Vanity Fair tells the story of one of Star Trek’s favorite episodes, beginning with …
“The Trouble with Tribbles” was the first professional sale for David Gerrold, a 23-year-old California college student. An unknown budding writer in September 1966 when he saw Star Trek’s first episode, he almost immediately began thinking of story premises. One of them drew on his teenage experiences of raising frogs, mice, rats, and fish. “I loved animals,” recalled Gerrold, now an award-winning author of many science-fiction novels and stories, in a recent interview. “But all of those critters died on me.”
So in February 1967, he drew up a proposal for an episode he called “The Fuzzies.”
“My original conception was, ‘Aliens are always scary. What if they’re cute but we don’t realize they’re dangerous? What if you had white mice or gerbils that got onto the Enterprise and got out of control?’ ”
Gerrold envisioned a real ecological disaster. “My attitude was that it would be whimsical but that we would have a serious threat,” he said. Nowhere in his work was there to be found now-classic slapstick moments, like William Shatner’sCaptain Kirk getting buried in a mountain of tribbles. Gerrold also imagined the buffoonish and chortling Cyrano Jones, the interstellar trader who introduces the beasties to the Enterprise, as a Boris Karloff type. (“You can just see him stroking it and saying, ‘Can I interest you in a harmless little tribble? . . .’ ”)
That mix of comedy within an actually serious situation (as James Doohan observed, Captain Kirk could have lost his command for an admittedly stupdi situation), along with fantastic dialogue (see McCoy and Spock) is what makes this such a great episode.
Can someone please tell me if this is a work day? If it’s not, why not? And if it is, how come no one is working? What about tomorrow? For that matter, what about the rest of the week? I’ve been asking around, and increasingly, it seems like no one is quite sure what to do when Christmas falls on a Monday. Wouldn’t it be simpler if we celebrated Christmas on the third Thursday of every December, like we do with Thanksgiving every November?
I ran this by the minister at church on Christmas morning, and he was surprisingly supportive. I thought I might get some push-back regarding the embrace of a fungible birthdate for Jesus, but he assured me no one has the faintest idea when the birth actually occurred. This triggered a lively debate among a dozen or so congregants, including a very knowledgeable Elder who explained to all assembled that an angel named Gabriel revealed to a man named Zechariah that his wife – a woman called Elizabeth – would conceive a baby called John (who later become a famous Baptizer,) while Zechariah was performing his priestly duties on the Day of Atonement, also known as Yom Kippur.
At this point, a Deacon named Roger jumped in to explain that Yom Kippur always falls in late September or early October. According to the Gospel of Luke, when Gabriel later announced to Mary that she would conceive Jesus, Mary went to visit Elizabeth, and Elizabeth was at that time in the sixth month of her pregnancy. Ergo, if Elizabeth conceived in late September, and Mary visited her in her sixth month, that means Mary conceived Jesus and visited Elizabeth in late March. And if Mary conceived Jesus in late March, that places his birth sometime in late December.
With great respect to the Elder and the Deacon and the apostle Luke, I commented that “sometime in late December” is no more precise that “the third Thursday of December,” and the choir director seemed to agree, adding that, “If we accept the virgin birth as fact, we should also consider the possibility that Mary’s pregnancy didn’t comport with all the traditional time-frames.”
Soon, the conversation grew animated. I tried to change the subject to the importance of eliminating daylight savings time, but it was too late, so I quietly excused myself from the fray …
Well, there’s an additional time–space continuum issue. Christians commemorate Good Friday, Jesus Christ’s death, and Easter, Jesus Christ’s rising from the dead, on different dates every year. Those days are determined by the Jewish Passover (as depicted in the Gospels, since Jesus was a devout Jew), which itself takes place the first full moon after the vernal equinox. That means that Easter can be anywhere from March 22 (last in 1818, and not again until 2285) to April 25 (last in 1943 and not again until 2038), according to the always accurate Wikipedia. So we celebrate Christmas not knowing if it’s the right date (or if it was just, shall we say, borrowed by the early church from the pagans celebrating, for reasons unknown to anyone stuck in this frozen wasteland, the winter solstice), and we celebrate Easter with only one of those 34 days being the date of the Resurrection.
Ponder all this as you’re toasting the New Year sometime between Sunday night and Monday morning.
Certainly “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which NBC stations will carry Sunday at 7 p.m. Central time, is a Christmas movie. What’s somewhat unexpected about it is that it was considered a box office failure when it first came out, as in making approximately half its production costs at the box office. (Some of that was due to stiff competition around Christmas 1946.)
What’s more interesting is the story behind the movie, particularly its star, James Stewart, as reported by the London Daily Mail:
Jimmy Stewart suffered such extreme PTSD after being a [bomber] pilot in World War II that he acted out his mental distress during ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’.
Stewart played George Bailey in the classic movie and channeled his anger and guilt into the scenes where he rages at his family.
Stewart was haunted by ‘a thousand black memories’ from his time as an Air Force commanding officer that he took with him back to Hollywood after the war.
Pilots who flew with him said that became ‘Flak Happy’ during World War II, a term to describe what is now known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.
Stewart wrestled with the guilt of killing civilians in bomb raids over France and Germany including one instance where they destroyed the wrong city by mistake.
Stewart felt responsible for the death of his men and especially one bloodbath where he lost 13 planes containing 130 men who he knew well.
Stewart never spoke about it, even to other veterans, and bottled up his emotions that came out in the acting parts he chose when he returned to Hollywood.
He acted it out during It’s a Wonderful Life, where character George Bailey unravels in front of his family – the emotional core of the film after a lifetime of setbacks, including being unable to go to war while his brother becomes a decorated hero.
Films like Shenandoah and Winchester 73 allowed Stewart to explore his dark side which was never there before he went to war.
Matzen writes that Stewart’s decision to join the military was less surprising than his decision to become an actor; his grandfather fought in the Civil War and more distant relatives fought in the Revolutionary War
Stewart was finally called up shortly before the assault on Pearl Harbor in 1941 which forced America into the World War II.
Asked by a studio boss why he wanted to give up his life in Hollywood, Stewart said: ‘This country’s conscience is bigger than all the studios in Hollywood put together, and the time will come when we’ll have to fight’.
Stewart was initially put in the Air Force Motion Picture Division because commanders wanted to use him to make films to convince more airmen to sign up.
He was also used for PR stunts until he demanded that he see combat like other airmen.
Stewart’s chance came with the creation of a B-24 bomber group, the 445th, and he was appointed commander of the 703rd squadron.
Matzen writes that the ‘key moment in Jim’s life had arrived. There would never be another like this, not before, not after’.
Speaking to DailyMail.com, Matzen said that Stewart signed up because he ‘felt he had to prove himself, especially with women, to prove he was attractive enough, charming enough’.
He said: ‘He wanted to prove he was responsible enough, that’s the key with him. He wanted to prove he was responsible enough to be an officer, that he could handle this, he could make his dad proud of him’.
According to ‘Mission’, Stewart and the 445th were deployed to Tibenham in East Anglia in England where they would carry out bombing raids on German targets.
Stewart did not stay on the ground and flew with his men.
Unlike other commanding officers Stewart, who was a Captain, took time to get to know his men as he wanted a team atmosphere.
The tactic worked but at a huge personal cost – when they started to be killed off it hit him harder.
Their first mission was to bomb a Nazi submarine facility in the city of Kiel and went off better than Stewart had expected.
As the flight got underway Stewart’s dream was finally realized – he was in combat.
Matzen writes that he ‘became part of something vital, something like the phalanx of the Roman legions’.
The biggest shock was the flak from anti-aircraft guns.
Matzen writes that the training about it ‘bore no resemblance to the experience’ and their bombers yawed left and right and pitched up and down as explosions went off all around them in the sky.
None of Stewart’s planes were shot down during the raid – but soon the bodies began fall.
During a raid on Bremen, the second largest port in Germany, enemy fighters took down a bomber called ‘Good Nuff’. Of the crew of ten, just three parachuted out.
Not for the first time, Stewart had to write a letter to the parents of the dead airmen saying they were missing and presumed dead.
A mission over Mannheim ended in catastrophe when they lost two planes with 20 men inside.
And as the weeks went on, this all began to weigh heavily on Stewart.
Matzen said: ‘He was a perfectionist and he was so hard on himself. It wasn’t just that he had responsibility for his plane, if he was in a group it was 15-20 planes and it was sometimes 75-100 planes.
‘It just got to him and it got to him pretty fast.
‘Every decision he made was going to preserve life or cost lives. He took back to Hollywood all the stress that he had built up.’
In total Stewart flew 20 missions and the stress manifested itself physically and mentally.
Stewart could not keep his food down which became a problem when he was embarking on draining eight or nine hour missions.
Stewart survived the war on peanut butter and ice cream which meant his diet consisted of just protein and sugar.
Unable to sleep, he became more and more wore down by the demanding flights – that became more and more bloody.
The worst was one that Stewart did not actually fly on, but his squadron did.
The raid on the city of Gotha, Germany, led to the loss of 13 planes, or 130 men all in one go.
Those who survived told horrific tales of bodies flying through the air and planes exploding in front of them.
More more than two hours Nazi fighters ‘poured death and destruction’ at Stewart’s men from every direction.
They used cables with bombs attached to them to bring their bombers down, fired rockets ‘like the Fourth of July’ and fired rockets at will.
Nazi pilots followed the planes as they went down to make sure there were no survivors.
Stewart heard all this and knew that the next day he had to lead the next nearly identical mission.
That night he did not sleep – miraculously his flight was nowhere near as bad.
Perhaps the episode which disturbed Stewart the most was a raid which went terribly wrong.
The 453rd were assigned to bomb a V-1 rocket facility in the northern French village of Siracourt.
The instruments in Stewart’s cockpit malfunctioned and 12 bombers deployed their payloads on the city of Tonnerre instead.
At least 30 tons of general purpose bombs rained down causing unknown numbers of civilian casualties.
Stewart’s pilots tried to cover for him but he took the blame himself, something which earned him their ultimate respect.
In all Stewart had served four-and-a-half years during World War II and was awarded the Air Medal with oak leaf clusters, Distinguished Flying Crosses and the Croix de Guerre.
Matzen told DailyMail.com that he interviewed one of the pilots who flew with Stewart who told him that Stewart once said that he had gone ‘flak happy’ and was sent to the ‘flak farm’.
‘Flak happy’ refers to what has now become known as PTSD but was little understood at the time, while the ‘flak farm’ was a treatment center for soldiers.
For Stewart his soul had been ‘ground down to nothing’ and his ‘youth had died’.
When Stewart’s mother Bessie and his father Alex saw him for the first time they were ‘shocked by what they saw – their boy had aged what seemed decades’.
Matzen writes that he was a decorated war hero, was rake thin and had gray hair and a ‘command authority’ that made his father uneasy.
Stewart faced a grim reality: He was 37 but looked 50 and his career as a romantic lead was over. He struggled to find work until director Frank Capra hired him for It’s A Wonderful Life.
Matzen said that it was a lifeline for Stewart and rehabilitated him in the eyes of Hollywood, showing directors that he could still act.
Speaking to DailyMail.com, Matzen said: ‘Jim came back from hell on earth and groped around for a movie to make, and his only offer he had was for what would become the most beloved motion picture in all American culture.
‘In an unlikely life full of unlikely things -this gangly stringbean becoming a movie star and then a war hero -this was the unlikeliest.’
The movie also provided an unlikely outlet for his still raw emotions.
Matzen said: ‘I don’t think he had that kind of capacity before the war. It enabled him to be ferocious and to have that raw emotion.
‘You see it time and time again; I think he would look for scripts where he could demonstrate that rage. I think that was the side of him that in there all the time and that’s how he would let it out.’
Stewart did not leave the military and continued to serve until May 1968 when he retired after 27 years of service during which time he was a bomber pilot during the Vietnam War.
But the memories of World War II never left him and he would see people in the street who reminded him of the airmen who had died under his command.
In ‘Mission’, Matzen writes: ‘Was he still flak happy, on a flak farm? Who could tell what was real after all that had happened over five long years.
‘The nightmares come every night.
‘There was on oxygen at 20,000 feet with 190s zipping past, spraying lead and firing rockets, flak bursting about the cockpit. B-24s hit, burning, spinning out of formation.
‘Bail out! Bail out! Do you see any chutes? How many chutes? Whose ship was it? Oh God, not him?
Not them! Bodies, pieces of bodies smacking off the windshield.
‘And the most frequent dream, an explosion under him and the plane lifted by it and the feeling that this was the end.’
The movie was directed by Frank Capra, of whom University of Nevada Prof. John Marini writes:
Frank Capra was born in Sicily in 1897 and came to America in 1903. Yet by the 1930s, his movies—movies like Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Meet John Doe—were said to embody the best in America. Capra’s films were nominated for 35 Academy Awards and won eight, including two for best picture and three for best director. But Capra’s star faded after the Second World War, and by the end of the revolutionary decade of the 1960s, the actor and director John Cassavettes could say: “Maybe there never was an America in the thirties. Maybe it was all Frank Capra.” By that time, Capra’s films were widely viewed as feel-good fantasies about a country that never was. But is that view correct?
Capra, like Lincoln, believed that our inherited political edifice of liberty and equal rights is a fundamental good. He believed that if our treasure is in the ideas of our fathers, it is the duty of each generation to make those ideas live through the proper kind of education—including through literature and art, including his own art of filmmaking. Accordingly, he believed it is important to celebrate the deeds of those ordinary individuals who continue to exercise the virtues necessary to maintain those ideas.
In celebrating these deeds in his movies, Capra rejected social or economic theories based on progressivism or historicism—theories in which the idea of natural right is replaced with struggles for power based on categories such as race and class. Such theories had taken root not only in Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany, but elsewhere in the West—especially in the universities. …
Capra was often thought to be a populist. But Capra did not assume that a virtuous opinion existed in the people, or that the people simply needed mobilizing. He was aware that the modern public is created by modern mass media whose techniques spawn mass society, posing a danger to individual freedom. Capra wrote that his films “embodied the rebellious cry of the individual against being trampled into an ort by massiveness—mass production, mass thought, mass education, mass politics, mass wealth, mass conformity.” He did not believe in the use of mass power to improve society or to right historical wrongs. Reform, he thought, must take place through moral regeneration—thus through moral education.
Consider Capra’s 1939 film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, in which an idealistic man goes to Congress, runs into rampant corruption, becomes despondent, is later inspired at the Lincoln Memorial, decides against hope to stand on principle, and prevails. Capra had doubts about making Mr. Smith. While in Washington preparing for the film, he attended a press conference in which President Roosevelt outlined the great problems facing the nation. Capra wondered whether it was a good time to make a dramatic comedy about Washington politics. In his troubled state he visited the Lincoln Memorial, where he saw a boy reading Lincoln’s words to an elderly man. He decided, he later wrote, that he “must make the film, if only to hear a boy read Lincoln to his grandpa.” He left the Lincoln Memorial that day, he recalled,
with this growing conviction about our film: The more uncertain are the people of the world . . . the more they need a ringing statement of America’s democratic ideals. The soul of our film would be anchored in Lincoln. Our Jefferson Smith [the film’s lead character, played by Jimmy Stewart] would be a young Abe Lincoln, tailored to the rail-splitter’s simplicity, compassion, ideals, humor. . . . It is never untimely to yank the rope of freedom’s bell.
When watching Mr. Smith, it is important to notice where Capra locates the corruption. FDR customarily attacked “economic royalists,” or the private corruption of corporations and monopolies. For FDR, the solution to corruption was to be found through the government and through the unions, which would combat the economic forces of the private sphere. But in Mr. Smith, Capra located the corruption not in the private but in the political sphere—it was the politicians who had usurped the institutions of government on behalf of their own interests and the special interests. When Smith goes to Washington he reveres a Senator from his state who had been a friend of his father. Smith’s father, a newspaperman, had been killed while defending an independent prospector against a mining syndicate that was likely in cahoots with the union. Capra, like Smith and his father, understood America in terms of a common good—a good established by the principles of equality and liberty as the foundation of individual rights.
The setting of Mr. Smith is deliberately timeless. There is no mention of the Depression or of impending war. There is no indication of partisanship. What Capra hopes to bring to life are the words that have been carved in stone on Washington, D.C.’s monuments, but which are now forgotten. That is Jefferson Smith’s purpose as well. In a central scene in the movie, gazing at the lighted dome of the Capitol, Smith says:
… boys forget what their country means by just reading “the land of the free” in history books. Then they get to be men, they forget even more. Liberty is too precious a thing to be buried in books. … Men should hold it up in front of them every single day … and say, “I’m free to think and to speak. My ancestors couldn’t. I can. And my children will.”
What Smith is advocating in the film is the establishment of a boys camp that will teach them about the principles of their country. Moreover, it is not to be paid for by the taxpayers, but with a loan from the government to be paid for by the boys themselves. At the climax of Smith’s battle in the Senate, he says this:
Get up there with that lady that’s up on top of this Capitol dome—that lady that stands for liberty. Take a look at this country through her eyes. … You won’t just see scenery. You’ll see … what man’s carved out for himself after centuries of fighting … for something better than just jungle law—fighting so he can stand on his own two feet, free and decent—like he was created, no matter what his race, color, or creed. That’s what you’d see. There’s no place out there for graft or greed or lies—or compromise with human liberties. And if that’s what the grown-ups have done with this world that was given to them, then we better get those boys camps started fast and see what the kids can do. It’s not too late. … Great principles don’t get lost once they come to light. They’re right here. You just
have to see them again.
For Capra, like Lincoln, the problem is how to make people see the principles again.
The politicians in Washington in 1939 did not like their portrayal in Mr. Smith. Many tried to keep the movie from being shown. Capra thought it to be a ringing defense of democracy—and the people agreed. It was a tremendous success, not only in America, but throughout the world. In 1942, a month before the Nazi occupation of France was to begin, the Vichy government asked the French people what films they wanted to see before American and British films were banned by the Germans. The great majority wanted to see Mr. Smith. One theater in Paris played the movie for 30 straight nights.
By the time America entered World War II, Capra had become America’s most popular director and was president of the Screen Directors Guild. Yet four days after Pearl Harbor he left Hollywood to join the Armed Forces. He was sent to Washington and was given an office next to the Army Chief of Staff, General George Marshall. Marshall was worried that millions of men would be conscripted, many right off of the farm, having little idea of the reason for the war. He assigned Capra to make “a series of documented, factual-information films—the first in our history—that will explain to our boys in the Army why we are fighting, and the principles for which we are fighting.” Capra was nearly cowed by the assignment. He had never made a documentary. But after giving it some thought, he brilliantly dramatized the difference between the countries at war by using their own films and documentaries, in this way illustrating the character and danger of tyranny.
After the war, with the danger gone, it became increasingly clear that American intellectuals, who had rejected the political principles of the American Founding, had not understood the phenomenon of tyranny. For them, it was simply historical conditions that had established the distinction between right and wrong—or between friend and enemy—during the war. For them, in fighting the Nazis, America had simply been fighting a social movement. Subsequently, they looked on those who still revered America’s Founding principles as representing a reactionary economic and social movement to be opposed here at home. For the same reason, Capra’s wartime documentaries—known collectively as Why We Fight—came to be seen merely as propaganda.
Capra never thought of his documentaries as propaganda. He saw them as recognizing the permanent human problems—those problems that reveal the distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, justice and injustice. The fundamental distinction in politics is between freedom and slavery or democracy and tyranny. Winston Churchill said of Capra’s wartime documentaries, “I have never seen or read any more powerful statement of our cause or of our rightful case against the Nazi tyranny.” In his view, they were not propaganda at all. Churchill insisted that they be shown to every British soldier and in every theater in England. At the end of the war in 1945, General Marshall awarded Capra the Distinguished Service Medal. And on Churchill’s recommendation, Capra was awarded the Order of the British Empire Medal in 1962.
Capra’s last great movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, was made in 1946. Shortly before making it, he said, “There are just two things that are important. One is to strengthen the individual’s belief in himself, and the other, even more important right now, is to combat a modern trend toward atheism.” This movie, he wrote, summed up his philosophy of filmmaking: “First, to exalt the worth of the individual; to champion man—plead his causes, protest any degradation of his dignity, spirit or divinity.” Capra understood that Hollywood would be changing, because the culture and society had begun to change. The historical and personal categories of class and race had become political, and self-expression and self-indulgence had replaced those civic virtues that require self-restraint. In his 1971 autobiography—imagine what he would think today—he wrote that “practically all the Hollywood filmmaking of today is stooping to cheap salacious pornography in a crazy bastardization of a great art to compete for the ‘patronage’ of deviates.”
In 1982, when he was in his 85th year, Capra was awarded the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award. In his acceptance speech, he touched on the things that had been most important in his life. He spoke of celebrating his sixth birthday in steerage on a 13-day voyage across the Atlantic. He recalled the lack of privacy and ventilation, and the terrible smell. But he also remembered the ship’s arrival in New York Harbor, when his father brought him on deck and showed him the Statue of Liberty: “Cicco look!” his illiterate peasant father had said. “Look at that! That’s the greatest light since the star of Bethlehem! That’s the light of freedom! Remember that. Freedom.” Capra remembered. In his speech to the Hollywood elite so many years later, he revealed his formula for moviemaking. He said: “The art of Frank Capra is very, very simple. It’s the love of people. Add two simple ideals to this love of people—the freedom of each individual and the equal importance of each individual—and you have the principle upon which I based all my films.”
It is hard to think of a better way to describe Frank Capra’s view of the world, and America’s place in fulfilling its purpose, than to turn to another great American who made his living in the world of motion pictures. Ronald Reagan was a friend and admirer of Frank Capra. They were very much alike. The inscription that Reagan had carved on his tombstone could have been written by Capra: “I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there is purpose and worth to each and every life.” Both Capra and Reagan looked to a benevolent and enduring Providence, and the best in man’s nature, as the ultimate grounds of political right. For them, as for Lincoln, America was more than a geographical location or a place where citizens shared a common blood or religion, or belonged to a common culture or tradition. America was a place where an enlightened understanding of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” had made it possible to establish those principles of civil and religious liberty that gave “purpose and worth to each and every life.”
Capra was aware that the moral foundations established by those principles, as well as belief in God, had become endangered by the transformations in American life following World War II. He saw the necessity of reviving the moral education necessary to preserve the conditions of freedom, because he understood that in a democracy, the people must not only participate in the rule of others, they must also learn to govern themselves.
In his last and most personal tribute to his adopted country, Capra recalled his family’s arrival at Union Station in Los Angeles after their long journey across America in 1903. When they got off the train, his mother and father got on their knees and kissed the ground. Capra’s last words to his assembled audience were these: “For America, for just allowing me to live here, I kiss the ground.” Capra did not believe that he had a right to be a citizen of America. Rather he was grateful for the privilege of living in America. He understood that freedom not only offers economic opportunity, but establishes a duty for all citizens—a duty to preserve the conditions of freedom not only for themselves, but for their posterity. Only those willing to bear the burdens of freedom have a right to its rewards.
For Capra, the real America was to be understood in terms of its virtues, which are derived from its principles. In his view, his art was dedicated to keeping those virtues alive—by making those principles live again in the speeches and deeds of that most uncommon phenomenon of human history, the American common man. It was the simple, unsophisticated, small-town common American that Capra celebrated in his films. But for Capra, as for his friend John Ford, no one epitomized this phenomenon better than Abraham Lincoln.
A dance-off to raise money for a high school scholarship fund and sports program prompted these thoughts that combine the theme song, the movie from which came that theme song, a famous American poet, a famous American rock band, one of the first famed teen novels taught in many schools today, and myself as a middle-schooler.
The Overbored 454 is a Hot Wheels Original Model by Phil Riehlman. This model resembles a 70’s Chevelle SS that has been tuned. With its 5.0 V8 Psycho Maxter engine with 845 horsepower and a top speed of 275 mph, this muscle car will rule the American street races.
With what engine? According to the YouTube video (and you might want to turn down the volume before you view it) …
This model resembles a 70’s Chevelle SS that has been tuned. With its I-6 (Inline Six) Psycho Maxter engine with 845 horsepower and a top speed of 245 mph (394 km/h), this muscle car will rule the American street races.
Yes, we are discussing a Hot Wheels car here. But fiction requires verisimilitude, defined as “the appearance of being true or real.” (So ignore that 275 mph claim.) It is true that the Chevelle SS was a trim package, but according to this only 7,000 of the Chevelle SS were made with a Chevy six-cylinder engine, and likely none after the mid-1960s.
The Overbored 454 is supposed to be based on a 1970s SS, of course, such as …
197019711972
… although to me it looks like a non-SS, though a related car — a mid-1970s Laguna S3, due to the sloped nose:
19751976
Back to the engine. The six a Chevelle SS might have had was introduced in 1962 for the new Chevy II compact (which means it probably powered my parents’ Nova sedan and wagon), in 194-, 230- or 250-cubic-inch sizes, with gas and air measured through a one- or two-barrel carburetor, producing at most 155 gross horsepower. (There also was a 292 six available, but sold only in trucks and vans.) It replaced the old “Stovebolt” six that powered the first two years of Corvettes. Maybe it could be bored out to 5 liters (about 305 cubic inches, but even with a supercharger and being “tuned” the idea that you could get 845 horsepower out of that engine is laughable, even in toys.
Besides that, what does “454” refer to if not to Chevy’s 454 V-8? That engine was the biggest of Chevy’s commercially available big-block V-8s. The second of the two big-blocks started at 396 cubic inches in the 1965 Corvette, grew to 427 cubic inches, then reached its zenith at 454 cubic inches in 1970. (My former neighbor’s 1970 Corvette owner’s manual listed an optional LS-7 465-cubic-inch 454, though it was never sold by Chevy. The Chevelle SS 454 had to do with just 450 stated horsepower.) That engine wasn’t available in cars after 1976, but it was available in trucks up to the SS 454 half-ton pickup to 1993.
The 454 got sixth place in one online poll of the greatest engines of all time. (Number one was, of course, the Chevy small-block, a version of which still powers Corvettes, Camaros, pickups, SUVs and vans.)
It shouldn’t be news that you can get a lot of horsepower from a 454.
My late friend and broadcast partner Frank, who once sold Chevrolets, could tell you more about 454s, I imagine, than I can without research. Even though Chevy sold 454-powered Chevelles, I imagine they must have been very nose-heavy, since aluminum blocks and heads weren’t perfected yet. Of course, the point of muscle cars was shoving the most horsepower possible into a mid-size (and sometimes compact) car. Such things as handling and braking weren’t priorities. (Imagine driving one of those in the era of drum brakes.) We won’t even discuss gas mileage.
Even though you haven’t been able to buy a big-block in a car in 40 years and a truck in almost 25, it turns out you can still buy a big-block engine from Chevy, with horsepower ranging from 406 from a 502 (for $7,566) to the ZZ572 720R Deluxe, which for $18,531 (minus a $250 rebate from Chevy through Dec. 31) will deliver 727 horsepower to your Chevelle or anything else you can fit it in. According to Chevy, though, the engine requires 110 octane gas and is “suitable for limited forays on the street.” Worse, the 720-horsepower ZZ572 is available with only, in GM’s Connect & Cruise package (with another $500 or $750 rebate through Dec. 31), an automatic transmission.
I taught high school history and social studies classes for thirty-five years. For almost all of those years I taught required 9th grade US history classes. Eventually I got pretty good at it. Each quarter one of the units involved the production of an essay that propounded a thesis, supported the thesis with evidence properly footnoted, and a conclusion flowing from the argument. Since these were 9thgraders I supplied packets of primary and secondary sources for them to use although they were free to find other materials. Of the topics I gave them the most popular by far was the assassination of JFK. Since I used that subject year after year I became very familiar with the various conspiracy theories and the evidence (or, rather, the lack thereof) supporting them. There is really no reason to believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the only shooter that day in Dallas. All of the alternate theories were answered long ago and it requires a genuine unwillingness to consider the evidence to believe otherwise. Peter Jennings’ ABC documentary (2003) effectively dealt with all of the questions regarding a second gunman or an alternate assassin firing from somewhere other than the Schoolbook Depository. A thorough debunking of the various conspiracy theories can be found in Gerald Posner’s Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK (1993). If your understanding of the issues is based on Oliver Stone’s movie, look further.
The President has decided to release the remaining documents relating to the investigation of the assassination. As of [Oct. 28] he has ordered that all those remaining should be released holding back only the names and addresses of people still living. I predict that nothing new of importance will be revealed. Was Oswald himself part of a conspiracy? People who know the most about him are doubtful that he could have worked in concert with anyone. From today’s London Times:
Farris Rookstool, a former FBI analyst who spent nine years reading 500,000 pages of documents in the bureau’s Kennedy collection, said the notion that Russia controlled Oswald was seductive but flawed.
“I did the interviews with the KGB, the first FBI-authorised face-to-face meetings, and I can tell you they thought Oswald was just as crazy as we did. I don’t think they were trying to wash their hands of being involved with him but they were just being very candid. Oleg Nechiporenko [a KGB officer who also met Oswald in Mexico City] said they called him ‘the Tornado’ because he was spiralling out of control.
“If you strip Oswald down and look at him as just a human, he had antisocial personality disorders, he had a childlike understanding of world history and he didn’t take orders very well.
“When he was in Russia they did a two-year electronic surveillance on him and they finally realised the guy was an idiot. They thought this guy is obviously not an American double agent or false flag or a dangle. When they folded their operation over there they gave him 72 hours to leave the country.”
There are still people who believe Stanton had Lincoln assassinated or that Spain blew up the Maine in Havana harbor and there will always be people who think a professional assassin might have chosen an exposed position behind the wall of a public parking lot and fired over the heads of people lining a parade route.
The headline may be hyperbole (Babe Ruth from the Red Sox to the Yankees? The Saints’ trading their entire draft pick collection to get Ricky Williams? The Vikings sending their future to Dallas for Herschel Walker?)
But if you’re making a list of bad pro sports player transactions, you must include the Packers’ infamous “Lawrence Welk” trade, made today in 1974, for quarterback John Hadl. The trade is known as the “Lawrence Welk” trade because, the joke goes, it took “a-one and-a-two and-a-three” in draft picks. The truth, however, is far worse — two first-round draft picks, two second-round picks and a third-round pick to the Rams.
Hadl was a good quarterback in the American Football League for the high-flying San Diego Chargers …
Packer fans who don’t remember this hideous decision (because the unconscious mind often blots out trauma) might well wonder what would possess someone to make that kind of trade. The answer is explained by Pete Jackel:
There was little time left on the morning of Oct. 22, 1974. The heat in Dan Devine’s Lambeau Field office had reached tropical levels and this had nothing to do with where his thermostat was set.
He had to do something before it was too late.
In his mind, he had no choice but to place that long-distance call to Los Angeles.
For more than three years as the Green Bay Packers’ coach, Devine had struggled to find a quarterback of the future. And on that Tuesday morning nearly 30 years ago, Devine’s own future in Green Bay was never more imperiled as this quarterback subplot intensified to new heights.
Devine’s Packers, who had followed up a miraculous 10-4 record in 1972 with a 5-7-2 disappointment in ’73, were in serious trouble. The night before, a Watergate-weary nation had witnessed the listless Packers slump to 3-3 following a 10-9 loss to the Chicago Bears in a Monday night game at Soldier Field.
More distressingly, it had become obvious that Jerry Tagge, Devine’s hand-picked quarterback of the future for the Packers – Tagge was drafted in the first round in 1972 -Ê was never going to succeed. The kid who had led Nebraska to back-to-back national championships in 1970 and ’71 simply could not translate his limited passing skills to the NFL level.
And Devine, who doubled as general manager, no longer could afford to stay with a quarterback who had led the Packers to just three touchdowns in the previous 17 quarters. Not with a 19-22-4 record in Devine’s three-plus seasons in Green Bay.
The heat was on.
“I can’t say I saw him being panicky, but I feel he probably was about that time,” said Packers historian Lee Remmel, who was in his first year as public relations director for the team in 1974. “Things were going badly and they got worse.”
Had circumstances played out differently, the immensely talented Archie Manning, the No. 2 overall selection in the 1971 draft who had fallen out of favor with the pathetic New Orleans Saints, might have been Devine’s savior. Devine had apparently agreed to a tentative trade the previous week to bring the then 25-year-old Manning to Green Bay, but fate intervened.
On the afternoon of Oct. 20, Bobby Scott -Manning’s projected successor with the Saints – had gone down with a knee injury in a game against the Falcons at Atlanta and was lost indefinitely. The Saints had no choice but to go back to Manning, killing the deal with Green Bay and drastically altering history.
“We were playing in Atlanta and Scotty got hurt and that kind of nixed it,” Manning said. “I was in the middle of all that trade stuff. I had heard it was Green Bay. I was being shopped and I remember there were several things going on with the Giants, 49ers, Packers, Saints and Rams.”
Devine also had held discussions with Gil Brandt, then the player personnel director of the Dallas Cowboys, about 31-year-old Craig Morton. But Morton had mostly been a backup to first Don Meredith and then Roger Staubach since entering the league in 1965 and Devine desperately wanted an established starter.
This lingering issue just had to be resolved once and for all.
Scott Hunter hadn’t worked out as the Packers’ quarterback. Neither had Jim Del Gaizo, for whom Devine had been panicked into squandering two No. 2 draft picks to the Miami Dolphins in 1973. And Tagge, who finished 1974 with one touchdown pass and 10 interceptions, was a bust, too.
Enough was enough.
So on the morning of Oct. 22, 1974, a desperate Devine placed that call to Los Angeles.
And then he mortgaged a franchise’s future, paying the staggering price of two No. 1 draft choices, two No. 2 picks and a No. 3 to the Rams for John Hadl.
As great as Hadl had been, he was 34 years old. And regardless of Hadl’s credentials, there’s no way anyone other than Devine could justify paying that price for a quarterback who was clearly in the twilight of his career.
It was a panic-inspired trade that stirred a buzz through the National Football League that persisted for weeks.
“It was one of those things where you couldn’t believe anybody would do that,” said Ron Wolf, then general manager of the Oakland Raiders.
“It was a hard trade for me to understand,” Brandt said. “It was not a good trade for them (the Packers).
“What happens is, people make a trade because they feel that trade can maybe get them into the playoffs or win a championship for them. But I remember there were a lot of people who said, `I can’t believe that Green Bay gave up that much for a 35-year-old quarterback.’ ”
And to this day, the lop-sided nature of that trade lingers in Green Bay.
“It was the worst trade in Packers history, without a doubt, and one of the worst in pro football history,” Remmel said. “That trade deprived us of two No. 1 picks, two No. 2s and a No. 3. It was pretty hard for his successor, Bart Starr, to rebuild the football team without those premium draft choices.”
The trade was made with the Rams, and Jackel provides an interesting detail:
Playing mostly during an era when rules made life so much more difficult for quarterbacks, Hadl passed for 33,503 yards and 244 touchdowns in a career that lasted from 1962-77. His primary receiver during his years with the San Diego Chargers was Lance Alworth, who was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame in 1978.
While with the Chargers from 1962-72, Hadl developed into one of the great quarterbacks of the old American Football League. Five times he played in the Pro Bowl as a member of the Chargers. And a man who was one of the last NFL quarterbacks to wear a number higher than 19 (Hadl wore No. 21) passed for more than 3,000 yards in a season three times and threw for 20 or more touchdowns in a season six times while with San Diego.
Furthermore, the guy was indestructible, never missing a game during his 16-year career because of an injury. …
By 1973, though, Hadl was in need of a change of scenery. At least in part because of his difficult relationship with Chargers offensive coordinator Bob Schnelker – who went on to hold the same position with the Packers under Starr -ÊHadl was traded to the Rams for defensive end Coy Bacon and journeyman running back Bob Thomas prior to the 1973 season.
Bacon and Hadl were both coming off Pro Bowl seasons at the time. It would be the last time a trade involving players who had appeared in the Pro Bowl the previous season was consummated in the NFL until this year, when the Washington Redskins traded cornerback Champ Bailey to the Denver Broncos for running back Clinton Portis.
In what proved to be his only full season with the Rams, Hadl was clearly revitalized. Surrounded by talent that included wide receiver Harold Jackson and running backs Lawrence McCutcheon and Jim Bertelsen, Hadl earned NFC Most Valuable Player honors after passing for 2,008 yards and 22 touchdowns.
Behind Hadl, the Rams improved from 6-7-1 in 1972 to 12-2 in ’73. It appeared the Rams, under first-year coach Chuck Knox, were entering a prosperous new era with Hadl at the controls.
“He meant everything to us that year,” Knox said. “He was the Most Valuable Player offensively in the National Football League that year. The Rams had won very few games the year before and then we went 12-2. We lost two games that year with John Hadl at quarterback. We got beat by Minnesota 10-9 and we lost a tough game in Atlanta 15-13 when (Nick) Mike-Mayer kicked five field goals on us and we had a touchdown for an interception called back.
“John Hadl was an inspiration. He was a great player and he was just everything you could want in a quarterback and a person.”
But the magic didn’t last. Hadl seemed to be missing something in 1974, when the Rams lost two of their first five games. When he completed just six of 16 passes for 59 yards during a 17-6 loss to the Packers on a rain-swept day at Milwaukee County Stadium Oct. 13, Hadl was benched in favor of James Harris.
Nine days later, Hadl would become a Packer.
I remember the trade, though I do not remember Hadl’s playing against the Packers just before he played for the Packers.
The trade gave the Rams three first-round draft picks, which they used to draft three players who were Rams for a long time — defensive tackle Mike Fanning, offensive guard Dennis Harrah and offensive tackle Doug France.
Meanwhile, the late Don Klosterman, the Rams’ general manager, was giddy over his windfall from a desperate coach.
“Green Bay came to us with an offer you can’t refuse,” Klosterman said. “As Carroll Rosenbloom (the Rams owner at the time) has always said, we strive for continuity. The draft choices leave us in excellent shape.”
While Klosterman and Rosenbloom are no longer around to speak of the trade from a historical context, Knox remembers it as one that the Rams simply couldn’t pass up.
“They had a football coach there (Devine) who also had control of personnel,” Knox said. “He could make trades or whatever and he didn’t have to go through a lot of people. So he wanted a quarterback very badly and Carroll Rosenbloom and Don Klosterman decided that we would be able to get along – we had a very good football team. We had James Harris and (Ron) Jaworski and quarterbacks like that.
“So we decided that two ones, two twos and a three, that’s probably one of the greatest trades made in the history of the National Football League. We got some good football players out of that mix and, in five years there, we won 54, lost 15, tied one and won a divisional title five straight years.”
As for the 1974 Packers, well …
With Jack Concannon serving as stopgap quarterback as Hadl learned a new offense with the greatest of urgency, the Packers lost two more games to drop to 3-5, three games behind the Minnesota Vikings in the NFC Central Division. When Hadl finally made his first start for the Packers Nov. 10 against the Bears at Milwaukee County Stadium, the division race was all but over.
Under Hadl’s guidance, the Packers surged to three straight victories, but then lost their last three to finish 6-8. There was only so much Hadl could do with pedestrian receivers the likes of Barry Smith and Jon Staggers, with a rapidly fading John Brockington (who averaged just 3.3 yards per carry that season) lining up behind him.
During his abbreviated season with the Packers, Hadl completed 89 of 184 passes for 1,072 yards, with just three touchdowns and eight interceptions.
Devine’s mistake was this: He greatly overestimated the talent that would surround Hadl when he pulled the trigger on the trade. That reality was underscored by the fact the Packers would have just two winning seasons (1978 and ’82) between the time Devine left Green Bay in 1974 and Mike Holmgren arrived in 1992.
As for Hadl and Devine, well …
Devine’s desperation move had failed. This partnership between Devine and Hadl had lasted just 54 days. …
“Let me tell you this one,” Hadl said. “He was getting blown out in Green Bay and we were down in Atlanta for the last game and it was raining about a foot a second. Anyway, the game is over, we go in and I say, `Coach, I’m sorry this thing didn’t work out.’
“He said, `John, don’t worry about me. They’re going to announce me as the head Notre Dame coach tomorrow.’ I couldn’t believe that. He knew that before that game was over!’ “
Then came Bart Starr to replace Devine as coach and general manager:
Going into the 1975 season, there was reason to believe the old Hadl might re-emerge. Starr had been hired to replace Devine and it was a reasonable assumption that two of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history would combine to comprise an ultimate braintrust. …
Nothing, though, not the arrival of Starr and not the return of No. 21, could salvage this season. The reality was, the 1975 Packers almost had expansion-team talent with players on offense the likes Pat Matson, Keith Wortman and the over-the-hill Ernie McMillan, Bruce Van Dyke and Brockington.
Gale Gillingham, one of the greatest guards in NFL history, was so disgusted with the team’s offensive direction that he sat out the 1975 season after Starr refused to trade demand. And Hadl, playing behind a makeshift line, was left to run for his life most of the season as he tried to pass to his new receivers, Ken Payne and Steve Odom.
“They were nice guys, but they just weren’t NFL caliber, most of them,” Hadl said. “We had Kenny Payne, who was a real tough kid. He was pretty good. Odom was fast. But there was the time factor throwing the ball. We didn’t have a lot of time, so we had to adjust our routes a little bit and get rid of it a little bit quicker.”
It was an unmitigated disaster. The Packers, losing eight of their first nine games, finished 4-10. And Hadl, playing his only full season in Green Bay, completed 191 of 353 passes for 2,095 yards, but with just six touchdowns and 21 interceptions.
Meanwhile, there was no help on the way. They had not drafted until the 47th pick in 1975. And if Starr had not traded future Hall-of-Fame linebacker Ted Hendricks to the Oakland Raiders for a first-round choice, the Packers wouldn’t have made their first selection in 1976 until the 72nd pick.
Had Devine not panicked into overpaying for Hadl, the Packers would have been in position to draft such quality players as Dennis Harrah, Russ Francis, Louie Wright, Tom “Hollywood” Henderson, Fred Dean and Doug English.
Instead, what Devine left behind was utter chaos.
Ironically, during a time when Starr was trying to build something out of so little, Devine, who never could find a quarterback in Green Bay, found one at Notre Dame.
Maybe you heard of him. His name was Joe Montana.
Starr had to clean up Devine’s mess by trading Hadl, former All-Pro cornerback Ken Ellis and two draft picks to Houston to get quarterback Lynn Dickey, which meant that Hadl cost five draft picks to acquire and a player and two more draft picks to get rid of him. One wonders how often Starr must have asked himself why he agreed to take the job without an available first-round draft pick for his first two seasons, though as with Devine and other Packer GM/coaches, Starr’s draft record wasn’t the greatest.
Dickey joined the Packers in 1976, then missed part of the 1977, all of the 1978, and part of the 1979 seasons after suffering a broken leg. Dickey didn’t play a complete season until 1980, though he was one o the NFL’s better quarterbacks of the early 1980s, once he had some actual talent around him.
If new quarterback Brett Hundley doesn’t play well today, there will be great clamor to pick up a quarterback this week, since the Packers have a bye week. Be careful what you wish for.
James Wigderson has some fun at a former daily newspaper’s expense:
“Profit? Fiscal year? Tsk! Tsk! Tsk! Beware, my dear Zilkov. The virus of capitalism is highly infectious. Soon you’ll be lending money out at interest!” – Dr. Yen Lo, The Manchurian Candidate
The Capital Times was founded because the Wisconsin State Journal wasn’t left-leaning enough. Yes, wee know, that’s hard to picture, but that’s The Capital Times story and they’re sticking with it.
The newspaper was born in 1917 after the business manager of the Wisconsin State Journal, William T. Evjue, resigned over the paper’s increasingly strident attacks against U.S. Sen. Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette to create The Capital Times. As governor, later a senator and the founder of Wisconsin’s progressive movement, La Follette established a reputation as a champion of the underprivileged and an opponent of powerful business interests, but he came under attack like never before for his opposition to U.S. involvement in World War I.
Of course, The Capital Times supported the war anyway, as they remind us, but they were the good progressive newspaper. Just ask, Editor Emeritus Dave Zweifel, wrote in his “Plain Talk” column in June:
As the founder of this paper, William T. Evjue, would often lament in his column years ago, “The trend toward the concentration of financial, economic, political and military power continues. Are we headed for a dictatorship of wealth?”
If Mr. Evjue only knew what’s going on today.
As readers of The Capital Times, we often ask the same question, “If Mr. Evjue only knew…”
And we mean capitalism, starting with the granddaddy of them all, JP Morgan Chase & Co., founded by the great robber baron himself, JP Morgan. Old Evjue and Fighting Bob must be spinning in their graves faster than a high-speed Dremel Rotary Tool.
That was hardly the only investment that made us chuckle. The Capital Times may have been against war profiteers during World War I, but they’re investors in Halliburton, General Electric, and Raytheon now. And they love Big Oil, investing in Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell. They’re even invested in Phillip Morris and McDonalds for some healthy cash.
And for a relaxing Cap Times, they make it Suntory time.
There are also investments in drug companies, Amazon, Facebook, AT&T, Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Wal-Mart Stores, and even Union Pacific Corp. You know, all those small mom & pop companies struggling to make their way in a brutal capitalist society.
Our favorite investment is in Tiffany & Co. Nothing says progressive values like being the Tiffany news company in Madison.
Associate Editor John Nichols recently wrote a column saying how socialists are free to be socialists again. The proof was the popularity of Senator Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign.
“His presidential candidacy confirmed the appeal of such a politics in a 21st century that has been characterized by rampant inequality and the corrupt excesses of crony capitalism,” Nichols wrote, in a publication fueled by wealth inequality and the corrupt excesses of crony capitalism.
The history of The Capital Times is even more littered with hypocrisy than that. Go back to 1977 and this Washington Post story:
The Madison Capital Times, one of the loudest voices of liberalism in the country, sounds a little different these days.
Struck by mechanical and editorial employees five weeks ago, the Capital Times stunned this liberal-oriented community by bodly advertising for reporters and editors to replace its striking employees and welcoming back into is newsroom strikers who broke from the picket lines to return to work.
This is the newspaper that in its 60 years of existence has been a colorful and aggressive foe of conservatism, governmental corruption and pettiness and individuals such as Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
This is the newspaper that led numerous fights for civil rights, including a wrenching battle for an open housing ordinance in Madison, that strongly advanced the progressivism of Sen. Robert M. LaFollette and that vigorously opposed U.S. involvement in Vietnam, well before that position became popular.
This, embarrassed liberals in Madison have noted, is the newspaper that has staunchly lined up with union leaders to lift workers into better living and working conditions.
“It is a great disappointment to see our own newspaper not offering protection, as it has done so often in the past, but actually collaborating in abuses against workers who built the Capital Times up to what it is,” said Ron McCrea, a striking copy reader and vice president of the Madison Newspaper Guild.
Ironically, the strike was not originally aimed at the Capital Times’ management. The strike began when, on Oct. 1, a union representing editorial employees struck the Wisconsin State Journal, the city’s morning paper, and the International Typographical Union struck Madison Newspaper, Inc., which owns the Capital Times and also owns the plant that prints both papers under a joint operating agreement.
Capital Times guild members, along with pressmen and mailers, walked out in sympathy.
However, about 60 per cent of the State Journal Association, the guild’s equivalent at that paper, have gone back to work, and the morning paper is now operating with most of its staff back on the job. And the printing plant is sufficiently automated to get along without the ITU.
But with the strike still nominally on, most of the Capital Times workers remain out.
The future of the Capital Times had been in question even before the strike.
The afternoon paper’s circulation has declined to about 39,000 from a peak of about 50,000 a generation ago. The State Journal, by contrast, circulates about 79,000 daily and 126,000 on Sunday, and management says the Sunday figure is up 4,000 from a year ago. In addition, the Capital Times has sold its radio station and entered the joint operating agreement under which its parents prints the State Journal.
Thus, to some, the Capital Times’ stance is no surprise.
“The problem is, basically simple: regardless of editorial orientation or ideology, if you get into a problem of [newspaper] economizing, the ideology is likely to make a marginal difference,” says one veteran labor economist in Madison.
In a lengthy, biting reflection on the strike printed last week, executive editor Elliott Maraniss said McCrea and his fellow strikers should stop invoking the heritage and traditions of the Times and build their own.
He speculated that the strikers had a death wish, either for the paper or the union, and used as an analogy a person who commits suicide because he or she fears murder.
At the same time the liberal Madison community does not appear overly concerned about the strike and its impact on the future of the paper. Miles Capital Times editor and publisher, expressed surprise that there has been so little mail decrying the possible fatal impact of the strike on the paper.
There is little solid evidence that circulation has dropped off substantially – spokesmen for the two papers say it is less than 1 per cent – and there is no noticeable drop in advertising.
One reason, according to some observers, is that the paper has lost some of its feistiness in recent years.
The liberal community was outraged last year, for example, at the papers tactics in helping to defeat a popular Democratic state representative who was speaker of the state assembly.
Following that, the paper switched positions on Archie Simonson, the judge who was recalled after his statements on the bench linking rape to sexual permissiveness and provocative women’s clothing. The paper first attacked him editorially, then expressed sympathetic concern for his right to make such statements.
Mayor Paul Soglin, a product of the campus radical movement, became a villain to the paper when he leaked his 1978 budget proposal to the Madison Press Connection, a weekly being produced by the strikers, and said he would not grant interviews to reporters who replaced them.The general softening of the liberal tone perhaps has been inevitable, said a University of Wisconsin professor who has watched Madison, politcal and social changes for years. he noted that the heroes and adversaries in past Capital Times news and editorial columns have gone and it is getting more difficult for the paper to identify their successors.To replace those past causes and personalities in order to hold its traditional readers, the professor said, the Capital Times apparently felt it had to appeal to the liberal and radical causes of a younger generation.Because of that, he suggested, the newspaper bean hiring from a generation of reporters arising from the campus unrest of the late 1960s. For the most part, he noted, they were hired from strongly left-leaning college newspapers and the underground press.
This also has brought, in the view of a Madison labor expert, a clash between reporters and management. He notes that union members perceive management as being ideologically akin to them and thus “soft” bargainers during labor negotiations.
Readers unfamiliar with the Madison media scene will note that The Capital Times is described as a daily newspaper in the Post story. That was then, this is, well, later then, as Isthmus reported:
“It’s been no fun dying on the vine,” says Ron McCrea, senior news editor of The Capital Times.
McCrea, 65, knows something about dying. He presided over the death of the strike paper known as the Madison Press Connection in 1980 and then went to work for the Washington Star, which abruptly shut down in 1981 after 128 years. …
Buoyant wouldn’t be the right word, but he was definitely upbeat about the paper’s announcement that it will cease publication as a daily on April 26 and shift to onilne publication and two weekly print editions (one news, one arts) to be distributed free in the Madison area.
“We took practically every step imaginable to sell the paper [to new readers] in the last few years, and it didn’t work,’ he says. The Capital Times, which approached 50,000 circulation in its heyday, has dropped to less than 17,000 and had become, in practical terms, a boutique journalistic product sustained by its very profitable half-ownership of the Capital Newspapers publishing conglomerate.
Things were getting so bad, McCrea says, that sources were becoming reluctant to give story tips to Cap Times reporters because the paper’s readership was so small and the larger papers might ignore its scoops.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had the experience of talking to people about a great story we’ve had, and nobody has a clue that we published it,” he says.
Perhaps the low point was the paper’s failed attempt to woo new subscribers in Madison’s “blue” neighborhoods on the near-west and near-east sides.
The mass home delivery of free papers produced precious few subscriptions, despite these being strongholds of John Kerry and Ralph Nader voters who presumably share The Capital Times‘ liberal philosophy.
“We thought this would be a rich target for us to fill out our circulation, but people just weren’t buying,” he says. “Some people even complained that we were littering! They asked that we take the papers away.”
McCrea’s conclusion: “You can only do so much before you finally have to face reality.”
Reality is online publishing and those two weekly editions. The move will save Capital Newspapers a ton in newsprint costs and result in perhaps 15 of the paper’s 60 newsroom positions being eliminated, in addition to other job cuts in production and delivery.
“I do feel upbeat because I’ve been there when they’ve simply folded the paper and told people to go home,” he says. “This is war by other means. Online is clearly the future of journalism.”
McCrea says the paper is being “very, very humane” in handling the job cuts by offering a buyout package that includes from ten to 52 weeks of salary, depending on longevity, some health-insurance coverage and other benefits.
With a few exceptions, all employees will have to apply for newly posted jobs by Feb. 18, McCrea says. The new staff will be announced on March 10. Those who aren’t hired will receive the same severance package as the staffers who accepted the buyout.
McCrea’s endorsement of the impending changes carries weight, given his long history at The Capital Times. He was a strike leader in 1977, when five unions at what was then called Madison Newspapers Inc. walked out when management unilaterally introduced new printing technology in a particularly brutal fashion.
“Madison Newspapers laid off half off its printers in one blow, [regardless] of seniority, with women and the disabled first,” he recalls “Those who returned to work the next day were told that their pay was being cut by a third. They were just bleeding in total despair.”
The striking unions failed to shut down the two dailies, which doomed the strike from the beginning. McCrea became editor of the strike paper, the Madison Press Connection, whichnever rose higher than 12,000 in circulation and folded in 1980 after employees went payless for five months.
The strike formally ended in 1982 when the last two unions finally gave up. All five unions were decertified, though the strikers had the satisfaction of collecting $1.5 million from MNI as part of their settlements. The two papers remain union-free to this day.
McCrea went to work as press secretary for the newly elected Gov. Tony Earl in 1982, but when Earl lost his re-election bid in 1986, McCrea found himself unemployable in Madison. He left town to work at the New York edition of Newsday (since shuttered as well) before he made his peace with the Cap Times and returned to the paper in 1995.
There was no clearer sign than McCrea’s return that the extraordinary animosity of the strike had finally passed.
But the damage had been done. The strike had put the proudly progressive Capital Times on the same side with the then bluntly anti-union Lee Enterprises, which owns the other half of the publishing company. McCrea admits the strike cost the Cap Times readers it never regained.
The decision to cease daily publication was tightly compartmentalized within top management. The staff was kept in the dark until the announcement, and even senior news editor McCrea didn’t know it was coming. He says he had no role in drawing up the job descriptions for the new online paper and its weekly news and arts editions. …
A third-generation newsman, McCrea has the proverbial news ink in his veins. “I don’t have the warmth of feeling for Web readers that I do for newspaper readers,” he admits. “I tend to think that newspaper readers bring more worldliness and wider life experiences to their reading.”
The Cap Times has announced that the two weekly print editions, each with an expected circulation of 80,000, will be distributed free. Is the company’s goal to target Isthmus audience and advertisers?
McCrea says his bosses deny this. “We all love Isthmus,” he says. “We did focus groups a couple of years ago, when we were looking to refashion The Capital Times one more time. In the focus groups, everybody just loved Isthmus. Everything they wanted was already in Isthmus. We came away feeling a little dispirited.”
That doesn’t put such questions to rest. In the compartmentalized world of Capital Newspapers, advertising strategy wouldn’t be shared with editorial staffers like McCrea.
Yeah, well, every media outlet competes with every other media outlet for advertising and for eyeballs. That too is economic reality.
So is this: The aforementioned Madison Press Connection, according to the always-accurate (and never biased!) Wikipedia: …
… evolved from a strike paper to one of the few cooperatively organized and owned daily newspapers ever to exist in the United States. … The staff was initially made up entirely of striking employees of MNI, with the exception of cartoonist Pete Wagner, whose controversial work spurred his firing within two weeks of being hired, but who was rehired when the staff voted to keep him in spite of numerous cancellations by irate readers. Wagner left the paper after ten months and was later replaced by Mike Konopacki, who specialized in labor-related cartoons. The Press Connection‘s cooperative structure was credited as the reason for numerous journalistic risks that corporate media avoided, including the publication in 1979 of an article purporting to provide the “secrets” of building an H-bomb.
… but, requoting from the Isthmus story …
… never rose higher than 12,000 in circulation and folded in 1980 after employees went payless for five months.
All of this, of course, is a demonstration that economic reality trumps (!) high-minded ideas about cooperative leadership, social justice, socially responsible investing, etc. The Press Connection died, and The Capital Times eliminated four of its editions, because as with any enterprise, for-profit or non-profit, if more money goes out than comes in, it’s not long for this world. As Margaret Thatcher was fond of saying, the facts of life are fundamentally conservative.
On a Monday night at Milwaukee County Stadium 60 years ago, the Milwaukee Braves took on the St. Louis Cardinals in an effort to clinch the National League pennant.
Here, not in a MP3 file, is how Braves announcer Earl Gillespie called the bottom of the 11th inning.
Foreshadowing alert: Here’s the finish (not narrated by Gillespie):
Gillespie and Harry Caray, then the Cardinals’ announcer, both were known to exclaim “Holy Cow!” They probably both said that this night, though for different reasons.
The next afternoon’s Milwaukee Journal reported thusly:
.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 