Difficult Listening 25 - 1950s politics on record

Harry Truman was President when I was born. As we slid into the Eisenhower years, my childhood memories were being imprinted with images of Crusader Rabbit and three-color Chryslers. Things weren't so blissful for the grown-ups though. They had to deal with the war in Korea, the "Red scare", Jim Crow, and those pesky atmospheric A-bomb tests. The economy was good but not everyone was happy.

The "Beat Generation" didn't like President Eisenhower. Allen Ginsberg wrote "Howl", his peyote inspired indictment of the American ethos. His publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti called for Eisenhower's impeachment. The anti-war and anti-nuke movements and the fight for real racial equality began during the Eisenhower administrations. The beatniks made disillusionment chic.

Twice, the Democrats ran Adlai Stevenson to oppose General Eisenhower. Stevenson called (prophetically) for an end to the Draft and an end to atmospheric atomic tests but he was perceived by the public as an "egghead" and "soft on Communism". Twice he was defeated.

Possibly the largest influence on the voting public was the "witch-hunting" activity of Senator Joseph McCarthy, avidly aided by The Press. McCarthy headed the Government Operations Committee in the U.S. Senate, a group similar to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in the other chamber, who busied themselves finding Communist sympathizers and homosexuals among government workers by means of unsubstantiated accusations and character assassination and stirring up the public paranoia. The public loved the adrenaline rush.

Politics hasn't changed much in my lifetime. The names change but the methods don't. To paraphrase Frank Zappa - Politics is the entertainment section of government.

Record 1 - TENTATIVE DESCRIPTION OF A DINNER GIVEN TO PROMOTE THE IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENT EISENHOWER and other poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti - Fantasy Records 7004 - 1958. "Protest poems" with "funeral drum" accompaniment by Cal Tjader.

Record 2 - ADLAI E. STEVENSON The Voice of the Uncommon Man - MGM Records E4329D - unknown release date (late 1960s?). Excerpts from speeches from campaign years through his years as U.N. Ambassador narrated by Alexander Scourby.

Record 3 - THE INVESTIGATOR - Discuriosities LP6834 - 1955. A mysterious record - the reverse side of the sleeve is blank, the label has a different catalog number, the matrix number on the disc has been obscured, the only visible name on the album, Wattley, turns out to be the cover artist. If it weren't for its infamy, it would probably remain a mystery. It is a satirical radio play written by Reuben Ship that imagines that Senator McCarthy dies in a plane crash, goes to heaven where he is recruited to take over the admissions committee. First aired on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and released on UK label Oriole Records in 1954, it caught the attention of HUAC and it was banned in the US. That led to the immediate pressing of 100,000 copies like this one.