Presidents’ speeches used to be a lot more important than they are today. I recall they used to have them at the most inconvenient times. I remember one speech my mom made me watch. It was right during the Beatles second or third appearance on the Ed Sullivan show.

Her efforts didn’t work. I knew how to make it painful to enforce a rule like that on me.
LBJ was the President and I never thought he was much to miss the Beatles over. LBJ is an interesting figure though. I thought he looked like his beagle dog. He did like to throw the poor thing around by its ears so I gathered he didn’t like a dog looking like him.

I associated LBJ with Vietnam. What was he thinking? Few people wanted that war. I think most of us thought it would be a better world if he just kept throwing the dog around and leave the boys at home.

I barely caught the Beatles performance. It was a great experience. The cameras had a way of making it look like the theatre had three thousand screaming kids in it but it was really only about 900 or so I hear. But a whole nation of kids felt empowered by the new sound and energy.

Last year McCartney guided the release of the Let It Be album under the name Let It Be-Naked. I liked it better than the highly produced version. And I hear the original producer Phil Spector flipped and ended up killing a woman in his house foyer.

I think LBJ could have been responsible in some way. I had two friends that went to Vietnam. One wanted to and the other didn’t. The first friend was Steve. He was a mad man. I didn’t know he had gone to war until we were both working in an apple juice factory together about a year after the war ended. He was a helicopter gunman. He was shot down three times and shot up a little bit. He was glad he went. And he liked the Beatles and didn’t care for LBJ either. I don’t think we ever talked about him throwing dogs around by their ears.

My other friend was Danny. He was giving the opportunity to go to Vietnam or serve a year in jail for a drug bust. The judge thought a little war would do him good. Actually Danny spent most of his time smoking pot and watching gasoline at a fuel depot. He really hated the war and didn’t think much about LBJ.

The war in Vietnam has pretty much ruined and taken the fun out of war for most of us post-modern elders. Unresolved feelings toward LBJ and Vietnam leak out all over the place. This isn’t the first time this happened. WWII wasn’t a war many Americans wanted to fight after what happened in WWI.

You don’t hear a lot about LBJ. Nixon sort of stole his thunder. Nixon hated the Beatles and would like have booked himself on the air during every performance of the Beatles on Sullivan’s show. Don’t recall his ever-throwing dogs around by their ears.

I think one of the tough lessons to us older post-moderns is life isn’t really black and white. And two people can end up with several different views of what was going on right before their eyes. I find myself admiring those who did well in the Vietnam War these days. I avoided going due to an S2 and disqualification for a drug bust. I didn’t mind at the time. But every once in awhile I wonder if I wouldn’t have tested myth manhood a bit better had I gone and been shot at for real. And yet I loathe the thought and memory of LBJ. And the evening body counts and video repots of the wounded. I remember photos of wounded people being hauled away on stretchers. That and bodies of dead soldiers on the tarmac of military airports. You wouldn’t see that now.

Now we are in another war. Some of us hate the war but we are uncomfortably conflicted by our admiration for the brave and our concerns that we are wasting our time in Iraq. I don’t know what I think. Other than I have come to be convinced that life is complex and we all experience life differently.

I also think that contemporary presidents would never schedule a speech during the Beatles. I don’t have my mother to make me watch it though she would probably stills ay the same thing today.

Culture has taken over in many ways the serious business of life. The small numbers who vote shows this to be true. Lack of church attendance shows the culture has moved well beyond our appeal as churches. And fewer men are going to college all the time. Meanwhile tracking celebrities is good fun. Anna Nicole Smith died yesterday. It was tragic but who in the Sam fat is she in the big scheme of things. Americans love culture. We really put more thought in to Nicole than what might be really happening in the economy, Iraq, church, school systems.

Why did I take the time to write all this? I bought a set of the Beatles concerts on Ed Sullivan just for fun. And began wondering if anyone’s mom would make them watch LBJ over the Beatles today. Probably not. We don’t make our kids do much of anything these days. Shoot my dad used to through me around by my ears like LBJ did his dog. Oh for the good old days.