November 1978 was a month like few others for the city of San Francisco. On November 7 voters in California rejected the anti-gay Briggs Initiative which would have banned the hiring of gay teachers. It was an emotional victory for openly gay San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk who had put considerable energy campaigning against it. Then a week-and-a-half later Jim Jones, leader of the People's Temple cult, forced more than 900 of his followers to commit suicide in their Jonestown settlement in the Venezuelan protectorate of Guayana. Jones and many of the victims were from the Bay Area.
On November 27, the Monday after Thanksgiving, disgruntled former city supervisor Dan White snuck into City Hall duruing the morning and shot dead mayor George Moscone (pictured, near left) at point blank range and then walked down the hall and did the same to Milk. In a somewhat bizarre coincidence, Moscone and Milk had a connection to Jim Jones, who a few years earlier was chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority.
At the time I was in my senior at Penn State University and in the early stages of coming out so Milk's murder was especially sobering for me. Back than having an openly gay man in such a high profile government position was unheard of, compounding the loss. In 2009 Sean Penn won an Oscar for his portrayal of Milk in the movie Milk. The film was based on the biography The Mayor of Castro St. - The Life & Times of Harvey Milk.
The day before Thanksgiving 1971 was a snowy one in the hills of Western Pennsylvania (about 4" fell). I was in the 9th grade at the time and my dad had gotten four tickets at work to tonight's Penguins hockey game at Pittsburgh's Civic Arena. I went with my older sister Linda, older brother Darrell (home for the holiday during his freshman year at Indiana University of PA) and a neighbor from down the street. The Penguins lost to Toronto 2-1 but it was an enjoyable outing nonetheless.
Walking home after getting off the bus we were playing around in the snow and throwing an occasional snowball. At one point I jerked my head to avoid one being thrown and my glasses flew off. After looking for them for some time with no luck I ran home to get a flashlight (Mom joined us). Finally, in the midst of our search a neighbor approached in his car and stopped when he saw our search party in the middle of the street. He stayed so we could look in the light cast by his high beams and shortly thereafter we found my glasses. We had been out in the cold for close to an hour.
Meanwhile, while we conducted our search another was about to unfold in the Pacific Northwest. A passenger named DB Cooper had hijacked a plane, demanded parachutes and $200,000 (about $1 million in today's $) and then jumped from the plane during a rainstorm into the wilderness north of Portland, Oregon. Although hijackings had become a hazard of air travel since the late 60's, the way this one was carried out made it unique. And although a bundle of deteriorated twenty-dollar bills was discovered in 1980, and traced back to those given him, Cooper himself was never found.
(The book D.B. Cooper: Dead or Alive? provides the full story of this mysterious man and his curious caper.) The following clip goes into greater detail about Cooper.
The assassination of President Kennedy is the first vivid memory I have of any historical event in my lifetime. I was six years old and in the First Grade at Fenton Elementary School in the Pittsburgh suburb of McKees Rocks. It was Friday afternoon and I had just returned to school after having lunch at home. My classmates and I waited for our teacher, Mrs. Follie, to arrive but for some unknown reason we waited an unusually long time for her (this was too good to be true!). Finally, she walked in and told us the news that President Kennedy had been shot and that we could go home.
It seemed befitting that it was an overcast afternoon which added to the somberness of my walk home (and Saturday would be dreary & rainy). Although I was aware this was an awful event I don't recall feeling any strong emotions. While waiting for my father to return from work I sat on the sofa in the living room and paged through my mother's December issue of Good Housekeeping that arrived in the mail earlier that afternoon. On the cover was a little girl holding a large Santa lollipop. Although its festive nature was incongruous with that day's tragedy, it was a nice escape for a young child.
Just two days later the nation witnessed the shooting death of accused assassin, 25-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV. It was just past noon and my family was eating Sunday lunch. The TV was on in the background in the living room because my father, a football fanatic, insisted on watching the NFL game that was being broadcast. The telecast was interrupted by coverage of Oswald being brought into police headquarters in Dallas. As he was being walked in, surrounded by detectives, a man named Jack Ruby jumped out of the crowd and shot Oswald in the stomach.
I didn’t see the shooting because my seat at the dinner table was obstructed by a wall that blocked my view. But I heard the commotion and saw the reaction of my parents. This was very likely the most shocking event ever seen on live TV until 9/11 when millions saw the 2nd plane (United Flight 175) crash into the 2nd tower of the World Trade Center.
Because of these events, for a long time I viewed Dallas (and Texas in general) as an evil place, not unlike enemy territory such as Red China, and it took a long time for me to shake this feeling.
ABC aired the controversial movie The Day After on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. It depicted a conflict between the U.S. & Soviet Union that escalated into nuclear war and the consequences suffered by a family living in Lawrence, Kansas after a nuclear bomb was dropped nearby. I watched it with my ex-boyfriend Rick at his apartment on West 15th St. (We had broken up a few months earlier but would reconcile and move back in together a week before Christmas.)
The movie (starring Jason Robards) had a grim storyline with no happy, or even hopeful, ending. It was even more sobering because of real-life tensions that had been building between the U.S. and Soviet Union during the first Reagan administration. Despite the fact that it was expected to attract a huge audience the movie aired with limited commercials (and none after the missles were launched) because very few advertisers were willing to air in it. This apprehension prevented ABC from charging high rates for advertising time; therefore, the few advertisers who took advantage got extremely good deals. One ad I remember seeing was for Orville Redenbacher microwave popcorn. I thought the juxtaposition of a nuclear blast and corn popping was amusing in a black humor sort of way.
As expected, the movie delivered a huge 46 household rating/62 share, making it the highest rated TV movie of all time and 3rd highest rated program of the year (behind the final episode of M*A*S*H and the Super Bowl). Soon afterwards a parade of TV movies with "socially relevant" storylines would follow, including Something About Amelia (incest); The Burning Bed (wife beating); and An Early Frost (AIDS).
Upon the movie's conclusion a special episode of Nightline aired to discuss the movie with a studio audience. I had seen enough and didn't need to immerse myself further in the grim subject so I made my way home to the East 20's in the rain. After what I had watched tonight I was looking forward to spending time with my family back in Pittsburgh for the Thanksgiving holiday.
I was in my senior year at Penn State and had just come home for term break on Saturday afternoon. That evening our TV watching was interrupted by a news bulletin reporting that California congressman Leo Ryan and eight others (including an NBC cameraman and two newspaper reporters) were gunned down at an airstrip in the small South American nation of Guyana. They were there on a fact-finding mission to investigate a cult known as the People's Temple whose members were mostly from California.
As bad as this news was an even grislier story unfolded the next day as the residents of Jonestown, the settlement Ryan was visiting, participated in a mass suicide ordered by their paranoid leader Jim Jones. Although some had been shot most died after drinking a grape-flavored drink laced with cyanide. The number of dead was truly staggering. As the week went on the numbers rose steadily, 100 at first, then 250, 500 all the way up to a staggering final toll of 913. Understandably, this tragedy cast a pall over the Thanksgiving holiday. (A number of books have been written about this event including Raven: The Untold Story of the Reverend Jim Jones & His People.)
One legacy of this tragedy is the phrase "drinking the grape Kool-Aid", which was coined to suggest that someone has been brainwashed.
I was away on business in Los Angeles visiting my company's office there for the first time (ad agency NWAyer). That evening, a Thursday, I was in my hotel room (the newly renovated Biltmore) getting ready to drive into West Hollywood for a bite to eat when I heard a breaking story on the evening news about Grammy-winning vocal duo Milli Vanilli (Best New Artist of 1990). It was revealed that they hadn't done their own singing when recording or performing!
Despite this deception I couldn't understand why a class-action lawsuit was filed to obtain refunds for those who purchased MV's CD/record Girl You Know It's True (which sold nearly 10 million units and produced five top-5 singles). After all, the wildly popular songs were unchanged, with the same great hooks and beats, so if fans previously liked hits such as "Girl I'm Gonna Miss You" why would they no longer enjoy them now? Of course, MV had to give back their Grammy. And unlike Vanessa Williams, whose career took off after a scandal (nude photos) forced her to step down as Miss America in 1984, the fledgling careers of Rob and Fab were largely over (and, sadly, Rob committed suicide in 1998).
The fascinating clip below shows them accepting their People's Choice, American Music and Grammy Awards.
I was in the 3rd grade and after dinner on the evening of November 9, 1965 I was doing homework in the living room with the radio playing in the background (my parents listened to the evening news on venerated Pittsburgh station KDKA while we ate dinner). Mom and Dad were getting ready to leave for Parents' Night meetings at each of the schools my brother, sister and I attended. That's when the news bulleltin came on about a massive power failure affecting New York City and the Northeast during evening rush hour.
Years later (as a resident of NYC) I was on a date when the conversation turned to our tastes in music, in particular, the Supremes. My date told me that whenever he heard their song I Hear A Symphony it brought back memories of the Blackout of '65. The song was being played on radio station WABC the evening of the blackout when the melody and voices became distorted as the turntable slowly wound down after losing power. And my second memory of this date was that when we said goodnight he hugged me so hard (it came out of nowhere) that he broke one of my ribs. Literally, a painful memory.
It was a dreary and rainy Tuesday but I was in good spirits for two reasons. First, the results from yesterday's mid-term elections were very positive as both houses of Congress returned to Democratic control. Second, I was getting paid for a research project I had recently completed about the U.S. Hispanic market. I went up to Chelsea at around noon to pick up my check from the research company I did the project for. From there I walked over to my bank to deposit it and while standing in line at HSBC I heard the surprising news on CNN that irascible Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was stepping down.
This news bulletin was like a beam of sunshine breaking through that day's clouds. Even better was the fact that for some reason the president decided to wait until after the election to make this announcement. Therefore, it was of no benefit to Republican candidates. This news made the day's pouring rain (the most of any day this year, a record-setting 3.60") more than bearable. In fact, as I walked home I felt lighthearted, just like Gene Kelly in his famous rain-splashing scene in the the movie Singin' in the Rain. At long last there appeared to be light at the end of the tunnel - and in two more years we would be delivered from evil.
I was running on the treadmill at the gym (Crunch Fitness) in the early evening of November 7, 2000 watching election coverage as I warmed up for my weight workout. The early returns looked promising for Vice President Al Gore. In fact, NBC had just projected him to be the winner in Florida. This encouraging news gave me a lift during my workout. However, by the time I returned home an hour later the state's 25 electoral votes had been taken from his column as Florida was now "too close to call". This was quite an unusual development.
I stayed up until nearly 2:00 and then for whatever reason I chose to keep the TV on as I slept. (At least I was able to lull myself to sleep knowing that former First Lady Hillary Clinton had won her race in New York for the U.S. Senate.) I awoke to the same uncertainty as when I crawled into bed - the race had yet to be called. And this is how it would stay for the next five weeks until the Supreme Court decided in Bush's favor - thus beginning an 8-year nightmare for the nation. (Books by CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin and renowned Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz discuss the standoff in Florida.)
The craziness in Florida, with its confusing variety of ballots, caused me to reflect on how those in the advertising research field (my profession) so often disparage Nielsen for its measurement of TV audiences - using techniques which go through rigorous methodological review. How curious that its methods are held up to such greater scrutiny compared to the jerry-rigged system used to elect the President - the most important man in the world.
History was going to be made regardless of who won tonight's 2008 presidential election. Either the U.S. would have its first African American president or first female vice president (Sarah Palin). I voted before going to work and waited in line for a little more than an hour at my polling place at an NYU dorm across the street from Washington Square Park. Happily, the sun was shining and the line of voters was buzzing with anticipation. And although I had been a supporter of Hillary Clinton I was happy to cast my ballot for Obama.
I watched election coverage on CNN when I got home from work that night. I planned to go to the gym but got caught up in the very encouraging returns, especially from traditional "red" states such as Indiana, Virginia and North Carolina. Later in the evening I called my mother in Pittsburgh to talk about the impending good news. Then as soon as the polls closed in California (11PM in the East) CNN declared Obama the winner. The streets in my Greenwich Village neighborhood erupted in wild cheers as if the Yankees or Mets had won the World Series. And the partying atmosphere continued all night.
Obama's acceptance speech in Chicago was somber but inspiring. A few minutes earlier he and his family had walked onto a large stage in front of 1 million ecstatic supporters, a setting that seemed almost European in style with its pomp and pageantry. At one point a crowd shot showed Jesse Jackson wiping away tears. Meanwhile Obama's opponent, John McCain, gave a very gracious concession speech. As usual his wife Cindy, looked stunning in a chic yellow-gold outfit (and thrilled that the campaign was over) - in contrast to the peculiar choice of a dress that Michelle Obama wore.
Previous blog posts I've published about two other presidential elections:
