August 6, 1966: The Beatles "Get Canceled" by America's Religious Right

The Beatles -- left to right: Ringo, Paul, John and George --

on their 1966 World Tour,

looking uneasy, maybe even shellshocked.

Which would have been understandable.

August 6, 1966, 60 years ago: What would later be called "cancel culture" hits the biggest act in world entertainment at the time: The Beatles.

On March 4, 1966, The Evening Standard, a London-based newspaper but, like many, serving Great Britain nationally, published an article titled "How Does a Beatle Live?" written by Maureen Cleave. She had interviewed all 4 group members regularly, and accompanied them on their 1st visit to America in February 1964. She is widely believed to have had an affair with John, and to have been the subject of his song "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)."

In her latest interview with John Lennon, she portrayed him as restless and searching for meaning in his life. The year before, he had written the song "Help!" While most American teenagers thought it was just a great rock and roll song, it was more than that: John was physically and mentally exhausted from 2 years of nonstop Beatlemania, and all the money he'd made hadn't reduced his stress. So he really was looking for help and meaning.

He and bandmate George Harrison had been reading about religion. Unlike George, who found a connection with Eastern, especially Indian, faiths, John found no comfort in it, or in any other religion. Cleave quoted him as saying:

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I'll be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first – rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.

People in Britain barely noticed: The article provoked no controversy there. Church attendance there was in decline, and Christian churches were attempting to transform their image, to make themselves more "relevant to modern times."

At first, that was also the case in America. Later in March, Newsweek printed the quote. In May, Detroit magazine printed the interview. On July 3, The New York Times Magazine printed it. Still, there was no reaction worth mentioning.

On July 29, Datebook magazine published the interview, and also Cleave's most recent interview with Paul McCartney, in its September 1966 "Shout-Out" issue, which was dedicated to controversial youth-orientated themes, including recreational drugs, sex, long hair, and the Vietnam War.

Although only Paul was shown on the cover, Art Unger, the magazine's editor, put a quote from Lennon's interview on the cover: "I don't know which will go first – rock 'n' roll or Christianity!" In author Robert Rodriguez's description, the editor had chosen what he thought would be Lennon's "most damning comment" for maximum effect.

Except, while it probably should have been, that wasn't the quote that upset people: It was the line, "We're more popular than Jesus now."

And he was right. Granted, 2,000 years from now, if human civilization survives, there will likely be more Bibles sold than Beatle albums. But, at the time, kids were more interested in 4 young men from current Liverpool than in 1 young man from ancient Israel and his 12 disciples.

The people that freaked out over John's remarks shouldn't have asked, "How dare he say that?" They should have asked, "What can we do to make Jesus, once again, more popular than The Beatles?" (Disclaimer: I don't have an answer now, and I probably wouldn't have had an answer had I been around then.)

In Birmingham, Alabama, WAQY disc jockey Tommy Charles said, on the air, "That does it for me. I am not going to play The Beatles anymore." He destroyed their records on the air. Local UPI reporter Al Benn filed a news report in New York City, culminating in a major story in The New York Times on August 5. Radio stations all over the country, including in supposedly liberal cities like New York and Boston, announced that they would no longer play Beatle songs.

On August 6 came the kind of event that one would have expected in Nazi Germany: In Reno, Nevada, station KCBN announced a public bonfire for that night, where the band's albums would be burned.

Many stations in Southern cities followed. Paul compared it to what the Nazis did with books they didn't like, and called it "hysterical low-grade American thinking."

Brian Epstein, the group's manager, who was Jewish, shrugged it off at first, saying, "If they burn Beatles records, they've got to buy them first." But then the press office at the Vatican -- though not Pope Paul VI himself -- weighed in, issuing this statement: "Some subjects must not be dealt with profanely, not even in the world of beatniks." Now, it wasn't just a bunch of ignorant, bigoted, archconservative Southern Baptists that were angry at the Fab Four: It was, officially, the Roman Catholic Church.

What's more, there were death threats. Now, John was scared: He had put his bandmates, and even their loved ones -- by this point, all but Paul were married, John and Ringo Starr each had one son, and George had a sister and her children living in St. Louis -- at physical risk.

And so, for what turned out to be the only time in his public life, John Lennon ate crow, and apologized for something he'd said or done.

On August 11, the Beatles flew from London to Chicago, where the North American leg of their World Tour was to begin. That night, at the Astor Tower Hotel, at a press conference in front of TV cameras, John said, "I suppose if I had said television was more popular than Jesus, I would have got away with it. I'm sorry I opened my mouth. I'm not anti-God, anti-Christ, or anti-religion. I was not knocking it. I was not saying we are greater or better."

He stressed that he had been remarking on how other people viewed and popularized the band. He described his own view of God by quoting the Bishop of Woolwich, "not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us."

He was adamant that he was not comparing himself with Christ, but attempting to explain the decline of Christianity in the UK. He closed with what could be considered a halfhearted apology: "If you want me to apologize, if that will make you happy, then, okay, I'm sorry." (Shades of more recent "I'm sorry if I offended anyone" statements.)

Most American journalists accepted this. A New York Times editorial said that the matter was over. Even the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano (The Roman Observer), decided that the apology was sufficient.

But it wasn't over. On August 13, in South Carolina, the Ku Klux Klan "crucified" a Beatles record on a large wooden cross, which they burned. On the same night, radio station KLUE in Longview, Texas held a Beatles bonfire. The next day, a lightning bolt struck its transmission tower, briefly knocking it off the air. Maybe this was God confirming that He had accepted John's apology as well.

It still wasn't over. On August 15, The Beatles played District of Columbia Stadium (later renamed Robert F. Kennedy Stadium), in Washington, which was still considered a semi-Southern city at that point, and the KKK picketed the concert. On August 19, The Beatles played their only scheduled concert in the South, at the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis. The Klan picketed this show, too. During the concert, a spectator threw a firecracker onstage, and all 4 members later said that they thought someone had fired a gun.

(Memphis was, of course, the hometown of Elvis Presley. If anyone asked Elvis for his thoughts on the matter, they've never been made public.) 

To make matters worse, John couldn't keep his mouth shut. On August 17, before their concert at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, he gave his approval to Americans fleeing to Canada to avoid the military draft. At a press conference in New York before their concert at Shea Stadium on August 22, John said the Vietnam War was "wrong." The year before, they had filled all 55,000 available seats at the Flushing Meadow stadium. This time, "only" 40,000 showed up, with pickets both for and against them facing off against each other. (There was no fight between these factions.)

It was their most stressful tour ever, and George said he'd rather leave the band than ever go on another tour. They decided they wouldn't, and would be only a recording band from that point onward, although they did not publicly announce it yet. George agreed to stay -- for now.

The last concert on the tour was at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on August 29. They were supported by The Ronettes, The Cyrkle, Bobby Hebb, and The Remains. (The Cyrkle were also managed by Epstein's company.) Attendance: 25,000, meaning about 17,000 empty seats. (In 1971, the NFL's San Francisco 49ers joined baseball's San Francisco Giants there, leading to an expansion to 69,000 seats.)

As usual, they roared through their set, playing 11 songs in 33 minutes, unable to hear themselves over all the screaming, partly due to the fact that, in spite of having a year pass since their first round of stadium concerts, no one had yet figured out how to stage a rock concert in a ballpark. (By the 1970s, that problem would be solved.) The last song they played was a cover of Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally," sung by Paul.

While they'd decided not to tour again, even the four of them did not know that this would be their last paying concert together, ever. There would be the concert on the roof of the building where Apple Records was based, on January 30, 1969. And each of them would have notable solo gigs, with Paul and Ringo living and continuing to tour into the 2020s. But The Beatles would never have another official concert.

In 1970, for his solo album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, John recorded a song titled "God," in which he rattled off things and people he didn't believe in: Magic, the I-Ching, the Bible, tarot cards, Adolf Hitler, Jesus, John F. Kennedy, Buddha, mantras, Gita, yoga, kings, Elvis, Zimmerman (meaning Bob Dylan), and, finally, The Beatles. He said, "I just believe in me. Yoko and me. And that's reality." In 1971, for his album Imagine, he recorded a song of the same title, asking people to imagine there's no Heaven or Hell, "and no religion, too."

In contrast, in 1970, for his solo album All Things Must Pass, George recorded "My Sweet Lord," in which he seemed to want to get to know God better -- but the background singers, after chanting, "Hallelujah," began chanting, "Hare Krishna," and moved on to chanting the names of the Hindu gods Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.

Maureen Cleave, who wrote the original article, died in 2021, at the age of 87.

* 

Ted Turner, 1938-2026

Ted Turner once said, "There's a fine line between being colorful and being an asshole, and I hope I'm still just colorful."

Robert Edward Turner III was born on November 19, 1938 in Cincinnati, and grew up in Savannah, Georgia. Expelled from Ivy League school Brown University for being caught with a woman in his dorm, he enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard, so he wouldn't be drafted to fight in Vietnam during the early phase of that war. He later admitted, "I like boats," and was "deployed to some pretty sweet places -- Charleston and Fort Lauderdale."

How much did he like boats? In 1964, he competed in the U.S. Olympic Trials for yacht racing. In 1974, he entered the defender's trials for the America's Cup. On September 18, 1977,  commanding

Courageous, Ted Turner won the America's Cup, defeating Australia in a 4-race sweep.

His father committed suicide in 1963, and 24-year-old Ted took over his father's business, producing advertising billboards. Like another young man who would become a baseball mogul, George Steinbrenner, he took his father's business and grew it far beyond anything his father had imagined, making it "the largest outdoor advertising company in the Southeast."

He began buying radio stations, and, in 1969, traded them for a struggling Atlanta TV statin, WJRJ-Channel 17. He changed the call sign to WTCG, for Turner Communications Group, although he advertised it as "Watch This Channel Grow."

Initially, the station ran old movies from prior decades, along with theatrical cartoons and bygone sitcoms and drama programs. As a better syndicated product fell off the VHF stations, Turner would acquire it for his station at a very low price. WTCG ran mostly second- and even third-hand programming of the time, including fare such as I Love Lucy, Gilligan's Island and Star Trek.

In 1972, he bought the rights to broadcast the games of baseball's Atlanta Braves and the NBA's Atlanta Hawks. In 1976, he bought those teams outright, thinking that his broadcast revenue would allow him to buy better players, and the teams would help the station grow further

On May 2, 1976, Turner announced that, instead of their surnames, the Braves players would have their nicknames above their uniform numbers on their backs. Darrell Evans had "HOWDY." Darrel Chaney had "NORT." Jimmy Wynn's nickname, "The Toy Cannon" (because he was short but powerful), was too long to fit, so his was just "CANNON." And pitcher Andy Messersmith had "CHANNEL."

Bowie Kuhn, the Commissioner of Baseball, saw through this blatant attempt by Turner to advertise for his station, and prohibited it thereafter. Turner and Kuhn were now at odds, and would remain so. (Not that he was the only owner with whom Kuhn was at odds.) On January 3, 1977, Kuhn suspended Turner for a year, for his actions in signing free agent outfielder Gary Matthews. Turner appealed the suspension, and it was overturned.

On May 11, 1977, with the team mired in a 16-game losing streak, Turner sent manager Dave Bristol on a 10-day "scouting trip," and installed himself took over as interim manager. This made him the 1st owner/manager in the major leagues since Connie Mack stepped down as manager of the Philadelphia Athletics in 1950.

That night, the Braves lost 2-1 to the Pirates. Phil Niekro went the distance, and pitched well, but fell to 0-7 on the season. He would end it 16-20. John Candelaria held the Braves to 1 run on 8 hits, 3 of them by rookie outfielder Barry Bonnell, who ended up batting .300 for the season. Dave Parker hit a home run for the Pirates, and that made the difference. Willie Stargell went 1-for- 2 with 2 walks.

The next day, National League President Charles "Chub" Feeney ordered Turner to step down as manager, citing MLB's Rule 20(e), which prohibits managers from owning any stock in the team that employs them, unless specifically granted an exemption by the Commissioner. This rule was put in place in 1927, after a situation regarding Rogers Hornsby. Mack, and also John McGraw of the New York Giants, who owned stock in their teams, were "grandfathered in." Turner appealed to Kuhn, but was never going to get anywhere with him.

The next day, with 3rd base coach Vern Benson running the team, the Braves broke their 17-game losing streak, beating the Pirates, 6-1. Bristol returned for the next game, and the team finished 61-101, in 6th and last place in the NL Western Division, 37 games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Turner fired Bristol after the season, and replaced him with New York Yankees coach Bobby Cox. He got nowhere with the Braves, but their next manager, Joe Torre, led them to the NL West title in 1982, and almost did it again in 1983.

That 1982 season was the year that made the Braves a national phenomenon: Not only had Turner changed Channel 17's call letters to WTBS, for "Turner Broadcasting System," but he'd made it a national "SuperStation." Like the Chicago Cubs on WGN, his games were now broadcast nationwide, and they got a national following, not just a regional one. He even billed the Braves as "America's Team," just as football's Dallas Cowboys had done. They lost the NL Championship Series to the St. Louis Cardinals, whose vast radio network had made them something like a national team.

Cox went on to the Toronto Blue Jays, and led them to their 1st Division title in 1985, but they lost the American League Championship Series to the Kansas City Royals.

In 1990, Turner lured away the Royals' general manager, John Schuerholz. He brought Cox back to the Braves, and the next year, they began one of the most successful runs in NL history. Not counting the strike-shortened 1994 season, the Braves won their Division -- the NL West through 1993, the NL East thereafter -- every season from 1991 to 2005. They won their 1st Pennant in Atlanta in 1991, and also won in 1992, 1995, 1996 and 1999. And they won the 1995 World Series, although they lost the others, including in 1996 and 1999 to the Yankees, who were managed by... Joe Torre.

In 1980, Turner founded CNN, Cable News Network, creating the 24-hour news cycle format. It revolutionized news broadcasting, in ways both positive and not-so-positive. Due to its role in covering the Persian Gulf War, Time magazine named Turner its Man of the Year for 1991.

He sold Turner Broadcasting, including CNN, in 1996, a year after the Braves finally won the World Series. He sold the Braves and the Hawks in 2007. He became one of the largest private landowners in America, and one of the country's leading conservationists.

Turner was married and divorced three times: To Judy Nye (1960–1964), Jane Shirley Smith (1965–1988), and actress Jane Fonda (1991–2001). He had five children: Laura Turner Seydel and Robert Edward Turner Jr., a.k.a. Eddy Turner, with Judy; and Beau Turner, Rhett Turner and Jennie Turner Garlington with Jane Smith. Generally, his children have followed in Ted's philanthropic and conservationist goals.

Turner and Fonda

In a 2018 interview on CBS Sunday Morning, Turner revealed his diagnosis of Lewy body dementia, which had led comedian-actor Robin Williams to commit suicide, and would also lead to the death of baseball legend Tom Seaver. It was Turner's last public appearance. He died today, May 6, 2026, at his home in Lamont, on the Florida Panhandle, at the age of 87.

In spite of their divorce, today, Fonda spoke well of Turner on Instagram:

MY IMMEDIATE THOUGHTS ABOUT TED He swept into my life, a gloriously handsome, deeply romantic, swashbuckling pirate and I've never been the same. He needed me. No one had ever let me know they needed me, and this wasn't your average human being that needed me, this was the creator of CNN, and Turner Classic Movies, who had won the America's Cup as the world's greatest sailor. He had a big life, a brilliant mind and a soaring sense of humor.

He could also take care of me. That was new as well. To be needed and cared for simultaneously is transformative. Ted Turner helped me believe in myself. He gave me confidence. I think I did the same for him, but that's what women are raised to do. Men like Ted aren’t supposed to express need and vulnerability. That was Ted's greatest strength, I believe.

He also taught me more than any other person or school classes, mostly about nature and wildlife, hunting and fishing (hunters and fishermen who follow the law are the best environmentalists), but also about business and strategy. Ted was supremely strategic. It was likely innate, but he studied the Classics in college, knew about the Peleponesian War inside and out and the strategies used by Alexander the Great and even Genghis Khan. And sailing big boats as he did further honed those strategic talents which he then brought into his businesses to much success. He could see around corners for sure.

Next to Katharine Hepburn, Ted was the most competitive person I have ever met and that was fascinating to witness. Whether it was who'd made the most ski runs at the end of the day, to acres of land owned (stewarded is the more fitting word for his relationship to land), who had the most billions, how many countries he'd made love to his prior lover in and could I match that, it was challenging. Ted was challenging, but I've always been up for a challenge, and with Ted it was almost always worth it.

As our friend, Ron Olson, said, "Ted was a great teacher, often by example. He challenged us to think big (he once asked me to draft a resolution for the UN and the US Congress to ban all nuclear weapons; I did) and act small (for the twenty years since meeting Ted, I too, pick up trash on my walks)."

I loved Ted with all my heart. I see him in heaven now with all the wildlife he helped bring back from extinction – the black footed ferrets, the prairie dogs, Big Horned sheep, Mexican Gray Wolf, the Yellowstone wolf pack, bison, the red cockaded woodpecker and so many more, they’re all gathered at the pearly gates applauding and thanking him for saving their species.

Five children survive him, five talented, complex kids who I had the privilege of becoming stepmother to. I had four stepmothers growing up and I know how important stepmothers can be, so we all did our best to build an extended, rag tag family, and I love them to this day. If it was complicated to be married to him, think how complicated it was being his child. And they are all doing fine.

Rest in Peace, dearest Ted. You are loved and you will be remembered.

Whatever caused them to split up, clearly, Jane Fonda thought Ted Turner was still, to use his word, "colorful" -- and, to use a too-often-used phrase, a great man.

If he had still been able to run CNN in 2015, I have no doubt that there would have been a proper journalistic investigation of Donald Trump. And that fat fascist son of a bitch would have been arrested by the FBI when he got to the bottom of the damn escalator. And, today, the world would be much better off.

March 12, 1956: The Southern Manifesto

Southern Senators, led by Strom Thurmond of South Carolina

March 12, 1956, 70 years ago: The Declaration of Constitutional Principles is signed, by 19 members of the U.S. Senate and 82 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, all from States that had been in the Confederate States of America.

Since there was not a goddamned thing about it that was constitutional, it became known as the Southern Manifesto, allowing people on the right side of the struggle for civil rights to do what these rednecks had been doing to them for years: Comparing them to Communists.

The main author was Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. In 1948, as his State's Governor, he had briefly left the Democratic Party to run as the nominee for President of the States' Rights Party. From that point onward, Southern Democrats who opposed civil rights were known as "Dixiecrats."

It was written in response to the unanimous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, 2 years earlier, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, declaring that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.

The Declaration included these words: "The unwarranted decision of the Supreme Court in the public school cases is now bearing the fruit always produced when men substitute naked power for established law."

This was a bald-faced lie: The decision was warranted, and it was a strike against naked power, in the form of "Jim Crow" laws that overturned established law.

It also said: "The original Constitution does not mention education. Neither does the 14th Amendment nor any other amendment. The debates preceding the submission of the 14th Amendment clearly show that there was no intent that it should affect the system of education maintained by the States."

This was true, but it covered up the text of the 14th Amendment: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall...deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." This is known as the Equal Protection Clause.

It also said: "This unwarranted exercise of power by the Court, contrary to the Constitution, is creating chaos and confusion in the States principally affected. It is destroying the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races. It has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been heretofore friendship and understanding."

This was a lie: There had not been friendship. And the Court's decision didn't create confusion; it clarified the law.

Three Democratic Senators from Southern States did not sign: Albert Gore and Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, and the Majority Leader, Lyndon Johnson of Texas. In the House, 16 of 21 Democrats from Texas refused to sign it, including the Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn, and a future Speaker, Jim Wright. Also refusing to sign were 3 of the 11 Democrats from North Carolina; and 1 of the 7 from Florida, Dante Fascell.

The following year, Thurmond launched the longest filibuster the Senate had yet seen, in a vain attempt to stop the Civil Rights Act of 1957. When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, he became the 1st Dixiecrat to switch to the Republican Party. There would be many more.

Thurmond turned out to be the last-serving member who signed the Southern Manifesto, serving until 2003, shortly after his 100th birthday, and dying a few months later. The last surviving signer was Richard Poff of Virginia, who died in 2011.

The last-serving member who refused to sign was Jack Brooks of Texas, who served until 1994. The last surviving refuser was the aforementioned Jim Wright, who died in 2015.