POOR, POOR ME

Blog number twenty-two

I gots me a little concern that maybe you can help me with.  I  won't be able to write in my blog for a few weeks because of an operation I had and am going to have on my eye that I will tell you all about when I get back to writing.  My concern is that if I don't write for awhile I will lose some readers.  And I can't afford that.  I want to tell you about following an armed robber and the time three men with clubs jumped out from behind a building when I was following a hooker late one night in downtown Sacramento.  I also want to tell you about the time another armed robber (I think) attempted to rob me at knife point - again, I think.  Plus a lot of other stuff.  So it you can just hang loose for a few weeks, check back with me once in awhile - pretend I'm on vacation, I will be ever so grateful.  Okay?

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Back before TV, in 1941, 42, 43, somewheres back then, a very curious puzzle happened on the radio.  There was a big censorship uproar.  Censorship in those days rested with the sponsers of the various radio programs.  The problem was with  a comedy skit that went like this:  One guy says, "I'm a thinker."  The comedian goes, "You thirtenly are."

Now that's a pretty lame joke, but it caused a sensation, and back then there was no "politically correct" brouhaha like there is  now.  It was kinda understood that  if a comedian used this joke, he was subject to being fired.  It is my own personal belief that somehow the joke was too "racy."  Don't ask me how that could be, because I don't know.

Two comedians - one of them I am pretty sure was Bob Hope,  said they were not going to do the joke, Jack Carson said he was going to use it, he didn't care what they did to him.  He wasn't afraid.  Can you imagine?

Now that is bad enough, the commotion that bad joke caused , but think on this:

At least three national comedians were publicly stating that they would use jokes that originated with other comedians.  They didn't care about telegraphing a punch line in the papers even before the show aired.  I was about seven years old at the time and even at that age something seemed kinda crazy about the whole thing. 

I remember listening to Jack Carson and hearing that joke - just like he said he was going to do.

I didn't laugh.
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