Serving Barnwell County and it's neighbors since 1852
Wouldn’t it be nice to enjoy a little humor in the current presidential campaigns? Nothing is funny about what’s going on.
Despite what you thought of John Kennedy, his politics or his extra-presidential activities, you have to admit he had a keen sense of humor.
When Kennedy visited Bristol, Tennessee, on Sept. 21, 1960, he was quoted as saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, it is my understanding that the last candidate for the presidency to visit this community in a presidential year was Herbert Hoover in 1928.
“President Hoover initiated on the occasion of his visit the slogan, ‘Two chickens in every pot,’ and it is no accident that no presidential candidate has ever dared to come back to this community since.”
A number of years ago, I heard about the importance of humor in the presidency from Liz Carpenter, an aide to Vice President Lyndon Johnson and press secretary to Lady Bird Johnson.
Humor, Carpenter told her audience, saved a lot of presidents. It saved Abraham Lincoln.
She told of Lincoln’s summoning his cabinet to the White House for a special session. The date was Sept. 21, 1862.
“The President was reading a book and hardly noticed me as I came in,” Secretary of War Edwin Stanton wrote of the incident later. “Finally, he turned to us and said, ‘Gentlemen, did you ever read anything of Artemus Ward? Let me read a chapter that is very funny.”
He then read aloud something by the humorist. Stanton was offended and almost got up and left. But Lincoln finished reading the piece and then laughed heartily. No one else laughed.
“Gentlemen,” Lincoln said, “why don’t you laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me night and day, if I did not laugh, I should die, and you need this medicine as much as I do.”
It was then that Lincoln read the Emancipation Proclamation, ordering freedom for all slaves.
Franklin Roosevelt certainly knew the value of good public relations. But he went too far. In his book, “Presidents and the Press,” Joseph C. Spear said that Roosevelt tried to control his image even through the press. (By the way, real journalists don’t consider the National Enquirer as part of the press.)
Wouldn’t it be wonderful, though, if we had something to smile about in today’s presidential campaigns? Even a little Harry Truman humor would be welcome.
The story goes that Truman was speaking at a convention in Kansas City, Missouri, and his wife, Bess, and a friend were in the audience. Truman told the crowd, “I grew up on a farm, and the one thing I know is farming means manure, manure, manure, and more manure.”
Mrs. Truman’s friend whispered to her, “Bess, why on earth don’t you get Harry to say fertilizer?”
“Good Lord, Helen,” Mrs. Truman replied, “you have no idea how many years it has taken me to get him to say manure.”
There are several versions of that story. Please check the National Enquirer to find out which one is not true.
