Only a few things in the ’40s and ’50s media ever affected me as a little boy. One thing that was for sure, I would never end up working in radio. But my memories about that golden time are pretty significant. One of my earliest memories is my sister, and my grandma, and my mother, and myself, marching around the breakfast table to Don McNeil’s Breakfast Club. The television shows that really influenced me were I Love Lucy, You Asked For It, Science Fiction Theater, and, of course, Superman.
It’s been announced that the original Superman motto of “Truth, Justice and the American Way” has been been ditched.
So now the super motto is “Truth, Justice and a Better Tomorrow.” Doesn’t that sound like Stalinism? “Glorious people build glorious tomorrow,” or “glorious people build new hydroelectric dam,” or in the case of DIA, “glorious people build glorious airport.”
Now old Superman really had an impact on me until, of course, I discovered my uncle’s collection of Playboy magazines, and the first time I ever kissed a girl after a baseball game. But Superman was all of our alter egos. I wore those Allegheny County welfare glasses and there were many times I wished I could have ducked into a phone booth and come out and kicked some big kid’s ass. But George Reeves was Superman. And Bud Collyer was Superman on radio. These people meant something and now…. a better tomorrow?
There is another part of this and by now I’m sure you’ve heard Superman’s son is bisexual. His name is Jon Kent. On October 11, Jon Kent, Superman’s son who wears the iconic “S” on his shield, came out as bisexual. As you well know, I too am bisexual. All the sex I get I buy. So, I guess it’s sort of a modern world. But the American way? Have Joe Biden and Kamala Harris killed the American way? Have Jared Polis and Michael Hancock killed the American way? Who can my grandson look up to?
The bisexual part doesn’t bother me a bit. It’s that American way thing. As you know when those young guys Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel invented Superman in the Spring of ’38 they were staring down the barrel of the Nazis. They were using professional wrestlers and body builders and they were going to keep the bad guys away from America.
I think it’s too late. The bad guys are here. I was also saddened to hear that they were going to build a better tomorrow. As Nancy Reagan said when Barbara Bush said that they were going to have a kinder, gentler American, Nancy quipped “kinder and gentler than who?” We’re going to build a better tomorrow. Better than the greatest generation? Better than the men who stood at Valley Forge? Better than the men at Gettysburg? Better than the young men and women who gave their souls in Southeast Asia and Iraq? A better tomorrow? Yeah? Look up in the sky.
— Peter Boyles