Over 40,000,000 people saw the performance, and the next day, controversy exploded. According to Robert Fink, while "Hound Dog" as performed by Presley was intended as a "witty multiracial piece of sygnifyin' humor, troping off white overreactions to a black sexual innuendo... nobody got the joke... The display was not taken as parody. 'Hound Dog' confirmed mainstream America's worst fears about rock and roll, and sparked nationwide vituperation; for the first time, Presley... was attacked in the media as a sexual exhibitionist with no musical talent." This performance of "Hound Dog" "triggers the first controversy of his career. Presley sings his latest single, "Hound Dog," with all the pelvis-shaking intensity his fans scream for. Television critics across the country slam the performance for its "appalling lack of musicality," for its "vulgarity" and "animalism." The Catholic Church took up the criticism in its weekly organ in a piece headlined "Beware Elvis Presley." Concerns about juvenile delinquency and the changing moral values of the young found a new target in the popular singer. After Berle's show, Ed Sullivan, whose variety show was one of television's most popular, declared that he would never hire Presley. Steve Allen, who had already booked Presley for "The Tonight Show", resisted pressure from NBC to cancel the performance, promising he would not allow the singer to offend. Cultural theorist David Shumway wrote, "Berle's network, NBC, received letters of protest, and the various self-appointed guardians of public morality attacked Elvis in the press." TV critics began a merciless campaign against Elvis, making statements that he had a "caterwauling voice and nonsense lyrics" and was an "influence on juvenile delinquency" (despite the fact that when he started the movements, most of the audience laughed at it), and began using the sobriquet "Elvis the Pelvis".