Whee, the People

"Elpoep eht ew" (El poop, et tu?) read half of the spritzy red, white and blue banners how disgracing our one-way streets. It was We the People's contribution to the Political Humor Symposium held a couple of weeks back--that way, participants could giggle all the way to the Warwick and the Academy of Music.

When I asked a WTP functionary at the humor lunch why they goofed, she said it was to save money by not having grommets along both sides of the flags. Thread that in your next grommet and see if it salutes. This reply at a luscious lunch about half full of munchers.

Only 100 Phillies signed up for the $65 package of two days of schmoozing with the likes of Art Buchwald, Dick Gregory, Andy Rooney, Mark Russell and lesser but no less levitating luminaries such as the CBC's Royal Canadian Air Farce and the John Cleese-hating editor of Britain's Private Eye satire mag. You can't blame that dismal turnout on WTP's press honcho Sam Rogers; it's terminal Philly dumbness that so few availed themselves of such a once-in-a-lifetime caper.

Nonetheless, it's not us, the populace, who are responsible for WTP's dumb press relations. For two days, WTP's press flack assured me I could interview the biggies in an "interview room" at the Academy. I escorted the Air Farce from the Warwick, fritzing all the way. (As a reared Detroiter who nurtured his muse on CKLW Windsor, I bragged that "spiritually" I was a Canadian. They giggled.)

Arrived at the Academy, I split, following the flack while they found their dressing rooms. Except that the flack couldn't find the interview room. Ahem. So I began schmoozing again with the Farceurs.

Not so fast and furious, ahem'd honcho Rogers. Still ahemming full speed ahead, he strong-armed me off the stage and, indeed, out of the Academy. "You can interview biggies after they perform." Right. Interview Gregory, miss Buchwald on stage.

The conference itself was absolutely superb. For me, a high point was Draper Hill, editorial cartoonist for the Detroit News. He did a slide lecture on the history of caricature that would have met the standards of a Harvard grad seminar (not surprising when you learn he's written the standard bio of British caricaturist Gilray). Jerry Robinson's filiopietistic history of the American comix was less exalted, though his cartoonists and writers-based exhibition on editorial cartoons at the Art Alliance was the best sidebar to the symposium.

The neatest thing for the non-humorous like me was watching the stars glitter at each other. For example, someone dared everyone to come up with a good gag on the Waldheim-Pope encounter. Silence, except for the whirling of not-so-lame brains. "Got it!" exulted Mark Russell. "The Pope hears Kurt's confession and the penance is--six months in Miami Beach."

Talking to Russell later in the Warwick lobby, I learned that he had suffered terminal brain damage, like me, from the Jesuits. To Buchwald, sitting next to him, I teased, "See, you don't have to be Jewish to be a joker. Russell's Catholic." "Anti-Catholic," Buchwald Art-fully replied, with a joke gestation period of two nanoseconds.

The symposium was replete with much saving gracefulness, like Dick Gregory chiding the ofay audience at the Academy for giving blacks February, the lousiest, shortest month of the year, for Black History.

From Welcomat: After Dark, July 15, 1987