Foreign News: Pfui!

American popular music, from groaner’s moan to Dixieland jazz, is a highly exportable commodity. So the State Department has learned from its new international disc jockey, Martin Block, whose weekly half-hour of music and informal chatter has become the Voice of America’s most popular program. Even behind the Iron Curtain, where Communists are furiously attacking “decadent American music,” thousands of recalcitrant Slavs continue to carry a torch for Dinah Shore or Gene Autry, Benny Goodman or Lena Home. Last week the Czech government skirmished with some of these incorrigibles and came off badly scorched.

The little basement theater in Prague was packed and jammed with Czech bobby-soxers, lured there by the Ministry of Information in hopes of hearing a two-hour program of Bing Crosby records.

“Now first let us consider this Bing Crosby,” the ministry’s announcer began. “He is a typical example of a man who sacrifices his art to get money. He sings in a way so sentimentally sweet it makes you sick.”

The announcer’s voice was drowned out by whistles and boos.

“Frank Sinatra is much better,” he went on hesitantly, “but the Americans wouldn’t give him a chance.”

This the music lovers ignored.

“Politically, Crosby stands for nothing that could be identified with the principles of Jefferson or Lincoln.”

Chorused the audience: “Pfui!”

In the U.S., Sinatra rushed to Bing’s defense. “Anybody who says Bing’s singing makes them sick,” he snorted, “has got politics in the ear!”

Crosby himself harbored no ill feelings. Said he: “I’ll be glad to play Loew’s Prague any time . . . Where can I get a flak suit?”