Wednesday, July 16, 2008

The people of old Mississippi should all hang their heads in shame!
I can't understand how their minds work --
What's the matter -- Don't they watch Les Crane?
But if you ask me to bus my children
I hope the cops take down your name
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal.
-- Phil Ochs ..................

(That's Crane on the right, interviewing Mario Savio
of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement)


I remember the Les Crane Show and was surprised to read that it had such a short run. I suppose it hit at the right moment -- I was still at home (so I watched TV) and I was at an age where I stayed up late. Apparently, I wasn't in the demographic he needed.

And today I'm in the wise-ass demographic that will come away from this obituary pondering a man who divorced Tina Louise and married a woman named Ginger.

In any case, there was a time when the media was truly liberal. Les Crane, Laugh-in, the Smothers Brothers, David Susskind and the like were all over the tube. Very good for the New Yorker crowd, perhaps not so good for selling Shake-and-Bake.

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