The editorial
Oh, how I miss talking politics with Dad! At least once a day, I’ll hear or read a news story and immediately think to call Dad – or at least text him the link for later discussion.
Here’s an example: Did you hear about the Benedictine nuns in Erie, Pennsylvania, accused of voter fraud this week? They’re not taking it lying down. Dad would have gotten such a kick out of reading about their leader’s barely contained furor.
When I miss my parents more deeply than usual, I look to their writings for comfort. This week, Dad came through, in this 1950 editorial he wrote while in college.
From The Scriptorium
The native intelligence of the American public has hit a new low in the minds of the politicians, if we are to judge by the tactics their campaign managers and state central committees have used during the recently concluded gubernatorial and senatorial races. It is common knowledge that they have never given the voter credit for having much more sense than an imbecile, but this latest move has proved beyond all doubt that he has dropped in their estimation to the status of a blithering idiot. Never before in the history of our democracy has the populace been subjected to such bold-faced insults to its collective intelligence. We are referring, of course, to the use of comic books as integral parts of a major political campaign.
There are two sides to every question, and this is by no means an exception. One possibility is that the American public has become so infantile in its thinking that it can no longer be reached by syllogistic reasoning. To peruse the few paragraphs setting forth a party’s main planks and the qualification of its leading candidate may have become too exhausting an effort for the voters’ minds. The day of the example-embellished major and minor and the earth-shattering, world-promising conclusion is long gone. In its place has settled the proof of an old pedagogical principle which runs, in effect:
“If they can’t understand it, explain it. If they still don’t get it, draw pictures.”
The alternative is that political tales have become so tall that nothing short of a publication of the Superman, Captain Marvel, Buck Rogers genre could possibly do them justice. It is with this latter alternative that we are inclined to agree.
A highly representative dose of this intellectual gruel begins with a full-page portrait (in heroic pose) of the candidate for governor. He is the choice of all good, thinking (sic) voters. He is the hero. Turning the page, the viewer finds that the people’s choice was just one of a large family supported by a brick-laying father and an over-worked mother whose hair, notwithstanding, is always at the height of fashion. So much for his childhood and youth.
The next big event is his graduation from college at the top of his class and the solemn vow, made in the privacy of his own heart, that he will devote his entire life to ridding his fair State of all scheming politicians.*
Immediately heads begin to fall.
As alderman he routs the crooked bosses from their smoke-filled dens and, for the benefit of the local W.C.T.U. undoubtedly, overturns their round table laden with bottles marked “XXX.” It might be interesting to note that the bosses, as well as anyone else he has opposed and vanquished, are all corpulent men wearing scowls and black suits in the accustomed manner of villains. About this time he gets married and, in a tender domestic scene, tells his chesty wife of his burning desire to serve his fellow man.
Soon comes the inevitable call to Washington, where the President asks him to head a commission to study a problem on which hangs the fate of all Europe. He modestly accepts, and takes leave of his home, wife, family, and thriving business. He arrives in Europe and is immediately acclaimed by all the widows and orphans in sight as a savior of mankind. What he actually does is never quite explained; but he loves the widows and orphans and they love him. After completing his mission, he shakes the hand of the President and hurries back to his family. (Besides, the primaries are only a few weeks off.)
One night he is visited by a committee of humble citizens who beseech him to become a candidate for governor and save the State from ruin. A look of benign astonishment floods his ever-smiling face. After the initial shock has passed he shakes each by the hand, tells them how they have taken him completely by surprise, and then proceeds to expound a seventeen-point program of sweeping reforms which will lift the clouds of doom and cause the sun to shine again. The citizens leave, and he is left alone with his thoughts and two million readers. This is too good a chance to miss; so he turns, looks them square in the eye, and gives them the inside dope on the coming election.
The next page is calculated to be the biggest vote-getter of them all
… for there, in all their glory, is the hero and his family in a smiling group portrait. The hero is smiling. His wife is smiling. His children are all smiling. His pet cocker spaniel is smiling.
Due to space limitations occasioned, no doubt, more to lack of funds than by lack of material, only two pages remain. These are artfully taken up by unsolicited endorsements of the hero by a bevy of fictitious persons from all walks of everyday life. There are barbers, bakers, steeplejacks, mill-hands, housewives, street cleaners, nurses, and teachers. Each is firmly convinced that his only hope of salvation lies in the hero’s being elected. After a final admonition to elect the greatest American of them all, the story ends.
They used to do it with free beer and cheap cigars.
It occurs to us that the coming of age of these picture-stories will bring to an end a host of time-honored political institutions. Soon we will have only nostalgic memories of the old general store and pot-bellied old men sitting around a pot-bellied old stove and debating the relative merits of their favorite candidates; and the proprietor sitting judiciously on top of the cracker barrel to keep the disputants from spoiling their suppers. The old general store, the pot-bellied stove, and the pot-bellied men will remain but instead of engaging in daily spirited debates they will meet weekly to swap comic books.
____
* Scheming politician – any member of the opposite party.
~ Harold E. Vayo, Jr. and The Alembic editorial staff, November 1950
Dad and his fellow editors at Providence College’s literary magazine gathered their thoughts and opinions and then sent off their leader to write the above editorial. I’m tempted to say “simpler times,” but in 1950 our war-torn world was still putting itself back together; and just a year after graduation, Dad would ship out to serve in Korea.
Thanks, Dad. Your editorial doesn’t make Election Day come any sooner or any more calmly, but I know in my heart we as a nation will make it through.
Editorial © 1950 Harold E. Vayo, Jr. and The Alembic editorial staff. All rights reserved.
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