The Last Hurrah: Up With People
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and the Twelve Steps by A. Orange Chapter 24: The Last Hurrah: Up With People
They offered the Sing Out! and Up With People! shows as a "moral" alternative to the anti-war Hippies of the 'sixties and 'seventies, and as a jingoistic denunciation of the opposition to the War in Viet Nam:
The "Sing Out!" show was produced under the auspices of Moral Re-Armament, but that became a problem when corporate sponsors like General Electric did not wish to be publicly associated with such a weird fascist cult religion, so the producers renamed the show to "Up With People!", and hid any links to Moral Re-Armament. (But they didn't hide them very well. The authors of the MRA propaganda book Moral Re-Armament: What Is It? bragged about producing both shows, and they often used the two names interchangeably. So did the book Born To Upturn The World: The people who are making the Sing-Out explosion, "Up With People", by David Allen.) The show's producers still managed to put their moral stamp on it: On the bus, young men and women were not allowed to sit together, for reasons of "purity." The young men were given lectures, advising against hot showers, lest the warm water arouse them to abuse themselves.
The song lyrics were like this:
That was such meaningless jingoistic hoopla that if you just edited out the word "America", and replaced it with the word "Germany" or "Hitler", you would have a good Hitlerjugend song for a Nuremberg Nazi Party Rally:
Every boy and every girl... We are going to fire a new shot... Heard around the world! Sieg Heil!"
"Men will heed you"? And do what you say? That sounds familiar — sort of like A. J. Russell's arrogant demands that strangers should obey the Oxford Group recruiters.
Such delusions of grandeur:
Even the titles of the MRA propaganda books about "Up With People"
were grandiose: Frank Buchman's fingerprints are all over it. Notice how such a bombastic slogan, "The greatest generation in history", was designed to appeal to the vanity and egotism of the young audiences who were the intended targets of MRA's ongoing recruiting work. — Just what heroic achievements had made the Baby Boomers "the greatest generation"? What great accomplishments had they made, so far? They were still just some insecure kids in 1966... And the "new idea" being sold to "the greatest generation" was actually just a very old cult religion dressed up in new clothes. Those old MRA guys were definitely clever propagandists.
MRA didn't seem to know much about the military way of life. According to MRA, a General's daughter said, "We military dependents are known as a wild and way-out crowd right around the world..." That is not entirely true. (I know, I grew up in the military.) There were a few bad-boy high-ranking officers' sons, but by and large, the military dependents were very regimented. A military man is held strictly accountable for what his children do, and if his children get busted, then he gets busted too, which can be the end of his military career. The least he is likely to get, if his children get into trouble, is reduced in rank and pay. But that can also mean that he never gets another promotion. His career is over. The military attitude is, "If you can't control your own children, then how can we trust you to control troops in combat?" So military dependents are often some of the most oppressed, regimented, and disciplined children on earth. Again, we see the standard Oxford Group show routine of converts telling exaggerated stories of their "extremely sinful and wild ways" before Frank Buchman's wonderful recruiters led them to the straight and narrow path.
Those young people in "Up With People!" worked hard at singing, dancing, and playing musical instruments. You would think that they deserved to get paid for their work — they put on a large number of shows all across the country each year, and sold a lot of tickets, and even appeared on national television — NBC TV — in 1968, as well as on hundreds of local stations in 32 cities. Did they get paid for their work? No. Well, so they volunteered, and just got room and board while they toured the country, right? No, not even close. They were actually expected to pay $9800 per year for the privilege of working on stage for free. (Although it is reported that, in 1990, about one-third of the cast did get some kind of financial aid.)121 And by the last year of the show, 2000, the "tuition" had increased to $20,000 per year. It just seems to be another cult rule: rob your own people first. They are easier to hit up than strangers on the street. (The Screen Actors' Guild must have popped a cork. That's really the ultimate in union-busting, isn't it? — make the actors, singers, dancers and musicians pay to work onstage.)
And how was that endowment fund for scholarships financed?
You can give financially to Up With People and Moral Re-Armament. Dollars, dimes nickels, pennies — believe it or not, without contributions like these Up With People would stop. Consider carefully whether you shouldn't give a hundred dollars — or a thousand dollars. Or more if you've got it. Consider how much it means to you to have this spirit spreading throughout the world today. How much does it matter? Maybe you should give everything you've got. People did two hundred years ago when this country had to finance the Revolution. And Up With People is financed in exactly the same way.
"Maybe you should give everything you've got."
That's the propaganda trick of
Sly Suggestions. And the False Analysis Of History is another propaganda trick that MRA used there. The early American colonists most assuredly did not give everything they had to General George Washington and his army. In fact, only one third of the colonists even supported the revolution. Another third were loyal to the King and Crown, and the remainder sat on the fence, undecided. George Washington was constantly begging the Continental Congress for more supplies because he never got enough. If it weren't for the French, the revolutionaries would have starved and lost the war. But MRA did not intend to educate people with accurate facts.... MRA just waved the flag and suggested that people should give them all of their money to MRA if they were really patriotic and really moral.  Previous: Death of a Salesman; Peter Howard Takes Over
Last updated 29 August 2015. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Copyright © 2016, A. Orange