A Happy Thanksgiving

“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations.”
― Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance

Just before Thanksgiving 1968, the song Bob Dylan once called "the greatest ever written" was released. It was the title track of Glen Campbell's 12th studio album: Wichita Lineman.

The song almost didn't happen. As it is, Jimmy Webb, the man who wrote it, hadn't even finished it before it was recorded. He had spent just a couple hours on it before recording a scratch tape of the first couple verses and sending it over to the studio where Campbell was recording:

Webb heard nothing back and then a few days later, he bumped into Campbell on the set of a commercial for General Motors. Webb invited Campbell back to his house in the Hollywood Hills to hear some other songs. Webb asked about Wichita Lineman, reiterating that it wasn’t yet finished. “Well it is now,” replied Campbell, pulling an acetate of the song out of his holdall.

When he put the acetate on a turntable Webb could not believe what he was hearing. From Kaye’s intro to the sweeping strings and Campbell’s stunning vocal performance, his song sounded sublime. As verse three rolled around, the one that Webb had yet to write, he realised they had simply added a solo. “Glen had detuned a guitar down to a ‘slack’ key, Duane Eddy style, and simply played the melody note for note, which was an extreme compliment,” said Webb in Dylan Jones’ book.

Campbell was a supreme talent, of course. So was Jimmy Webb, who was responsible for some of the greatest songs of the 1960s and '70s. So were the musicians who worked on the record, who later came to be known as the Wrecking Crew.

It was a case of everything coming together almost on its own. And the result was stunning.

The day after Capitol Records released the full "Wichita Lineman" album, Richard M. Nixon was elected President of the United States in one of the most dramatic presidential elections in American history. George Wallace — who may have been the herald of things to come — had split the vote with a surprising and effective third-party run, making what might have been a comfortable win for Nixon much more of a contest.

It was quite a change from the blowout of Barry Goldwater by LBJ in 1964, which in turn was a massive shift from the extremely close 1960 general election, where Nixon had been on the losing end. One can only speculate whether the swings from one extreme to another were part of what convinced Nixon to load the dice in his run for reelection in 1972, especially when one considers how certain he was of JFK and the Democrats loading the dice against him in 1960.

In any event, it was par for the course in 1968. The year had begun with the Tet Offensive and would prove to be the bloodiest of the Vietnam War. Mass protests had broken out not just in the United States, but throughout Europe, especially in France. There was civil unrest behind the Iron Curtain, too; Czechoslovakia rose up against their Communist overlords, only to have their nascent revolution crushed beneath the tracks of Soviet tanks.

Meanwhile, there were more moments of sublime fortune, and not just in the recording studios of Capitol Records on the corner of Hollywood and Vine. On the day before Christmas, a quarter of a million miles from home, astronaut William Anders of Apollo 8 took one of the most memorable and remarkable photographs in human history.

For the first time ever, all of humanity could see our home. There we were, a blue marble, as we were later to be called, sitting all alone (or so it seemed) in the vast reaches of space.

After a year of upheaval and unrest, of war both hot and cold, of superpower saber rattling and cinematic breakthroughs, of cultural revolution and riot and arson and political assassination, there we were, all clinging to the same rock in the middle of nowhere, shielded from the violence of our sun by forces we were just beginning to understand, sustained by a thin and fragile layer of gas and water we were only starting to truly appreciate.

One can only wonder where we would have been had social media existed back then. Would we have looked in wonder at the specter of our one and only planet suspended in the cold, dark, unforgiving environment of space? Or would we have argued over whether the picture was A/I and the entire Apollo program faked?

It's not hard to imagine the temperature of the country in the wake of the Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy assassinations had there been a bullhorn in every single person's hand. And a free one, no less.

The American Way

Yet, that's just the way we are: "free born and free bred," in the words of Teddy Roosevelt, and we tend to be a bit wild. The current atmosphere of the country is, for lack of a better word, contentious, but that's not all that unusual for us. We just have short memories and seem to forget the fights of yesterday and treat the fights of today as something radically new.

They're not. Our national mythology (and this may be true in many other nations, although none are quite like ours) would have us believe the present is the smooth and natural evolution from our past. But there hasn't been anything smooth about the history of the United States. It's been a rowdy and rollicking story, right from the very beginning.

We should celebrate it. As difficult and trying and strange and challenging as this year has been, and as frightening as the immediate future may look, it comes with the territory. In a way, conflict is baked into our collective instincts, just as much as compromise and cooperation always prove to be our way out. What we lack in the current moment is good faith.

But with a little good faith, the price of our rowdiness always pays off in prosperity and achievement. We became the most successful country in history — and Whigs will fight anyone on that point — specifically because we're so free. Liberty is never easy, and it's easy to get it wrong, but on balance we've come out on the right side, even as we've been so wrong so often.

So, this Thanksgiving, let's celebrate the good even as we acknowledge the bad. As tough as it might be, let's allow the iconic crazy drunk uncle to enjoy themselves and vent their spleen. There's no stopping them anyway, and chances are, you're not going to change their minds on much.

Rather, let's commit ourselves to enjoying each other first. And then, as this next, even more challenging year arrives, let's commit ourselves to being joyful warriors for the best things Americanism represents. Focus on the positive. Believe in what is right and true and just. Have faith in our ability to pull it together and triumph over our own worst impulses.

We've done it before, many times. We can do it again. And we will.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Addendum

One of the true pleasures on YouTube is the History Guy. Last year, he did a great job on the story of the first Thanksgiving:

And of course, no Thanksgiving would be complete without at least one tune from the late, great Vince Guaralidi:

Enjoy your holiday, and we'll see you next Sunday.

Kevin J. Rogers is the executive director of the Modern Whig Institute. He can be reached at director@modernwhiginstitute.org.

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