Ok–I get why, on Futurama, they keep having the head of President Nixon say “Sock it to me”…but they also have him express happiness with a weird sort of dog-howl sound (“Aroo!”). He does it at least once per episode where he appears.
Am I missing a cultural reference here, or are they just doing it because it’s funny and it’s not riffing something Nixon actually did?
(For what it’s worth, it’s funny as hell–I just want to know if there’s another layer I’m missing)
I put it here rather than CS because there’s a factual answer and I need Nixon/history nerds, not Futurama nerds.
There used to be a comedy show called Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, and “sock it to me” was one of their catchphrases. Nixon appeared on the show and said the line, and everyone talked about it.
The DVD commentary for “A Head in the Polls” (the episode where Nixon gets his head attached to Bender’s body) says they’re just doing it because it’s funny.
If you do a google or at least a Youtube search of Nixon “sock it to me” you’ll see where he appeared.
Laugh In was absolutely hilarious. I can’t describe it…you had to be there.
Kind of like a liberal west coast Hee Haw, mixed with the Daily show and Saturday Night Live
Now Get OFF of my Lawn!!!
Here he is on Laugh-In. It was a frequent catchphrase on the show, and his shocked recitation of the line was pretty funny at the time, given his stuffy image:
Can’t cite a direct relationship but two buttons popular among us “counter-culture” types back then were one showing Nixon with an exaggerated nose saying something like “Beat Nixon’s Nose Into a Plowshare” and another with exaggerated jowls and ears making him a sort of bloodhound saying something like “You can’t hide from Tricky Dick”. I always assumed the Futurama thing had something to do with the latter.
Nixon said that it won him the 1968 election. And Hubert Humphrey, his Democratic opponent was also asked to be filmed saying “Sock it to me,” and declined. He said that that may have cost him the election.
That’s what George Schlatter is quoted as saying that he believed, anyway.
In some commentary or other, he also says his Nixon is more an imitation of Anthony Hopkins in the Oliver Stone Nixon movie than the actual president. I always thought that explained the howling a little bit; it’s easier to imagine that as an exaggeration of a film performance than as something that comes from Nixon himself.
