The tour earned the group over a million dollars in ticket sales, and stimulated a further increase in record and Beatles-related merchandise sales. Robert Shelton of "The New York Times" criticised the Beatles for "creata monster in their audience" and said that the band should try to subdue their fans "before this contrived hysteria reaches uncontrollable proportions". Reports at this time likened the intensity of the fans' adulation to a religious fervour. Derek Taylor, the band's press officer, was quoted in the "New York Post" as saying, "Cripples threw away their sticks [and sick people rushed up to the car ... It was as if some savior had arrived and all these people were happy and relieved." In a report from London for the "Partisan Review", Jonathan Miller wrote of the effects of the Beatles' extended absence overseas: "They have become a religion in fact ... All over the place though there are icons, devotional photos and illuminated messiahs which keep the tiny earthbound fans in touch with the provocatively absconded deities." American social commentators Grace and Fred Hechinger complained that adults had failed to provide youth with an adequate foundation for their creativity, and they especially deplored the tendency for "creeping adult adolescence", whereby parents sought to share their children's "banal pleasures".