From: Don Allen <dona@totcon.com> Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 21:58:34 -0400 Fwd Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 13:14:51 -0400 Subject: Hey, UFO kids, what time is it? http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/examiner/article.cgi?year=3Dhot&day=3D24&artic= le=3Dmorse.dtl ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Tuesday, June 24, 1997=20 =A9 1996 San Francisco Examiner=20 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Hey, UFO kids, what time is it? By Rob Morse EXAMINER COLUMNIST THE PRESS loves anniversary stories. They're much easier to plan than=20 stories about things happening for the first time.=20 Usually we do anniversary stories about events that were front-page news=20 when they happened, like Pearl Harbor. Right now, the media are in paroxysms= =20 of anniversary journalism about an event that most Americans didn't notice= =20 at the time.=20 It may not even have taken place, although it made the front page of the=20 Tuesday, July 8, 1947, edition of the Roswell (N.M.) Daily Record. "RAAF=20 (Roswell Army Air Field) Captures Flying Saucer in Roswell Region," said the= =20 paper, one of the few that took the report seriously.=20 Joseph Stalin later waved that issue of the Roswell Daily Record, demanding= =20 to know what the United States was going to do with its captured flying=20 saucer, according to Col. Philip Corso, author of "The Day after Roswell."= =20 The book also claims that the silicon chip and Apple Computer's innovations= =20 were borrowed from technology found on the spacecraft. And Apple accuses=20 Microsoft of ripping them off.=20 The book is advertised as "firmly grounded in fact," and has a forward by=20 Sen. Strom Thurmond, in understandable English with a lot about communism=20 but nothing about UFOs.=20 How did Stalin get a copy of the small-town American paper? Well, if you=20 have any sense of the history of American paranoia, communist spies were=20 everywhere. They were the space aliens of their time, kids.=20 Your parents had conspiracy theories, too.=20 Historian Richard Hofstadter called it America's "paranoid style of=20 politics," and UFOs definitely are political. Where else could politicians= =20 come from?=20 If you ask most young people, and a lot of not-so-young people, what=20 happened in 1947, they'd say "Roswell."=20 Me, I'd say, "My first birthday party." I don't remember anything about=20 1947, so I looked it up in the anniversaries section of the World Almanac, a= =20 great source- book for the anniversary beat.=20 Here are just a few things we're not celebrating in the media because=20 they've lost their luster, while UFOs shine brighter in the skies over=20 America.=20 Fifty years ago, President Harry Truman asked Congress for $400 million in= =20 aid to Greece and Turkey for defense against communist aggression. Nowadays= =20 $400 million couldn't build a ballpark, but this "Truman Doctrine" staved=20 off the Soviets.=20 Secretary of State George C. Marshall proposed a plan for European recovery= =20 from World War II. Called the Marshall Plan, it's the reason European=20 countries are arguing about the Eurodollar instead of rubles.=20 Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in an X-1 Rocket, a fast-flying object= =20 over the desert that would have been forgotten but for "The Right Stuff."=20 Princess Elizabeth of England and Lt. Philip Mountbatten were married in=20 1947, leading to the creation of Britain's most important industry, the=20 Royals.=20 Reddi Whip was invented in 1947.=20 If 1947 was a red-letter year in paranoia at the time, it wasn't because of= =20 Roswell, but because the House Un-American Activities Committee began its=20 investigations, blacklisting 10 Hollywood writers.=20 Other writers quickly learned to stay away from social issues and start=20 writing dialogue for robots and snatched bodies, the latter being a big=20 metaphor for communist infiltration. Nowadays, you just get snatched, no=20 Marx about it.=20 It's natural that we don't make a big whoop about the 50th anniversary of=20 any of those things, but before you start surfing the UFO sites on the=20 Internet, consider a couple of other things that happened in 1947.=20 On July 26 of that year, President Truman united the army, navy and air=20 force into one military establishment and founded the Central Intelligence= =20 Agency.=20 Coincidence?=20 That was just weeks after the UFO and the dead aliens were found in the=20 desert near Roswell, to be carried away, covered up and later converted to= =20 peaceful uses on tabloid TV shows.=20 In 1947, most American families didn't have TV sets, but those that didn't= =20 soon had nagging kids. It was the year TV addiction began.=20 Sure, I'm one of those who went on to "The Twilight Zone." But Rod Serling's= =20 tales about UFOs were always homilies about human nature. Most science=20 fiction was like that, before it was presented as fact on news shows' "alien= =20 autopsy" segments.=20 Now UFOs don't teach us anything, except that half the people in America=20 have some need to believe in them. Who knows why? They're a poor substitute= =20 for religion. They're easily mixed up with streetlights and don't even make= =20 guest appearances on tortillas.=20 Their occupants are unsexy space Bambis, yet always seem to be poking around= =20 at human sexual organs like urologists, according to UFOlogists. Aliens=20 always abduct people humans wouldn't invite home to dinner.=20 If you want to mark the anniversary of any invasion that took place in 1947,= =20 you'd do better to consider another small, mysterious humanlike creature=20 with a huge head who was found in the vast wasteland.=20 The year 1947 was when "The Howdy Doody Show" first aired. Sure, Howdy Doody= =20 was just a faked model, and sure you could see the strings, but he carried= =20 America's kids away, and they've never returned.=20
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