Dave Wood

The government and its mega monsters have me worried sick about the fate of humorists in America. We have a fine tradition of such folks beginning with guys like Philip Freneau, who called himself “one of the swinish multitude,” and Ben Franklin, continuing with Will Rogers and H. L. Mencken and carried on by Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce and the entire Algonquin Circle.  These folks responded to the mischievous hijinks of government, the social mores and folkways through the mediums of pamphlets, books, newspapers, radio, and now television, which has often been on the mark when making serious fun of the nation’s missteps and deeds.

But recently TV humorists have taken a horrific beating by media moguls and government that are too blind to know better.

Bill Maher, who has no patience to tolerate either party’s side of the political and social spectrum, has gone after Biden and now with equal zest goes after Trump, and yet has been removed from his catbird seat on HBO and relegated to the more tepid CNN. And what about Jimmy Kimmel, Steven Colbert and Ellen DeGeneres? Let’s face it. The remaining comics face extinction if this keeps up.

As a teenager and well into the 1990s I assumed such censorship was impossible in this fun- loving country. I was weaned on Tom Leher, a genius songster whose first recording came from my older cousin who gave it to me, probably to sharpen me up for college. Leher is dead now but when alive he skewered everything from the nuclear security in “So long mom I’m off to drop the bomb, so don’t wait up for me…then in your shelter you’ll watch on TV, while Brinkaly and Huntaly describing contrapuntaly, the cities we have lost in the agonizing holocaust.”

Leher didn’t let up on his alma mater, implying it contained a bunch of elitists whose wimpy cheers were “Fight fiercely, Harvard! Demonstrate our skill: When the game is over, we’ll take you out to tea!”

He wasn’t afraid of institutions either: “’Be prepared!’ That’s the Boy Scout marching song, as through life you march along. Don’t solicit for your sister that’s not nice, (unless you get a fair percentage of her price!) and if you run into a girlfriend who is similarly inclined, don’t be nervous, don’t be scared. Be prepared!”

Fine artists got their share in a lyric he sang to a Strauss waltz about a thrice-married Bohemian lass named Alma. “Alma, tell us, all modern women are jealous; which of your magical wands got you Gustav (Mahler), Walter (Gropius) und Franz ((Werfel)” and then explains how she lost them. “But Gustave was writing ‘Das Lied Von Der Erde’ and I was wanting only to make love.” Walter worked late at the The Bauhaus, and Alma hated running a chowhaus (Serving late suppers). And Franz? “Alma didn’t even use Pond’s.”

What I’m suggesting is that although Tom Leher lost his graduate assistantship from stalwart Harvard for making fun of it, he was never kicked off  the stage by Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Bush boys and succeeding power brokers until the current Washington resident mucked up the humor that Americans have cherished since our beginnings. I’m happy previous authorities have permitted the existence of the oldtimers who so often hit the nail on the head.