The Doom Boom Part I: "The Late Great Planet Earth"

Seventies Quiz:

1. The biggest-selling book during the 70s was
a. Jonathan Livingston Seagull
b. Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask
c. I'm OK/You're OK
d. The Late Great Planet Earth

2. Hal Lindsay was
a. New York's worst mayor since John Patrick O'Brien
b. New York's best mayor since LaGuardia
c. Richie Cunningham's neighbor on the series "Happy Days"
d. Author of a series of really bad books that sold millions of copies

3. Orson Welles narrated two films released in 1979. One was "The Muppet Movie." The other was
a. "All That Jazz"
b. "Star Trek"
c. "Alien"
d. "The Late Great Planet Earth"

The Seventies were not an optimistic time; let's face it. And, as in past periods of rapid change and hardship, millions turned to predictions of doomsday. The astrology airheads, who a few years before were heralding the Age of Aquarius, were now studying Nostradamus, a 16th Century French physician whose cryptic poems, they thought, predicted everything from Hitler to the rise of the Soviet Union. Nostradamus supposedly forecast a nuclear holocaust just around the corner.

For 11 million Americans, however, Hal Lindsay's book The Late Great Planet Earth spelled out what was ahead. Lindsay, a campus preacher who specialized in simplistic, emotional teachings, did what many folks did - he looked through the Bible for verses which he said predicted doom for our present day. Nothing new here. Down in Brooklyn Heights the likes of Judge Rutherford and the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society had been doing that for decades. But Lindsay had a certain flair for self-promotion that made his book a runaway best-seller. Of course, like Nostradadamus's followers and the Watchtower gang, Lindsay had a 100% accuracy record for identifying predictions - after they occurred. I found a copy of his book a few years ago. It was absolute nonsense, of course, written in a silly, slogan-filled style - like a collection of written sound-bites. But it sold, and we can't dismiss all 11-million of its readers as stupid, uneducated yokels.

In 1979 a film version of the book was released, narrated by Orson Welles. Remember the television ads? "A film that can change your life!" Then there was that scene where a man in a robe is wacked over the head with a giant rock as Welles asks "Why did they stone him?" I never saw the movie, but a friend did, and she thought that Lindsay was hinting that one of the Kennedys was the dreaded Anti-Christ - Mr. 666 himself.

Late Great said a great deal about the 70s. First, it was an early warning sign of the rise of that modern curse: the TV evangelist. Lindsay promoted his books heavily on the television preacher circuit, and it's doubtful whether he would have been so successful without the publicity. But who watches that junk? Well, there's another phenomenon that emerged during the Seventies era: the growing strength of the hard-core, litteralist fundies. Most of us New Yorkers had little exposure to such folks, thinking they were only to be found in backwater towns somewhere Out There, where "Inherit the Wind" took place. No, they were all around us, and their numbers were growing, thanks partially towards the predictable surge towards simplistic fundamentalism that often accompanies times of rapid change. One could easily draw parallels between Lindsay's teachings and those of al Qaeda.

None of the above explanations is terribly original, I know. But how about this one? We New Yorkers, and Americans in general, have a terrible sense of history. Perhaps it is our naive belief in inevitable Progress, but many of us think that what happened in the past has little to teach us about how to deal with what is going on today. Economic downturns, military defeats, challenges to old, trusted institutions - these have all happened before! And, as during the Seventies, they cause many people to believe that a giant Apocalypse is near - one that can only be avoided by reverting to some charismatic leader's (Yeah, it's hard to believe, but some folks regard people like Lindsay as leaders) simplistic, us/them, emotional pleadings to return to a pure way of life that never really existed. If more of us knew our history, we would know that teachers such as Lindsay have come before - and quickly faded away, along with their predictions.