“Come Together” – the Timothy Leary campaign slogan that became a famous Beatles song…

The best-known slogan coined by Sixties counterculture celebrity Timothy Leary is the one he created to promote the use of LSD and other psychedelic drugs: “Turn on, tune in, drop out.”

In 1969, Leary came up with another slogan that was eventually made famous, though not by him.

Three years earlier, actor Ronald Reagan had been elected Governor of California.

Leary figured that if a Hollywood celebrity could run for Governor and get elected, maybe the times were right for a Hippie celebrity to take a shot at it. Besides, he loved publicity.

So, he threw his mushroom cap into the ring and announced that he planned to run against Reagan in the 1970 gubernatorial election.

Leary came up with the tongue-in-cheek campaign slogan, “Come together, join the party.”

In June of 1969, while visiting John Lennon and Yoko Ono at their legendary Montreal “Bed-In,”  Leary asked Lennon to write a campaign song to go with his slogan.

Lennon agreed. And, during the Montreal Bed-In days, in addition to writing and recording “Give Peace a Chance,” Lennon wrote an initial version of the song “Come Together.”

The melody was basically like the Beatles song we know today, but the original chorus was different.

It went: “Come together, right now. / Don’t come tomorrow. / Don’t come alone.”

Lennon made a demo tape of the campaign song for Leary. Leary gave copies to local underground radio stations in California and the song got some airplay.

Shortly thereafter, Leary’s campaign got derailed due to his mounting legal troubles from a past marijuana bust, forcing him to, er, drop out of the Governor’s race. (Lucky for Ronnie.)

So, Lennon took the song to his bandmates, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, when the Beatles were recording songs for the upcoming Abbey Road album.

Together, they reworked it a bit and changed the lyrics to those all Beatles fans are familiar with:

“Here come old flattop, he come groovin’ up slowly
He got ju-ju eyeballs, he one holy roller
He got hair down to his knees
Got to be a joker, he just do what he please
He wear no shoeshine, he got toe-jam football
He got monkey finger, he shoot Coca-Cola
He say, I know you, you know me
One thing I can tell you is you got to be free
Come together, right now, over me.”

The first line of the song (Lennon’s homage to a similar line from Chuck Berry’s 1956 rock hit, “You Can’t Catch Me”) and the chorus — “Come together, right now, over me” — became famous pop culture quotations.

“Come Together” was released as a single in the US on October 6, 1970 and reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart on November 29, 1969 — which is how, by a trippy route, Tim Leary’s gubernatorial campaign slogan became the subject of posts for those dates on ThisDayinQuotes.com.

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“He who destroys a good book kills reason itself.”

In the 1630s, England’s infamous “Star Chamber” (sort of a politically-oriented version of the Spanish Inquisition) banned the printing or sale of “any seditious, scismaticall, or offensive Bookes or Pamphlets.”

The Star Chamber was abolished in 1641. But two years later, the British House of Commons passed a new censorship law.

Although it was was called a book “licensing” law, it was more about limiting free speech and creating publishing monopolies for politically-connected publishers than it was about protecting the rights of authors (or readers).

Books deemed to be in violation of the “Licensing Order of 1643” were seized and destroyed. And, the writers, printers and publishers of those books faced prison sentences.

This made England’s great poet John Milton angry and inspired him to write a “speech” urging more liberal publishing laws.

The full title of the printed version was Areopagitica; A Speech of Mr. John Milton For the Liberty of Unlicens’d Printing, To the Parlament of England. (The full text is online here.)

Now generally referred to as Areopagitica for short, it was published on November 23, 1644.

Milton’s Areopagitica (a word alluding to ancient Greek judges) is among the most famous historical documents advocating freedom of the press ever written.

One line in it is still frequently quoted today and included in many books of quotations:

“As good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself.”

Milton’s eloquent words failed to persuade Parliament to change its book “licensing” and censorship regulations. They remained in effect until 1694, 20 years after Milton’s death.

Of course, in the centuries since then, censorship of books has significantly and steadily decreased, at least in the United Kingdom, the United States and other Western democracies.

But even in those countries efforts to ban books from public libraries has continued.

For example, during the first decade of the 21st Century, the American Library Association documented more than 4,000 attempts to have various book removed from local libraries here in the United States.

Some modern self-appointed censors want to ban books that conflict with their religious views. Some want to block access to books they deem “pornographic.”

Other reasons given for requesting books to be banned from libraries in recent years include things like sexism, “anti-family” content and uses of the N-word, one of the common complaints lodged against Mark Twain’s classic novel Huckleberry Finn.

Targets of people and groups who want to ban books at their local libraries also include many other literary classics, such as: 

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
1984 by George Orwell
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
The Call of the Wild by Jack London

You can read a longer, jaw-dropping list of examples on the “Banned & Challenged Classics” page of the ALA’s website.

If John Milton were still around, I think seeing that list might make him angry.

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“Your eyes are full of hate, Forty-one.” In Ben-Hur, that's good.

Screenwriter, playwright and novelist Gore Vidal once uttered a funny quip about the old corporal punishment called “birching” (i.e., whipping someone with a bundle of birch tree rods).

According to many books of quotations and websites, he said:

       “I’m all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.”

Another famous quotation linked to whipping that might have been written by Vidal is in the epic film, Ben-Hur, which premiered in New York City on November 18, 1959.

I said might have been written by Vidal because there is significant uncertainty about who wrote which parts of the final script for Ben-Hur.

Official credit for the screenplay was given to veteran screenwriter Karl Tunberg.

However, at the request of the film’s director, William Wyler, several other writers did extensive but uncredited rewriting, including Vidal and the famous playwrights Maxwell Anderson and Christopher Fry.

If you’re a fan of the movie you probably know the famous quotation from Ben-Hur that is often cited by movie buffs and books.

It’s in a scene in the galley of a Roman warship, where bare-chested Charlton Heston, as Ben-Hur, is chained with dozens of other sweating, near-naked slaves who row the ship.

The Roman naval commander, played by British actor Jack Hawkins, comes down into the galley to inspect the slaves.

He asks Heston, who he calls by his seat number – Forty-one – how long he’d been in “service” as a galley slave.

Heston glares at Hawkins and says grumpily that he’d served a month less a day on the current ship and three years in others.

Hawkins seems to ignore Heston’s defiant tone and walks on.

Suddenly, he turns around and lashes Heston on the back with the multi-stranded whip he’s carrying.

Heston rears up and looks menacingly at Hawkins. Hawkins looks down at him coolly and remarks: “You have the spirit to fight back, but the good sense to control it.”

Then he observes:

“Your eyes are full of hate, Forty-one. That's good. Hate keeps a man alive. It gives him strength.”

It’s not certain that Gore Vidal was the writer who contributed those famous lines to the script.

It could have been Tunberg, Anderson or Fry.

However, given Vidal’s sexual preference (he was openly gay long before it was as acceptable as it is today), and given his oft-quoted quip about mutual birch lashings by consenting adults, something tells me Gore would have a special flair for writing a scene that included sweaty, scantily-clad men and a whip.

In fact, Vidal claimed to have purposely put a homosexual subtext into the script in its depiction of the relationship between Ben-Hur and Messala, played by Stephen Boyd.

Messala, a Roman, was a close childhood friend of Jew-turned-Christian Ben-Hur (though as the movie progresses they become arch enemies).

In an interview in the 1996 documentary The Celluloid Closet, Vidal recalled discussing the nature of their friendship with director William Wyler.

“I said, ‘Well, look, let me try something. Let’s say that these two guys when they were 15 or 16...they had been lovers and now they’re meeting again and the Roman wants to start it up...Willie stared at me, face grey. And, I said, ‘I’ll never use the word; there will be nothing overt, but it will be perfectly clear that Messala is in love with Ben-Hur.’ Willie said, ‘Gore, this is Ben-Hur, A Tale of the Christ I think is the subtitle,’ he said, rather vaguely, looking around. And Willie finally said, ‘Well, it's certainly better than what we've got. We'll try it.’”

According to Hollywood legend, Wyler denied this conversation with Vidal ever took place.

Either way, once you know about the anecdote, it’s hard to not to think of it when you watch the scenes in Ben-Hur when the two childhood friends first see each other again after years apart, give each other a warm, er, bear hug, and then laughingly throw those big, l-o-o-o-ong spears.

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The genesis of “the Almighty Dollar” – from Genesis to Washington Irving...

The word almighty, used in connection with God, appears 57 times in the King James Version of the Bible.

Starting in the Book of Genesis, God is variously referred to as “the Almighty God,” “God Almighty” and, most often, simply as “the Almighty.”

The English idiom “the almighty dollar,” which is commonly used to mock the worship of wealth and money, does not come from the Bible.

It was coined in 1836 by the American author Washington Irving, whose best known works include the short stories “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle.”

There is an earlier, similar term. In 1616, the English playwright and poet Ben Jonson used the term “almighty gold” in his poem “Epistle to Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland.”

But the more familiar “almighty dollar” first appeared in a travel story Irving wrote about a steamboat trip he took through the Louisiana bayous.

The story, titled “The Creole Village,” was originally published in the November 12, 1836 issue of Knickerbocker Magazine.

Irving was impressed by the laid back lifestyle of the Creole people who lived in Louisiana’s bayou country and by how unconcerned they seemed (at least to him) about making or having money.

He wrote in his travel piece:

“The inhabitants, moreover, have none of that eagerness for gain and rage for improvement which keep our people continually on the move...In a word, the almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion throughout our land, seems to have no genuine devotees in these peculiar villages; and unless some of its missionaries penetrate there, and erect banking houses and other pious shrines, there is no knowing how long the inhabitants may remain in their present state of contented poverty.”

Near the end of the piece, Irving opined:

“As we swept away from the shore, I cast back a wistful eye upon the moss-grown roofs and ancient elms of the village, and prayed that the inhabitants might long retain their happy ignorance, their absence of all enterprise and improvement, their respect for the fiddle, and their contempt for the almighty dollar.”

I suspect this romantic vision overestimated how content the locals were to be poor.

Of course, in 1855, when “The Creole Village” was included in a collection of his stories called Wolfert’s Roost, Irving made it clear that he had meant no offense — to the almighty dollar, that is.

In a satirical footnote in that book (later included in larger Irving anthologies like The Crayon Miscellany), Irving wrote:

“This phrase [the almighty dollar], used for the first time in this sketch, has since passed into current circulation, and by some has been questioned as savoring of irreverence. The author, therefore, owes it to his orthodoxy to declare that no irreverence was intended even to the dollar itself; which he is aware is daily becoming more and more an object of worship.”

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“O Liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!”

In 1781, a young French woman named Marie-Jeanne Philippo married wealthy businessman Jean-Marie Roland, becoming Madame Roland.

Madame Roland and her husband were early supporters of the the democratic goals of the French Revolution when it started in 1789. 

They became active leaders of a moderate Revolutionist party called the Girondists.

Unfortunately for them — and many other French citizens — a more extreme group took control of France a few years after the storming of the Bastille.

They were called the Jacobins and their leaders imposed the infamous “Reign of Terror.”

During that bloody period, Jacobin leaders imprisoned and thousands of people they viewed as political threats or simply didn’t like.

Eventually, they deemed the Rolands to be insufficiently revolutionary.

Madame Roland was arrested in Paris in the spring of 1793. Her husband was traveling at the time. When he heard his of wife’s imprisonment, he went into hiding.

Madame Roland was held in prison for months. On November 8, 1793, she was sent to the guillotine, a few weeks after Marie Antoinette met the same fate.

On the way to her execution, Madame Roland passed a large statue of the goddess Liberty that her former political comrades had erected nearby (the same goddess portrayed by the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor).

According to historical accounts of the day, when Madame Roland saw the statue she looked at it sadly and uttered a line that became famous:

“O Liberté, que de crimes on commet en ton nom!” (“O Liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!”)

Not long after saying these words, Madame Roland was beheaded. When her husband heard the news, he killed himself with his own sword.

Her poignant quote has since been used in many commentaries about the excesses committed in the name of freedom and democracy.

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