NBC Newsman Didn't Get Out Enough

No Gays In Brokaw History

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Former NBC newsman Tom Brokaw’s new book, BOOM! Voices of the Sixties: Personal Reflections on the ’60s and Today, goes on sale tomorrow. A reflection on, well, the 1960’s, Brokaw attempts to give a personal view into America’s tumultuous past. And, judging from the NY Times review, Brokaw didn’t come across any queers in his travels.

Mr. Brokaw’s own history is also part of his panorama. He intersperses autobiographical anecdotes sparingly and chooses them well. He and his wife, Meredith, were married in 1962; girdles were part of her wedding trousseau, and they received five cigarette lighters as presents. Five years later he was in San Francisco being asked, “Mister, do you know what’s going on over on Haight Street?” and meeting a young woman who claimed to have slept with all of the Byrds.

“My ambitions were counter to the counterculture,” says Mr. Brokaw, who was born in 1940, had a family and an established career by 1968 and did not experience the full impact of the baby boom in his personal life. (The emergence of gay culture is notably absent from this book’s panorama.)

Poor Tom Brokaw: can you imagine a life lived without getting down with the gays. Sad…

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