A few months ago I related an incident that occurred following the telecast of a documentary on David Brinkley’s Journal which used my home town, Salem, NJ, as an example of the statistical average town in the US circa 1963-1964. Salem was chosen randomly from data processed by the latest computer system of the day available to NBC. The survey of more than 600 of the 9,000 residents was conducted by Gallup. The method of inquiry involved a preliminary session during which the questions were posed privately to each individual followed by a public session where the questions and responses were filmed. A follow-up survey was done 6 months after the initial survey to verify consistency in the responses against the changing social, political, and economic conditions of that time period.
When I wrote about the flap over Barack Obama’s characterization of small towns, I referred to the Brinkley documentary to illustrate my points regarding small towns and how my experience as a resident of small town corresponded with and reflected the remarks attributed to Obama. I searched the internet in vain for a link to a reference of Brinkley’s documentary. Yesterday, like a Usain Bolt out of the blue, I received a copy of that documentary on DVD from my brother. It had been over 40 years since I watched the initial broadcast of Brinkley’s controversial opus on TV so I was eager to compare my recollections of the incidents to the actual broadcast. Part of me is inclined to believe that what I have has been edited, as my sense is that some references were more stark than what I viewed on the DVD; however, I must add that at the time I felt the whole episode was rather like The Emperor’s New Clothes with a number of Salemites prancing about brazenly naked, metaphorically speaking, of course! Those who were foolish then remain so now–time doesn’t heal recorded folly. Those whose eloquence was notable then, seemed even more timely and impressive now.
In an the run up to the presidential election of 1964, the most persistent and important dilemma that the residents of Salem faced was race/civil rights followed by the economy and foreign policy issues, notably the increasing involvement in Vietnam. Last night, more than 40 years after my sleepy little south Jersey home town was awakened by a bunch of outsiders whom the town folk adamantly believed duped them into speaking their minds about nearly everything and recorded their answers for posterity, the first person of color was chosen as the nominee from the Democratic Party to run for the office of president of the United States. At a time when Martin Luther King’s voice soared over the masses in Washington, DC, evoking the imagery of an healed and uplifted Republic, by the application of the principles upon which it was founded to all of its citizens regardless of race, color, or creed, the citizens of Salem were engaged in a similar struggle, unable to muster either King’s eloquence or vision. The grist of over 4 decades seems to have been milled finely enough for us to dare to abide by the precepts of our Republic; yet, the nagging specter of race slips along the edges of conversation, inveighs implicitly in closed circles, and may be protected by the privacy of the voting booth. Each viewing of Brinkley’s documentary increases my own sense of ambivalence: Obama’s selection as the Democratic Party’s candidate for president as well as Hillary Clinton’s valiant bid to win that same office is evidence of democracy in action at its finest, but it is sobering when I look back to 1964 and consider how the political, social, and economic landscape remain fundamentally the same. I had hoped that when I had ejected the DVD from its player that I would only recognize images from the past, sadly, I have seen some of these faces alive and well among us today. Let us hope that Yes we can will not be a forgotten or infamous campaign shibboleth trotted out by historians on some future news program to illustrate the folly of idealism or how political expediency will always lack the courage to defend the ideals of democracy. Perhaps we can just doesn’t cut it as a national ring tone!
