Humans use their senses to gather information and then they draw conclusions and take action.
When the conclusions are faulty and the actions even worse, they usually end up on this podcast, known worldwide as Cruel Weird Awful.
It was back in 1986 that a guy operating on inaccurate information decided the best thing to do was to mug one of the most famous people in TV news, all the while shouting “Kenneth, what is the frequency?”
CBS News anchor Dan Rather was walking back to his apartment on Manhattan’s Park Avenue when a guy stopped him and asked “What is the frequency, Kenneth?”
Rather suggested the man had mistaken him for another person, at which point the guy knocked Rather down and kicked and punched him, all the while asking the same seemingly random question.
The man believed that TV networks were beaming personalized transmissions into his head and he was trying to find out which frequency they were on.
He also believed he was a time traveler, that “Kenneth” was the first name of the vice president in his timeline, and that Dan Rather was “Kenneth.”
That guy would later serve a 25 year sentence for killing a technician outside NBC’s studios.
But for years, the public didn’t know any of that, so “What is the frequency, Kenneth?” just sounded like a strange question that an unstable mugger yelled at Dan Rather.
So of course it became a pre-internet meme, best known as a running joke on David Letterman’s show.
And then in 1994, the band R.E.M. released a loud guitar album Monster, and the lead track was called “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?”
Singer Michael Stipe was writing a song about a person who was trying and failing to understand the younger generation, and to make that point, he made a reference to the line from the Dan Rather attack.
When the band played the song on CBS’s The Late Show, they were joined by Dan Rather, who apparently was comfortable enough with what had happened to make an ironic joke out of it.
Guitarist Peter Buck wrote later that Dan Rather was “a fine newsman, an interesting person to talk to, and quite a bit nuttier than most of those media types (I consider that a good thing). That said, nothing in my rich and varied life prepared me for the experience of performing behind him as he ‘danced’ and ‘sang’ ‘What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?’”
Reality can be hard to come by sometimes.
Back in 2016, a man in upstate New York came across a massive fire in his neighbor’s house.
He drove his car through the fence, burst into the house and saved the day by rescuing the neighbor’s dog, except… there was no fire at all.
He’d taken cough medicine laced with LSD and hallucinated the whole thing.
But the dog was ok!
What’s the Frequency, Kenneth? (Songfacts)
Upstate New York man charged with burglary after taking LSD and rescuing neighbor’s dog from a hallucinated house fire (New York Daily News)
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