1967: The Third Decade
1967
No new Soap Operas titles, hints or comments from them
The Summer of Love for us
Flower Power exploded into full bloom during the summer of 1967, and at the same time America experienced the worst inner city riots in history. The Beatles told us that “All You Need Is Love”, but President Johnson announced, “America needs a force of at least half a million soldiers (Boomer boys) to win the war in Vietnam”. Choose your bumper sticker: “America- Love It or Leave It” or “Make Love, Not War.”
Hippies didn’t own TVs, and this had an interesting effect on the most thinly disguised reflections on the tube. No new soap opera titles premiered in 1967. The networks refused to leak any clues as to the mood of the country for reasons of national security. But, the cover-up only half worked. Dig just a bit deeper and you realize that elimination can be just as revealing as addition. The networks cancelled “To Tell the Truth” and “Candid Camera” in 1967. There would be nothing candid and very little truth on the tube this year.
“The Smothers Brothers’ Comedy Hour” stood out as the only new television program worth watching. Tom and Dick constantly walked the razor’s edge of censorship. Ex-black list survivor, Pete Seeger, starred on their premiere show, singing his anti-Vietnam tune, “Waist Deep in Muddy Water”. The Smothers continued to push topical political issues throughout their run, even though they faced heavy censorship and the threat of cancellation on a week-to-week basis.
The TV networks gave up on the growing hippie market and aimed directly at innocent, younger Boomers. The new game plan tried to give the kids a good, hard look at the American Dream with fun new shows like “The Dating Game”, “The Newlywed Game”, “Dream Girl of ‘67” and “Supermarket Sweepstakes”. What more could a teenager expect from life? But, TV warned young Boomers, “If you stray from the accepted norms of society and fall under the influences of the Dark Side (the counterculture), The Man has both Coasts covered with ‘Dragnet’ (in LA) and ‘N.Y.P.D.’”.
The Western genre experienced a revival when the old Texan entered the White House. But now, Lyndon’s popularity waned in the polls. A growing dissatisfaction with his Vietnam policy chipped away at LBJ’s image, and reflected in the two new horse operas on TV in 1967. In “Cowboy in Africa”, the hero attempted to bring his pioneer spirit and the Code of the West half way around the world into a foreign, modern day setting. The show flopped, as did “The Legend of Custer”. Both shows appeared to be omens of Lyndon’s Last Stand in Vietnam.
If one had to choose an exact date when First Wave Boomers turned off TV, a good guess might be January 13, 1967. That night Ed Sullivan forced the Rolling Stones to sing “Let’s Spend Some Time Together”, instead of “Let’s Spend the Night Together”. Every teenager in America knew the title of the song and his blatant censorship didn’t fool anyone. One would think that old Ed might have learned a lesson from his “Show-nothing-from-the-waist-down” fiasco with Presley, but apparently not. Prior to the show, an innocent interpretation of the lyrics might have been “Let’s hang out together this evening”, but once Ed censored the line, millions of Boomers arrived at the same conclusion: “If the lyrics upset Old Stoneface, the song’s about fornicating!” The tune became a huge hit for the Stones.
Boomers tuned in to two songs inspired by the riots and ensuing crackdown on WASP teens on the Sunset Strip. The message far outweighed the talent of an LA garage band called the Seeds in “You’re Pushing Too Hard” (“on me/ What you want me to be?/ You’re pushing too hard about the things I say/ You’re pushing too hard every night and day/ You’d better watch out”). The Buffalo Springfield warned, “Something’s happening here/ What it is ain’t exactly clear/ There’s a man with a gun over there/ Telling me to beware… Step out of line the Man will come and take you away/ You’d better stop, Children. What’s that sound? Everybody look what’s coming down.”
The Beatles finally released a single to celebrate the New Year: “Let me take you down, because I’m going to Strawberry Fields (the location of an orphanage/asylum run by the Salvation Army in Liverpool)/ Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about/ Strawberry Fields forever.” If the Great Society served as the yardstick of sanity, then it would be, from this point onward, an honor in hippie circles to be considered as a potential inmate of Strawberry Fields. The little flurry of backwards music as a tag for the song made the perfect exclamation mark for the statement.