40 years ago today, 25 March 1974 was a Saturday. Whats in the news? It’s official: School’s out. Are you ready to be a senior? With 19 felony charges against her, hostage-turned-terrorist Patty Hearst faces the possibility of life in prison. Why did she join her captives? The term “Stockholm Syndrome,” from a popular misconception about last summer’s bank hostage crisis in Sweden, enters the public consciousness. Senator Edward Kennedy, Chairman of the Senate Health Subcommittee, says there is broad agreement among Democrats in favor of President Nixon’s universal health insurance plan. America breathes a sigh of relief that we won’t have political fights over health care twenty or forty years from now. President Nixon says he’ll go ahead with his planned Soviet Union summit meeting, despite the Watergate investigation. Nixon was supported in his decision by leftist protestors, who helpfully added “Moscow: You can keep him!” Russian poet Yevgeniy Yevtushenko, censured three months ago for defending exiled author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, returned to official Soviet favor this week with a poem honoring a truck factory. No, really. 75-year-old Duke Ellington took the A Train to heaven yesterday. Ellington, who received the Medal of Freedom from President Nixon in 1969, didn’t like to be thought of as a “jazz” musician, preferring to call his work “American music.” Though best known for standards like Satin Doll, Mood Indigo, Don’t Get Around Much Anymore, It Don’t Mean a Thing (If it Ain’t Got that Swing), and Prelude to a Kiss, Ellington always considered his greatest work to be his three inspirational “Sacred Concerts,” blending Christian worship with jazz. President Nixon told aides today that the worst is over in the Watergate scandal. Oddly enough, the President credits Democratic leaders with abating the storm. He had expected them to join spooked Republicans in the clamor for his resignation. Instead, House Speaker Carl Albert, Senate Democratic leader Mike Mansfield and Senate Democratic whip Robert Byrd spoke out against resignation and, according to Nixon, broke the momentum. Short of a dramatic revelation linking Nixon directly to the Watergate coverup, he will now almost certainly remain in office until his term ends in 1977. Here come the summer blockbusters. Robert Redford in “The Great Gatsby,” Richard Chamberlain in “The Three Musketeers,” Goldie Hawn in “The Sugarland Express” and the Love Bug sequel “Herbie Rides Again” are either here or coming soon. If you’re going to join the hosts dragging Main, you’ll hear car radios blaring “One Helluva Woman” by Mac Davis, “You Won’t See Me” by Anne Murray, “Sundown” by Gordon Lightfoot, and the re-release of Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock,” back on the charts in the 50s-mad 70s.
Posted on: Sun, 25 May 2014 06:02:32 +0000
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