Today in music history

[WhiteDove]

1973

"Americans", a spoken word record by Byron McGregor, hit number one on the Cash Box Best Sellers Chart. McGregor was a newsman at Windsor Ontario's CKLW radio and recorded an editorial that was written by Canadian journalist Gordon Sinclair. The record described how Americans donate food, medicine and millions of dollars to those in trouble around the world and are rewarded with protests and flag burnings in other nations. Little has changed in thirty years.

Americans

The United States dollar took another pounding on German, French and British exchanges this morning, hitting the lowest point ever known in West Germany. It has declined there by 41% since 1971 and this Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least-appreciated people in all the earth.

As long as 60 years ago, when I first started to read newspapers, I read of floods on the Yellow River and the Yangtze. Who rushed in with men and money to help? The Americans did. They have helped control floods on the Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges and the Niger. Today, the rich bottomland of the Mississippi is under water and no foreign land has sent a dollar to help.

Germany, Japan, and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy, were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of those countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States. When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it.

When distant cities are hit by earthquake, it is the United States that hurries into help; Managua, Nicaragua is one of the most recent examples. So far this spring, 59 American communities have been flattened by tornadoes. Nobody has helped.The Marshall Plan, The Truman Policy, all pumped billions upon billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now, newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent war-mongering Americans.

I'd like to see one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplanes. Come on, let's hear it! Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tristar or the Douglas 10? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all international lines except Russia fly American planes?

Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or women on the moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy and you find men on the moon, not once, but several times, and safely home again. You talk about scandals and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everyone to look at. Even the draft dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here (Canada) on our streets, most of them, unless they are breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from Ma and Pa at home to spend here.

When the Americans get out of this bind, as they will, who could blame them if they said "the hell with the rest of the world." Let someone else buy the Israel bonds, let someone else build or repair foreign dams or design foreign buildings that won't shake apart in earthquakes. When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke.

I can name you 5,000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake.

Our neighbors have faced it alone and I am one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of these, but there are many smug, self-righteous Canadians.

And finally, the American Red Cross was told at its 48th Annual meeting in New Orleans that it was broke. This year's disasters have taken it all and nobody, but nobody, has helped.

Also today 1976 The Eagles release their "Greatest Hits" album. To this day, it is still the best selling record of all time.

[dmiller]

Edited February 18, 2005 by dmiller

[WhiteDove]

I don't know David I suppose you could repost it there if you want the fight. Feel free, but I was just lookin at it from a music history item.

[dmiller]

Thanks, WhiteDove, but I don't want the fight. What I deleted, was better placed in the Politics and Tacks section, rather than here. And what I said has been

*hashed and re-hashed* too many times, to be gone over again. :)-->