Sam Spade's San Francisco

U.S. presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama have unmasked their favorite pop culture icons, including superheroes, with McCain favoring Batman and Obama choosing Spider-Man and Batman.

In interviews with Entertainment Weekly magazine posted on its Web site on Thursday, McCain, 71, and Obama, 47, also gave their picks for best on-screen president, top singers and most-liked television shows.

Aside from the fact that this is a silly thing and an even sillier thing for me to report on, I must confess that I am a bit disappointed in Barack Obama's choice. Very little would surprise me that comes out of John McCain's mouth.

My childhood was spent in the years immediately after World War II. My heroes were real people. My heroes were Winston Churchill, little Audie Murphy who was a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, Major Glenn Miller who died taking his music to the front lines in Europe during the war and Chester Nimitz and Ray Spruance of the U. S. Navy who beat hell out of the Japanese Empire in the Pacific. I grew up with wonderful stories of great builders and creators like Mohandas Ghandi, Dr. Sun Yat Sen and Golda Meir. In those days there were a lot of real people who were as valiant and heroic as comic book characters.

Even if I were restricted to choosing pop-culture heroes of the time, I would have chosen Davey Crockett, "King of the Wild Frontier". There was a Davey Crockett movie and weekly childrens TV program that starred Fess Parker as Davey Crockett. I even had my own "official" Davey Crockett coon-tail frontiersman cap and I wore it proudly at play.

But - unlike Spiderman and Batman - Davey Crockett is real. That's a big difference, folks!

Colonel David Stern Crockett (August 17, 1786 – March 6, 1836) was a celebrated 19th-century American folk hero, frontiersman, soldier and politician; referred to in popular culture as Davy Crockett and often by the popular title "King of the Wild Frontier." He represented Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives, served in the Texas Revolution, and died at the age of 49 at the Battle of the Alamo.

America is slipping into deep trouble when our heroes are comic book creations. When a nation's heroes become make-believe characters in tights and masks with "powers" that break the laws of physics and violate any sense of logic - then just how far away is the decline, fall and collapse of our culture?

Resources:
Obama - McCain Reveal Pop Culture favorites - Reuters
Entertainment Weekly
David Crockett - Wikipedia
Remember the Alamo - the Davey Crockett Story - PBS
Davey Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier - movie (1955)
Davey Crockett - the television series

And finally, if you would like to hear the Davey Crockett song from the 1950's televison show and movie, then here is your chance. Someboby recorded the song on YouTube from an original 45-RPM record. It's an interesting video, but I wish the producer had not taken us on a detailed tour of his goddam record player while he played the song.

Anyway, here it is. If you are an antique like me it will bring back memories. If you're a younger person, you can get a laugh at the kind of silliness American kids liked in the 1950's: