Part of this post relates to censorship, something we're so great at we do it to ourselves. Or maybe not. The Smothers Brothers seem so innocuous to us now and yet, where do we find something this hard hitting except on underexposed YouTube channels that, if current trends continue, will be no more in a few more months.
In the following Fresh Air program, David Bianculli plays the never-aired last verse of "Waist Deep In the Big Muddy" as sung by Pete Seeger in one of the appearances that finally (sort of) took Seeger off the media blacklist he'd been on since the McCarthy Era.
Take a look too at the TV essays of Harlan Ellison. I had a college friend who knew Ellison as a sometime houseguest and who thought he was a schmuck. But schmuck or no schmuck, the guy had some points to be made.
I shouldn't be surprised about this. At this point we censor ourselves in part by imagining we're somehow past those times. Are we?
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