The number one single today in 1960:
Today in 1969, the Who released their rock opera “Tommy” …
… two years before Iron Butterfly disbanded over arguments over what “In a Gadda Da Vita” (which is one-third the length of all of “Tommy”) actually meant:
The number one British album today in 1970 was “McCartney,” named for you know who:
I got a news release from Wisconsin Education Association Council President Mary Bell asserting that the recall of Gov. Scott Walker is “both historic and heroic.”
It may be dawning on Democrats that the recall of Walker is something else — a failure in progress, like watching a car crash in slow motion.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
With little more than two weeks until Wisconsin’s gubernatorial recall election, some Democratic and union officials quietly are expressing fears that they have picked a fight they won’t win and that could leave lingering injuries.
The election has taken on significance beyond Wisconsin state politics: Organized labor sees the battle as a major stand against GOP efforts to scale back collective-bargaining rights for public-sector workers, as Mr. Walker did after taking office in 2011. Some Democrats now fear mobilizing Republicans to battle the recall could carry over to help the party—and Republican Mitt Romney—in November’s presidential election. …
For the left-leaning groups that have spent months trying to oust Mr. Walker, a loss would be a deflating end to a process that began with unions and their allies gathering more than 900,000 signatures to force a recall. …
Top Democrats now say that when labor groups first raised the specter of a recall, the party’s officials urged their allies in Wisconsin to reconsider. “We told them it was a bad, bad, bad idea,” one Democratic official said.
A union official said both the Democratic National Committee and the Obama campaign expressed reservations. “I don’t know that anyone was enthusiastic about it over there,” the union official said.
Party leaders also counseled against pouring money into a contested primary ahead of the recall election, the Democratic official said.
[Rep. Peter] Barca, the Wisconsin Assembly minority leader, said he had heard rumblings about the DNC’s displeasure with the recall. But Wisconsin residents weren’t seeking approval from Washington, he said.
This is where one remembers the line of Will Rogers: “I’m not a member of an organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”
Time magazine visited the Solidarity Sing Along:
The members of the Solidarity Sing Along are a microcosm of the anti-Walker movement: passionate about public policy, eager to fight for their values, invested in the community they have forged — and yet, not entirely on the same page. Despite the outpouring of anger at Walker, on an electoral level, the governor’s opponents have struggled to channel the enthusiasm that garnered more than 1 million recall signatures into a successful campaign.
As a result, the campaign to recall Walker is sputtering, and the governor has pulled ahead in the polls with a little over two weeks to go until the June 5 election. “There’s a lot of despair, a lot of anger,” says Chris Reeder, 41, an activist who helps lead the Solidarity Sing Along. “The polls are very scary.”
To begin with, recall proponents could have used a consensus candidate to pit against the incumbent. Tom Barrett, the Milwaukee mayor who will square off against Walker on June 5, was defeated by the governor in 2010 and advocated for some of the same changes to union benefits (including increasing the amount most public employees contribute to their pension and health care costs) as the governor. Barrett’s record of tangling with unions led labor to squander several million dollars on Dane County executive Kathleen Falk, a liberal primary challenger whom Barrett clobbered by nearly 20 points.
Walker moans about the out-of-state union money arrayed against him, but the truth, say Democrats involved in the recall fight, is that labor is tepid about Barrett and depleted by costly battles in Ohio and Indiana. The Milwaukee mayor has relentlessly attacked Walker, which is to be expected in a race that is by nature a referendum on the incumbent, but Barrett has done little to articulate a clear agenda of his own. When Republicans call Barrett a cipher, they aren’t without a point. …
The DNC’s tentativeness about plunging into the contest, which Republicans attribute to fears that a loss would tarnish President Obama’s chances in the state, has irked some local activists, who note that two-thirds of Walker’s $25 million haul came from out of state, while the RNC pledged to go “all in” to protect its imperiled star. “It’s very disheartening,“ Reeder says of the DNC’s absence in the race.
As I predicted months ago, the recall also is draining the coffers of Democrats and their allies in a year when Wisconsin is supposedly a presidential-election swing state, the state will be electing a new U.S. senator, Democrats presumably will be trying to knock off freshman Reps. Sean Duffy (R–Ashland) and Reid Ribble (R–Sherwood) while trying to retain the open seat of Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D–Madison), and there are the Senate recall elections and then the properly scheduled legislative elections this fall.
Three groups of voters are going to vote June 5 — supporters of Walker, opponents of Walker, and those who may not support what Walker did, but don’t believe his actions during his first 17 months in office warrant his recall. It seemed obvious when this ridiculousness began a year ago that the first and last groups probably outnumber the second group. I predict that of the newspapers that decide to opine on the recall, exactly two — The Capital Times and Isthmus, both in the People’s Republic of Madison — will support Tom Barrett. The rest will put themselves in the third group.
It also takes a brain to observe that, even if Barrett wins the recall June 5, Democrats have zero opportunity to seize control of both houses of the Legislature until after the November elections, and that given a 21-seat GOP margin, the Assembly’s shifting from Republican control to Democratic control in 2013 is unlikely.
Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post notes the upshot of all this:
All of this bodes well for Walker and ultimately for Republicans on the ballot in November, including Mitt Romney and the eventual U.S. Senate nominee. Really, is Obama’s message any clearer than that of the recall forces? In the meantime, Republicans are organized, energized and well aware that if they can put Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes in Romney’s column, suddenly he’ll have many more options to get to 270 electoral votes.
The Troglopundit has the perfect reaction:
Guess they shoulda thought of that last November, before they set all this crap in motion.
That would require a competently run Democratic Party in Wisconsin, of course.
I thoroughly disagree with the number one song today in 1961:
Today in 1965, the Beatles found that “Ticket to Ride” was a ticket to the top of the charts:
The number one album today in 1971 was the Rolling Stones’ “Sticky Fingers”:
Because I’m the only non-sports editorial person in the office and thus have better local things to do, I didn’t attend the Dubuque appearance of U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood in Dubuque Friday.
The Dubuque Telegraph Herald did:
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has a task for those in the tri-states — contact your congressional representatives in Washington, D.C., and urge them to pass the transportation bill.
“America is one big pothole, folks,” said LaHood, adding that if the bill is not passed, the U.S. will be changing course from a long history of supporting the nation’s transportation infrastructure. …
The transportation secretary suggested that policy-makers in Washington, D.C., where “nobody gets along or has a common agenda,” follow Dubuque’s lead and ignore the political views of individual leaders in the name of progress. …
Asked by Mayor Ray Buol what it would cost to bring U.S. transportation up to current standards, LaHood acknowledged it would take “billions of dollars,” but he said the cost already has been budgeted for.
Last thing first: Given that there is no prospect in the foreseeable future of anything approximating a balanced federal budget, to say that the cost has already been budgeted for is like your planning to win PowerBall or Mega Millions this week.
LaHood, a former Republican congressman from Illinois, demonstrates that those who claim there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans have a point. LaHood has been the point man in the Obama administration’s continuing war on drivers, as demonstrated by the proposal to make GPS devices essentially useless and to ban cellphone use in vehicles. LaHood is also a professor of the Washington-knows-best school as demonstrated by the federal mandate for all states to set the same definition of legal intoxication instead of letting states decide. (Which came after the federal mandate for all states to require seat belt use and set the same drinking age, the latter of which dates back to the Reagan administration.)
The texting ban and LaHood’s wish to ban cellphone use is despite the lack of proof that texting and cellphones are any worse a driver distraction than all the other legal (that is, not specifically proscribed by law) forms of driver distraction, such as eating and drinking, reading a map, reading road signs, watching other traffic, adjusting your sound system or ventilation controls, the Check Engine light, or, worst of all, passengers.
LaHood’s employment as transportation secretary is supposed to impress us with President Obama’s bipartisanism, in the same way we were supposed to be impressed by George W. Bush’s appointment of U.S. Rep. Norman Mineta (D–California) as transportation secretary. My preference for transportation secretary would be a member of the National Motorists Association, an organization that seeks to inject that rarest of things, common sense, into speed limits and enforcement thereof, the drunk driving debate, seat belt laws, and the other things government tries to do to infringe upon our transportation freedom.
Beyond LaHood’s search for his “billions of dollars,” transportation funding is a state issue too. One of my first local events was a Platteville Area Chamber of Commerce luncheon that featured state Secretary of Transportation Mark Gottlieb. He mentioned a $15 billion gap in what the Department of Transportation and/or the Legislature wants to do in road projects and actual funding therefor over the next decade.
In both the federal and state cases, perhaps there wouldn’t be such a funding gap if we drivers weren’t paying through our gas taxes and vehicle registration fees (those two areas comprise half of state transportation revenue) for things that do not benefit us drivers. I like to walk, and my children ride bikes; that doesn’t mean I think we should pay for pedestrian-specific paths or bike trails beyond what we already have. Mass transit in rural areas does not cost nearly as much as the Milwaukee transit system nor Madison Metro buses, and it seems to me residents of Milwaukee and Dane counties should pay for their buses, not me. Trains have a purpose, to move freight, not to move limousine liberals between Madison and Milwaukee.
Now that I’ve written this, I sort of wish I had gone to see LaHood. Except that LaHood is like nearly every other politician I’ve ever met, afflicted with something one of our late dogs had — selective hearing.
Jessica McBride is also looking for reasons to choose Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett instead of Gov. Scott Walker:
Mayor Tom Barrett increasingly seems to be running a “throw everything you can and see what sticks” campaign. …
And so we’re told we should oust Gov. Scott Walker midterm because, well, Walker’s supposedly the really, really angry guy (OK, whatever). Or he’s making us all really angry at each other (whatever).
We’re told we should go through the disruption of doing something we’ve never done before, oust a governor midterm, because he’s mean to women (or something).
We’re told we should oust him because some monthly jobs figures weren’t great, even though Milwaukee’s jobs figures aren’t great. And then, when Walker, under fire over jobs before he’s had a chance to really implement a job reform agenda, produces a report that shows the state has gained jobs under his tenure, we’re told we shouldn’t vote for him because he released it early. …
There are also murky asides about that looming John Doe investigation in Milwaukee County. Although the specter of that is obviously concerning, right now it hasn’t snaked its way up to Walker. So right now it’s just shadowy allegations or aides who allegedly did bad things. …
If you believe the polls, Walker is actually increasing his lead. I think this is partly because the Democrats haven’t settled on a coherent, clear message for why we need to be going through all this. They need one. Walker is not just an incumbent. He’s an incumbent they are trying to toss out of office in the middle of his term. That’s a really big deal. People get this. It means they are looking for Democrats to clearly make the case — the case for why we should.
Instead, Democrats are tossing up such a flurry of charges that no one has a clue what they are talking about anymore.
The upshot is in McBride’s last sentence: “… the fact his opponents haven’t been able to clearly explain why his central reform (remember that?) was so bad.”
One strange anniversary in rock music Saturday. In 1968, Paul McCartney and Jane Asher attended a concert of … Andy Williams:
Eleven years later, not McCartney, but Elton John became the first Western artist to perform in the Soviet Union.
Four years later, David Bowie’s suggestion reached number one:
Today in 1966, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend of The Who decided to replace for the evening the tardy drummer Keith Moon and bass player John Entwistle with the bass player and drummer of the band that played before them at the Ricky Tick Club in Windsor, England.
When Moon and Entwistle arrived and found they had been substituted for, a fight broke out. Moon and Entwistle quit … for a week.
The number one single today in 1967:
Today in 1967, the BBC’s “Where It’s At” featured a preview of the Beatles’ new album, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
The show didn’t include the song the Beeb banned due to its alleged drug references:
The number one album today in 1958, and for the next 31 weeks, was the soundtrack to the musical “South Pacific” went to number one and stayed there for 31 weeks. The film version starred Mitzi Gaynor, who looked very much like my mother a few years later.
Today in 1979, Eric Clapton married Patti Boyd, the former wife of George Harrison and the muse for the song “Layla.” The song lasted much longer than the marriage.
One wonders if anyone played selections from that day’s number one British album:
I am not a person who reflexively believes the way things used to be is better than the way things are today. For one thing, history, good or bad, does not go backwards.
I am, for better or worse, a child of the TV generation. When our oldest son, Michael, started watching TV, it amused us greatly that he was watching the same PBS shows, “Sesame Street” and “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” that we watched growing up. (It wouldn’t surprise me, though I don’t remember it, if I watched episode number one of “Sesame Street,” portions of which, of course, can be viewed on YouTube.) I’m sure pediatricians or psychologists would be horrified to learn that, when I was seven years old, I was a religious watcher of “Hawaii Five-O,” on CBS Tuesdays at 7:30 p.m. and then, once the “Family Hour” was instituted, 8 p.m. (More on Five-O later.)
Cable TV has been a bonanza (not to be confused with “Bonanza”) of old TV over the years, having taken on what broadcast stations used to do during off-network hours. (Old reruns on broadcast TV have largely been replaced by original-run syndicated programming.) One highlight of going to my in-laws was the ability to watch weekend reruns of “Emergency!” and “The Green Hornet,” which at the time were on channels we didn’t get where we lived.
On a different weekend in southwest Wisconsin, another channel was showing a marathon of the old cartoon show “The Banana Splits,” with four people costumed as lifesize stuffed animals. (I apologize in advance for inserting the theme music, “Tra-la-la La-la-la-laaa tra-la-la la-la-la-laaaaaa,” into your brain for the next several days.)
One of the voice talents on the show was the great ventriloquist Paul Winchell, who gained anonymous notice later as the voice of Tigger and Dow Bathroom Cleaner’s “scrubbing bubbles.” TNT used to have a morning segment called “Lunchbox TV,” featuring reruns of “Starsky and Hutch,” “CHiPs” and “Kung Fu.”
While my early watching was usually cartoon-related, most of my TV watching has been in some variation of the action/adventure genre. Early on, I developed a two-pronged formula as to whether the series was worth my watching: (1) cool wheels, well before I could drive (including, in the case of “Star Trek,” space vehicles), and (2) cool theme music, before I’d developed appreciation for music. That might be the only explanation for why I watched “The A-Team,” although George Peppard did appear to be having the time of his life as the head of said A-Team.
For us old TV buffs, WBAY-TV RTN was a godsend, until it went away. Then came WGBA-TV’s Me TV, which on Sundays includes one of the great dramas, “The Fugitive” (the finale of which was the highest rated TV show in history until someone shot J.R. Ewing), “The Rockford Files” (a series I thought as a nine-year-old was edgy because the title character said “damn” and “hell” a lot), “Get Smart” (two words: Mel Brooks) and “Hawaii Five-O,” and “Mission: Impossible” weekdays, and “The Wild Wild West” (a science fiction Western, if that makes any sense) on weekends.
If I were programming “Steve TV,” using the aforementioned formula, the program schedule would include:
I’m a fan of the more obscure series too. “It Takes a Thief” starred Robert Wagner as a rich jewel thief who steals things for the government. (And you thought stealing stuff for the government was limited to the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Revenue.) The classic theme music was from jazz composer Dave Grusin. I doubt anyone remembers another Jack Webb offering, “Chase,” which featured not just cool theme music but, in the same series, a fast car, a helicopter, a motorcycle and a police dog. (Nirvana for pre-teen boys.) A couple years later, NBC-TV replayed a one-season series, “Hawk,” about a half-American Indian New York City police detective, because of its star, who, 10 years after the series first aired on ABC, was the top-grossing box office star in the U.S. — Burt Reynolds. Even more obscure was a series I remember watching, though I remember almost nothing about it — “Bearcats,” about two guys “looking for adventure” around the turn-of-the-century West, traveling from place to place in an old Stutz Bearcat.
How do we know these and other TV series were superior to much of what’s on TV today? Because Hollywood keeps remaking TV of the ‘60s and ‘70s as movies, even series that were not perhaps crying out to be redone as movies, such as “The Incredible Hulk.” Since the 1980s, we have seen the movie returns of “The Untouchables,” “Mission: Impossible,” “The Saint” (think of the original British TV series as Roger Moore’s audition to replace Sean Connery as James Bond), “The Avengers” (perhaps the worst remake, because while Uma Thurman was a fine replacement for Diana Rigg, Ralph Fiennes is no Patrick Macnee), “The Wild Wild West” (again victimized by bad casting, because Will Smith reminds no one of original star Robert Conrad), “I Spy,” “The Mod Squad,” “Charlie’s Angels,” “S.W.A.T.,” “Starsky and Hutch,” and “Get Smart,” an unappreciated classic in its time. Dick Wolf, the creator of the “Law & Order” franchise, brought back “Dragnet” for two seasons as a one-hour drama, but although I enjoyed it (hearing the announcement “sentenced to death by lethal injection” at the end was a particular thrill), few other viewers apparently did.
Most of those remakes are not popular among the series’ original fans. In the case of “Starsky and Hutch,” the producers made fun of the original series, and if you do that, you’re making fun of the original series’ fans, whether or not the original premise strained credulity. The movie casting of Ben Stiller as Starsky and Owen Wilson as Hutch was just ridiculous. (Having Hutch sing “Don’t Give Up on Us,” the only successful single of original costar David Soul, was a nice touch, though.) If you watch any remake directed by Brian De Palma (who redid “The Untouchables” and the first “Mission: Impossible”), you know that any similarity between the original and De Palma’s remake is limited to the title.
Most of the remakes miss the spirit of the originals, which were created in the old Television Code days, when writers and directors couldn’t go nearly as far as TV goes today and thus had to be more inventive. The quality of most series usually drops the longer the series goes on (particularly “Star Trek,” most of the third season of which could qualify as the worst program in the history of entertainment) when, as a Star Trek chronicler once put it, format becomes formula. At some point, the powers that be in TV entertainment decided that what viewers wanted was more reality — flawed heroes, storylines unresolved after just one episode, social commentary, and more downer episode endings — when, not to be Pollyanniaish about it, most viewers want escapism out of their entertainment. (This is probably not an original theory, but the more grim the daily news is, I’d suggest, the more escapism people want.) Call me a philistine, but the longer the classic series “M*A*S*H” went, the less interested I was in it as the series became more socially profound and less funny. (The fact the series lasted approximately four times as long as the actual Korean War didn’t help either.) A series that was supposed to emulate “Emergency!”, “Third Watch,” was unwatchable because the creators (who formerly worked on “ER”) decided instead to foist enough angst on each character to make them, or the viewer, look for their stash of cyanide tablets.
A lot of fans of old series (many of whom expand on the original through writing fan fiction) want to bring back their favorite series, only to be disappointed by the failure of the comeback (proposals to bring back “Hawaii Five-O” have languished for more than a decade) or to be disappointed in the comeback, since obviously different people (namely actors, writers and producers) are involved. History, good or bad, does not go backwards, even on TV.
The number one single today in 1963:
Another one-hit wonder had the number one single today in 1968:
The number one single today in 1974 might be the very definition of the term “novelty song”:
The number one British single today in 1975:
(Which more appropriately should have been called “Stand by Your Men,” since Tammy Wynette had had three husbands up to then, and two more thereafter.)
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 