Will Was A “Hooey” Expert!

I watched a news channel the other night where the commentator with the perfect white teeth was interviewing a Republican lawmaker from Wyoming or Montana (I can’t tell those two states apart). Well, naturally, since there is some kind of law that says you can’t have a show without “equal” time, she also had a junior congressman from the northeast with them as the Democratic spokesperson. 

They both rambled for a while. Then they made statements aimed mostly at the other party. Then they got mad. One of them mentioned Jefferson. The other countered with Lincoln. Both shouted a little. The “news anchor” did zilch to calm the waters. Little or no substance was interjected by anyone. They raved on longer than their intelligence level allowed. Everyone thanked each other at the end. All smiled for the camera as we faded to another (and seemingly endless) wireless phone commercial.

I thought of Will Rogers. Now, ole Will could have made some sense out of what those two fellows just said. Or, at the very least, he would have put his personal spin on it that would have given us a little laugh….and added some keen insight and perspective on what the heck they were arguing about. 

Maybe America’s problem is that Will ain’t here. He died in a plane crash up near Point Barrow, Alaska, in 1935. He was well acknowledged in his time as the foremost humorist of his day. “Poet ‘Lariat’ of the Common Man” was his unofficial title. I think he was much more than that. In the 1920’s and 30’s, he had his finger on the pulse of this great nation. In his Oklahoma “down home” poke at America he got it right more often than not.

And I know what you are thinking, different era. Will was writing in a Golden Age that fell into the Great Depression. Calvin Coolidge was president for goodness sakes! Social security hadn’t been created. We’d already had the war to end all wars. Will couldn’t be relevant or effective today. His political humor would be way out of touch. No way would he be as insightful, accurate or beloved by an entire world if he were “picking on” government and their shenanigans today.

You’re probably right. But just for fun, let’s give Will a chance.

Here’s an excerpt (and if I am breaking all forms of copyright law here, I apologize profusely to Mr. Rogers and whoever is still making money off of him) from a piece Will wrote in, I believe, 1931 on the art of politics, “We have been staggering along now about 155 years under every conceivable horse thief that could get into office, and yet we are, still going strong. I doubt if Barnum’s Circus, or Hagenbeck’s Wild Animal Show have housed as many different kinds of species as has been in our Government employ during its existence. Yet as bad as they are they can’t spoil it, and as good as they are they can’t help it….. A good man can’t do nothing in office because the System is against him. And a bad one can’t do anything for the same reason. So bad as we are, we are better off than any other nation, so what’s the use to worry?”

I hope, trust and pray that Will is still right!

I pondered over what I had just heard on the news show and another Rogers’s quote came to mind, “Common sense is not an issue in politics, it’s an affliction.” Will also said, “Neither is honesty an issue in politics. It’s a miracle…..”

And he would have had a field day with the two opposing political parties so blatantly squaring off in every newspaper, t.v. interview, town hall meeting and coffee shop debate where they can scurry up a crowd. He once said, “If we didn’t have two parties, we would all settle on the best men in the country and things would run fine. But as it is, we settle on the worst ones and then fight over’em.”

Does a little truth ring with that one? How about this, “If you eliminate the names of Lincoln, Washington, Roosevelt, Jackson and Wilson, both parties’ political conventions would get out three days earlier.”

Will covered the conventions in 1928 and had this to report, “The Republican Convention opened with a prayer. If the Lord can see his way clear to bless the Republican Party the way it’s been carrying on, then the rest of us ought to get it without even asking for it.”

At one Democratic National Convention Will wrote, “Ah! They was Democrats today, and we were proud of’em. They fought, they fit, they split, and adjourned in a dandy wave of dissension. That’s the old Democratic spirit. A whole day wasted and nothing done. I tell you, they are getting back to normal……”

Will also wrote, “The Republicans have a habit of having three bad years and one good one, and the good one always happens to be election year.”

Let’s close with this and you decide if Will Rogers’s wit and wisdom was contained to the mere period of his life. “When a party can’t think of anything else they always fall back on lower taxes, but no voter has lived to see the day when his taxes were lowered. Presidents have been promising lower taxes since Washington crossed the Delaware by hand in a row boat, but our taxes have gotten bigger and their boats have gotten larger until now the President crosses the Delaware in his private yacht.”

I’d loved to get Will on “Face the Nation” today and let him take a crack at the foolishness that abounds in Washington. He would deride the rhetoric as “applesauce” and “hooey”! He’d say enough of the preening, porkbarrellng and finger pointing! He wouldn’t lose faith in this nation or our system. But he’d tell them “horse thieves” and “circus acts” to get their heads out of the sand and help us a little.

Now, we’d all vote for that.

Yours,

Will and Kes