This is a good article. I'll post some of it, but I wasnt aware of some of the facts in this article.
I dont know about other countries, but it is amazing that the U.S. reacts with outrage at the strangest things yet has milder reactions to things that really make an impact on people. Its still happening.
In fact, Unger had been encouraged to use all four Beatles interviews, which were reproduced in Datebook without any significant changes, by Tony Barrow, the band’s press officer. In March 1966, Barrow wrote to Unger.I think you might be more than interested in a series of ‘in-depth’ pieces which Maureen Cleave is doing on each Beatle for the London Evening Standard. I’m enclosing a clipping showing her piece on John Lennon; I think the style and content is very much in line with the sort of thing DATEBOOK likes to use.[/size]Clearly, Barrow already understood Datebook’s politics. Unger had created a socially engaged magazine dedicated to challenging all manner of prejudice, dogma, and discrimination, even as it dispensed advice about haircare, makeup and dating etiquette. The fact that Unger, like Fields, was a gay may have fuelled their determination to nurture more tolerant attitudes among Datebook’s young readers. Nowhere was Datebook’s quietly subversive agenda more clear than in the realm of race relations.[/size]
‘Segregation is a lot of rubbish’At the height of the civil rights movement in the south, Datebook often focused on racial and religious intolerance. In 1961, for example, it asked “should you date boys of another race or religion?” and concluded that “across-the-line dating can be a healthy and desirable thing”. That same year Lillian Smith, a leading southern white racial liberal, urged Datebook’s overwhelmingly white female readers to break with the racism of an older generation. The magazine even included contact details for various civil rights groups so that readers could support the movement.The Beatles were also aware of Unger’s liberal agenda. They first met him in 1964. Afterwards, their press office regularly supplied Datebook with news scoops and provided extensive access whenever the band toured the US. The band often proved willing accomplices in Unger’s plans. In 1965, Datebook reported a flight from Houston when drummer Ringo had “joined a circle of performers, many of whom were Negroes, and they talked about everything, including race relations, Ringo making his pro-integration feelings very clear”. Ringo insisted: “Segregation is a lot of rubbish. As far as we’re concerned, people are people, no different from each other.”
http://www.thenewsminute.com/article/are-beatles-still-more-misunderstood-jesus-48287
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Topic: Lennon. More Popular Than... (Read 1198 times)