America 250\u201d is no \u201cSpirit of \u201876.\u201d<\/p>\n
For those of us who remember the bicentennial, the semiquincentennial is a complete and utter dud. Many fine festivities will take place on and around July 4, but compared with the years-long nationwide celebration that marked this country\u2019s 200th anniversary, 250 feels like a nonevent. <\/p>\n
Perhaps it was inevitable. Semiquincentennial (meaning half of a 500-year anniversary) certainly doesn\u2019t roll off the tongue as easily as bicentennial and our current president isn\u2019t making it any catchier. Mostly because he seems to think 250 is the new 80 (the birthday President Trump recently marked with his UFC Freedom 250 cage match<\/a> on the White House lawn).<\/p>\n As many have noted, Trump\u2019s method of honoring this country\u2019s birthday involves making it all about him by demolishing parts of the White House<\/a> (to install a new bunker-like ballroom), attempting to set up<\/a> a $1.8-billion slush fund for pardoned Jan. 6 rioters, seeking to build a triumphal arch<\/a> that a majority of Americans oppose<\/a> and trying to slap his name and\/or image on any surface he can think of (including a proposed $250 bill<\/a>). No wonder so many artists have dropped out<\/a> of the concert series planned for the Great American State Fair in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n To be fair, the federal government\u2019s involvement in bicentennial planning also got bogged down with political and personal hubris. The national commission, originally created by President Lyndon B. Johnson, was reformed under President Richard Nixon. Plagued by criticism and scandal, it was eventually dissolved by Congress and replaced by a new commission that decided to mostly fund community celebrations.<\/p>\n There was much hand-wringing over missed opportunities at the time, but for more than a year, state and local governments staged reenactments, parades and patriotic events all over the country while the commercial sector star-spangled the crap out of everything<\/a>: T-shirts, bell-bottoms and bathing suits; curtains, bedspreads and throw rugs; dishware, glassware and Tupperware.<\/p>\n The Declaration of Independence appeared on highball glasses, tea towels and collectible plates. Beginning in 1974, CBS ran mini-history lessons called \u201cBicentennial Minutes,\u201d<\/a> which were then sent up on shows as diverse as \u201cHee Haw\u201d and \u201cMaude.\u201d George Washington and other Founding Fathers graced Pez dispensers, coasters and the cover of Mad Magazine. There was a bicentennial Barbie and a colonial Campbell\u2019s Soup doll. McDonald\u2019s sold red, white and blue milkshakes, Burger King offered a flag-bedecked series of glass tumblers, Disney characters wore tricorn hats for a line of park merchandise.<\/p>\n Some called it the \u201cbuy-centennial\u201d but for a kid who daily rocked Stars and Stripes sneakers, and, thanks to a year\u2019s worth of American-history-themed \u201cSchoolhouse Rock!,\u201d could, and would, sing the preamble to the Constitution<\/a> or the anthem \u201cNo More Kings\u201d<\/a> at the drop of a hat, it was great fun.<\/p>\n Now, of course, \u201cNo More Kings\u201d is an anti-Trump protest theme, and the right has so co-opted patriotism that wearing a flag-emblazoned T-shirt can feel somehow partisan. American history itself has become a bone of contention, with the left accusing the right of whitewashing this country\u2019s inarguable sins \u2014 Native American displacement, slavery, gender inequality and racist policies \u2014 while the right insists that the left is obsessed with undermining our nation\u2019s power and legacy by \u201cwoke\u201d-shaming it.<\/p>\n The only thing each end of our divided political spectrum can agree on is that democracy is under mortal threat from the other. <\/p>\n That\u2019s one good reason to feel less than festive<\/a>, and there are plenty of others, including increased political violence, the war in Iran, tariffs, surging gas prices, civil rights rollbacks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactics, artificial intelligence\u2019s threat to jobs, the resurgence of measles, the rising cost of just about everything and the fact that some critics are claiming<\/a> that Steven Spielberg\u2019s \u201cDisclosure Day\u201d is less full of wonder than \u201cClose Encounters of the Third Kind.\u201d<\/p>\n But things weren\u2019t so great heading into the bicentennial either. I was 12 at the time, born nine months after Alabama Gov. George Wallace gave his infamous \u201csegregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever\u201d speech and less than two months before President Kennedy was assassinated. I hadn\u2019t been alive a year when civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were murdered in Mississippi by members of the Ku Klux Klan and hadn\u2019t turned 5 when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and then-Sen. Robert F. Kennedy were also assassinated.<\/p>\n Sure, it was that now-wistfully remembered time when kids went out in the morning and played, mostly unmonitored, until nightfall (with the inevitable trips to the doctor for stitches and tetanus shots for those wounds too obvious to hide from parents). But by the time the bicentennial rolled around, my life had played out against the backdrop of civil unrest and the Vietnam War, both spilling from our black-and-white television almost nightly. <\/p>\n I was 9 when Wallace, then a presidential candidate, was shot and 10 when I learned what OPEC and gas siphoning meant as my family spent hours in an un-air-conditioned car, inching toward the gas pump after the 1973 \u201cYom Kippur\u201d Arab-Israeli War resulted in oil shortages.<\/p>\n That same year, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned from office, pleading \u201cno contest\u201d to charges of tax evasion but avoiding prosecution for charges of bribery and criminal conspiracy, and Nixon appointed House Minority Leader Gerald Ford (R-Mich.) to Agnew\u2019s place. In 1974, Nixon, faced with impeachment for his part in the Watergate scandal, became the first president in U.S. history to resign.<\/p>\n The bicentennial\u2019s tall ships festivals, fife and drum parades and Old Glory consumer fest occurred in a country reeling from more than a decade of history-changing assassinations, civil unrest, economic anxiety and high-level political corruption (not to mention a collective fear of the ocean brought on by the 1975 release of Spielberg\u2019s \u201cJaws\u201d). Democracy was celebrated under Ford, the first, and thus far only, president to come to office through the provisions of the 25th Amendment rather than a national election.<\/p>\n A president who, after being regularly and ruthlessly lampooned by comedian Chevy Chase on the nascent \u201cSaturday Night Live,\u201d reacted by becoming friends with Chase <\/a>instead of, you know, forcing the network to fire him.<\/p>\n If the bicentennial roiled with some of the same tensions Americans feel today, it did benefit from a cultural cohesion that no longer exists. The year 1976 saw the founding of Apple and the introduction of VHS tapes, but the national audience was still very much a reality. Back then, you couldn\u2019t escape the songs of the summer<\/a> \u2014 \u201cSilly Love Songs\u201d (Wings), \u201cDon\u2019t Go Breaking My Heart\u201d (Elton John and Kiki Dee) and \u201cAfternoon Delight\u201d (Starland Vocal Band) \u2014 any more than you could miss those \u201cBicentennial Minutes.\u201d We all listened to the radio, watched TV, went to the movies and bought books, and our preferences revealed the country\u2019s desire for both comfort and change. <\/p>\n On the bestseller lists, Agatha Christie\u2019s final Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple books marked the end of an era, toggling in the No. 1 spot with the political turbulence of Gore Vidal\u2019s \u201c1876\u201d and Leon Uris\u2019 \u201cTrinity.\u201d \u201cRocky\u201d beat \u201cAll the President\u2019s Men,\u201d \u201cTaxi Driver,\u201d \u201cNetwork,\u201d \u201cMarathon Man\u201d and \u201cThe Omen\u201d at the box office and, later, in the best picture Oscar race. <\/p>\n On television, Americans sought the nostalgic comfort food of \u201cHappy Days,\u201d \u201cThe Waltons\u201d and \u201cLittle House on the Prairie\u201d amid the more pointed social comedies of \u201cAll in the Family,\u201d \u201cThe Jeffersons\u201d and \u201cMASH,\u201d all of which had nightly averages of 20 million or more viewers. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/6013131\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/2083x625+0+0\/resize\/266x80!\/format\/webp\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fed%2F4f%2Fa3cacf2e4dbf83cdf5949818d19a%2Famerica-250-break5.png)
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