Back to the Bicentennial!

WARNING: If you've had an assful of the political bellyaching we're persistently drowning in these days, skip down to the pictures. This post is largely an appreciation of America's Bicentennial year through vintage advertising and whatever else I've got in my personal nostalgia collection reflecting it. The first part, however, is just me talking shit.

Anyone who knows me (that would be four mental patients and Kafka's ghost), or who has regularly perused this blog (which would be pretty much just your humble Non-Parader), knows that I'm no fan of our current President. I never have been, going back to my Long Island youth. I can unequivocally say that, by the time I escaped the Island (by the end of 1990, at age 21), I knew Glump was a racist philanderer and an unethical businessman.

I knew he was a racist because in 1985, he immediately responded to the horrific sexual assault on the "Central Park Jogger" by taking out full-page newspaper ads calling for the execution of the five untried black teens arrested for it (and then never walked it back, even after they were eventually exonerated by the confession of another, and then DNA evidence confirmed that confession and excluded them).

I began reading three daily newspapers at around age ten, because my family subscribed to the excellent LI paper Newsday, the great New York Daily News, and the yellow-rag-then-and-even-worse-now New York Post. I was also a regular reader of Spy Magazine in the late 80's, which regularly skewered Blump for his shady, tasteless behavior, so it's possible I was even aware of his father's and his discriminatory housing practices (for which they were slapped on the wrist, in spite of plenty of evidence).

I knew he was a philanderer because he began openly squiring his mistress Marla around the city, even as he was married with young kids at home. The infidelity was not Page Six gossip, by the way--for a while there, it was ubiquitous on the front page of every daily. Fortunately, just like their daddy, none of his family were burdened by ethics or even a rudimentary sense of shame, so they all stuck by his fortu--I mean, him. They all stuck by him. His money and power had nothing to do with it. I'm still half-convinced that marrying Marla was Hrump's feeble attempt at saving face.

Of course, what I knew back then--what we all knew then--is barely a tenth of the corruption, deviousness, subterfuge, and outright shittiness Schlump has demonstrated since. I realize that the Semiquincentennial (oy, what a mouthful!) of our beloved nation has little or nothing to do with Clump himself, the worst Commander-in-Chief since the job had a title. The fact that he has essentially branded our 250th year with his usual dopey, gold-plated spectacle just makes the whole thing reek like a non-temperature-controlled warehouse of his unwanted cologne, neglected pallets of the odious solution stacked to the rafters, the bottles' contents as rancid and cloudy as the cerebrospinal fluid his atrophied brain bobs around in.

So I propose we ignore Plump's pomp and circumstance. Not his dishonesty, fraudulence, and malfeasance, you understand--that we need to scrutinize more than ever. But his dumb brawls on the White (Trash) House lawn, his pathetic "State Fair," and whatever else he has planned as moron-distracting entertainment between his birthday and the country's... THAT we need to disregard completely.

What we need is the feeling we had fifty years ago! I was seven, and when 1976 came to an end, I swear I remember crying one wistful tear on New Year's Eve, because I was just so damn bummed it was over! (Star Wars would come out five months later, fortunately, and between that and the sequel, I found the strength to go on for a few more years...)

First, let me point out that I wrote a post twenty years ago with some scans from my nostalgia collection, including a complete Sunday Oregonian newspaper. Take a moment to peruse that one first, 
and you will see a Radio Shack flier from that paper, featuring their own Realistic brand "Spirit of '76" AM radio. Then, come back to this post to see that, two decades later, I finally gave into the improbable temptation and bought one!

(Do I really need to tell you to click on the pics to enlarge them?
If you're as old as me I might!)

Here's a random matchbook I picked up when I bought a giant jarful at an estate sale--auctioned the rest, kept this one (photo edited to show both sides, duh):

Now here's a bunch of scans from my old TV Guides, which I'm still digging through for material.

This ad is actually from December of 1975, when the Rockefeller Center tree lighting took on a Bicentennial bent. This was when the event was still a local affair, airing in the afternoon on channel 4, and not the big network prime-time production it has since become.

Here's another December '75 program, a "religious" show with televangelists Oral Roberts, Rex Humbard, and Kathryn Kuhlman. Sadly, God did not allow Kuhlman to see the big bash: less than three months later, the "faith-healer" died undergoing open-heart surgery.

A few ads for the holiday:
A Danbury Mint bell (going for much less than $25 these days)...

A Spencer Gifts plate...

A "linen calendar towel"...

Some Tally-Ho decks from the United States Playing Card Company (I personally love that Linoid finish, don't you?)...

Some stamps, from Westport Collectors Society... zzzzzzzz...

From unlickable stamps to liquor? Now that's more like it! Here's the Southern Comfort "Spirit of '76 Happy Hour Bar Guide"! (Just the three relevant pages, actually.)

A public-service announcement-type message for U.S. Savings Bonds--not explicitly Bicentennial, but still pretty cool...

And, what the hell, two more neat PSA's, these associated with the "Keep America Beautiful" anti-littering campaign, which always kinda felt like part of the Bicentennial national pride anyway...

Those last two were in issues of TV Radio Mirror, but before I get to that magazine, here are two pertinent articles from TV Guide.

First, from November 1975, an interesting piece about the Star-Spangled Banner sign-off films shown on your local channels in the wee hours.

And here's a brief article from December, about some upcoming television shows covering America's big anniversary.

A couple of good ones from TVRM, for a rather minimalist timepiece, and a pre-seeded flower bed touted as "science's most spectacular achievement!" Yeah! Go piss up a rope, Jonas Salk!

STAY TUNED! MORE COMING--
AND EVERY BIT AS EXCITING!