Here's Johnny, Going Rogue

THE NINETEEN SIXTIES was a golden age for late night TV, if only because Johnny Carson was in his prime on NBC. I wasn't much interested, being a bit young, but my sister, in  high school, was. Often she would wheel, deal, and  cajole our strict mother into letting her stay up late on a school night just late enough to catch Johnny's always masterfully funny monologue. My sister recently confided than on many nights, after she had gotten mother's permission to stay up late, mom would pop pop corn, and watch the monologue with my sister. I never knew it. i was thirteen years old, asleep in bed. In February, 1968, the show went rogue. Harry Belafonte, at the height of his celebrity and radicalism, guest hosted the Tonight Show for a week. It would never be the same. Of the twenty five guests Belafonte selected to have on in the five nights, fifteen were black,and all were controversial. all, including the white ones, were politically charged, and radical.  they included Robert F. Kennedy and martin Luther King, both within weeks of being murdered. The normally somber King was urged by Belafonte to be funny, and he was. Kennedy spoke of social, racial, and economic equality. The smothers brothers, recently barred form CBS for turning Viet Nam into a farce, which it was, didn't disappoint. Right on they all radicalized. Never before in television history, and never since, except for the advent of the black channel decades later, had African-Americans dominated mainstream American television in such numbers or with such a radical agenda, talk wise. Although the whole affair caused quite a momentary uproar, it came and went so quickly, and the left wing agenda was covered in so much humor and comedy, that it passed muster,and eluded outright censorship and immortality. Johnny Carson returned the next week, and simply acted as if nothing ha d happened. The greatness of Johnny Carson is that he could get away with almost anything.