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volksmarschall: I know what you mean, volksmarschall. Whenever I go on YouTube, I watch the videos and the videos only. I dare not venture into the comments for the sake of my sanity. :eek:

H.Appleby: I have a confession to make: the Indonesian screenshot at the end of the Pearl Harbor update is a teaser. There's a few updates I have to get through first before I get to Indonesia.

Before I get America knee-deep into the Vietnam conflict, there’s a pop culture update I’ve been wanting to do for a while. You might recall that back in the late 1950s, I did an update about the rise of rock and roll music. This is something similar done for a similar reason: to cover a cultural aspect of the decade that I’m on.
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[video=youtube;QtvTE3m5jpM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtvTE3m5jpM[/video]

Television in the Sixties
After World War Two ended with Japan's surrender in February 1947, the United States experienced what journalist David Halberstam called “the best years of our lives.”
Following an uneasy transition from war to peace marked by labor unrest, the United States experienced a postwar economic boom fueled by the rise of the middle-class. Veterans of the war came home and started families, creating a massive population surge known as the Baby Boom. These new families all needed homes in which to live; to build homes quickly and cheaply, open fields across America were transformed into sprawling mass-produced housing communities known as the suburbs. The need for furniture and appliances to fill up these new cookie-cutter homes meant a steady supply of jobs, which greatly shrank the unemployment rate. At the dawn of the 1950s, a new player emerged on the scene that would become a symbol of prosperous postwar America: television. Boxy TV sets started to appear in stores nationwide, giving people the chance to watch a show instead of simply hearing it on the radio. In an era in which people were eager to buy the latest thing whether they really needed it or not, television became THE thing that everyone had to have. By 1960, "the tube" as it was nicknamed sat in 90% of American living rooms. Just as people in the 1930s and 1940s literally planned their days around what time their favorite radio shows would come on, people in the 1950s and 1960s saw their individual universes being redirected around the visuals that the Big Three television networks – ABC, CBS, and NBC – each had to offer.

One area that was affected greatly by the growth of television’s popularity was the news. In the 1930s, radio replaced newspapers as America’s favorite source for news. Three decades later, television knocked radio out of the number one spot. In recognition of that fact, the Big Three networks began to expand their televised coverage of the news. Since 1960 was an election year, the Presidential race became the first thing the networks put a greater emphasis on. Although televised coverage of Presidential elections began in 1948, it was in 1960 that the modern coverage of the fight for the White House was born. In addition to broadcasting the political conventions and presenting wall-to-wall coverage of the Election Night results, the networks in 1960 aired the first-ever presidential debates between the candidates of the two major political parties. Democratic Vice President Henry M. Jackson of Washington and Republican Governor William F. Knowland of California met in television studios to debate the issues of the day live before a national audience of millions. To present the two candidates on the TV screen at the same time, the networks used a technique called “split screen” for the first time. Following the 1960 election, all the networks put a greater emphasis on their presentation of the evening news. When Jackson took office in January 1961, the Big Three each had a fifteen minute-long daily evening news program. By the autumn of 1963, all three programs had been expanded to thirty minutes in length and had all been given the 6:30 PM time slot that they still occupy to this day. In April 1962, the “CBS Evening News” rolled out a new anchor: Walter Cronkite. A network veteran who had manned the anchor desk during the last three Presidential elections, Cronkite’s straightforward “that’s the way it is” style of delivery would make him a trusted and popular news anchor until his retirement in March 1981.

(For nearly two decades, Walter Cronkite was the face of the evening news on CBS)
Of course, the news wasn’t the only reason people tuned in to watch television. Like radio before it, television was a medium that provided audiences with the same entertainment from coast-to-coast. Although television in the 1950s had provided memorable shows like “I Love Lucy” (CBS; 1951-1957) and “The Honeymooners” (CBS; 1955-1956), it was in the decade that followed that classic television was arguably born. Television shows which premiered in the first half of the 1960s would live on in syndicated reruns half a century later:
  • The Flintstones (ABC; premiered in 1960)
  • The Andy Griffith Show (CBS; premiered in 1960)
  • The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS; premiered in 1961)
  • The Jetsons (ABC; premiered in 1962)
  • The Beverly Hillbillies (CBS; premiered in 1962)
  • Bewitched (ABC; premiered in 1964)
  • The Addams Family (ABC; premiered in 1964)
  • The Munsters (CBS; premiered in 1964)
  • Gilligan’s Island (CBS; premiered in 1964)
Interestingly, the most popular television show during Jackson’s first term was “The Beverly Hillbillies” (which will now be referred to as TBH). The show had been created by Paul Henning, a Missouri-born television writer who had also created the sitcom “The Bob Cummings Show” (NBC/CBS; 1955-1959). An avid outdoorsman, Henning had spent much of his time camping in the Ozark Mountains of Southern Missouri. This experience inspired him to create TBH. The sitcom starred Buddy Ebsen as a good-natured backwoods mountaineer named Jed Clampett who one day accidentally struck oil on his property while out hunting for food to feed his family. Suddenly wealthy from his lucky find, Clampett chose to use his fortune to move his poor family out to the ritzy glamour of Beverly Hills, California so they could live next door to his banker. The result was a “fish out of water” experience for the Clampett family as their simple rural lifestyle clashed repeatedly with the sophisticated urban atmosphere of their new neighborhood. TBH premiered on September 26th, 1962 to poor reviews from critics who panned the show as being lowbrow. Despite the poor reviews, the sitcom turned out to be a huge hit for CBS. TBH held the number one spot in the Nielsen audience ratings for the 1962-1963 / 1963-1964 television seasons and remained a Top Twenty hit for most of its’ run. At the end of its’ ninth season in March 1971, the “story about a man named Jeb” was cancelled after 274 episodes. The show had been cancelled not because of ratings – which were respectable – but because CBS executives had entered the 1970s believing they had too many rural-themed sitcoms on the schedule to attract younger urban-minded viewers. In what became known as the Rural Purge of 1971, CBS cancelled “The Beverly Hillbillies” and every show like it, including:
  • Petticoat Junction (another Henning-created sitcom which premiered in 1963)
  • Green Acres (premiered in 1965)
  • The Jerry Van Dyke Show (a sequel to "The Andy Griffith Show" which premiered in 1968)
CBS showed no mercy cancelling these shows, prompting “Green Acres” star Pat Buttram to call 1971 “the year CBS killed everything with a tree in it.”

Across the Atlantic in England, one of television's most enduring shows got its' start. British television executives were faced with a dilemma: how do you fill a half-hour on Saturday evening? The BBC had a gap in the Saturday evening schedule between the sports show “Grandstand” (premiered in 1958) and the music panel show “Juke Box Jury” (premiered in 1959). Clearly something had to fill that time gap but what exactly? One possibility for the BBC emerged in March 1962: a science fiction series in which characters traveled through time and had adventures in different periods of history. In December 1962, a Canadian television producer who liked to shake things up became the BBC’s new Head of Drama. His name was Sydney Newman and being a big fan of science fiction, he enthusiastically made the call that this time travel idea would be adopted to fill the gap. The show would be about a mysterious doctor who traveled through time with his companions in a large machine that was somehow housed inside a small blue police box called TARDIS (short for “Time and Relative Dimension in Space”). The fact that the doctor had no name inspired the name for this show: “Doctor Who”. To produce “Doctor Who”, Newman appointed Verity Lambert – the first female drama producer in the history of the BBC. To play the Doctor, Lambert talked fifty-five-year-old character actor William Hartnell into taking on the role after two other actors had turned it down. If casting the title character was hard, shooting the pilot episode in the autumn of 1963 proved to be even harder. Titled “An Unearthly Child”, the pilot turned into a disaster due to a series of technical and performance problems. Unable to use this version for broadcasting, a second version of “An Unearthly Child” was subsequently shot and aired as the first episode of the series on November 23rd, 1963. Without a major news story to overshadow it, the premier of “Doctor Who” attracted a decent amount of viewers who were curious to see what this new time traveling science fiction show was like. Since enough people had seen it, there was no need to re-air the first episode a week later. When an extraterrestrial race of cyborgs called the Daleks were introduced a month later, the popularity of “Doctor Who” really took off...a popularity which would make the show a cult favorite for the next five decades.

(William Hartnell, the first of many actors to play the Doctor, is seen here standing next to a Dalek)
Although television expanded around the world throughout the 1960s, nowhere had that growth been more rapid than in the Republic of China. Unlike in America where it took off like a rocket, television got off to a slow start in China. Chiang Kai-shek allowed the new medium into his country in 1952 but insisted that television be used in a strictly non-commercial manner. He didn't view TV as something that should belong to the masses. Originally, TVs were used solely by the government to broadcast messages to government offices scattered across the mainland (just as the Internet started out as a way for the United States government to nationally coordinate her computers). It wasn’t until 1958 that Chiang recognized television's potential in cementing his vision for China's future. He lifted the ban on commercial television use and allowed the public to finally have access to something that the American people were taking for granted. In 1958, his authoritarian regime established the state-run TV Shanghai telecommunications network. With a mandate to expand television to the masses, TV Shanghai constructed a system to bring television signals to every city in the coastal region of China - where the majority of the mainland population lived. To increase service further, the government established two more state-run telecommunications networks. In late 1962, TV Taipei was formed to bring television coverage to the Chinese island of Formosa. TV Chongqing was formed a year later to begin the process of bringing service to the mountainous interior of China.

So what exactly did the Chinese watch in the 1960s? The answer: only what the government wanted them to watch. The Republic of China under Chiang’s rule was a one-party state in which political opposition was ruthlessly suppressed by the secret police – a hallmark of authoritarian regimes – and the media was tightly controlled. The reason for Chiang's reversal on allowing the public to own TV sets was his recognition of the fact that he could use the medium to control public opinion. Taking a page from Nazi Germany's playbook, Nanjing fully exploited the media to portray China as a country whose time had come to occupy her rightful place in the sun. Chinese culture was exulted as being the superior culture in Asia and the Chinese people had it drilled into them that they were the “master race” whose destiny it was to unite the countries of Asia into a sphere of influence led by them. You couldn't watch TV in China without being bombarded by pro-China propaganda. You also couldn't watch TV in China without being bombarded by propaganda about China’s enemies. Japan was an obvious target, given the ugly history between the two nations. The three state-run telecommunications networks regularly aired programs reminding the Chinese people of Japanese atrocities committed against them during the 1930s and 1940s. Whenever the government did put out current news about Japan, they always portrayed the former occupier in the worst possible light. This “hate Japan” message campaign was especially ramped up for emotional exploitation on the anniversary of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which had triggered the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 and had since become a national day of remembrance just like Pearl Harbor Day in America. The Americans and the British were likewise portrayed by the Chinese media as evil Western imperialists who wanted to continue the subjugation and exploitation of the Asian people. China, it was proclaimed over and over, not only had to stand up for “the little guy” against these big American and British bullies but had to remove their presence from Asia altogether. Only then could the Chinese people lead the continent into a golden age of peace and prosperity. It was all government propaganda, carefully crafted to mold how the Chinese saw themselves and the world.

(One of the first Chinese television celebrities to emerge in the 1960s was Fu Pei-Mei, a woman who literally showed the country how to cook)
Chinese television in the 1960s was a hodgepodge of government-approved programming. There was a financial program to cover trading on the Shanghai Stock Exchange (there were shares of thirty-six Chinese companies available for purchase and sale in 1962). There were programs covering art, sports, agriculture, and music. Dramas were popular, especially those about China’s vast ancient history. There were educational shows aimed at teaching children the basics such as how the Earth revolves around the Sun and how to do math in your head. Western programs, deemed to be inferior in quality by the government, were strictly banned. Also absent from the Chinese TV schedule was sitcoms. Popular in America, sitcoms were deemed by Nanjing to be too frivolous and lowly for Chinese audiences to watch. Thus you would never see Chinese equivalents of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” or “The Addams Family” in the 1960s. Ironically, the anti-sitcom Chinese did have an impact on one American sitcom. In 1963, a former radio writer named Sherwood Schwartz went to CBS executives and pitched an original idea for a sitcom. He wanted to do a show about seven people from different backgrounds that through a twist of fate get shipwrecked on an island somewhere in the vast Pacific. The television audience would each week follow the seven stranded castaways as they not only tried to get along with each other but try to somehow get rescued from their plight. Although the executives were skeptical about how long you could keep a show about seven people stuck on an island going, Schwartz was nonetheless given the green light to produce his show for the 1964-1965 television season. On September 26th, 1964, “Gilligan’s Island” premiered on CBS. According to the easy-to-remember sea shanty opening theme song which summed up the plot of the show each week, the first mate Gilligan (Bob Denver) and the skipper (Alan Hale, Jr.) of a charter boat had taken five passengers out on a three-hour tour of Honolulu waters when they got caught in a fierce storm. The storm washed their boat ashore a desolate island, leaving everyone stranded and with only a radio to connect them to the outside world. Although the show didn’t make much logical sense (for instance, why did the passengers bring a lot of clothes along with them for a three-hour tour?), “Gilligan’s Island” was nonetheless a surprise hit for a network that wasn't expecting much from it. It remained popular throughout its’ four seasons, ranking in the Top Twenty programs during the first two seasons.

(Not realizing that "Gilligan's Island" wasn't real, some viewers actually urged the United States Coast Guard to rescue these fictional castaways)
As “Gilligan’s Island” neared the end of its’ fourth and final season in the spring of 1968, Schwartz had to consider how the castaways would be rescued after everything they had been through. The show had dealt with current events, doing one episode about the British Invasion of the American music scene and doing a few episodes about space exploration. Schwartz therefore decided to use the Cold War standoff between the United States and China as the backdrop for the rescuing of Gilligan and company. In the show’s final few episodes, Schwartz introduced a plotline in which the United States Navy was in the process of building a series of observation posts across the Pacific to track the movement of any Chinese submarines that tried to approach either Hawaii or the West Coast. In the course of their construction project, the Navy came across Gilligan's Island. In the final episode of the series, the USN dispatched a team to the island to scope it out and determine if building an observation post there would be feasible. Upon their arrival, the team became surprised to find the beached hull of the charter boat which had gone missing a few years earlier and was presumed to be sunk with all lives lost. Moving inland to search for any survivors, the team literally ran into Gilligan who excitedly then led them to the rest of the castaways. Having been found alive after all this time, the castaways became delighted to learn that the Navy was going to rescue them from the island. While boarding a naval vessel for the ride to Pearl Harbor, millionaire Thurston Howell, III (Jim Backus) told his wife Lovey (Natalie Schafer) that the first thing he was going to do after they got back to New York City was to have Chinese food for dinner. Greatly surprised, Lovey quickly reminded her husband that he hated Chinese food. Howell acknowledged that was true but sheepishly defended his change of heart by saying that since they owed their rescue to the Chinese, “the least we can do is eat their food.”
 
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Edward R. Murrow > Walter Cronkite!

Andy Griffith Show all the way baby! :cool: That show is a living legend on my father's side of the family...

(Not knowing the castaways in Gilligan's Island weren't real and calling for their rescue...reminds me of Orson Welles' War of the World and the panic that caused despite the commercial breaks informing the listening audience that it was nothing more than a new performance of H.G. Wells' timeless classic). :D
 
It reminds me of Galaxy Quest, "Those poor people."
 
So, if the “The Beverly Hillbillies” was cancelled in 1971 there was a chance that Sharon State appared in that show as Janet Trego, I guess.

Or not?
 
That's an amazingly specific question Kurtie.

Slightly surprised about the Shanghai Stock Exchange, what if the stock prices don't move in the way the government wants? Or is this one of those exchanges were all traders are carefully vetted to ensure they understand the real purpose of the exchange - proving China is amazing?
 
volksmarschall: There's an alternate history twist to "The Andy Griffith Show". Originally when Don Knotts, who played the well-meaning but bumbling deputy Barney Fife, left the show to pursue a movie career, Jerry Van Dyke was offered the deputy role. He turned it down and did "My Mother the Car" instead, which is considered to be one of the worst TV shows of all time. In this alternate universe, he accepts the offer and not only becomes the new deputy of Mayberry but gets his own show after TAGS goes off the air in 1968 in which he becomes the new sheriff of Mayberry.

I put Jerry Van Dyke on TAGS for the same reason I put Leslie Nielsen in "Ben-Hur": because I can.

J.J.Jameson: I think I've seen that movie.

Kurt_Steiner: Who?

El Pip: The Shanghai Stock Exchange was historically shut down by the Communist regime in Beijing. Since Chiang is running China instead and I know he established a stock exchange in Taipei, I imagined he would keep the Shanghai Stock Exchange open.

trekaddict: I have thought about giving "Star Trek" an additional season for the same reason I gave "Gilligan's Island" an additional season: because I can.
 
Haha, one of my favorite Don Knotts movies is The Ghost and Mr. Chicken! :p
 
Well, OTL Star Trek pretty much helped bankrupt the Studio, in spite of it's already tiny budget. So, let's day that here NBC doesn't move the show to the new timeslot, giving them more ad revenue, more trickles back to Desilu, more money for Season 3 (which IRL had the worst and some of the best episodes) and thusly a Season 4 before they run out of money or collide with Bill Shatner's ego?

Bonus points if during the late 80s Rick Berman has an unfortunate accident or simply leaves TV forever.
 
volksmarschall: I remember Don Knotts did a movie in which he turned into a fish.

The Incredible Mr. Limpet! Interestingly enough, I just saw a DVD of The Ghost and Mr. Chicken at a gift shop I visited earlier this week, right after I had made the comment. Weird! :confused:
 
Maybe Batman gets picked up for another season. The only two villains in the opening credits who were not on the show were Twoface and Clayface. Maybe they get episodes?
 
trekaddict: That's one way to handle "Star Trek".

Who?

volksmarschall: Maybe it was meant to be? *shrugs*

Kurt_Steiner: Oh, her! Poor girl. :(

J.J.Jameson: It's possible.

For the next update, you can probably guess where the title came from.
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Independence Palace Down
In March 1962:
  • Wilt Chamberlain of the Philadelphia Warriors becomes the only basketball player in NBA history to score one hundred points during a single game.
  • In England, The Beatles – now managed by Brian Epstein – make their radio debut on the BBC Manchester program “Teenager’s Turn (Here We Go)”. They play a three song session, performing covers of “Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream)” (original by Roy Orbison), “Please Mr. Postman” (original by The Marvelettes), and “Memphis, Tennessee” (original by Chuck Berry).
  • Minnesotan folk singer Bob Dylan releases his self-titled debut album. It would be a commercial flop, only selling 2,500 copies and failing to appear at all on the American music charts.
  • On NBC, Jack Paar retires as host of “The Tonight Show” after a five year-run. “The Tonight Show” would then go through a series of guest hosts – including comedian Groucho Marx and game show host Merv Griffin – until Johnny Carson took over as Paar’s successor the following October.
  • Entrepreneur Glen Bell opens the first Taco Bell Tex-Mex fast food restaurant in Downey, California.

(The humble beginning of a fast food giant)
For Scoop Jackson, March 1962 marked the beginning of a challenging period for his Presidency. A series of international and domestic crises erupted seemingly one after the other. His Administration barely had time to respond to one fire before another one ignited. The first fire he had to deal with was in South Vietnam. On the morning of February 27th, the Independence Palace in Saigon came under attack by air. The Independence Palace was the official residence of President Ngo Dinh Diem and his family, so attacking it would be the same as attacking the White House in America. A pair of Vietnam Air Force pilots, strongly opposed to Diem’s iron-fisted autocratic rule, had decided to take matters into their own hands by carrying out an attack against the corrupt regime at the very core. Early on that fateful Tuesday morning, the two pilots were given orders to fly their American-supplied Douglas A-1 Skyraider single-seat attack aircraft to the Mekong Delta and bomb Vietcong units who were engaged in heavy fighting against the South Vietnamese Army thirty-seven miles south of the capital. The Vietcong were anti-Diem insurgents backed by North Vietnam and China who were fighting to overthrow the pro-US government in Saigon and re-unite the two Vietnams under Hanoi’s rule. Taking advantage of their mission to execute their assassination plot, the two pilots took off but instead of heading to their assigned target, flew towards the Independence Palace.

Shortly after seven o’clock in the morning, the French colonial-era palace came into view. The two Skyraider planes circled their target, inspecting the building for any sign of opposition. Once they were satisfied that no one on the ground suspected that they were in any danger, the two pilots commenced their assault. They dropped a mixture of bombs and napalm on the building itself before strafing the grounds of the presidential compound with rockets and machine gun fire. They occasionally flew away to regroup and shake off any defenders, only to return and resume the bombing. The entire attack lasted about thirty minutes before the two pilots finally broke away from their target, now reduced to a burning pile of rubble. General Maxwell Taylor, the commanding US general in South Vietnam, was literally awakened out of his bed by the stunning news that the Independence Palace was being bombed. He automatically assumed that the attackers were either North Vietnamese or even Chinese. It didn’t occur to him right away that the attackers were really South Vietnamese. The confusion brought on by the surprise attack extended to the defenders of Saigon, caught off guard and unable to determine either the nationality of the attackers or the scope of the attack. South Vietnamese tanks and armored personnel carriers rushed through the streets of Saigon, preparing to fight an enemy they couldn’t make out. Panicked anti-aircraft batteries opened fire, hitting anything that flew. In the confusion of the moment, the batteries mistakenly shot down four of their own planes. These planes had been scrambled from Bien Hoa Air Base to intercept the attackers and became victims of friendly fire instead. Standing on the steps of his headquarters, Taylor watched dumbstruck as a pair of tanks drove by with hurried drivers having no idea of where they were going. “It was the very definition of chaos,” Taylor later wrote in his after-action report to D.C. about the attack. The pilots’ plot against the government had been such a surprise that none of the defenders knew exactly what they were defending against.

(An example of the Douglas A-1 Skyraider)
Diem had been sitting in his study in the western wing of the Independence Palace when the attack commenced. He had his face buried in a book about the life of George Washington, the first President of the United States (1789-1797). That’s when a 500 lb bomb suddenly smashed through the roof, went all the way through the second floor, and disappeared into the first floor. Jumping out of his seat, the first South Vietnamese President barely had seconds to wonder what the hell was going on before the bomb below him detonated. The resulting explosion ripped through the building, blowing out windows and knocking out enough supporting beams to cause the second floor and roof to collapse. Diem was killed instantly in the blast, never having a chance to save himself. Nor was his life the only one the fireball claimed. Roman Catholic Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc (Diem’s older brother) and chief political advisor Ngo Dinh Nhu (Diem’s younger brother) were both killed seconds later. Madame Nhu, Diem’s sister-in-law and the First Lady of South Vietnam, actually survived the initial blast but was seriously injured when the western wing of the building collapsed. She was pulled out of the ruins by the recovery team and died in the hospital shortly thereafter. The assassination plot had not only succeeded but had succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of the two pilots. In less than a half-hour, the major players in the Ngo family had been wiped out. In all, thirty people were killed and three were injured in the Independence Palace Bombing.

Ngo Dinh Diem (January 3rd, 1901 – February 27th, 1962)
Jackson was in the White House when news arrived that the sixty-one-year-old leader of South Vietnam had been assassinated. Upon being informed, he slumped into a chair and buried his face in his hands. “He was too stunned to really say much of anything,” White House Chief of Staff John Salter later recalled. The President couldn’t believe it: most of the palace was gone and with it the civilian leadership of South Vietnam. At a time when China was hungrily eyeing South Vietnam, losing Diem and his ruling family was a terrible blow for America’s position in Southeast Asia. After all, he was America’s guy! Worse, no one within the Administration could agree afterwards who had been behind the attack. CIA Director John McCone immediately thought the Chinese were responsible. He pointed out that Nanjing had devoted time and resources building an intelligence network inside South Vietnam. Since China wanted to add that country to her empire, McCone reasoned that assassinating ministers would be a natural part of their strategy. Secretary of Defense Paul Nitze sharply disagreed. Unlike in Laos where the Chinese had invaded the country on the pretext that they were acting to end the civil war there, the Chinese had so far been behaving rather covertly in South Vietnam. For them to do something as public as assassinating ministers struck Nitze as highly unlikely since any such action could be easily traced back to them:
“I just can’t picture Chiang ordering his air force to bomb Saigon!”
Once Taylor had provided clarification that the bombing had in fact been carried out by two South Vietnamese pilots, Nitze offered his counter-theory as to what had happened. Since Diem was a hated figure in his country, these two “lone wolves” simply could have been acting on their own accord to do something that others only could dream of doing. “They had the means to kill him,” Nitze said, “And they would have been foolish to let that chance slip.”
Nitze was right of course; but in the fog of war, his “acting alone” theory was treated as just that. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson disagreed with both McCone and Nitze. LBJ, who had visited South Vietnam the previous autumn and came away thinking poorly of Diem, thought what had happened over there was the result of a conspiracy within the military to decapitate the government. In his mind, Diem was doing his country more harm than good and the military finally had enough of his incompetence. Exactly how widespread the conspiracy was Johnson couldn't say for sure. What he did say for sure was that Diem's assassination was actually a godsend for the Administration since it bailed them out of a tough spot. Scoop had been warned previously by his Vice President that “at some point we may be faced with the decision of whether we further our support for [Diem] or we start to look around and see if there is someone else we can support.”
Johnson had been afraid that the longer Diem stayed in power, the worse the situation in South Vietnam would get. The worse the situation in South Vietnam got, the more likely it would force the United States to make a hard choice: either stay the course and hope for the best or somehow get rid of him and start over with new leadership. “Now that these younger military officers have knocked off Diem,” LBJ told the President, “We have to believe that a military regime will turn this problem around.”

The Vice President’s assertion that it had been the work of a military conspiracy seemed to gain credence in the days following Diem’s assassination. By March 2nd, the South Vietnamese Army had taken full control in Saigon. The Army signaled that the country was under new management by suspending the Diem-era Constitution and instituting martial law to restore order and provide security. No action was taken against the two pilots behind the Independence Palace Bombing and they were allowed to continue serving in the Vietnam Air Force. In a move which raised eyebrows across the Pacific, both pilots even received promotions. For the Johnson wing, the promotions provided evidence that a military conspiracy had indeed been behind the ousting of Diem and that the two pilots were being rewarded for their participation. Jackson came to agree with Johnson’s assertion, believing that it would help explain the Army’s swift take-over of the country. He also believed that the Saigon garrison hadn't been a part of the conspiracy, given their Three Stooges-style reaction to the attack. Even China, whom McCone had blamed for the attack, backed the theory of a military conspiracy. Chiang Kai-shek publically pointed to the Air Force bombing of Diem’s residence as proof that “even members of his own military has turned against him.”
The truth is that there never was a military conspiracy behind the events of February 27th, 1962. Nitze had called it exactly right: the Independence Palace Bombing had been an isolated act perpetrated by two men who felt dissatisfaction with Diem’s regime. Rather than conspire to overthrow the government, the Army had merely stepped in to fill the sudden power vacuum. The bombing had altered the dynamics in South Vietnam by eliminating the civilian leadership that Jackson was trying to prop up. The new situation meant he had to start over and try to work with the Army’s leadership in the struggle to prevent the fall of the country to the North Vietnamese (the Chinese of course were lurking in the background). The attack had also revealed that the Jackson Administration didn’t have as firm a grasp on the Vietnam problem as they thought. McCone, Nitze, and Johnson had all looked at the same event and drawn entirely different conclusions, each with different ramifications. The resulting debate within the Administration showed that America’s leaders didn’t know for certain what was going on in Vietnam. They could only guess.
 
That Taco Bell looks like it's a children's playground more than a fast food restaurant! :eek:
 
I doubt this will be the first time different parts of the Administration draw different conclusions from the same event in Vietnam.

I have a feeling this over-estimation of the Machiavellian cunning (and basic competency) of the South Vietnamese Army will be a problem later on. The White House will thing the new Junta has a plan when they will in fact have no idea.
 
Rick Berman = Man who took over some time after Roddenberry was shuffled to the sidelines, turned TNG into the concentrated awesome that it is, had a hand in the creation of every other Trek show, had multiple over-lapping shows at the same time, and thusly is blamed for the creative exhaustion of the writers and the market saturation that led to Enterprise having a suck Season 1-3 and being canned just when it became really, really good in Season 4. Most hated man in Trek. I did a literal happy dance when he was fire.... ehm when he retired.
 
I wonder what Dương Văn Minh was doing while the Spads were strafing Diem...
 
volksmarschall: Believe it or not, that's what the first Taco Bell looked like.

El Pip: You're exactly right on both counts.

trekaddict: What's TNG?

Kurt_Steiner: Probably nothing. He wasn't much of a leader anyway.

By the way, last Monday was President Theodore Roosevelt's birthday. I'm a little surprised he doesn't get a national holiday like Washington and Lincoln. After all, HE'S THEODORE ROOSEVELT!!! He dug out the Panama Canal with his bare hands!* :cool:

*Okay, not really, but if Chuck Norris can have "facts"...
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The Ash Wednesday Storm
When March 1962 began, the Jackson Administration was reeling from the assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. Depending on who you asked, Diem had either been killed by the Chinese, disillusioned Vietnam Air Force pilots, or by his own military. In the wake of the assassination, the Administration discussed amongst themselves what to make of it. As March entered its’ second week, Mother Nature decided that the time was right to grab the busy President’s attention as only she could. On March 5th, a nor’easter formed off the coast of North Carolina. A nor’easter is a low pressure storm that forms along the East Coast of the United States from the convergence of polar cold air mass and the warm oceanic air mass of the Gulf Stream. It then passes just off the coast of New England and Southeastern Canada before heading out into the North Atlantic. Nor’easters get their name from the fact that winds in the left-forward quadrant rotate onto land from the northeast. These storms can cause severe coastal flooding, coastal erosion, blizzards, and damage from hurricane-force winds.

In the case of the Ash Wednesday Storm, she was created when not two but three pressure areas converged off the coast of North Carolina. At the same time, the Earth had reached its’ spring equinox (when both poles are equally aligned with the Sun). This meant that the East Coast was particularly vulnerable to exceptionally high tides. This was the perfect recipe for a major natural disaster. The Outer Banks, a long string of narrow barrier islands off the coasts of North Carolina and Virginia, were hit first by the nor’easter. Nags Head, North Carolina north to Virginia Beach, Virginia were pounded by heavy rain, high winds, and tidal surges. Hundreds of homes, hotels, motels, and resort businesses were either badly damaged or completely destroyed. In Virginia Beach, the waves were so strong and relentless that they actually broke apart the concrete boardwalk and sea wall. The cities of Norfolk and Hampton, Virginia reported destructive winds and flooding. Construction of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel suffered a major setback when a big piece of custom-built construction equipment called “The Big D” was demolished by the storm. Flooding left Chincoteague, Virginia under six feet of water and virtually wiped out her feral herd of Chincoteague Ponies. The only pony to survive was Misty, who in 1947 became famous as the star of a Newbery Medal-winning children’s book written by Marguerite Henry (which was later adapted into a 1961 film).

(Buckroe Beach, Virginia)
As the nor’easter reached the mid-Atlantic coast, it slowed down and stopped moving for three days. This lack of movement turned a bad situation worse because it prolonged the devastation being wrecked on the East Coast. Even people who didn’t live in the vicinity of the coastline were being affected because the storm was – on top of everything else – dumping up to four feet of snow several hundred miles inland. People were being buried in snow deep into West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Wallops Flight Facility, a NASA rocket launch site near the Virginia-Maryland state border, suffered a million dollars in damages. Above the state border in Ocean City, Maryland, winds reached 60 mph and waves twenty-five feet high surged into the town. Waves forty-feet high pounded Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, destroying the boardwalk as well as every beach front home. Across the state of Delaware, sand dunes were completely flattened. New Jersey then got hit hard by the nor’easter. Half of Atlantic City’s famous Steel Pier was ripped away by the unmerciful storm. Avalon, New Jersey reported that six blocks of buildings were totally flattened. The Garden State would ultimately tally 45,000 homes as being either destroyed or greatly damaged. The carnage repeated itself in New York, where one community alone suffered the loss of one hundred homes. Trees fell everywhere across Connecticut and Rhode Island, landing on homes and knocking out power lines. Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine all reported experiencing beach erosion.

(Cape May, New Jersey)
When the nor’easter finally dissipated on March 9th, it left behind a massive mess stretching from North Carolina to Maine. Forty people were found dead and over a thousand had suffered injuries. The heavy wind, large waves, and record-breaking high tides had left many storm-ravaged families homeless and businesses were either flooded out or were completely gone. Touring the devastation afterwards, President Jackson assured his fellow Americans that the Federal Government would step in and provide assistance to help them rebuild their shattered lives. As Malcolm Forbes (New Jersey), Prescott Bush (Connecticut), and other Governors assessed the damage in their hard-hit states, it became apparent that this nor’easter was unlike any other that had come before. In all, six states would report $500,000,000 in property damage. To put that into perspective, property damage from Hurricane Betsy three years later would cost over twice that amount. The nor’easter was so powerful that it even earned a name: the Ash Wednesday Storm (due to the fact that the heaviest damage occurred on the first day of Lent in Western Christianity). The nor’easter which inundated the East Coast that second week of March 1962 became one of the ten worst storms to hit the United States during the 20th Century, ranking up there with the likes of Hurricane Andrew which would bulldoze its' way across Florida and Louisiana thirty years later. Touring the scene in New Jersey with Forbes, Jackson solemnly told him:
"The destruction from this storm goes beyond anything we have ever known."

(Norfolk, Virginia)