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This is Later with Lee Matthews,
The Lee Matthews Podcast more what You Hear

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Weekday Afternoon's On the Drive with Masteroff
has been called the premier popular historian of

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comedy by the New York Times.
He's an author of previous books The Comedians,

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Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and
the History of American Comedy and We

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Had Little Real We Have a Little
Real Estate Problem, The un heralded story

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of Native Americans and Comedy. His
newest book is called Outrageous, A History

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of show Business and the Culture Wars. This is very timely clipnester Off.

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Yes, I hope. So that
was the sort of whole idea I've been

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hearing for the past several years that
you can't say anything anymore, you can't

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joke about anything anymore. So I
wanted to write an entire history of that

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that is not just the last five
years, but the last two hundred years.

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So people being outraged by the entertainment
industry is nothing new, No,

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absolutely not. I mean I remember
in my life time the hysteria that greeted

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the Simpsons when it first came out. They said that it was a bad

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example for children. Bart Simpsons saying
don't have a cow eat my shorts was

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considered unethical, immoral, a bad
example, you know, a bad example

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for the American family. President George
Bush said that we should see more things

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on TV like the Waltons and less
things like the Simpsons. And Simpsons Hysteria

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was followed by a Beavis and butt
heead hysteria. They accused a Beavis and

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butt Head of encouraging arson. There
were calls in government to have the show

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removed from the air. Same thing
happened when South Park came out. Same

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thing happened with SpongeBob square Pants,
who was accused of furthering a homosexual conspiracy.

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All of these things happened in my
lifetime before the invention of social media,

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right, and also going as far
back as radio days. Yeah,

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I mean, there's many, many
examples. This is the thing that I

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really want to d home with this
book is that people say you can't joke

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about anything anymore. But if you
look at what comedians were contending with on

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radio in the nineteen thirties, the
nineteen forties, the nineteen fifties, if

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you go back and listen to some
of those shows, some of them are

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so sanitized. They don't even feel
like comedies. Sometimes they feel like dramas.

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Some of them are very boring,
and that was by design. They

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were sponsored by major cigarette companies and
other corporations, and they did not want

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to offend anybody. So there were
no references to politics, no references to

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religion, no references to sexuality.
Of course, you could not cuss,

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and in those days, a word
like God was considered a cussword, so

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the restrictions were very, very severe. The famous radio comedian Fred Allen made

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a reference to saffron the material,
and they took it out of the script.

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They said, you can't say saffron. That's an obscene. He goes,

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what are you talking about? It's
an implication. So there were all

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of these rules and restrictions that were
far more severe back then than today.

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If you look at what you can
say today on satellite radio and podcasts compared

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to the history of AM and FM
radio, what you can say on streaming

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services and cable TV compared to the
tradition of ABC, CBS, NBC,

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we actually have far greater freedom of
expression, not less, but a lot

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of people ignore that because of the
new taboos that have emerged. Most that

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have to do with racial slurs or
things that people consider bigoted that maybe people

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didn't consider bigoted forty years ago.
But if you compare that to the totality

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of the twentieth century, we have
far less taboos today than in the past,

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not more. Clipnester off The brook
is Outrageous, A History of Showbiz

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in the culture Wars and he is. The book is out now. Everywhere

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you get books, you're mentioning some
of the Fred Allen, for one,

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one of his good friends, and
it was a full rivalry between he and

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Jack Benny. I remember hearing a
Jack Benny episode where he makes reference to

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getting dance lessons and Rochester is cleaning
up after the dance lessons and he makes

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reference to, okay, let me
put the ironing board away and let the

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air out of all the balloons,
insinuating the dance lesson was a burlesque act.

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And I remember hearing it, and
of course this was a recording.

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I wasn't hearing it live, but
I remember hearing it and thinking, how

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did they get away with that?
In like nineteen fifty two when that broadcast

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aired. Yeah, yeah, well
they had their workarounds there how they could

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sort of get things past the censors. And of course there was a famous

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stick that they did in both radio
and television. As many comedians have recited

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this variation of this story. They
would intentionally put in the dirtiest joke,

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maybe something explicit they know would never
be allowed on the air, so the

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sensors would be distracted by that and
say take that out, and not say

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take out the other thing, like
the ironing board gag. They didn't notice

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it, So that way they would
sneak in the thing with this sort of

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decoy that they knew would never get
on the air. Clipnster Off is with

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us. Outrageous is the book,
and it is the history of being outraged

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by the entertainment industry throughout the years. You have several specific examples like Will

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Rogers, our own Will Rogers.
No oh yeah, yeah yeah. People

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do not know this story. And
of course people know Will Rodgers in Oklahoma,

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but other places in America people just
know the name, they know the

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catchphrase. Never met a man I
didn't like, but they don't really know

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why he was famous. Of course, he was a syndicated columnist. Will

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Rogers says his syndicated column is really
what made him famous. He was a

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star in vaudeville and then the Zigfield
Follies on Broadway, and of course in

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movies. He was under contract to
Fox, the same studio that had Shirley

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Temple in the early nineteen thirties,
and in nineteen thirty four, Will Rodgers

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was doing a coast to coast radio
broadcast for the Shell Oil Company. The

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name of the show was the Shell
Chateau and he was introducing a western roundup

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song. I think it was called
the Last round Up. It was like

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a cowboy song, and Will Rogers
introduced it by saying, you know,

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it may sound like a cowboy song
to you, but it's just a good

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old N word spiritual to me.
But he didn't say en hyphen word.

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He said the word. And then
people thought, well did I mishear that,

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because even in nineteen thirty four,
you did not say that word on

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coast to coast radio. It was
already taboo. NBC and CBS has policies

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against using that word on the radio. And then the song ended and he

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came back on. Will Rogers said, see, doesn't it sound like an

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N word spiritual? It sounds like
a great N word spiritual to me,

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he said it three times. Well, the switchboard lit up. People were

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complaining they could not believe that the
great Will Rogers would use the most vicious

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racial slur on coast to coast radio
three times. And there was a protest

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movement as a result, especially in
the black press. Black newspapers, editorial

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writers, African American letter writers all
complain, how dare Will Rogers slur us?

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How dare he insult our entire race? We demand that he apologized,

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otherwise we're going to boycott all Shell
gasoline stations and all Shell oil products.

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So Shell went back to Will Rogers
said, Okay, next week, you

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gotta go on the air, say
you misspoke and apologize because this is gonna

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affect our bottom line. So Will
Rogers goes on the air the next week

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and he says, so it seems
some of you listeners out there are a

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little bit oversensitive. I used a
word last week with no meaning of malice,

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and you all took it the wrong
way. I wasn't saying anything racist.

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I've been using the N word my
entire life, and nobody has ever

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complained. Shell Oil was in the
control room going, what are you doing

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you've made it way worse. And
so from then that moment forward, the

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Black press became even more aggressive and
they expanded their boycott campaign not just the

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shell gas stations, but to movie
theaters showing Will Rogers movies. And Will

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Rogers films were pulled from Fox theaters
in black neighborhoods as a result of this

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boycott pressure. So this was just
several months one year before Will Rogers died.

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By the time that he died in
August nineteen thirty five in the infamous

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plane crash, this story was forgotten
and at the time it was mostly covered

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in the Black press. Variety and
some of the showbiz periodicals covered it,

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but mostly the white press ignored it. So the story today is completely forgotten.

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But the whole controversy that occurred and
his subsequent apology and non apology making

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it worse is very, very very
much like the type of story you would

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hear today as timely as if it
was in yesterday's time. Headlines and more

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stories like this too available in outrage. Just Cliff nestro Off a history of

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show business and the culture warsh Thanks
for bringing that great story to us and

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for joining us today. Thank you
thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews,

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the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember
to listen to The Drive Live weekday

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afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia
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