Historical Meet-Ups

William Bennett
Conservative icon, U.S. drug czar

meets

Janis Joplin
Hippie icon, U.S. drug casualty

It was the summer of love, 1967. Bill Bennett was a swingin’, Vietnam War-protesting graduate student in philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin—a far cry from the moralizing Reagan Administration Secretary of Education he would become. Known to his frat brothers as “Ram” (after a legendary incident in which he battered down a locked door with his head to get at an angry girlfriend), the future author of The Book of Virtues played electric guitar in a garage band called Plato and the Guardians. It was that outlaw rock ‘n’ roll rep that convinced mutual friends to set him up on a blind date with an up-and-coming blues wailer from Port Arthur, Texas named Janis Joplin. After enjoying some barbecue, the pair spent the rest of their evening together staring up at the Texas sky, talking, and drinking beer. Alas, the couple lacked a certain chemistry. Afterwards, Bennett’s brother Bob asked him how it went. “Let me put it this way,” Bennett replied. “We were both disappointed.” In subsequent interviews, Bill Bennett was even more dismissive of his brush with rock royalty. “That date lasted two hours, and I’ve spent 200 hours talking about it,” he groused.