JOHNSON: There was a horrible piece I wrote in 1968 praising the student revolution. I'd gone to Paris to cover the Vietnam talks and then in the middle of this the students exploded, for no reason at all, and this became the story. Everyone forgot about Vietnam. It was very exciting, of course, and I fell for it and wrote a piece, which was a kind of imitation of The Communist Manifesto saying that a new specter was haunting Europe, a specter of students. It went down very well—that wasn't the problem. I realized I'd made a huge error of judgment when, in the same week, no less than four very rich men congratulated me on it.