What we have here is the audio (only) of a speech Allan Sherman gave at U.C.L.A. on October 28, 1970. I loved Allan Sherman and I was attending U.C.L.A. at the time and I forget what it was but something, to my great agony, prevented me from attending this. A friend of mine went, taped the audio, promised to dupe me a copy and never did. I figured I'd never hear it but now, 44 years later, here it is on YouTube. Ain't the Internet wonderful? It runs close to an hour.
I might have been disappointed if I'd attended then because Sherman said not a word about his comedy career. He devoted his mike time to speaking against The War (this was back when we had them one at a time) and attacking Vice-President Spiro Agnew with a much-too-long — and only occasionally funny — speech. At the time, we got plenty of that from folks who had more to say and said it better. He was also preaching to the choir.
Now, the talk is an interesting relic of the times, typical of the kind of anti-war speeches we heard everywhere in those days. And it also strikes a personal chord for me. He asks why the government wants his twenty-year-old son Robert to go to Vietnam. I don't think Robbie, with whom I went to high school, did go. I was the same age and I didn't go, either…
