Mebbe I oughta put this in General Questions instead, but I read this forum more often, so Im guessing that others do too. Also it is kinda pointless. But please feel free to move it.
An-y-hoo, in high school my English teacher gave us an essay that purported to be a campaign speech which enabled the politician who gave it to win the election. In it, he said a bunch of complimentary or neutral things about his opponent, all of which were true. But he used large words, not in terribly common use (at least not at the time), which sound like very uncomplimentary things (at least by the standards of the time). My teacher’s point was to think carefully about what you read or hear, and what is actually being said. The two I remember are “His parents encouraged him to masticate” and *His sister has for many years been an admitted thespian".
Does anybody know what Im talking about? Does anybody know where I can find a copy of this speech? Preferably on the net - I live in Europe now and have limited access to English-language publications. Also, is it really a campaign speech? Who gave it, where and when, and what office was he running for? Who was the poor guy he was talking about? Did he really win? And what about Naomi?
It is better to waste your youth than do nothing with it. – Georges Courteline
Well, a quick search of the Internet didn’t pull up any copies of it.
The speech, incidentally, was made by George Smathers (R-FL) in his Senate campaign (1952, if I remember). Smathers was running against Congressman Claude “Red” Pepper (D-FL), who was well known as one of the most liberal members of Congress.
During the speech, Smathers called Pepper, “a shameless extrovert”; stated that he had practised “nepotism” towards his wife, and that his sister-in-law was “a thespian.”
Smathers won the race by 67,000 votes.
JMCJ
“John C., it looks like you have blended in very nicely.”
-UncleBeer
Smathers denied making the speech (in 1950, BTW). Did he really do it? I have no evidence either way. The idea later became a classic satire piece in Mad Magazine. Here’s a link to the satire and a short bit about the alleged speech itself.
Before anyone gets mad at me for moving this to GQ, I have a reason.
One of our shy posters will be along soon to give you the SD about this.
She emailed me as to where to put her info. And, trust me, she has the goods.
Also, if she cites just a wee bit to much in terms of a quote, I’m gonna allow it as many people here can’t exactly go out and read the original articles.
Oh dear, I’m not sure I can live up to samclem’s expectations (though I appreciate his assistance), but we’ll see if the following helps vindicate or condemn George Smathers in this bit of campaign folklore.
That last footnote refers an article Howell Raines wrote for The New York Times (“Legendary Campaign: Pepper vs. Smathers in ’50,” Pg. B8). Although Raines reported that the retired politician vehemently denied to him ever using the quips in any speech (and, in later years, Pepper himself also acknowledged that he never heard Smathers repeat any of the lines attributed to him), Smathers himself “said these wisecracks became the running jokes of the campaign and that [reporter William H. Lawrence of The Times] kept him posted on the latest versions.”
Furthermore, Raines noted that, “William Fokes, a Tallahassee lawyer who was Mr. Pepper’s administrative assistant at the time, also confirmed that reporters were passing around these jokes.” Raines noted that everyone (from both camps) that he interviewed was of the opinion that Smathers had never uttered any of these quips in any stump speech. Raines went on, however,
“Earwitness to Campaign Slymouth,” a letter-to-the-editor that appeared in the 13 June 1989 edition of The New York Times (Section A, Pg. 26, Col. 4), was written by a University of Florida grad who contended that during that 1950 campaign he heard those phrases delivered “in multiple, statewide broadcast campaign speeches.” It’s unclear whether he claimed to have remembered hearing radio broadcasts or whether he attended Smathers’s speeches in person, but for some reason he was sure that no reporters were responsible for writing those “accusations.” Nevertheless, the writer went on to say,
No recordings of Smathers (or anyone else) repeating these lines during the campaign have surfaced. And, as Crispell mentioned, when it comes to Smathers’s alleged remarks, no one’s found any contemporaneous reports in any Florida newspapers that the candidate ever accused Pepper of indulging in celibacy before marriage or having a thespian-sister.
It’s hard to figure out when Smathers is first supposed to have said these things about Pepper (or when the joke “speech” first surfaced), but Ben Zimmer has found a source that predates the frequently offered Time magazine version – a 2 April 1950 Washington Post piece on “a story going the Washington rounds.” There, the remarks are attributed to “[t]he political enemies of Senator Claude Pepper.” Mention of Smathers himself as the culprit is notably absent.
Tammi “reporters are such cunning linguists” Terrell
Wow. Tammi Terrell has posted 12 times in 5 years. This produces an average of less than 0.01 posts per day. Just goes to show there is something in the “quality not quantity” adage.
Nonsense and poppycock. I say her post quality would be much improved with a few rolleyes in GD or maybe some “bring pie” jokes.
Thanks for the Straight Dope, Tammy.
Sigh, I should be so lucky, RiverRunner. I think samclem would be quite a good catch, too, despite the fact that on multiple occasions he’s been observed exchanging money with known numismatists.
I’m not saying which one, but when I was introduced to one of the SDMB staff, that staff member reached out their hand and grabbed my phalanges and touched my epidermis!
Pardon me for reviving a fairly stale thread, but I’m only posting this because I get to furnish some stuff from a book on dirty jokes . . .
A good friend of mine, knowing my interest in Smathers’s alleged “thespian speech,” gave me a copy of Gershon Legman’s Rationale of the Dirty Joke: An Analysis of Sexual Humor (First Series) [New York: Grove Press, 1968] and pointed me to pages 148 and 149.
There, Legman writes,
(Legman then goes on to note Earl Wilson’s 6 April 1950 column, which is mentioned in Ben Zimmer’s post, to which I linked above. “N.Y. 1942” indicates where and when Legman himself first heard this joke.)
Now, Brian and I don’t know what “Baker, 1947, V. 3” is, so it’s difficult to know what Mr. or Ms. Baker provided as evidence of a presumably humorous political speech, but Senator Beauregard Claghorn was a popular character (played by Kenny Delmar) on “Allen’s Alley,” Fred Allen’s radio show, which ran from 1942 to 1949. (Delmar reprised the role for the 1947 film, “It’s a Joke, Son!” He also made numerous public appearances as Senator Claghorn and, in character, met President Truman at one such event in January, 1948.)
Claghorn, the folksy Southern Democrat politician (and on whom Foghorn Leghorn was patterned), was introduced in the fall of ’45 and sent into retirement three years later. (The radio success of Claghorn, however, may have inspired Hollywood to introduce in 1947 a comedy called “The Senator Was Indiscreet.” The screenplay, written by Charles MacArthur, featured William Powell as Melvin G. Ashton, a “dimwitted blowhard” U.S. Senator running for President.)
(For what it’s worth, Legman also mentions Samuel Goldwyn’s “moronisms,” [also known as “Goldwynisms”], many of which are suspected as apocryphal. One of these hinged on a reversed misunderstanding [reversed for this purpose, that is],
Legman speculates that most or all of moronisms attributed to Goldwyn, were “actually invented and put into circulation by his principal screen-writer, Ben Hecht, a good newspaperman gone Hollywood” and, in fact, Charles MacArthur.)
Certainly by early 1950s, then, the public was already not only well familiar with the radio voice and image of the bumbling politician (especially a Southern one), but also knew jokes that hinged on not understanding perfectly innocent “high-class” words and mistaking them for concepts decidedly less, well, polite.
To my mind, given this climate, once reporters’ humorous quips began to stick to Smathers, it was just a matter of time before someone came to believe he had heard Smathers himself on the radio, accusing his shameless extrovert of an opponent as having a thespian-sister.
– Tammi Terrell
[1] Everything unknown is taken as obscene.
[2] In fact, the relevant portion of that Gimbels ad reads,
