerous and leads us into endless

wars. Powers responds positively to Stone’s intellectual refutation of American foreign policy

and calls him a highly effective antiwar journalist.57

Such unqualified support for I.F. Stone and

his antiwar activism indicates the magazine’s mounting endorsement of the movement and its

leaders.

As Rolling Stone idolized I.F. Stone, it also turned to another kind of political dissident:

Hunter S. Thompson. Though he first wrote for the magazine in 1970, it was in 1972 that his

famous “fear and loathing” columns began. Thompson covered elections, the war and everything

in between with biting wit and no mercy for politicians. After Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic spoke

at a march of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War during the Republican National

56. Sandy Burton, “Harold Willens gets off his Assets,” Rolling Stone, May 27, 1971.

57. Thomas Powers, “The Achievement of I.F. Stone,” Rolling Stone, February 17, 1972.

Cohen 25

Convention, Thompson declared that “if Kovic had been allowed to speak from the convention

hall podium, in front of network TV cameras, Nixon wouldn’t have had the balls to show up and

accept the nomination.”58

In a further display of his distaste for the political status quo

Thompson wrote “after three months in Washington, I felt like I’d spent three months in a mine

shaft underneath Butte, Montana.”59

Thompson continued to supply Rolling Stone with these

fascinating rants until his suicide in 2005.

Following this pattern of bold social commentary, Rolling Stone accused the government

of a secret military buildup in Vietnam in 1972. On information from the Ad Hoc Military

Buildup Committee, which tracked patterns in military movements, Rolling Stone predicted that

a large operation was brewing in North Vietnam. While Nixon peddled his policy of

Vietnamization and claimed that U.S. forces would soon be leaving Vietnam, the evidence was

stacked against him: the majority of war planes at Travis Air Force base were leaving for

Vietnam, two to four thousand marines boarded vessels leaving Okinawa towards Indochina,

new aircraft carriers and warships left San Francisco ports earlier than planned, and marines took

markings off of their fatigues and headed north from bases in South Vietnam. A political cartoon

which accompanied the article depicted Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in a row boat

leading U.S. battleships and aircraft carriers (painted with slogans such as “hit those split-eyes”

and “law and order”) that launched bombers towards Vietnam.60

Rolling Stone took a risk

printing this information. While none of it was classified, Nixon called the press his “worst

enemy” and was more than happy to use the IRS and his personal aids to intimidate journalists

58. Hunter S. Thompson, “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72” in Reporting Vietnam (New

York: 1998), 386.

59. Hunter Thompson, “Fear and Loathing: The Viet From Key Biscayne,” Rolling Stone, March 16, 1972.

60. “The Secret Military Buildups in Vietnam,” Rolling Stone, May 25, 1972.

Cohen 26

who displeased him.61

The article’s byline reads “Our Staff.” The editors were clearly cautious

not to name specific reporters. Such an overt challenge to the President on Vietnam is another

sign that by 1972 the war had fostered significant political coverage in the pages of Rolling

Stone.

Nixon’s decision in 1972 to mine North Vietnamese harbors, like the invasion of

Cambodia two years earlier, sparked outrage in the growing antiwar segment of society. Rolling

Stone reported from Berkeley that the mayor had essentially shut down the city in response to the

war’s escalation. Rioters overturned cop cars, burned flags, and smashed windows. Nearby, in

People’s Park, more peaceful demonstrators planted flowers.62

A similar article details the chaos

that broke out at the University of New Mexico following Nixon’s announcement. The piece is

sympathetic to the protestors, describing how the National Guard bayoneted four students and a

camera man covering the scene. Other nonviolent students were marching and attempting to

block traffic when policemen fired buckshot at them. A third article bemoans the tragic

circumstances of several South Vietnamese students studying abroad in America. Students

known to be antiwar were deported at the request of the South Vietnamese government, which

vowed to punish all antiwar Vietnamese. Tim Findley laments that these students faced “almost

certain imprisonment and possibly a firing squad” upon their return home.63

In another example

of Rolling Stone’s ever more antiwar posture, Charles Perry reviewed Winning Hearts and

Minds, War Poems for the magazine in late 1972. Perry commends the servicemen brave enough

to publish this anthology of antiwar poems from Vietnam veterans. Though many stores at the

61. C. Pach, "“Our Worst Enemy Seems to Be the Press”: Tv News, the Nixon Administration, and U.S.

Troop Withdrawal from Vietnam, 1969–1973," Diplomatic History 34, no. 3 (2010).

62. Patrick Sullivan, “Berkeley: Again: Trashing and People’s Park,” Rolling Stone, June 8, 1972.

63. Tim Findley, “Student vs. State Department: Antiwar Vietnamese faces Deportation,” Rolling Stone,

March 16, 1972.

Cohen 27

time refused to carry the book, Rolling Stone printed several of the poems. These and similar

pieces illustrate Rolling Stone’s ongoing commitment to the antiwar movement in 1972.

That same year Jann Wenner decided to set up a Washington bureau for Rolling Stone.

By 1974 he had Richard Goodwin running the Georgetown office. Goodwin had been a law clerk

for Justice Felix Frankfurter and worked for both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.64

He

was a political heavyweight in Washington, just what Wenner wanted to represent his magazine

on the east coast. With a new bureau in the nation’s capital, the magazine reached a new level of

antiwar and political reportage during this year. Not only did Rolling Stone accuse the

government of a secret build up, it also took a stand on electoral politics. In a piece titled “We

Gotta Get Rid of Nixon,” Ralph Gleason outlines how Nixon’s “imperial war” had gone over the

edge with the mining of Haiphong harbor in North Vietnam. Gleason compared Nixon’s

propaganda machine to George Orwell’s 1984 and feared what Nixon might do if North Vietnam

won the war. The United States had to get Nixon out of office “before he kill[ed] us all.”65

Continuing this trend, a book review later in the year praised David Landau’s Kissinger: The

Uses of Power. Reviewer Thomas Powers described the book as a nuanced look at Henry

Kissinger and his inability to end the war in Vietnam. Powers states, “Landau’s relentless

analysis of Kissinger’s mind convinces you that sometimes reason is not enough, that what is

needed is simply an act of moral will, a decision to end it, and damn the details. And that,

clearly, is the one thing Richard Nixon would never do.”66

President Nixon’s policy decisions in

Vietnam pushed Rolling Stone to expand its political coverage. This interest in the 1972 election

64. Ibid., 194.

65. Ralph Gleason, “We Gotta Get Rid of Nixon,” Rolling Stone, June 8, 1972.

66. Thomas Powers, “Books: Kissinger: The Uses of Power Review,” Rolling Stone, December 21, 1972.

Cohen 28

and the hope for Richard Nixon’s defeat would later morph into extensive coverage of elections,

and even political endorsements.

“McGovern’s election is the only certain way…to end the war in Vietnam,” reads a

headline from June 1972. This was Rolling Stone’s first official endorsement, and it came

directly from Jann Wenner. He writes, “Never in recent memory has the confluence of social

and political issues been so dramatic as in the election year of 1972. The War in Vietnam has

become the main symbol, and behind it is a whole set of values that can create and sustain such

terror.” What follows is an enthusiastic commendation of George McGovern’s presidential bid,

listing the many reforms he would implement as president.67

It is clear from his language that

Wenner chose to support McGovern primarily because of his antiwar platform. By 1972 the

imbroglio in Vietnam and its reverberations at home impelled Rolling Stone to formally endorse

a peace candidate and become directly involved in American politics.

Pinning their hopes on George McGovern, the editors and writers at Rolling Stone were

gravely disappointed with the result of the 1972 election. Ralph Gleason predicted that in his

second term Nixon would only continue the “wholesale slaughter and devastation” in Vietnam.68

Timothy Crouse wrote a heartfelt piece on McGovern’s last days on the campaign trail,

describing how the press was moved to tears when they realized he had lost.69

In a six-page

feature on Nixon’s inauguration titled “The Inaugural: Hail to the Chief, Bury the Dead,” Joe

Eszterhas contrasted Nixon’s victorious rhetoric with other events of the week: the murder of

67. Jann Wenner, Endorsement of McGovern, Rolling Stone, June 8, 1972.

68. Ralph Gleason, “Perspectives: What are We to Do About Nixon?” Rolling Stone, February 1, 1973.

69. Timothy Crouse, “Reliable Sources: The Last days of McGovern’s Campaign,” Rolling Stone,

December 7, 1972.

Cohen 29

seven people in Washington, D.C., a hostage crisis in New York and the year’s heaviest bombing

raid in North Vietnam.70

As news of the inauguration faded, Rolling Stone’s criticism of Nixon and his policy in

Vietnam did not. A host of articles from 1973 illustrate the magazine’s renewed condemnation of

the war. “And the War Goes On” reports that despite Congress’s decision to cut off funds for the

bombing of Southeast Asia, Nixon decided to continue bombing Cambodia, affirming “it’s the

right policy.”71

Another piece describes the sad story of a Vietnam veteran who injured his eye

on a search and destroy mission in 1968. The army discharged him after the injury, though

doctors gave him a good prognosis. Due to his early discharge, the Veterans Administration

refused to help the wounded veteran obtain medical treatment and he eventually lost the eye.72

Similarly, David Harris’s feature “Ask a Marine” profiles paraplegic veteran Ron Kovic, one

year before he penned Born on the Fourth of July and sixteen years before the Oliver Stone

biopic of the same name. The story features several full-page photographs of Ron, one standing

proud in his Marine uniform, another in his wheelchair and sporting long hair. In the interview,

Kovic recounts his journey from a patriotic high school wrestler to an antiwar organizer for

Vietnam Veterans Against the War. He describes his harrowing experiences in the jungles of

Vietnam and the rat-infested VA hospitals he came home to after he was shot and paralyzed in

1968. Harris reveres Kovic and his decision to tell the truth about Vietnam: “He manned tables

and spoke at high schools…He told them how he’d sung about the ‘Halls of Montezuma’ and the

‘Shores of Tripoli’ and how it was a lie.” Several book reviews from the year also focused on the

plight of wounded veterans and one recalled the Kent State tragedy. Michael Rogers calls The

Truth About Kent State an “excellent sourcebook.” Author Peter Davies argues that several of the

70. Joe Eszterhas, “The Inaugural: Hail to the Chief, Bury the Dead,” Rolling Stone, March 1, 1973.

71. “And the War Goes On,” Rolling Stone, June 7, 1973.

72. “VA Won’t Help; Vet Loses Eye,” Rolling Stone, April 26, 1973.

Cohen 30

guardsmen planned ahead of time to shoot students that day and that after the incident they met

and fabricated a defense story. Rogers applauds Davies, who calls Kent State and the ensuing

investigation “so blatant a transgression that it is difficult to ignore.”73

War was not the only political topic Rolling Stone covered in 1973. In “Defending an

Essential Freedom,” Ralph Gleason decries Nixon’s anti-media policies, warning that freedom of

speech and the press were decreasing in America.74

No one was more central to the war between

Nixon and the media in 1973 than Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg had leaked the Pentagon Papers in

1970, revealing to Americans for the first time some of the most egregious lies and policy

failures from the war in Vietnam. The Nixon administration did everything in its power to

prevent further publication of the papers. The Supreme Court decided in 1971 that the New York

Times and other newspapers had the right to publish the Pentagon Papers, but Ellsberg himself

was still guilty of revealing government secrets. Nixon and his advisors denounced Ellsberg and

made every effort to put him behind bars. Kissinger even labeled Ellsberg “the most dangerous

man in America.”75

However, as an article from Rolling Stone indicates, the judge dismissed his

trial, citing obstruction of justice and corruption on the end of the government which included

illegal wiretaps, the robbery of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office and a private meeting between

Nixon and the judge himself. The trial made the White House look “like a gathering place of

burglars, buggers and other tawdry corrupticians,” the magazine indicates. Thanks to Ellsberg

“the government was twice found guilty.”76

The praise continued later in the year when Rolling

Stone published Jann Wenner’s twenty-eight page, unedited interview with him. Wenner blamed

73. Michael Rogers, “Kent State Won’t Fade Away,” Rolling Stone, October 25, 1973.

74. Ralph Gleason, “Perspectives: Defending an Essential Freedom,” Rolling Stone, March 1, 1973.

75. The Most Dangerous Man in America, DVD, directed by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith (2009; San

Francisco, CA: Independent Television Service, 2009).

76. “Daniel Ellsberg & the Price of Justice,” Rolling Stone, June 7, 1973.

Cohen 31

Nixon for demonizing Ellsberg, and portrayed him “remarkably like a Greek god” according to

Anson.77

In the interview, Ellsberg condemns Henry Kissinger, expresses horror at continuation

of war in Vietnam, and gives his two cents on Watergate.78

Watergate was, of course, the other great scandal of 1973. Though the story of Nixon’s

“plumbers” and their dirty tricks broke in 1972, it was not until the following year that the

Senate’s investigation of the matter followed the trail right to Nixon himself. In “Nixon’s

Heartbreak Kid: From Wooster to Watergate,” Terrence Sheridan tells the story of White House

Counsel John Dean, whose testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee directly

implicated the President.79

Later that year, Richard Goodwin, former assistant and speechwriter

for John F. Kennedy, wrote a piece called “The Abuse of Power and the Constitutional Remedy:

The Obligation of Congress to Impeach the President.” Goodwin argues that Nixon used his

power “to undermine justice, liberty and the general welfare.” He broke the laws of the

Constitution and, according to Goodwin, impeachment was the only way Congress could combat

such a dangerous expansion of presidential power.80

Dozens of similar articles appeared over the

next three years, investigating every aspect of Watergate from Woodward and Bernstein’s initial

stories on the break in to Nixon’s defense lawyers. Rolling Stone’s extensive treatment of

Watergate shows the magazine further expanding its political reportage from Vietnam to new

political issues.

By 1974 this political coverage had transformed into a special “Politics” section within

the magazine. That year Rolling Stone covered everything from the National Caucus of Labor

77. “Daniel Ellsberg & the Price of Justice,”191.

78. Jann Wenner, “Dan Ellsberg: The Rolling Stone Interview,” Rolling Stone, November 8 and December

6, 1973.

79. Terrence Sheridan, “Nixon’s Heartbreak Kid: From Wooster to Watergate,” Rolling Stone, June 21,

1973.

80. Richard N. Goodwin, “The Abuse of Power and the Constitutional Remedy: The Obligation of

Congress to Impeach the President,” Rolling Stone, December 20, 1973.

Cohen 32

Committee’s new platform to the strange politics of New Mexico’s governor George C.

Wallace.81

The magazine continued to criticize President Nixon’s anti-media practices, arguing

that Nixon’s response to reporters he disfavored was to exclude them from events such as his trip

to China, deny them interviews and completely ignore them at press conferences.82

Kissinger,

too, was a popular target. In “The Case Against Kissinger” John D. Marks claims that while the

media was quick to attack Nixon on Vietnam and Watergate, Henry Kissinger was continually

admired. Kissinger cultivated relationships with the press and allowed reporters to call him

Henry. He kept them happy and therefore passive. Marks, on the other hand, details Kissinger’s

involvement in Watergate and how he quickly tried to cover it up.83

Though articles such as

these show Rolling Stone moving towards diverse political coverage, their choice of targets

implies that the war was never too far from the editors’ minds. Almost every article on Nixon

mentioned his escalation in Vietnam or his bombing of Cambodia, and most of the reports on

Kissinger regarded him as the architect of the war.

Although by 1974 American combat troops had left Vietnam, Rolling Stone’s coverage of

the war was not over. “The Prisons of War” by Joe Eszterhas was a twenty-one page story,

spanning two issues, about GI Rick Springman who came home after spending over two years as

a prisoner of the Viet Cong. Springman tells a fascinating story of American B-52 bomber raids

over his camp and the napalm-covered fields he was forced to march through. He insightfully

points out that he and his fellow prisoners learned what it was like to be invaded and attacked by

the American military. Springman says all he wanted to do after his release was spend time with

81. Al Schwartz, “Strange New Rumblings on the Left,” Rolling Stone, January 17, 1973; Joe Klein, “The

Ministry of George C. Wallace,” Rolling Stone, October 24, 1973.

82. James Morgan, “The President Answers His Critics,” Rolling Stone, July 4, 1973.

83. John D. Marks, “The Case against Kissinger,” Rolling Stone, August 1, 1973.

Cohen 33

his family and reveal to others the realities of war and the message of peace.84

Later that year

Rolling Stone showcased another peacemaker, Jane Fonda. Fonda wrote a journal-style piece,

complete with photographs, narrating her travels through North Vietnam after the U.S.

withdrawal. She describes bombed-out hospitals, flooded wreckage, and “dead earth.” Despite

this, despite the three to six million tons of unexploded mines left in Vietnam after the

Americans left, there was very little anti-American sentiment in North Vietnam. Concluding her

story, Fonda says the people of Vietnam were “rebuilding” and hoping for a new and better

life.85

The conclusion of the war itself, however, did not come until 1975. That year, as South

Vietnam faltered, Rolling Stone contributors feared the worst: that America might join the war

again. Tom Hayden, founder of SDS, wrote an article in February titled “Kissinger’s Indochina

Obsession: Will He Bomb Again?” Hayden reminds America that Kissinger lied about his desire

for peace many times during the war, using it as an election tactic for Nixon. He would promise

peace when elections were close and escalate again after Nixon was safe. Furthermore, Hayden

argues, Kissinger expressed disapproval of the American peace agreement with Vietnam and

could seek to change its terms once again.86

Hayden’s worries were extinguished in April when

Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese without American interference. Hunter Thompson, writing

from the Rolling Stone Global Affairs desk in Saigon, described chaos in the capital and the

evacuation plan for American citizens, stating “a rocket could hit at any moment.”87

The last

84. Joe Eszterhas, “The Prisons of War,” Rolling Stone, March 28 and April 11, 1974.

85. Jane Fonda, “A Vietnam Journal: Rebirth of a Nation,” Rolling Stone, July 4, 1974.

86. Tom Hayden, “Kissinger’s Indochina Obsession: Will He Bomb Again?” Rolling Stone, February 27,

1975.

87. Hunter S. Thompson, “Interdicted Dispatch from the Global Affairs Desk,” Rolling Stone, May 22,

1975.

Cohen 34

remaining Americans in Saigon were successfully airlifted from the city on April 30 and the

foreign intervention in Vietnam finally came to a close.

Looking back on the war later in the year, Rolling Stone published “Images of War: An

Oral History of Vietnam.” The photo essay includes pictures and short descriptions displaying

how ambassadors, soldiers and journalists remembered Vietnam. One GI remembered teaching

Vietnamese children how to shoot guns and resist Viet Cong infiltration. A Naval lieutenant

writes “Vietnam looked like the surface of the moon.” The photographs show a young

Vietnamese girl holding a gun, a soldier smoking a joint, a panoramic view of Vietnam from a

helicopter with a machine gun pointing out at the pristine countryside. 88

The remembrance of

Vietnam was a difficult issue for Americans after the war. Many in the government wanted to

wash their hands of the horrific conflict and erase it from national memory. An article on draft

dodgers and deserters after the war describes President Ford’s clemency program as a way to

“insure Vietnam’s slide into the sub-basement of the American consciousness.”89

Rolling Stone encouraged its readers not to forget the war but to learn from it. In an

article simply called “Peace,” Tom Hayden says “We have lost not only a war, we have lost the

entire foreign policy of the last 30 years. Now we must find another policy and in that ordeal find

ourselves.” Hayden argues that the antiwar movement stopped the draft, helped end the war, and

changed the policies of the Democratic Party. He believed the United States was on the verge of

a fundamental change, moving towards “humanism” in foreign policy and he urged Americans to

keep the consciousness of the peace movement alive.90

An interview with Seymour Hersh again

pushed readers to remember the war. It tells the exhausting story of how Hersh searched for

88. “Images of War: An Oral History of Vietnam,” Rolling Stone, June 19, 1975.

89. Thomas Kent, “In and Out of the Clemency Machine: A Deserter’s Quick and Easy Ride Home,”

Rolling Stone, January 30, 1975.

90. Tom Hayden, “Peace,” Rolling Stone, May 22, 1975.

Cohen 35

Lieutenant William Calley Jr. in his first attempts to break the My Lai story. In the article Joe

Eszterhas calls Hersh an “America folk hero” and lauds not only his My Lai coverage, but also

his other investigative reports breaking the secret bombing of Cambodia, the CIA’s domestic spy

operations and America’s involvement in the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile.91

In addition to Hersh’s breakthrough reporting and the memory of Vietnam, Rolling Stone

articles from 1975 focused greatly on domestic and foreign politics. “Revolution of the Red

Carnation” depicts the coup in Portugal and the ensuing violence.92

Another piece profiles the

youngest new Congressman, twenty-six year-old Tom Downey from New York, and his unlikely

journey to Washington.93

A long expose by Jules Witcover explains that the National Governors

Conference was nothing more than a “political tribal ritual” including cruises, plenty of alcohol,

and enough food “to choke a small army.” The governors apparently held few substantial

discussions and had special interest groups, primarily the American oil lobby, foot the bill.94

Other articles from the year include an analysis of the 1974 midterm elections, a report from the

House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, and a piece on President Ford’s address

to the nation. Clearly, Rolling Stone accorded a considerable amount of space to political articles

in 1975. The following year, Jann Wenner went as far as to throw a star-studded party for Jimmy

Carter’s campaign staff. He then hired several reporters from the Village Voice to cover the 1976

election for Rolling Stone.95

Politics had made it into the magazine, and it was there to stay.

91. Joe Eszterhas, “The Rolling Stone Interview: Seymour Hersh,” Rolling Stone, April 10, 1975.

92. “Revolution of the Red Carnation,” Rolling Stone, November 20, 1975.

93. Edward Zuckerman, “The Peachfuzz Congressman from the Empire State,” Rolling Stone, November 6,

1975.

94. Jules Witcover, “Governors Meet: It’s Oil’s Treat,” Rolling Stone, July 31, 1975.

95. Draper, Rolling Stone Magazine : The Uncensored History.243-313.

Cohen 36

Conclusion

Since the seventies, Rolling Stone has consistently covered politics as thoroughly as

music or popular culture. From modest beginnings—short reports on the musical aspect of

antiwar demonstrations—to comprehensive coverage of Watergate, the federal government, and

foreign policy, the magazine’s political reportage expanded and evolved over the course of the

Vietnam War. Seminal events such as Bloody Thursday and the Kent State tragedy drove the

magazine to intensify its coverage of the war in Vietnam. Because the war and its backlash were

just one part of the larger political puzzle, coverage of these incidents initiated coverage of the

president, his advisors, and eventually the entire political system in America. The magazine’s

rising antiwar views led to harsh critiques of Vietnam’s principle creators: Johnson, Nixon and

Kissinger. From here Rolling Stone expanded to cover other politicians and activists. From 1972

forward the magazine diversified its political coverage even further, covering current events

around the world. By the end of the war, political features, interviews and exposes had become a

permanent fixture of the magazine.

If not for Vietnam and the impassioned antiwar movement, Rolling Stone might still be

an exclusively musical review. Instead, its reporting has led to the dismissal of a four-star

general, revealed how the CIA used reporters to spy on foreign governments, triggered a U.S.

army investigation of war crimes in Afghanistan and, quite recently, presented evidence that the

army used “psychological operations” in an attempt to coerce U.S. senators and congressmen

into providing increased funds for the war in Afghanistan. (According to the article, federal law

prohibits the use such propaganda against American citizens).96

With these whistle-blowing

96. Daniel Strauss, “Army Begins Investigation, Court Martial after Rolling Stone Article,” The Hill,

March 28, 2011, http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/152253-us-army-begins-investigation-court-

martial-after-rolling-stone-article; Michael Hastings, “Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S.

Senators,” Rolling Stone, February 3, 2011.

Cohen 37

reports, Rolling Stone proves that non-traditional media, by exposing such stories to the public,

can affect the decisions of America’s political and military policymakers. In a time when the

twenty-four hour news cycle has essentially eliminated investigative reporting and when the

media relies on official government sources for the majority of its information, such a realization

may prove vital to the life of journalism.

Cohen 38

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