One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America - Plot & Excerpts
For more than a year, the famed entertainer Walt Disney had made weekly appearances on the network to promote a colossal theme park he was building on roughly 168 acres of former farmland in Anaheim, California. Now that it was ready, ABC marked its opening with considerable pomp and pageantry. Its hour-and-a-half program began in the spacious pressroom at Disneyland, which, an announcer noted, was “equipped to service over one thousand members of the worldwide press here to cover this truly great event.” Host Art Linkletter told the audience that the network had twenty-nine cameras installed across the park, along with “dozens of crews and literally miles and miles of cables,” to capture the magic. Thanks to ABC’s efforts, Linkletter claimed, millions watching at home would share the experience of the thirty thousand who had the fortune to be there in person to witness the grand opening of “the eighth wonder of the world.”1 The amiable Linkletter quickly turned things over to “Ronnie”—his cohost, Ronald Reagan, who had the honor of introducing the dedication ceremonies from a perch above Main Street, U.S.A., the park’s idyllic reproduction of a nineteenth-century town.
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