Listen, Mr. Agnew
Johnson, Nicholas
Listen, Mr. Agnew by NICHOLAS JOHNSON HPms is an appropriate time to lis--1- ten to America's newest musical idiom, "rock." Vice President Agnew has revealed that even he has been listening to...
...There are more alcoholics in San Francisco alone than there are narcotics addicts in the entire country...
...They are not really urging you adopt a heroin distribution program, Mr...
...But what has it done to deal with our number one drug problem, alcoholism...
...Copyright © 1969 by Trousdale Music Publishers, Inc...
...psychosis due to alcoholic brain damage is irreversible), and the impact upon family and friends, are far more severe from alcoholism than from all other hard drugs combined...
...It's about the only leadership we're getting...
...Or how about nicotine addiction...
...the Vice President opens the Red Skelton show...
...they are urging life through democracy...
...And it helps her on her way Gets her through her busy day "And if you take more of those You will get an overdose No more running for the shelter Of a 'Mother's Little Helper' They just help you on your way Through your busy dying day...
...Vice President, somebody's trying to tell you something— "And you don't know what it is . . . do you, Mr...
...It has educated our children to go for the quick solution, to grow impatient and disinterested in developing the skills and solutions requiring discipline and training...
...These music people are not really urging death through drugs...
...What are you doing to change that world...
...She's giving you a little more time, Mr...
...By Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil...
...And, of course, the economic loss through absenteeism, the physical damage to the body (cirrhosis is the sixth leading cause of death...
...Above all, let us stop going for help to advertising executives who sit around, after their three-martini lunches, coming up with ad campaigns that preach the get-away-from-it-all qualities of caffeine, nicotine, aspirin, and other pain killers, alcohol, stomach settlers, pep pills, tranquilizers, and sleeping pills (plus the whole range of mouthwashes, deodorants, cosmetics, and the like...
...No song writer I know of is urging as a Utopia a society in which the junkie's life is a rational option...
...Absolutely nothing...
...Perhaps we can understand and excuse this rather fundamental error as he came down from his first trip, but I think we can fairly hold him to a higher standard in the future...
...One recent survey found that of seventh graders only thirty per cent of the boys and forty per cent of the girls had never tried tobacco...
...No, the real issue, Mr...
...But then, perhaps he has not listened to much of the music yet, or taken enough time to think about it...
...You see, Mr...
...Or how about Edwin Starr's recording of War, by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong: "Peace, love and understanding Tell me, is there no place for them today...
...The President shows up on a Bob Hope special...
...It stinks...
...The issue is whether you, and the rest of the Administration, are— to borrow Eldridge Cleaver's (and VISTA's) phrase—part of the solution, or part of the problem...
...It is, perhaps, symbolic of the basic hypocrisy in government today that he chose Las Vegas as the battlefield to attack drugs...
...The Vice President might better turn his attention to the corporate campaign contributors (of both parties) who finance their fat campaign donations with the profits they make from worthless or harmful drugs, and from cigarettes and alcohol that first "addict" and then kill hundreds of thousands of Americans a year...
...They believe that governments are instituted among men to promote "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...
...television station that promotes its programming as great "turn-on's...
...Now they are moving in on radio...
...Vice President, but nobody is going to salute it...
...These music people are not really urging death through drugs...
...It means appropriations for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, parks, libraries, and beautification programs...
...We don't like the people getting that social criticism set to music...
...Now, it is true that the Vice President has missed the point...
...Vice President Agnew has revealed that even he has been listening to rock music...
...Let us not indulge the hypocrisy of going after the drug users who are poor, black, and young with a vengeance, as if they were criminals, without even providing them adequate treatment centers, and ignore the far more serious problem of the hard drug pushers (of alcohol and cigarettes) who are respectable, rich, and middle-aged...
...That means more money—not vetoes of appropriations—for rebuilding our cities, education, food programs, urban transportation, welfare, job training, and health care...
...You talk about obscenity and drugs, But the radio station owners get the message: The Administration is listening to them, just like it is watching their big, wealthy brothers, the television stations...
...How many Americans seek in drugs the solace from a vicious, cruel world they did not create, but cannot escape...
...We have lost sight of that a bit in this century—but the young people are prodding us and saying, 'Look, Dad —this is what it's all about.' " But this is not all...
...Could it be anybody I want somebody to love...
...There are 300,000 deaths a year related to cigarette smoking...
...There are a lot more kids who are being exposed to drugs because of the deliberate efforts of greedy, immoral television and tobacco company executives to hook them on nicotine—executives who are revered as the pillars of our society, and whose activities are sanctioned by the Federal Government— than there are those who get pot "with a little help from their friends...
...But when the Vice President starts criticizing television, pretty soon the "analysis" of the President's speeches is watered down or disappears, and President Nixon builds up a record of (free) prime time television usage that exceeds every other prior President...
...There are estimated to be at least five million alcoholics in this country...
...They say we must fight to keep our freedom But Lord knows it's got to be a better way I say, war . . . What is it good for...
...Copyright © 1970 by Jobete Music Co., Inc...
...And the former Chairman of this Administration's Federal Trade Commission, Caspar W. Weinberger, has noted: "Advertisements for over-the-counter medicines may be a contributing factor in drug abuse problems in the United States...
...FCC Chairman Dean Burch says he is interested in "obscenity" in lyrics...
...As for "law and order," one- third to one-half of all arrests by police in the United States are for chronic drunkenness...
...That's where he makes his mistake...
...Our entire consumer-manipulation economy is based on a dishonest, destructive exploitation of human emotions and motivations...
...the Vice President is concerned about mentions of drugs...
...Since you have suggested that "we should listen more carefully to popular music," and quoted from With a Little Help from My Friends, I'd like to lay a few more lyrics on you...
...Listen to the lyrics: "Your mind might think it's flying On those little pills But you ought to know it's dying Because . . . Speed kills...
...Let's get on with the job of giving people the physical, mental, and spiritual environment they need to grow closer to their full potential...
...It is not just that corporate, governmental, and other institutions have turned away from our original goals, and that they have created conditions that stimulate the desire to escape...
...Senator Frank Moss has observed: "The drug culture finds its fullest flowering in the portrait of American society which can be pieced together out of the hundreds of thousands of advertisements and commercials...
...The song you quoted, With a Little Help from My Friends, is not a joyful pitch for drugs...
...Here is Steppenwolf, singing about The Pusher: "You know I've seen a lot of people walkin' around With tombstones in their eyes But the pusher don't care If you live or if you die . . . "If I were the President of this land I'd declare total war on the Pusher Man God damn the Pusher...
...If we are really serious about doing something to alter the drug culture in America, let us get on with the work and stop worrying about the music...
...It contains the lines, "Do you need anybody I need somebody to love...
...Perhaps the critical point is that young song writers and performers do not make political campaign contributions, but that Ford, TWA, and other drug-image merchandisers do...
...Of course not...
...They want us to help them clean it up...
...And many do not think yours is doing it...
...I think it holds out some promise...
...This Administration repeats and repeats that it is not censoring—just as the Russians did when they rolled their tanks into Czechoslovakia in August, 1968...
...As the Chairman of the Bank of America, Louis Lundborg, said recently: "What [young people] . . . say they want doesn't sound so different,, you know, from what our Founding Fathers said they wanted—the men who wrote our Declaration of Independence, our Mayflower Compact, the Bill of Rights, the other early documents that laid the foundation for the American Dream...
...So who is kidding whom...
...In] too many of the lyrics the message of the drug culture is purveyed...
...Listen to Steppenwolf's Monster, written by Jerry Edmonton, John Day, and Nick St...
...a genuine attack on the problems of under-employment and meaningless employment as well as unemployment...
...Vice President, is not the desirability of hard drugs...
...Nicholas (no relation) : "Once the religious, the haunted and weary Chasing the promise of freedom and hope Came to this country to build a new vision Far from the reaches of kingdom and Pope "The spirit it was freedom and justice Its keepers seemed generous and kind Its leaders were supposed to serve the country But now they don't pay it no mind "'Cause the people grew fat and got lazy And now their vote is a meaningless joke They babble about law and order But it's all just an echo they've been told The cities have turned into jungles And corruption is strangling the land The police force is watching the people And the people just can't understand...
...The Administration may just find out what is happening in the country...
...I do not think this should be cause for panic—even though he does...
...That's the way you do it...
...Jones...
...Agnew seems to think that music is the cause of (rather than the relief from) the pressures that lead people to use hard drugs...
...They are actually encouraging the drug life and profiting from it...
...She's holding out optimism...
...The Vice President has asked us to "Consider . . . the influence of the drug culture in the field of music...
...The song writers are trying to help us understand our plight and deal with it...
...More Americans are killed by drunk drivers every year than are killed by murderers and the war in Southeast Asia combined...
...Most would agree with his suggestion that dependence on hard drugs is "a depressing life style of conformity that has neither life nor style...
...It is advertising which mounts so graphically the message that pills turn rain to sunshine, gloom to joy, depression to euphoria, solve problems and dispel doubt...
...It means more meaningful job opportunity for all Americans, white and black...
...One cannot help but wonder how he overlooked Ford's urging, "blow your mind," Trans World Airlines' taking us "up, up, and away," the honey company that suggests we "get high on honey," the motor bike company that advertises "a trip on this one is legal," or the Washington, D.C...
...They said they wanted the freedom to be their own man, the freedom for self-realization...
...Some song writers are hopeful...
...If we really want to do something about drugs, let us do something about life...
...Television ran almost $20 million worth of advertisements for sleeping aids alone in 1969...
...In fact they don't think that you (as the Paper Mac he lyric put it) can "spray it with cologne and the whole world smells sweet" either...
...And it has urged us all to seek "better living through chemistry...
...What is the Vice President doing to cut down on these pushers...
...Let us stop accepting the campaign contributions of the "respectable" liquor manufacturers with one hand while we are imprisoning some of our finest young people with the other...
...Copyright © 1970 by Screen Gems-Columbia Music, Inc...
...Television teaches—with continuous, air hammer effectiveness—the dangerous and debilitative lie that the solution to all life's problems and nagging anxieties can be found in a product, preferably one that is applied to the skin or taken into the body...
...The question is whether you have done anything to alter the repressive, absurd, and unjust forces in our society that drive people to drugs...
...Or listen to the Rolling Stones' Mother's Little Helper, because they are really trying to help us understand what our generation's problem is, as well as giving the kids some good advice: "Mother needs something today to calm her down And though she's not really ill There's a little yellow pill She goes running for the shelter Of her 'Mother's Little Helper...
...They can run it up your flag pole, Mr...
...It has so distorted and demeaned the role of women as to make it almost impossible for either men or women to relate to each other in other than a sex-object, manipulative way...
...You don't come right out and say, "Cut the controversial stuff, guys...
...they are urging life through democracy/' The forces of censorship are subtle...
...I can understand why some would not like lyrics like those...
...That is Canned Heat in Amphetamine Annie...
...But we can't wait much longer if history is not to record your presiding over the decline and fall of the American empire—complete with words, music, and a drug culture sold to the American people by large contributors to Presidential campaigns...
...How, in the midst of the chemical life they have glamorized, can they absolve their consciences by telling our kids that a sixteenth or seventeenth chemical will bring the downfall of their lives and the Republic...
...The Vice President is going after the song writers...
...The Vice President has pointed with pride to what the Administration has done to crack down on "drugs...
...Mama Cass sings, "Yes a new world's coming The one we've had visions of And it's growing stronger with each day that passes by Coming in peace, coming in joy, coming in love...
...Because if we make an effort to strike at the real causes of addiction to alcohol and other less prevalent and dangerous drugs, we will find that we have also made a big dent in mental illness, divorce, suicide rates, and the other statistical indicia of social disintegration...
...For the only thing that flows faster than the gamblers' money in Las Vegas is alcohol...
Vol. 35 • February 1971 • No. 2
