Comments by "Itinerant Patriot" (@itinerantpatriot1196) on "The Cold War"
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I was just a tyke but the assassination is one of my earliest memories. My sister and I wondered why our afternoon television shows weren't on. Our Mom explained it to us in a simple way and we felt sad because she told us he had two children right around our age. The assassination did change the way people got their news, accelerating a process that was already underway. Cronkite talked about how radio and newspaper reporters looked down their noses at the medium in the early days. The nightly news didn't even get a half hour slot initially. As for the connection between the assassination and Beatlemania, that is a reach. Kids all across Europe were already going crazy and mass hysteria has a way of being contagious. Elvis really paved the way for the Beatles. He was the first one to really get the teenage girls screaming and the teenage boys to dress like him and take up the guitar. There would have been no Beatles if there hadn't been an Elvis, a white guy who could give black rhythm and blues and rockabilly crossover appeal.
As for that Huntley Brinkley newscast, Ed Sullivan was livid when they ran video footage of the band. He was under the impression he had exclusive rights to any TV coverage and he felt NBC scooped him in an unethical manner bordering on infringement. He was especially irked about what the reporters had to say about the Beatles. Edwin Newman, the reporter responsible for the piece, slammed them, saying stuff like: "It's anybody's guess why the Beatles emerged from cellar nightclubs to national prominence" and "One reason for the Beatles popularity could be that it is almost impossible to hear them. The London times has carried the sobering report that the Beatles may bring the Mersey Sound to the United States, to which it may be rejoined, show us no Mersey". He then went on to say: "Robert Percival, an artist, proposes to capture the Mersey Sound on canvass, Percival, mercifully, is deaf." Huntley piled on, closing the news broadcast with: "So anyone looking for some mute and glorious Milton will just have to keep on looking."
Not exactly the kind of press Sullivan was hoping the band would receive prior to his upcoming show. Fortunately for Ed, it came from Huntley and Brinkley. If Cronkite had slammed em it would have been a bigger story and who knows, Nixon may have even put them on his enemies list sooner than he did. At a minimum, Hoover's antennae would have been raised and he may have done a deep dive into their Hamburg past and the Bohemian friends they made along the way. He was the protector of all that was good and righteous after all, that is when he wasn't cross dressing for Clyde. Ah, the good old days. The don't make em like J. Edgar anymore.
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@bobtaylor170 They certainly helped cheer the country up. My point was even if the assassination hadn't taken place the Beatles still would have been a huge hit. In that sense, one thing had nothing to do with the other. They were coming and as you would know better than I would, the music industry, especially in America was ready for the next big thing. That's where I disagree with the video. Motown was great, I grew up listening to it in Detroit, but in many ways it was regional. The Beatles actually helped Motown increase in popularity since they were covering their songs. The Beatles loved Motown. Johnny Cash was leaning country by that time. He still had crossover hits but the rockabilly thing had run its course by 64. It's My Party and My Boyfriend's Back weren't exactly rock standards. I don't know, maybe you were a Beach Boy fan but I never was. Groups like them, Jan and Dean and the like were also niche.
Like I say, you were there. The Beatles hit like a tsunami. The country was still grief stricken but I think the reaction to the Beatles was still going to be just as big. That was the point I was making. You're a couple years older than me so I will defer but you gotta admit, they were unlike anything that came before them and they gave rock music the kick in the ass it needed. There hadn't been anything like them since Elvis and by that time Elvis had let the Colonel take him down the movie route, where he played Elvis over, and over, and over again. That's too bad. Elvis always wanted to be a serious actor, he just never got the chance after his stint in the Army.
That's an interesting fact about the Beatles and the airport. I'd never heard that before. They were not the clean-cut type Brian tried to make them out to be that's for sure. Jimmy Nichol, the guy who sat in for Ringo for a bit of their world tour said no one could out drink or out ** the Beatles, and he had worked with a lot of bands.
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Well done. But as far as Von Braun denying his Nazi ties, he could have signed a thousand documents and that wouldn't have changed the fact that at least 20,000 slave laborers died building his rockets for his Fuhrer. Paperclip was an ethically repugnant program but in the world of the way things are the United States knew the Soviets would snatch up any German scientists they couldn't get to first and Soviet rockets replacing German rockets as a threat to national security was something the Allies were going to do everything in their power to prevent.
As far Sputnik is concerned, from what I have read Khrushchev wasn't all that keen on the idea. He got talked into it after being convinced it wouldn't have a negative effect on long-range rocket development which he knew he had to have because bombers cost too much. After he saw the overreaction freak out by the American public, spurred on by one Lyndon Baines Johnson, he got fully on board with the space race. Ike wasn't worried because he knew the Sputnik gap like the later missile gap was a bunch of BS but he did a piss-poor job of communicating that to his fellow citizens who saw death from above. Korolev was a sharp cookie and when he died the program met the same fate as every other Soviet program after the pioneer died or was pushed out, a lesser functionary took over and the race was over.
As a child of Apollo I owed a debt to men like Korolev and Von Braun who allowed me and billions of other people to witness our first step on another planetary body, but a lot of people died in the effort, some voluntarily, some at the end of a gun. Those were exciting times though. We don't dream big dreams anymore, and when civilizations stop dreaming big dreams, they start to decline. That has been true throughout the ages, and we will not be the exception. But that little plaque on the Moon will be there long after are kicked off this rock. That's kinda cool. I wonder if another civilization who dreamed bigger dreams will find it and wonder what the hell happened to the race that planted it? Ce La Vie.
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