[lbo-talk] Fuck Hope

[Mark Bennett]

Good god, you're a better man than I am.  I, too, remember watching these
broadcasts as a kid, and while I make no claim to political precocity, and I
grew up in a military household in a military town, I thought they were *
terrible*.  Just ghastly.  Hope himself was awful, but what really got me
was  when he would bring out the babes and bombshells of the day: Raquel
Welch, Joey Heatherton, Ann Margaret, etc., and a couple of G.I.s would be
allowed boogie with the babe onstage for a minute or so.  Even at that time
something seemed terribly patronizing about that.  I always wondered if the
audience had been ordered to attend the damn thing.  I mean, even as kid I
thought these guys would rather be roaming around Saigon, drinking beer and
getting laid then spending a couple hours watching Bob fucking Hope tell his
stupid jokes.  A funny thing: these horrible programs were required viewing
in my family; but during one of the later broadcasts I asked my father - who
served in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam - if he ever attended such a shindig when
he was in overseas, and he instantly barked "Hell no!" without bothering to
hide his contempt.

On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 7:59 PM, Dennis Perrin <dperrin at comcast.net> wrote:


> I'm trying to get through the DVD box set containing all of Bob Hope's
> Vietnam specials, 1964-72, but man, is it rough sledding. I was a kid when
> these shows originally aired, so I'm really watching them for the first
> time. I'm up to 1967, and Hope's gotten more stridently pro-war and very
> anti-dissent. I'll write about the whole package in due course, but I just
> have to say how wowed I am at these pro-war commercials. Subtlety and soft
> sell were not part of the pitch. And each year, Hope gets worse. I hope to
> see him in the final show, clinging to a helicopter, one step ahead of the
> NVA.
>
> Dennis
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