David Bianculli recalls The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour which went on the air in 1967, developed a strong following against formidable competition…and soon got yanked off the air, not because nobody was watching but because certain people didn't like what was being said on it.
I remember having strongly-mixed reactions to the show. I liked a lot of the comedy on it, especially segments that featured the supremely deadpan Mr. Pat Paulsen. My politics at the time though could probably be best described as extremely Conservative but with an extremely low opinion of the Conservative leaders of the time. (Though my political views have changed considerably, one constant has been my belief that just because someone says things I agree with doesn't mean that that person is a good person, competent, honest or even sincere about what they say. In fact, I'm kinda suspicious of anyone who doesn't think they have some weasels in their own ranks.)
We had a neighbor lady down the street who thought that show was a bigger threat to America than, say, someone dropping a nuclear bomb on us. She used to get upset at things like if TV Guide said Jack Benny was going to be on that program…well, that meant that Jack Benny was a traitor who had sold out to The Enemy. Her problem essentially was a belief that the show involved young people criticizing older people. If you were in your twenties or thirties, you should always defer to people in their forties or older…and Tom and Dick Smothers were very bad people because they had the nerve to find fault with Congress or the President of the United States.
I never even tried to engage her in a discussion about this. I was much younger than she was and therefore not entitled to a contrary opinion. I did of course notice the major flaw in her argument, which was that there were older people who thought the President and Congress were wrong, and all the Brothers were doing was saying the same thing. But some beliefs are more emotion than logic and you waste your time trying to be logical with those people.
I think time has vindicated most of what the Smothers Brothers said and did. Their various "comeback" attempts at TV didn't soar, possibly because they were nowhere near as good as the original show. One time when I was at a party with Tommy Smothers, I heard someone say to him, "In the long run, you won your battle." And he replied, "Yeah, but we lost our show."