YT-
In a 1989 interview, American television personality, radio personality, musician, composer, actor, comedian, and writer Steve Allen (1921-2000) discusses growing up during the Depression, parenting, the importance of being a father, and the mistakes he made in raising his own sons.
!snip!
Allen considered himself a “middle-of-the road radical”, a phrase he coined.
He was a democrat.
He was a Hollywood lefty, but listening to him he sounds like he identified as democrat because it was socially acceptable to say so, because a lot of his rhetoric doesn’t sound particularly left-wing. When did the importance of a father in a child’s life become part of the democrat platform?
Funny guy, great piano player, but I read his book against God. Allen died a bitter atheist who hated God because his son (iirc) killed himself.
I went to a couple of his shows in early 1970s when stationed in Los Angeles. During commercial breaks, he would play piano or clarinet (played Benny Goodman in a movie). He also had a segment where people would give a song title and he would improvise a song based upon the silly title.
I always enjoyed Steve Allen. Funny, talented and smart.
What I didn’t know was that he was too smart for God and that’s a whole nuther level of arrogance right there.
“too smart for God…”
I need to remember that one. Thank you
How many true, Conservative (Republican) fathers are willing to kill babies before/after they’re born? NONE. OTOH, let’s take a look a Steverino’s side…….
To his credit, he’d be denounced and destroyed for even those views were he still alive and relevant. But by the time of that interview he allegedly had come to be considered something of a cranky old crank. Don’t know if it’s true but Jack Parr and Johnny Carson supposedly disliked him. A lot.
re: his son. I may have misremembered it, that one of his sons didn’t die but fell hard into drugs and/or a cult or something. Can’t find the reference now.
What all this signifies is the unmooring of morality from the populous.
Without a moral framework, laws are minor obstacles to self gratification
When I was a teenager (late1960s) I used to frequently bag his groceries at the supermarket where I worked. He and his wife Jane seemed very unhappy people. I did enjoy his local TV show; very funny guy.
“When did the importance of a father in a child’s life become part of the democrat platform?”
No – when did it STOP?
Probably about the time the hippies started rebelling against their WWII veteran dads, and THEY’VE known better than EVERYBODY ELSE ever SINCE.
Just ASK them. 🙄
I read his last book, called “Dumbeth.” Pretty much the whole book was complaining about people who felt entitled and did not do their jobs — except for PATCO, in which case he complained about Reagan’s firing of people for not doing their job.