Comedians: The Campaign Jokes

Following the death of President Kennedy, political humor all but ceased to be a genre of show business, and long after candidates were back on the stump and fustian had returned to the air, comedians were still relatively silent. Mort Sahl was practically the third nominee in 1960 (TIME Cover, Aug. 15, 1960), but last spring and summer neither he nor any other comic made a significant bid for new stature in the field. Yet now that the actual campaign has begun, the nation’s comedians have felt the call to duty, and they seem to be ready.

Sahl, for example, says that Lyndon Johnson is “the first President in history to put the country in his wife’s name.” Mentioning Bobby Baker, Mort adds: “Bobby gave Lyndon an expensive stereo set, but Lyndon wasn’t really happy with it. What Lyndon really wanted was components—something that could be hidden away in closets.”

Ivy Lyndon. Negro Comedian Dick Gregory, working at the Crescendo in Los Angeles, has entered the campaign too. “You know when I found out that Goldwater is square? When he called Lyndon Johnson Ivy League.” And, “I’m going to vote for Johnson in November, if for no other reason than that he talks like us.” Goldwater? “He’s the only cat who could stand on the Israel border and get shot at from both sides.”

For his first TV show of the new season next week, Bob Hope has already taped a couple of political notes. “It was thrilling the way Johnson chose his running mate at the convention,” goes one.

“He just picked Humphrey up by his ears.” About the President’s anti-poverty bill, Hope quips: “From now on, it’s against the law to be poor—unless you’re a Republican, and then it’s expected of you.”

Mark Russell says that the Senator sometimes signs his name “Barry Goldwater, L.B.J.” That is, “Little Bit Jewish.” Russell, who has been working at Bobby Baker’s Carousel motel in Ocean City, Md., and opens at the Shoreham in Washington, B.C., next week, will be taking with him another item that concerns Hubert Humphrey, Phar. D. “The fact that Humphrey has a degree in pharmacy would be very handy,” says Russell. “Some hot day, Johnson could say: ‘Hubert, make me a malted.’ ”

Goldbottle’s Boys. In Greenwich Village, a trio called Jim, Jake, and Joan appear at the Bitter End Café doing imaginary interviews. Sample:

Interviewer: Mrs. Johnson, what was the first thing you did when you moved into the White House?

Lady Bird: I sold my slaves.

Near by, at another coffeehouse called Phase Two, Resident Satirist Frank Lee Wilde observes that Bobby Kennedy is the only person who has not yet been Premier of South Viet Nam—”and that is simply because they have a residence requirement.” So Kennedy is traveling around New York State instead, and “at every stop he opens the carpetbag and out jumps Mayor Wagner.”

Elsewhere in Greenwich Village, the cast at The Premise is telling its audiences that Goldwater’s first major address as President will begin as follows: “Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . . seven . . . six . . . five . . . four . . .” To anyone who might wonder what life would be like under President Goldwater, the answer is: “Brief.”

Comedians are not the only show-business volunteers on the satirical side of the campaign. The word is that Dean Martin has calmed the fears of Sammy Davis Jr. by telling him: “Don’t worry, Sammy. If Goldwater wins, I’ll buy you.” And an outfit called Panic Productions has released an LP album called I’d Rather Be Far Right Than President, which imaginatively follows Goldwater to victory and into office, chronicling his first presidential moves, such as withdrawing recognition from Britain, India, Sweden, and Switzerland, kicking the man from the New York Times out of a press conference, warring on poverty with thermonuclear bombs, installing a nuclear warhead in every privately owned plane in the country, and talking with Khrushchev on his ham radio. Says Khrush: “How’s by you, Goldbottle?”

Another LP album, called Folk Songs for Conservatives, was purportedly recorded at a “hatenanny” where groups like the Four Bigots and Noel X and His Unbleached Muslims sang such traditional folk material as Hang Earl Warren to a Sour Apple Tree.

Among conventional performers, Manhattan’s Plaza 9 and the Chad Mitchell Trio have recorded an item called Barry’s Boys:

Why, Dad once crusaded for Sacco-Vanzetti, Now all we’re doing is doing the same for Jean Paul Getty . . . We’re Barry’s boys.

The real Barry’s boys are obviously taking a lot of guff from all over, but at least they have not lost their own sense of humor. At Goldwater’s national headquarters in Washington, the faithful are cheerfully prepared to supply on request any and all good jokes they have heard about their man. For example, they offer this one about the moment when Barry gets sworn in as President. “Repeat after me,” says Chief Justice Warren: “I swear to protect this nation against its enemies, foreign and domestic, so help me God.”

“I swear,” repeats Barry, “to protect this nation against its enemies foreign and domestic, so help me God. You’re under arrest, Warren.”