The Credibility Gap

The Credibility Gap was a satirical comedy team active from 1968 through 1979. They emerged in the late 1960s doing comedic commentary on the news for the Los Angeles AM rock radio station KRLA 1110, and proceeded to develop more elaborate and ambitious satirical routines on the "underground" station KPPC-FM, Pasadena, California. Founded as loose collective centered on KRLA staff members Lew Irwin, John Gilliland, Thom Beck, Richard Beebe, and folk singer Len Chandler, the group is chiefly remembered today for its 1971-1979 line-up, comprising Beebe, Harry Shearer, David L. Lander and Michael McKean.

History

Lew Irwin and The Credibility Gap

KRLA 1110 news director Lew Irwin formed The Credibility Gap in 1968 with his radio colleagues John Gilliland, Thom Beck, Richard Beebe, and folk singer Len Chandler. They took their name from the Vietnam-era term Credibility gap, a euphemism for political dishonesty, and broadcast their comedy along with the news on KRLA. In 1968 (billed as "Lew Irwin and The Credibility Gap") they released An Album Of Political Pornography for Blue Thumb, consisting of highlights from their radio sketches. Thom Beck left in late 1968, and was replaced by Harry Shearer. Then Lew Irwin left a few months later, being replaced by David L. Lander in February, 1969.

Credibility gap

Credibility gap is a term that came into wide use with journalism, political and public discourse in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. At the time, it was most frequently used to describe public skepticism about the Lyndon B. Johnson administration's statements and policies on the Vietnam War. It was used in journalism as a euphemism for recognized lies told to the public by politicians. Today, it is used more generally to describe almost any "gap" between the alleged reality of a situation and what politicians and government agencies say about it.

History

The term "credibility gap" came against a background of the use of the term "missile gap", which the Oxford English Dictionary lists as first being used by then-Senator John F. Kennedy on 14 August 1958, when he stated: "Our Nation could have afforded, and can afford now, the steps necessary to close the missile gap." “Doomsday gap” and “mineshaft gap” were the imagined post-apocalyptic continuations of this paranoia in the 1964 Cold War satire Dr Strangelove.