CSotD: “Well, it’s good for people to laugh, isn’t it?”
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Thankyouthankyouthankyou Signe Wilkinson, for allowing this topic to be addressed without a violation of the Prime Directive.
We only show good cartoons here. We don't mock the off-key, "don't you people read the papers?" commentaries that should embarrass their creators, though the temptation does become almost overwhelming at times when the facts are easily found but clearly misrepresented.
This is a little different, more of a "were you born yesterday?" issue, since the faux-outrage over "presidential dignity" is so clearly partisan that you would think it were being ginned up by political opponents in the middle of a campaign. (heh)
In case you are one of the four people who missed it, here is the video that has knickers knotted among those patriotic souls who, until this moment, had never, ever thought of criticizing the socialist Kenyan who usurped the presidency and faked the moon landing.
I wasn't blown away by it, by the way. He's been a lot funnier, in my estimation, doing standup style comedy, and, while getting to make snide retorts to an ignorant, ill-informed interviewer probably felt good for a change, the whole thing seemed sort of forced to me.
But here's two points:
1. I'm 35 or 40 years over the target audience for this light-hearted outreach effort. Not only did I sign up for health insurance three months ago, but in another year, I'll be on Medicare anyway.
2. At least he didn't try to get laughs by mocking the trumped up cause over which 3,500 American citizens, many of them in that youthful age bracket, died.
The reporting on actual impact of the video on signups seems to me a little squishy, but I feel the same way when they link news events to the Dow, and getting through to the right demographic is a perfectly valid effort in any case. Effective advertising and promotion does not always produce an objectively trackable A-caused-B corollary.
Meanwhile, the notion that American presidents have some great tradition of aloof dignity to be preserved plunges us right back into the age-old question of "Are you that stupid or do you think I am?"
The quote in today's headline comes from Calvin Coolidge, who donned this ceremonial headdress on a visit to Deadwood, SD, in 1927, where he was being made an honorary member of some tribe, I'm sure "honorary" being code for "no actual elders approved this."
He was advised by handlers that the resulting photo might make people laugh, but, for all his reputation as a dour, humorless Yankee, his reply was "Well, it's good for people to laugh, isn't it?"
It's also good for presidents to get out where the people are and try not to look like stuffed shirts all the time, which is why, 16 years earlier, President Taft had initiated this undignified annual event, the throwing out of the first baseball.
And why Harry Truman began an equally ridiculous annual tradition. Truman at least had the courage to eat his gift, as did Eisenhower after him. It was Kennedy who let the bird off the hook, adding another silly, light-hearted element to the tradition. I haven't heard of any presidents declaring themselves too dignified to participate in the event.
Nixon was not president when he appeared on Laugh-In for that memorable "Sock it to me?" cameo, but it was part of grooming his image for the campaign. Which is to say, here's a Republican who purposely allowed himself to look undignified in order to garner the support of young, hip voters.
Clinton took some flak for playing the sax on Arsenio, but the real outrage came when he did a town hall on MTV and a college student asked the famous question, "Boxers or briefs?"
It put Clinton in an impossible situation: Answer and be attacked for that, or deliver a lecture on appropriate questions and come off as the stuffy uncle nobody under 30 would vote for. But he answered it and, despite the knotted knickers that ensued, handily won the election over Bush Sr.
This raises a point, however, because observers have long suspected the question was planted. A copycat question that came up in a CNN debate eight years later certainly was, when a Brown student was instructed to ask Democratic candidates "PC or Mac?"
Which leads us to the difference between a president choosing to be light-hearted and a president being spun by wise-ass media.
Dan Quayle's "potatoe" incident, in which he instructed a boy to spell the word as the teacher had written it, and Al Gore's correct statement that he authorized spending to develop the Internet, became legends in the hands of media more anxious to get a laugh than to check the facts.
Similarly, the alleged "clumsiness" of one-time University of Michigan football MVP Gerald Ford, who took a misstep on a wet metal staircase and shanked a couple of golf balls, played directly into the hands of the emerging prep-school-bully school of comedy just becoming prevalent at that time.
In fact, Ford provides a caution when it comes to trusting the youth vote: It could be argued that he lost the election less over having pardoned Nixon than over the apparent fact that a substantial portion of the electorate thought he was Chevy Chase.
And his successor, Jimmy Carter, fared little better with the wise-ass press, which had a field day with his suggestion that people turn down their theromstats a few degrees, and showed their city-kid upbringings by misinterpreting the "killer bunny" incident, in which the president (wisely, as anyone familiar with the behavior of disease-bearing animals would say) splashed water to deter an unusually bold-acting rabbit from climbing aboard his fishing boat.
Perhaps the guardians of political dignity would do better to guard their heroes against avoidable foolish behavior that has no payoff, and, in the meantime, to remember that it is, indeed, good for people to laugh and that people who go through life with broomsticks where they don't belong do not, thank god, constitute a majority.
Meanwhile …
Back to the topic of cartoonists providing me with something to post, thankyouthankyouthankyou Darrin Bell, for offering a counter to cartoons about the Affordable Care Act that are as absolutely blind to facts as the attitude of the (yet another) lying shill he mocks so well in this one.
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