REINSTATE KEITH OLBERMANN NOW!!!

On Friday, MSNBC-TV President Phil Griffin stated that popular prime time TV news commentator KEITH OLBERMANN was being put on immediate indefinite suspension without pay for having made monetary political contributions to three separate Democratic Party candidates in the recent midterm elections. This action was taken because Olbermann had made these donations without having first secured permission from Griffin. According to MSNBC and NBC network policy, making such contributions without first seeking permission from the president of the network is a violation of that policy.

As a progressive who places high value in free speech and individual participation in our political system, I find Griffin's policy and action to be an egregiously offensive and un-American violation of Keith Olbermann's basic civil rights! As such, I am calling on you and all other fair-minded individuals to barrage Phil Griffin and Jeff Zucker, the CEO of his parent company, NBC-TV, with phone calls, faxes, cards, and/or letters protesting this dastardly policy and unnecessarily extreme action. Further, I ask you to join me in a BOYCOTT of these two networks along the lines I describe in a protest statement/letter I urge you to make/send found below.

The addresses and phone numbers for both of these men are listed here, followed by what I recommend your statement or letter should contain:

Phil Griffin
President, MSNBC
One MSNBC Plaza
Secaucus, New Jersey 07094-2419
Phone: 201-583-5000
Fax: 201-583-5819

Jeff Zucker
CEO & President of NBC Universal, General Electric
3135 Easton Turnpike
Fairfield, Connecticut 06828-0001
Phone: 203-373-2211
Fax: 203-373-3131



Dear Messrs. Griffin and Zucker:

I am writing (calling) to let you know I neither agree with nor approve of your policy banning television hosts for your networks from making donations to political candidates without first securing YOUR permission to do so!

I am voicing my tremendous displeasure with your policy and the fact that it has resulted in the indefinite suspension without pay for Keith Olbermann. I strongly urge you to REINSTATE KEITH OLBERMANN WITH FULL BACK PAY IMMEDIATELY AND END THIS VERY UN-AMERICAN POLICY AT ONCE!

This communication is to inform you that I am BOYCOTTING Morning Joe, The Daily Rundown, Jansing & Co., Andrea Mitchell Reports, MSNBC News Live, News Nation, Hardball with Chris Matthews, MEET THE PRESS, any show or substitute host you place in Keith Olbermann's M-F 8 PM Eastern time slot, as well as numerous other NBC and MSNBC shows, until you end this ridiculously restrictive policy and REINSTATE KEITH OLBERMANN WITH FULL BACK PAY! Until such action is taken, I will tune in to CNN, PBS or other cable or network programming instead of MSNBC and NBC. To show you I mean business, Messrs. Griffin and Zucker, I am not only urging all of my friends and relatives to follow this boycott, too, but I am also forwarding a copy of this letter to several of your prominent sponsors as well. Perhaps once GEICO, Progressive Insurance, CISCO, Bank of America, VISA, Joseph A. Bank, Travelers Insurance, Vonage, Gentlemen's Warehouse, and a few more of your advertisers find out that their ads aren't being watched on your networks, maybe THEN you will get the message and honor this demand!

I base my decision to engage in this boycott on the following considerations:

1). Your policy is a fundamental violation of your employees' civil rights and directly suppresses the exercise of their right to free speech.

2). Your competitor, Fox News, allows their employees to not only make political contributions themselves, but also permitss them to openly advocate the election of specific conservative and Republican candidates by name. In addition to that, they even allow said candidates to solicit contributions ON THE AIR!

3). Mr. Olbermann made his contributions privately, without fanfare, and in no way publicly tied them to your networks.

4). Mr. Olbermann has consistently provided intelligent and informative programming, and has engaged in numerous admirable relief efforts, notably Haiti earthquake relief and the setting up of free clinics across the country for uninsured and poverty-stricken individuals in need of health care. As such, he does not deserve the shoddy treatment you have subjected him to!

5). It was Mr. Olbermann's efforts, far more so than any efforts undertaken by either of you, which have propelled MSNBC beyond CNN into the second strongest prime time ratings for a cable news network. Such an accomplishment should be lauded and rewarded rather than punished for a mere technical violation!

Catch my drift? REINSTATE KEITH OLBERMANN NOW, or the boycott will begin!

MOST sincerely,

(your name and city and state)

cc:
GEICO Insurance
Vonage
CISCO
Progressive Insurance
Jseph A. Bank
Bank of America
Travelers Insurance
VISA
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Regardless of whether this was merely the result of a personality conflict between Keith Olbermann and Phil Griffin, or a minor technical violation of an unreasonable and unjust corporate policy, the suspension without pay action is unjust and way over the top. As such, we must take strong action against it and voice our disapproval. For, in reality, this is just another in a long line of examples of the exercising of executive arrogance and of conservative corporate forces to discredit and silence prominent liberal and progressive spokespersons.

That is why I am urging you and others you know to express your strong opposition to this action TODAY and to join me in making these contacts, boycotting these network shows, and forcefully making the demand: REINSTATE KEITH OLBERMANN NOW!!!

WHAT IF...?

"Many great ideas go unexecuted, and many great executioners are without ideas. One without the other is worthless."
- Tim Blixseth -

"God is not looking for alms. God is looking for action."
- Bono -

"Well done is better than well said."
- Benjamin Franklin -


We are often a nation of complacent and sometimes cowardly people. Many times we look the other way or say or do nothing as others around us engage in actions or practices harmful, or not beneficial to, the common good. We allow our elected officials to legislate, and our business community to forge ahead unchallenged against our best interests, and many times we simply take it, without so much as a whimper. Have you ever stopped to consider the cost of such complacency? Or thought about what would have happened had other courageous and visionary -people before us had been as complacent as we are today? Have you ever thought, for example...

What if Rosa Parks had meekly submitted to that irate Alabama bus driver's demand that she move to the rear of the bus to make room for white passengers up front? You know the answer: blacks and all other persons of color would still ne regarded and treated as second-class citizens, and would never be afforded the simple dignity every human being is entitled to.

What if Thomas Jefferson and our other Founding Fathers had complacently stayed on their plantations or in their shops and businesses instead of meeting to plan for independence by crafting its unprecedented declaration? The action they took was at great personal risk and could have cost them their lives. The United States would still be a colony, and the most democratic form of government ever devised, with its emphasis on individual freedoms, would never have come into being.

What if President Lyndon B. Johnson had not pushed for civil rights legislation or for expanded social programs like the War on Poverty or Medicare? He knew as he pressed for these things that doing so would cost his Democratic Party votes for years to come, especially in the South. To his credit, though, he rejected political expediency and fought for and got these passed anyway. The result? Institutionalized racism was overturned; millions of poor were lifted out of poverty; and millions of elderly were able to lead less worrisome and more comfortable lives.

What if Ralph Nader had simply graduated law school, kept quiet, and opted to become another play-it-safe corporate lawyer? From 1959, when he published "The Safe Car You Can't Get" in The Nation, through his well-known 1965 study called "Unsafe At Any Speed," to numerous other industry and environmental exposes over the decades, this man acted as a whistle-blower on negligent American industry for our safety and benefit. Alkong the way, he has become stigmatized by corporate America as a kook and opportunist, when in actuality, he has spotlighted negligent businesses and polluters and caused them to produce safer and cleaner products. Though I still blame him for George W. Bush becoming President, I nonetheless admire his guts and conscientiousness in looking out for consumers.

What if Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy had merely golfed their termns away instead of developing NASA and channeling our science and industry toward space exploration and a manned moon landing ahead of the Russians? Both gambled with possible failure and risked political criticism for making huge expenditures on untried projects without any guarantee of success. But the positive end results of their actions benefitted us in numerous ways: we eventually won the Cold War, there was rapid growth of computer technology, vast improvements in electronics and communications technologies, new discoveries in medicine and even agriculture were all spawned due to their efforts.

What if President Franklin D. Roosevelt had let polio defeat him? Or had become the benign, unadventurous President many in his upper class background had preferred he become? The answer to this is way too easy: there would be no time-and-a-half overtime pay, no unemployment compensation, no labor unions, perhaps no middle class (or a far more microscopic one), no Social Security for retirement, no protection for your bank (and therefore none for your deposits), and no regulation of the stock market.
The many good benefits FDR pushed for and attained for this nation are so vast and important to our quality of life that living without them would be incomprehensible!

What if the 1860 Republican Party and President Abraham Lincoln had just played it politically safe and had struck another in a series of meaningless compromises on slavery with southern politicians just as his predecessors had done? Yes, his life would have undoubtedly been spared, and yes, there would have been no Civil War, but slavery would still exist and the universal freedom and dignity of persons of color would never have been achieved in this country. The courage and justice practiced by Lincoln and his party helped make this nation truly legally become a "land of the free".

What if President Theodore Roosevelt had taken the easy way out and let the huge trusts and corporate bankers of his day have their way completely unchallenged as they had for many years? Simple: the concept of government taking a regulatory role over big business to protect small business and average people from the excesses of concentrated capital would never have come into being. Roosevelt instituted the federal government as a protective buffer between big business and everyone else. He also helped establish regulation over food and drug products to ensure public safety. Our National Parks and provisions against pollution were direct results of Roosevelt's influence, and the beneficial results of his activism remain to this day.
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In contrast to many of today's visionless, play-it-safe conservative Republicans and Blue Dog conservative Democrats, the persons featured above were not lazy defenders of the status quo. They refused to accept unjust or backward-looking conditions as they were and strode to change them by taking individual action. They did so at great risk politically, physically, and economically. They acted toward fulfilling a more just and improved society for all. The same cannot, and will not, ever be said of mediocre, corrupted, and self-centered politicians like Sarah Palin, Mitch McConnell, or Ben Nelson, or of egomanaical demagogues like Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck.

We see the positive results of the actions of those pioneers pictured above all around us, every day. We know the "what if" of had they never acted. Ours would be a far bleaker and uncomfortable world had they not shown the courage to move as they did. This should serve as inspiration and impetus for all of us to leave our comfort zones once every so often to make a courageous stand for the benefit of others on occasion!

LEADERSHIP WE COULD USE TODAY!

"TAX THE VERY WEALTHY TO MAKE EVERYONE HEALTHY!"
- VIGILANTE, SOZADEE, CA -


It was a kinder, gentler, and, in many ways, a much nobler time. People were far more civil back then, as they had shared a unique and almost universal commonality. His country had just left a terrible economic catastrophe which had seen millions go hungry and without work. It had also been involved in a horrifically bloody and costly war. Many returned soldiers were still without jobs and there was a housing shortage as well. A new enemy was devouring territory overseas and had declared its determination to conquer the world. Though it seemed that the absolute worst of the preceding few years had passed, much had been lost and many were gripped with an uneasy and gnawing fear. The future seemed uncertain at best. In such a foreboding atmosphere, he decided to run for high political office in an effort to bring hope to millions and improve their lot in life.



He was a member of "the greatest generation", and like most others of that time, he had come from very humble roots. Son of a small town pharmacist, he was raised in a small midwestern village of only 700 people. From this simple and austere setting, he dreamed of some day becoming a college professor. The dream was seemingly dashed, however, once the Great Depression hit. He had to leave the university in his first year of study to work in and help save the small family drug store. To do so, it became clear that he, like his father, must also become a pharmacist, and so he buckled down to learn the trade. This extremely bright and dedicated young man amazingly completed a two-year course of study in only six months' time and received his Pharmacist's License from the Capitol College of Pharmacy in Denver, CO. Over the next 7 years, he worked tirelessly in the family store until it had once again become prosperous, this in the middle of the worst economic downturn in the nation's history.

By 1937, his hard work had made it possible for him to return to college. Two years later he had earned a B.A. from the University of Minnesota. The very next year, he attended Louisiana State University (where a classmate of his was future Louisiana Senator Russell B. Long). Here he obtained his Master's Degree in Political Science. Ever gregarious, friendly, and energetic, he along the way became a brother of the Phi Delta Chi (Theta Division) fraternity, and also an honorary brother of Alpha Phi Alpha, an African-American fraternity. This was a rather remarkable occurrence for a white man of his era. But then war broke out, and the direction of his life took another turn.

Like most men of that time, he felt compelled to help his country fight to victory. After two failed attempts at enlistment (he was rejected due to a hernia), he worked in several different wartime agencies over the next few years to aid the cause. He began to notice the positive effect government agencies could play in people's lives, and so became interested in government and politics as a practical career. He ran for mayor of Minneapolis but was defeated due to an inadequately funded campaign. Undaunted, he remained active in politics, and played a pivotal role in merging Minnesota's laborers and farmers with the state's Democratic Party. The resultant DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor) Party he helped forge back then became, and remains to this day, Minnesota's dominant political party. On his second try, he was successful in his bid to become mayor of Minneapolis, and was reelected by a record margin two years after that. He had enacted many local beneficial reforms and had been successful in removing undesirable criminals from the city.

And so it was in 1948 that he decided to make a bid for even higher office. He figured that, if he achieved the office of U.S. Senator, he would be able to work for the betterment of millions all across the country rather than just several hundred thousand on a local level. That year he became the first Democratic Senator from Minnesota in 47 years, and the first Democrat actually elected to the Senate from that state since 1858!It was an amazing accomplishment. He didn't fully realize it then, but he had engineered a huge political shift for his state. But the best was yet to come.

Even prior to his senatorial election, he undertook a principled, courageous, and controversial fight to end racial discrimination. At the 1948 Democratic National Convention, he took to the microphone and boldly proclaimed, "To those who say, we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years too late...the time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights!"

Once elected, he spent the next 15 years steadfastly working for civil rights, the cause of labor, and government aid for the less fortunate. He once admonished, "Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism." He advocated the idea of the Peace Corps, which President John F. Kennedy adopted and established in 1961. He was passionate and articulate and loved to deliver a forceful speech. Comic Johhny Carson once jokingly referred to him as "Minnesota Chats", a pun on the nickname of "Minnesota Fats" which had been given to a popular billiards player of the day. His joyous and smiling approach to politics earned him the praise and admiration of his colleagues, even political foes. While known for his dramatic and fiery public oratory, he was also very adept at soft-spoken, behind-the-scenes listening, negotiating, and compromising. Conservative Republican Barry Goldwater once said of him, "listening to him is like trying to read Playboy magazine with your wife turning the pages." For, while forceful and excitable, he was also very thorough, as well as respectful and quick-witted. On another occasion, Goldwater recalled, "After one of his long-winded speeches I suggested he had been vaccinated with a phonograph needle. He responded by saying that I would have been a great success in the movies working for Eighteenth Century Fox."

He went on to become his nation's 38th Vice President, serving under President Lyndon B. Johnson. As Vice President, Hubert H. Humphrey continued with his expertise in listening, negotiating, and compromising. He worked with his old Senate colleagues and was instrumental in getting civil rights, voting rights, Medicare, Fair Housing, and other progressive LBJ legislation through Congress, back in that golden era when Congress actually delivered a great deal of benefit for average working people, farmers, and the poor, not just big business.

Humphrey was narrowly defeated by Richard Nixon in 1968 when he ran for the presidency. He went back home to Minnesota to teach political science at Macalaster College. Voters returned him to the U.S. Senate two years later, and he remained there the rest of his life. I consider myself lucky to have actually met him and shaken his hand briefly in 1975. He had a big, powerful hand with surprisingly tender palms. I remember thinking at the time how that hand had probably shaken 1 million others prior to having shaken mine, for he had met people all across the country and throughout the world in his long career. The very next year, I had the distinct pleasure of seeing him deliver a stump speech in southern Minnesota on behalf of then-presidential candidate Jimmy Carter. I had driven down to see and hear both men speak in an open field and see how they would fare before a crowd in this normally fairly conservative Republican area of the state. Humphrey launched into a fiery "give-'em-hell-Hubert" type of tirade about how Earl Butz, Gerald Ford, and the Republicans had ruined the rural and agricultural economy, and how Jimmy Carter would set things right. At the end of his speech, Humphrey had a good number of those Republicans loudly cheering that day. It was a sight to behold! (Of course, that was back in the days when Republicans actually listened to, and compromised with, their opponents, and didn't try to disrupt political gatherings, or, like spoiled, unruly little children, shout out those not sharing their view. Our country AND the Republican Party were in far saner, more civil, and much better shape in that way back at that time)!

When Humphrey died in 1978, his funeral was attended by hundreds of world and American political leaders, friend and foe alike. All came to pay their last, heartfelt, genuine respects to the man who had been dubbed "the happy warrior" and who had celebrated and fought for the causes of equal rights, fairness, and opportunity for the entire human race.



I have no doubt that Hubert H. Humphrey would be delighted to see we have elected Barack Obama as our first President of African-American heritage. He would likewise be delighted that we now have Sonia Sotomayor as our first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice. And I am certain that he would be an avidly vocal supporter of a universal, public option (if not an outright single-payer) national health care bill, just as he had strongly supported Medicare in 1965. There is absolutely no way this great fighter for justice would have allowed today's greedy and exclusive health insurance and pharmaceutical companies to fleece the public as they have been doing steadily for the past two decades. He would have lambasted and shamed them publicly, and thrashed them for their excesses. His would be a leadership we could use today. He would do as he always did: strongly voice his support for public health care reform publicly, let tthe piggish-monied interests know he meant business, and then privately listen to and negotiate with the opposition to get a meaningful and beneficial bill passed. His approach would not be like that of Mitch McConnell, or John Kyl, or Jim DeMint, or Eric Cantor, or John Boehner, whereby all one says is "no" and tries to gin up angry protestors across the country for the benefit of lobbyists and big insurance companies. For Humphrey worked on behalf of, and truly understood, average working people and those who need special help, not big business and corrupt corporate lobbyists. He never forgot the hard-pressed people who were all around him as he came of age, the difficulties his own family had faced, or how government could be a good and effective means to help better everyone's lives. He would stand today with the positive-oriented and visionary Dennis Kuciniches, Bernie Sanderses, Anthony Weiners, and Sherrod Browns in government, not with the previously mentioned naysayers. Hubert H. Humphrey would now rise and state, with firm conviction, that "those who say we are rushing this issue of universal national health care, I say to you we are 233 years too late, and the time has come for Government to get out of the dark shadows of exclusion and obsession with excessive private profit and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of providing for universal human needs!"

AND HE WOULD BE THOROUGHLY CORRECT.






UP NEXT: JESUS AND UNIVERSAL NATIONAL HEALTH CARE REFORM

MORE THAN 50 YEARS OF CONSERVATIVE /REPUBLICAN LIES

To all who may be attending their Congressperson's Town Hall meeting this month: Remember, as you encounter a packed room of people shouting out against health care reform, these people were most likely brought in from across the country by wealthy Republican conservatives to disrupt your meeting, and they most likely don't even reside in your district. They have been fired-up by conservative special interest group lies, and now they in turn will be repeating those lies, like President Obama's health care plan will force seniors into euthanasia, will provide taxpayer money for abortions, will end up killing people due to delays in getting medical treatments, will come between you and your doctor, and so on. ALL of these statements are LIES, and they fit a long, steady pattern of conservative, and especially conservative Republican, scare tactics and lies used for over more than 50 years to turn the public away from progressives, liberals, and progressive legislation. I present below a long, only partial, list of those lies.

After having caused the stock market crash in 1929 through years of free market, anything-goes, unregulated capitalism, the Republicans and economic conservatives of that era were horrified by Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal" programs of active government involvement in the economy. They said fair, common-sense, and humane measures like legalizing labor unions, instituting welfare and Social Security, implementing jobs programs for the more than 20% of the work force that was unemployed, providing unemployment for those who were out of work, and regulating banks, the stock market, and big business was "socialistic", had "gone too far", and would "destroy capitalism." Oh, yes---they also said it "wouldn't work." Sounds suspiciously similar to the type of nonsense being pedaled today by conservative Republicans like Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner, doesn't it? Well, these statements were wrong then, just as they are today. They were LIES told by fearful people without vision or heart who didn't understand the situation at hand and/or didn't care about those in need all around them. What Roosevelt's measures really did, of course, was to SAVE capitalism and plant the seeds for the growth of a huge and prosperous middle class.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, ever-fearful conservatives, led by the notorious Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, were seeing communists under every bed. Many innocent people were hurt by being blacklisted for trumped-up and supposed communist activities. This LIE about alleged communist infiltration throughout government and society unnecessarily and permanently ruined many people's lives.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the big conservative LIE concerned civil rights. Fearful conservative defenders of the status quo argued that granting civil rights to minorities through federal legislation, letting blacks eat at the same lunch counters as whites and use the same bathrooms and buses as whites, was a violation of states' rights and would destroy white American culture and civilization. This, too, was a flimsy conservative LIE. Our country is immensely better off today for having allowed people of all races, ethicities, and creeds equal access to education, employment, and social and cultural activities! Another conservative lie at this time was that, if we didn't fight in the civil war in Vietnam, that country and all the rest of Asia would go communist. This lie was even adopted, adapted, and expanded by liberal presidential cabinets during JFK's and LBJ's administrations. The rest of Asia did NOT go communist after we withdrew from that war, and all it accomplished was create huge profits for the military/industrial complex and kill more than 50,000 American soldiers and countless innocent Vietnamese civilians. Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, darlings of conservative America back then, even lied about having a "secret plan to end the war." They had none, of course, and only used and manipulated the war to gain and maintain political power.

The 1980s brought us the Reagan administration, union-busting, and "trickle-down economics." This conservative lie held that, by cutting taxes for the very rich and big business, and cutting back on the power and number of labor unions, the added wealth created at the top of the income scale would trickle down to everyone else and all would prosper. That being a LIE, of course, the only ones who prospered from the policy were the very rich and big business. The "trickle down" evaporated long before it ever hit the middle class or poor.

"Free trade" was another lie foisted on us by conservatives in the 1980s-1990s, and its close cousin was deregulation. Conservative Republicans like Milton Friedman, George H.W. Bush, Phil Gramm, and Tom DeLay, as well as right-wing think tanks like the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute began their incessant chant that any and all trade is good for everybody, and that eliminating regulations on business would result in an upswing in prosperity for all. They even succeeded in fooling President Bill Clinton and other "new" Democrats into going along with this nonsense. The fact that all this led to was an export of millions of high-paying American jobs and the freezing of workers' wages here, plus a rise in energy speculation which led to record high gasoline prices, plus ever-spiraling health care costs prove what LIES these conservative policies turned out to be!

After 9/11, hardcore neocon warmongers Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld lied to us, telling us Iraq was actively involved with AlQaeda and was building an atomic weapons stockpile. These conservative LIES led us into an unnecessary, preemptive, and hugely costly war in Iraq which has weakened our economy. This George W. Bush administration insinuated that is was totally against abortion and would overturn Roe vs. Wade. But, with a solid Congressional majority, a conservative President, and a working conservative Supreme Court majority, the Republicans made no effort at all to eradicate abortion. Instead, they cynically USED the issue as a political tool against Democrats. This made them LIARS on that issue, too, and proved that they gave it only lip service to use the religious right for votes. The Bush crew also re-fed us the trickle-down economics and tax-cuts-for-the-rich LIES, and accelerated the rates of free trade and deregulation of business to the point where we slid into the worst, deepest recession since the great crash of 1929. Again, as so often before, these conservative and Republican LIES caused nothing but damage and have brought us down.

Now we are faced with another big conservative Republican LIE: that health care does not need reform, and that doing so will make it "socialist", dangerous, and actually harmful to us all. Much like their arguments in the 1930s and steadily onward, this LIE, too, should be dismissed as nonsense designed to protect only the wealthy and hurt everyone else. Remember this steady stream of conservative Republican LIES when you meet with your Congresspersons and vote in the midterm elections next year, folks. The only fear you need to have going forward is in following today's conservative Republican talking points, which are all LIES!

FLASHBACK: JULY-AUGUST, 1966

"Tax the very wealthy to make everyone healthy."
- Vigilante, Sozadee, CA -












TOP ROW L to R: The Supremes, L.A. Civil Rights march
NEXT ROW: Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan
NEXT ROW: Yardbirds, The Association
Vietnam
NEXT ROW: The Mamas & Papas, LBJ
BOTTOM: Lovin' Spoonful

I had the chance to delightfully revisit much of my past this last weekend, when a cousin came back to town and I was able to get together with a number of other cousins. We spoke of the usual family stuff, but also of current events and past history and music. When I got home, I started to again reflect on those days of yesteryear, and I began to appreciate what a fabulous and historic era I grew up in, living as I did in my lower middle class beginnings during the 1950s and 1960s in the Minneapolis, MN area.

The summer of 1966 was a particularly pleasant time for me. The world was abuzz with activity, creativity, and change. Things seemed to be picking up momentum on all fronts. Incomes and buying power for nearly all were rising, and the youth culture was starting to come into its own. Civil rights marches were happening and rights were justifiably being obtained, fashions were flipping like pages of a magazine, a cultural renaissance was occuring in art and music, antiwar protests over Vietnam were just starting to bud at college campuses, America had searched its soul and found injustice, thereby engaging itself in a noble War on Poverty (funny how the far right, who love to condemn war protesters as being cowards who want to "cut and run" from a fight did themselves unhesitatingly cut and ran from one of our most important wars ever, that War on Poverty, isn't it?). Gas was plentiful and cheap, and a popular ad slogan was "see the USA in a Chevrolet." Economical "Fizzies" made it possible for you to make your own cherry, orange, grape, lemon lime, or root beer carbonated soda pop at home using tap water. They came 8 Alka Seltzer-sized tablets per 19 cent package, and all you did was drop a tablet into an 8 ounce cup of water and wait for the fizzing to stop. They were staples in every supermarket. iPods and CDs had not yet even been conceived, stereo was only 8 years old (and most of us didn't own one, instead having the "high fidelity" monaural phonographs). Two song 45 rpm vinyl records and transistor radios were the rage, AM radio was king, the Beatles were the undisputed masters of pop rock music, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass and Frank Sinatra were immensely popular. People were optimistic, trusted their neighbors and government, and everything seemed to be on an upswing except for that nagging Vietnam War and civil rights marches and riots.

I came of age in this era. I began to take notice of the world around me and began thinking independently, as my own person. I started watching the news on our black and white TV (remember, we were lower middle class and couldn't afford a color set), and actually began reading more than the comics in the newspaper. I thought it was wrong for minorities to be discriminated against. I found it funny that we weren't winning hands down in Vietnam, with the body counts being as lopsided as the Pentagon was reporting. I was swept up in all the color, change, and heady excitement of that era, but especially in its music.

As I look at some of the songs and music groups who were popular just in this two month period of July and August, 1966, it looks like a murderers row of all-time classic rock and R & B. With so many fabulous new songs coming out each and every week, I never dreamed back then they would still be played on radio stations even today, some 43 years later! More classic songs were released in this 2 month period than have appeared in entire months or even years since then! See if you don't recognize or remember some of these artists' names: Beatles, Supremes, Four Seasons, Sam and Dave, Lovin' Spoonful, Hollies, the Mamas and the Papas, Simon and Garfunkel, Rolling Stones, Temptations, Grass Roots, Yardbirds, the Association. Some of the classic hits first appearing in that golden summer were "Summer In The City" by Lovin' Spoonful, "Hold On! I'm A-Comin'" by Sam and Dave, "Yellow Submarine/Elkeanor Rigby", a two-sided hit from the Beatles, "Hungry" by Paul Revere and the Raiders, "Along Comes Mary" from The Association, the Supremes' "You Can't Hurry Love", "Bus Stop" from The Hollies, "I Want You" by Bob Dylan, Donovan's "Sunshine Superman", a very uptempo and brassy "Respectable" from the Outsiders, the punchy and unique interpretation of "Summertime" by Billy Stewart (OUTSTANDING vocal!), and the smooth and jazzy "Sunny" by Bobby Hebb. 2 1/2 to 3 minute pop songs sold millions of copies by having a predominant rock beat, catchy tune, and a serious, relevant lyric, like The Yardbirds' classic "Over Under Sideways Down" with its expressions of nonconformity ("when I was young, people spoke of immorality / all the things they said were wrong are what I want to be"), The Rolling Stones' commontary on the stresses of life back then as described in "Mother's Little Helper" ("...mother needs something today to calm her down / and though she's not really ill, there's a little yellow pill / she goes running for the shelter of a mother's little helper."). B. J. Thomas scored with his ballad "Billy and Sue", the tragic tale of a soldier in far-off combat getting a "Dear John" letter from his girl back home, causing him to jump up in battle and get fatally shot. Folk/easy listening masters The Sandpipers released their melodic gem "Guantanamera" based in part on a poem by Cuban freedom-fighter Jose Marti ( "...with the poor people of this earth I want to share my fate..."). Folk artist Verdelle Smith even had a modest hit with her rendition of "Tar And Cement", a milestone which I believe was the first-ever environmental protest song. In it, she describes leaving a small country village to find wealth and success in the big city, only to return to find things back home had changed immensely ("...and every night I'd sit alone and learn what loneliness meant / up in my vented room above a world of tar and cement. / Many years later, tired at last, I headed for home to look for my past / I looked for the meadows - there wasn't a trace / six lanes of highway had taken their place / where were the lilacs and all that they meant? / Nothing but acres of tar and cement..."). Pretty heady stuff back then for the targeted audience of pre-teen through young adult! But it was indicative of a flawed, but much better time. A time where most people really cared about others and were less preoccupied with their own material lust. A time where liberals and conservatives and Democrats and Republicans could disagree without spitting insults at one another or hating each other.

Thank you for letting me indulge in the past for this post, friendly readers. I am glad that I grew up and came to awareness in such a time. We have made great progress in many areas since then, but we have lost a great deal of what was simple and wonderful and good along the way. There are many unrealized goals from that era, and it reminds me that we Americans still have a long, long, long way to go, and that we must continue to strive for a better world for all...