History was made

History...

Whether you wanted it or you didn't...

Whether you voted for it or you didn't...

You cannot deny that history was made at 11pm Eastern Time last night. America woke up this morning to the reality that (in all likelihood because it is still theoretical) it WILL have a new President of the United States in January of 2009, and that President will be a black man, the son of a Kenyan father and a Kansas mother, by the name of Barack Hussein Obama.

Conservatives cannot deny that fact any more than liberals can deny Barack's middle name.

Obviously the turnout will be the dominant subject of my show this weekend, but I just wanted to get those important digs in.

And yes, I DID vote yesterday. And I WAS watching at 11pm Eastern as well as chatting on the phone with my good friend from ShockNet Radio, RJ Evans, when history was made. No didn't vote for Obama (I voted Libertarian), but I still will not deny the fact that he did earn his victory.

"War of the Worlds" - Seventy Years Later!

Click Play to hear the actual radio show.

(Radio show comes courtesy of Old Time Radio and the Internet Archive.)

On October 30th, 1938, a small group of radio performers gave a performance that would, quite literally, shock the world.

To lead actor and star Orson Welles, the performance was nothing more than a cleaver Halloween stunt; to scare people on the radio in the same way that people scared themselves in front of the campfire for generations gone by.

The show certainly sounds innocent enough on the onset. Some timely music, reportedly coming from a hotel ballroom, and the occasional discussion about an otherwise innocent meteor strike. But then the story takes a more dramatic turn.

Unfortunately Welles did not take into consideration the fact that certain listeners would not be able to listen to the start of the program, which announced that the production was actually fictional. Even in those days audience members would engage in what we today refer as "channel jumping", where they would jump from one station to the next every time that station would go to break. So some listeners would go from Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy to boxing to shocking news from Grover's Mill.

Before the show reached the halfway point, the panic was nationwide. People were fleeing their homes in New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and Illinois. Police stations from Boston to Los Angeles were flooded with calls from frantic listeners that believed that the world was in fact coming to an end. College students in North Carolina were frantically calling their parents, begging to come get them, fearing the worst. Even listeners in Canada were frantically calling CFRB in Toronto asking for more information.

Hospitals were filled with people who claimed to be overcome by smoke and stricken by fear. The electric company in Providence, Rhode Island, was besieged with callers demanding that they turn off all the electricity as a "defensive maneuver".

In the days that followed, the Federal Communications Commission, only five years old, summoned the leaders of the broadcast companies to Washington to discuss remedies to prevent future hysterical outbursts. One suggestion commonly expressed was the outright prohibition of the use of the words "flash" and "bulletin" for any broadcast other than legitimate news stories. This would be the second time such speech was censored by the FCC, the first being made upon the formation of the FCC back in 1933 when they were ordered by Congress to prohibit any kind of message supporting socialism, Communism, or Nazism.

Still more draconian methods were proposed by members of Congress in the wake of this broadcast. One such measure insisted by Senator Clyde Herring (Democrat) of Iowa would require that the FCC review EVERY broadcast before it could be aired. Fortunately, the Senator's blatant bowdlerization plan failed to gain traction.

Regretfully, even H.G. Wells, who wrote the original story, was outraged at the hysteria, but was even more outraged at Orson Welles making changes to his legendary story and thus demanded that the Columbia Broadcasting Station issue an immediate retraction.

The Columbia Broadcasting Station apologized profusely to the hysteria that was inadvertently caused by the late-coming listeners and vowed that the show would NEVER BE AIRED AGAIN!

Of course, it has been rebroadcast since then... and remade and paid homage to numerous times, and even today, on the 70th anniversary of the original broadcast, it is available for people to listen to at their leisure.

A few things that should be mentioned...

• If the "artillery cannons" sounded like a toilet flushing, that's because it was. Some very creative people strung a microphone cable to the men's room for some of the sound effects.
  
• The "Secretary of the Interior" was originally supposed to be the President, but radio officials balked at the idea and ordered it be changed, even though many panic-stricken listeners were convinced it really was President Roosevelt.
  
• Orson Welles supposedly played a recording on the reporter's account of the 1937 Hindenburg disaster to demonstrate the kind of tone the fictional radio announcer should take during the performance.
  
• In the original story by H.G. Wells, the story takes place in his home country of England. Orson Welles believed that the story needed to be moved to New Jersey so it would appeal to the American listeners. (This was part of Wells' complaint about the radio show.)
  
• The Columbia Broadcasting Station, the syndicated radio system, is best known today as the TV network CBS.
  
• The radio station where the Mercury Theater on the Air made the broadcast was WABC in New York. WABC would later change their call letters to WCBS, and a new WABC would be created in 1953 which would become the flagship to the American Broadcasting Company, which many of you would recognize today as the TV network ABC. WCBS would later become instrumental in the fight against McCarthyism, and the plight of one of their popular radio personalities would inspire Edward R. Murrow to take on the politically powerful Senator Joe McCarthy.
  
• Finally, the speech that Orson Welles made at the very end of the broadcast was completely ad-libbed and done at the behest of radio officials because, up until that point, they had absolutely no idea of the kind of hysteria that was going on outside of the WABC building. Welles and the rest of the performers were taken completely by surprise as to what happened.

I hope you enjoy the rebroadcast of the War of the Worlds on it's 70th Anniversary, and be sure to come back to the blog site tomorrow for a rare link to the Brutally Honest show that was inspired by it.

(Historical information provided by Wikipedia and www.waroftheworlds.org)

Brutally Honest Rant - 02/21/07

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: Wrong George, George
Audio Transcripts
02/21/07

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – “American Idiot Remix” – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

It was back in 1994, during the 50^th Anniversary of the Normandy Invasion known as “D-Day”, that I felt a particular wave of disgust. Here was a time commemorating the most pivotal moment of World War II, where hundreds of servicemen lost their lives to put an end to tyranny, and the man representing the United States of America for this solemn occasion was one William Jefferson Clinton, a man who not only did not serve in the military, but did everything possible to stay out of serving. And here he was strolling through the massive gravesite of hundreds of men who DID serve – whether they wanted to or not – and who gave up their lives to fight a noble cause. I was bothered by that little piece of historical hypocrisy. I mean, it’s one thing to not serve in the military… it’s another to do everything possible to MAKE SURE that you do not serve and then later be in a position where you would be sending other people to fight and die.

But then again, that’s what the baby boomers voted for, right?

Well fast forward about thirteen years later and I experienced that same feeling of disgust over yet another President marking yet another historical event with hypocrisy.

George W. Bush, our current president, decided to spend this President’s Day celebrating another guy named George W. Only this time the “W” would stand for “Washington”. President Bush showed up on Mount Vernon on Monday to mark George Washington’s 275^th birthday (which actually would have been this Thursday) and laid a wreath at the first president’s tomb.

This, in and of itself, is perfectly fine. But then he decided to say a few words about Washington, the man that he was, and the American Revolution. And it was here that I felt that wave of disgust, because it was here that Bush Junior compared HIS actions to those of the American Revolution.

“On the field of battle,” said our current President of his ancient predecessor, “Washington’s forces were facing a mighty empire, and the odds against them were overwhelming. The ragged Continental Army lost more battles than it won, suffered waves of desertions, and stood on the brink of disaster many times. Yet George Washington’s calm hand and determination kept the cause of independence and the principles of our Declaration alive.”

The “principles of our Declaration”? Has anyone actually READ the Declaration of Independence? More importantly, has President Bush actually READ the Declaration of Independence? I seriously doubt if he even knows what it says, because if he did, then I would certainly believe that he would have never made that kind of statement!

While the Declaration of Independence does give the infamous line about all men being created equal and that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights – specifically life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – the document does do a whole lot more than that. It is a scathing indictment of the ruling government of the time – specifically of that same “mighty empire” that our Dufus-In-Chief referred to. It outlined a list of offenses, gross abuses of power, committed by the leader of that “mighty empire” and then actually declared that leader to be UNFIT for that role OR ANY OTHER role of leadership.

Now bear in mind that Washington had no idea what the Declaration was going to say when he was fighting the American Revolution. Hell, it wasn’t even WRITTEN when he agreed to lead our forces into battle! He was simply told to do the job and report in on his progress, which he did regularly.

“In the end,” Bush then said, “General Washington understood that the Revolutionary War was a test of wills, and his will was unbreakable. After winning the war, Washington did what victorious leaders rarely did at the time. He voluntarily gave up power.”

Again, Junior shows his failure to understand history. General Washington didn’t “voluntarily give up power” after the war. The American Revolution was not about General Washington, nor was it waged to GIVE Washington power! It was about freeing the American Colonies from that same oppressive “mighty empire”.

General George Washington was a servant of the Continental Congress, and he knew it first and foremost. He followed THEIR orders. He took THEIR lead. He didn’t try to SUBVERT the authority or the will of the Continental Congress. He stepped down after the war because he knew that the job was done and it was time for people to go home. Period. He didn’t turn around and say “Woo-hoo! That was a great ride! Let’s say we keep the momentum going and go invade the Indians next!”

Comparing Junior’s efforts in his “War on Evil Islamic Terrorist Bad Guys” to that of the American Revolution is about as off-base as you could get! Not only that, but it shows our current president’s true ignorance of history. The American Revolution wasn’t about stopping an outside invading force. There was no invasion. The “mighty empire” was already there. It was about kicking OUT the current government authority because it was inept, corrupt, abusive, and otherwise undeserving.

Let’s get brutally honest here… if anything, George W. Bush has more in common not with George Washington, but with King George III of that “mighty empire” known as Great Britain. The empire that thought that it was unstoppable. The empire that believed that GOD was on its side. The empire that thought that it could do whatever it wanted to its own people without question or explanation. The empire ruled by someone who believed that he could re-write and re-define laws on a whim. The empire that thought that it could solve any problem simply by sending more soldiers overseas. Any of this sounding a little familiar?

I know that our current president wants us to believe that he’s still trying to spread freedom and liberty all around the world, and that’s a certain delusional spin-bubble that needs to be burst on another rant, but in the meantime here’s a little friendly piece of advice for our historically-deficient leader… Mister President, the next time you want to spend President’s Day comparing your actions to those of your predecessors, you probably should stick to a president whose situations are closer to your own. Abe Lincoln quickly comes to mind… the first Republican President as well as the one who pretty much established the belief that the Constitution is null in times of war. Or perhaps someone for whom you have more in common with… namely Richard Nixon. He certainly knew about making necessary sacrifices when politically expedient and being “the decider” even when those decisions were unpopular.

Because, Mister Bush, by your speech on President’s Day, you really laid down TWO wreaths on Mount Vernon. The first was laid on the tomb of President Washington, and the second was laid on the legacy that Washington established as the first President of the United States. It may have been a legacy that was tattered and torn by your more immediate predecessors, but, sir, by your failure to grasp history and your own actions in that job, you truly showed that such qualities in a leader have for all intents and purposes shuffled off this moral coil.

(Computer – some stuff… oh, come on, you know you have to tune in to hear them!)
(Fade Music In – “Mythodea” by Vangelis)

You know what really surprised me about this? I’m the only one who really caught on to this issue! I certainly didn’t expect the folks at Fox News to pick up on it, but the rest of the media really just let this matter whiz right by them. Even MSNBC’s Keith Olberman, who would normally take time out of his regular broadcast to rip the President a new hole, actually said very little about this ill-made comparison of the two men named George.

And I have to wonder, is that what politics has really boiled down to of late? Have we really lost any appreciation of our system of government that a sitting president could compare himself to a predecessor whose actions were diametrically opposite, and NOBODY bothers to pick up on it or even say two words about it?

That’s sad, people. That’s really frigging SAD!

And I’ve got news for you folks, I’d be ripping on Bill Clinton if he pulled this kind of stunt as well. If you want to show respect for your predecessors, then you do it by simply acknowledging the things he or she did and then move on. You don’t try to leach off of them to validate your own decisions. Let history decide through your own actions if you were truly worthy of such comparisons.

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production, all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/“End of Recording”)

[End of program]
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