Final Coverage

After an immense amount of news coverage in July and another small amount in August, mentions of the Committee for Reunion with England dwindled to a trickle at the end of 1975 and received barely a mention in 1976. All jokes (good or bad) run their course.

In fact, the last few appearances in 1975 were from fellow humorists. George A. Crago, a columnist for the Sunday Dominion Post in Morgantown, West Virginia, mentioned the Committee in his weekly “Montani Hootnani” column on November 9, 1975.

One day in the Committee’s post office box, we received an issue of a publication called the Wretched Mess News, a newspaper published in Montana that reprinted the Committee’s original advertisement from March 1975.

We had not heard of the Wretched Mess News before, but it reminded us of a news magazine that might have been published by Monty Python. We later learned that the Wretched Mess was first published in 1962 by advertising man, David Bascum. An anthology of Wretched articles was published in 1985, entitled The Worst of Wretched Mess News. I recently found a copy at the Library of Congress, and although it did not contain our advertisement, it is a hilarious publication with articles such as “How to Lean Against a Wall” and “The Lost Art of Elbow Piano Playing.”

The final newspaper coverage of the Committee for Reunion with England appeared in the Richmond News Leader on July 3, 1976.

Reporter Steve Row gave a fairly straight account of the CRE story, while clearly enjoying the joke just one day before the 200th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It was an appropriate last act in the Committee for Reunion with England’s saga.

Next: 50 Year Reflections