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| "Pert 'n' perky, statuesque Angie Davis is more than meets the eye. 'Neath that natural "do" there beats a brain as big as all outdoors, which is where Angie, an assistant Poli Sci instructor at Lompoc Community College in California likes to spend her leisure time, surfing, sunbathing, or just plain walking."
Grand Fifth JFK Inaugural Edition, National Lampoon, February 1977
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One of the subtleties of that 1977 National Lampoon edition celebrating JFK's fifth term is that it's willing to be a little dull to get across various metajokes. The overarching gag is that if Jackie Kennedy had been the one martyred in Dallas, Jack would have settled into the Irish politician's pattern of staying in power for roughly ever (e.g., Eamon de Valera, Richard J. Daley in Chicago, or James Curley, who was mayor of Boston on and off from 1914 to 1950); but JFK would have pulled this off by mobilizing the puerile energies of white baby boomers, rather like Chairman Mao's cult of personality did during his Cultural Revolution.
A subsidiary joke is that an all-powerful JFK would have handled the civil rights problem in America the way his fellow Irish Democrat Mayor Daley did in Chicago: by appointing every black with any ambition to a salaried government job, albeit a vaguely demeaning one. Thus, the following rather dry "People" page (click to enlarge) from a 1977 issue of government-sponsored Tar magazine ($0.75 or 3 federal magazine stamps) announcing various civil rights leaders being promoted from positions within the HOP federal agency to marginally higher-paying posts at SKIP and JUMP. For example, rather than being a controversial UCLA professor, Angela Davis is happy to have a paying job at Lompoc Junior College.(By the way, the female energies that became feminism in our timeline are, in JFK's alternate universe, devoted to the worship of Presidential priapism.)
The other meta-joke on the page is that the Kennedy Administration has nationalized and merged the entertainment and sports industries, so that James Earl Jones, fresh off winning an Oscar for the Camelot-style musical The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass!, will now run back punts for the Oakland Raiders, filling a gap in the roster opened up when linebacker Richard Roundtree of Shaft fame was sold to the St. Louis Cardinals. Also, after PFC Cassius Clay became the last American soldier killed in Vietnam, the amenable Floyd Patterson was reappointed heavyweight champion, a title he has now held for 15 years by only fighting "welterweights and Japanese."
In contrast, JFK drafted the hardcore blacks like Eldridge Cleaver and Bobby Seale into his new Black Berets and set them to pacifying the ghettos:
In contrast, JFK drafted the hardcore blacks like Eldridge Cleaver and Bobby Seale into his new Black Berets and set them to pacifying the ghettos:
They organized hot breakfast programs, hot lunch programs, hot car programs -- anything that would help. They ruthlessly enforced urban removal and community security. They engineered long, persuasive talks with landlords, merchants, cops -- anyone who wouldn't help. They moved hard and fast to save the ghetto from itself. Sure, there were protests -- from friend and foe alike. And there were casualties, as there are in any war. ...
Since then, thanks to tough, aggressive business practices perfected in the service of their country, [Cleaver and Seale] have become millionaires many times over.
(Sounds like South Africa today.)
The only radical civil rights policy affecting suburban whites is "familial desegregation," which has taken 1,000 white children from their parents in places like Shaker Heights and handed them to black families in Watts. But, that is specifically the brainstorm of JFK's idiot brother Teddy (whom National Lampoon endorsed for President in 1980 on the grounds that President EMK would surely provide four years of Lampoon-worthy material that wrote itself).
And there are hints that Jack and Bobby (chairman of the Semi-Unofficial Committee of One, which deals with "life and death matters of national security") use Teddy's program primarily to take Jewish children hostage, perhaps to quell "Jewish dissent against the war for the Irish homeland" and to ensure that the "American press" will never again be "unduly dominated by Jews," according to Kennedy (formerly Look) magazine.
The only radical civil rights policy affecting suburban whites is "familial desegregation," which has taken 1,000 white children from their parents in places like Shaker Heights and handed them to black families in Watts. But, that is specifically the brainstorm of JFK's idiot brother Teddy (whom National Lampoon endorsed for President in 1980 on the grounds that President EMK would surely provide four years of Lampoon-worthy material that wrote itself).
And there are hints that Jack and Bobby (chairman of the Semi-Unofficial Committee of One, which deals with "life and death matters of national security") use Teddy's program primarily to take Jewish children hostage, perhaps to quell "Jewish dissent against the war for the Irish homeland" and to ensure that the "American press" will never again be "unduly dominated by Jews," according to Kennedy (formerly Look) magazine.
(By the way, I don't see much evidence that managing editor P.J. O'Rourke was relatively more involved in this issue than in others. This particular issue's editor was Tony Hendra, a former teenage monk who had done comedy with John Cleese and Graham Chapman at Cambridge.)
By the way, can you imagine The Onion today coming within an order of magnitude of what National Lampoon was doing three dozen years ago? It's not just a matter of The Onion's lack of courage, it's a matter of a decline in intellectual ability. The Lampoon issue takes on the difficult challenge of imagining how an Irish wardheeler with a veneer of media sophistication, an intuitive understanding of which way the wind was blowing, would have dealt with The Sixties. What has The Onion contributed at all to understanding the Obama Phenomenon?
By the way, can you imagine The Onion today coming within an order of magnitude of what National Lampoon was doing three dozen years ago? It's not just a matter of The Onion's lack of courage, it's a matter of a decline in intellectual ability. The Lampoon issue takes on the difficult challenge of imagining how an Irish wardheeler with a veneer of media sophistication, an intuitive understanding of which way the wind was blowing, would have dealt with The Sixties. What has The Onion contributed at all to understanding the Obama Phenomenon?
Tony Hendra -- the manager of Spinal Tap!
ReplyDeleteAlso his daughter accused him of sex abuse or something
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20150594,00.html
Tony Hendra co-wrote what could've been The Great American Movie on Race, The Great White Hype.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, the original screenplay--which Hollywood muckamucks found too "racist"--was toned down 'til it became an intermittently entertaining piece of fluff.
Nonetheless, some of the acid cynicism of the original survives and shines out--Damon Wayans's preposterously out-of-shape, wastrel, one-time champ doesn't bother training for a title fight against a pretty-boy, Irish boy, claiming "my blackness will beat him."
"Also his daughter accused him of sex abuse or something"
ReplyDeleteHendra's JFK parody has First Daughter Caroline always coming on to her daddy.
Glad I wasn't part of that family.
Isteve tropes ahoy!
ReplyDeleteYeah, the first Daley left office feet-first, unsurprisingly. I remember the news breaking in the middle of a MASH rerun or whatever nonsense I was absorbing at the time. Anchorman Walter Jacobson broke in to announce the news on CBS's WBBM-TV, ending his bit with what he described as an old Irish saying: "He had one foot in heaven before the Devil knew he was dead."
ReplyDeletein 1977 a humor mag, even if it was MAD, had to be more literary-minded in order to crank out units of satire. I remember one issue that even had "My kingdom for a horse" and other Shakespearean scenes converted into hip-hop lyrics (great art by Mort Drucker in it, too). Whereas today Jon Stewart or The Onion merely parody-emulate the existing self-serious media establishment. The Daily Show is actually nothing but clips from Fox, CNN, etc. Even the original of Stewart, SNL's "Weekend Update," depended on old-fashioned one-liners, rather than reacting to a "goofy video clip" twenty times a night. It's cheap sport.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, can you imagine The Onion today coming within an order of magnitude of what National Lampoon was doing three dozen years ago? It's not just a matter of The Onion's lack of courage, it's a matter of a decline in intellectual ability.
ReplyDeleteSorry, but the intellectual horsepower just isn't there these days. Anyone with two neurons to rub together is out trying to make a buck, not wasting time with satire at something like the National Lampoon. Too bad for the college kids of today and the PJ O'Rourke's of tomorrow.
"By the way, the female energies that became feminism in our timeline are, in JFK's alternate universe, devoted to the worship of Presidential priapism."
ReplyDeleteGiven the sexual voraciousness of the Kennedy's, how long will it be until everyone in America is descended from someone who slept with a member of the Kennedy clan? Three generations? Four?
"Jack would have settled into the Irish politician's pattern of staying in power for roughly ever (e.g., Eamon de Valera, Richard J. Daley in Chicago, or James Curley, who was mayor of Boston on and off from 1914 to 1950);"
ReplyDeleteThis is an American thing, not an Irish thing.
American politicians hang on forever. Irish politicians don't. Few make it over far over 60.
De Valera's career was an exception, he was Prime Minister from 32-48, 51-54, 57-59 and president from 59-73. But he was a figurehead from around 1950 onwards. He spent most of one of those years in the 50s when he was ostensibly in power in the Netherlands receiving treatment to try (unsuccessfully) to save his eyesight. You could compare it to Churchill's last term in office.
By the way, can you imagine The Onion today coming within an order of magnitude of what National Lampoon was doing three dozen years ago?
ReplyDeleteNo, of course not. For one thing if it (tried) to emulate National Lampoon it would be considered a pr0n site, nudity was not uncommon there.
Also Nat Lamp did comedy short stories, again not suitable for a comedy web site.
BTW, It's doubtful that JFK could have been more than a two-term President. Despite his appearance he was generally in poor health, a heavy smoker, and likely taking Barbiturates to sleep (quite common at that time - see Marilyn Monroe) to counteract the Amphetamines he was often being shot with.
ReplyDeleteHad he not been assassinated, it's quite possible that he would have died in office before the end of his second term.
I think cable TV and then the internet destroyed peoples' minds. A lot of genius comes from not having all that much to do and to push off boredom. I remember Steve Vai explaining why he spent so much time practicing guitar. He just didn't have that much else to do after school. Similarly, your ability to read and write and detect nuances of language go down when you don't spend all that much time reading. Cable TV made reading an activity. But the past 150 years, reading was the substance of our lives. It was the natural environment of the mind.
ReplyDelete