It Is Always Something

I remember it quite well. I was in Indianapolis to participate in a pitch meeting to obtain the Burger Chef account when I watched Neil Armstrong take his first step on the moon. All of us in the room which included Pete, Peggy, and Don were amazed by what we just saw.

Wait a second. That didn't happen to me. That happened on Mad Men.  I saw Armstrong on the moon in the den of the original Manis Manor at 460 Holt Road in Marietta, Georgia.  I remember it being very late and I could barely keep my eyes open. I wasn't yet ten years old.

It is even more remarkable now than it was then.  Apollo 11 made it to the moon with 60's technology. The fact they had radio contact still amazes me. There are parts of my house where I can't make a phone call on my smartphone.

But you know what happened.  After several landings on the moon, it became old hat. All they brought back were rocks. Man, they must have been nice rocks with all of the people dying in Vietnam, man.

That part of it was really too bad.  We basically put a man on the moon in about twelve years since Sputnik was launched. That's an unbelievable short period of time to accomplish something so incredible.

Of course, American's agenda-setters (The Washington Post and The New York Times) are allowing us to look back at that time, when Americans came together to achieve a common goal, with pride.

If you believe that, I have some moon rocks to sell you.

WaPo, as everybody is calling it now, ran an article about NASA's race to the moon by noting:

"As NASA worked relentlessly to fulfill John F. Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the moon by decade’s end, it turned to the nation’s engineers. Many of them were fresh out of school, running the gamut from mechanical to electrical engineers, because that’s mostly what was taught in universities, and almost exclusively to white men."

For some weird reason, NASA turned to the nation's engineers to achieve the goal of landing a man on the moon before Jimi Hendrix took the stage at Woodstock instead of the nation's liberal arts majors. They were male mechanical and electrical engineers. Which means they were really into math.  This was before the time of pocket calculators, too, so we are dealing with men that used slide rulers. (I'm not sure how to use a slide rule. I can barely use a pocket calculator.)

There were the ONs: The Original Nerds. They all have one problem: the color of their skin.

The Post goes to say, "In archival Apollo 11 photos and footage, it’s a "Where’s Waldo?" exercise to spot a woman or person of color."

I have an idea. Let's not play a "Where's Waldo"  exercise to spot a woman or a person of color. 

The New York Times ran an article titled, and I am not making this up, "How The Soviets Won The Space Race For Equality".  They ran it because when everybody thinks about equality, they think about the Soviet Union.

History shows the Soviet Union sent  Valentina Tereshkova into orbit on June 16, 1963, twenty years before America sent Sally Ride into space.  But, and the Times article did not state this, Ride was the first LGBT astronaut into space. Take that Khrushchev! USA! USA! USA!

The Times noted: "Ardent female fans in the U.S.S.R. saw her triumph as a welcome reaffirmation of the Soviet commitment to gender equality, while women outside the Soviet Union took it as proof that there was no limit to what women could achieve".

I'm not an expert, but I would doubt her "ardent female fans" saw her as a "welcome reaffirmation of the Soviet commitment to gender equality" because they didn't think in those terms. They probably thought that she was lucky to get out of a stink hole like The Soviet Union.

The Times article ends "Cosmonaut diversity was key for the Soviet message to the rest of the globe: Under socialism, a person of even the humblest origins could make it all the way up."  As long, of course, a person of humble origins didn't disagree with the state. They would find other places for you besides a rocket ship, comrade.

All of this is part of our New American past-time called "Naw, it wasn't that great".  You hear it all around. Hipsters say The Beatles weren't all that great.  There were other Liverpool bands just as good.  Yeah, Abe Lincoln freed the slaves and saved the union, but have you noticed that wart on his face?

Yeah, the moon landing was great and all that, but did you see that picture of Misson Control? All white men.  They probably smoke and drank too much.  Yes, that was a slide rule in his pocket and yes, he was happy to see you.

We have a generation of clickbait followers where nothing is ever good enough.  Heaven forbid we look back at something with pride.

There's nothing wrong with pointing out facts. Yes, it was mainly white men at Mission Control. But does the color of their skin diminish what they accomplished?

We'll do better next time.