This is Later with Lee Matthews, The Lee Matthews Podcast more what You Hear
Weekday Afternoon's On the Drive with Masteroff has been called the premier popular historian of
comedy by the New York Times. He's an author of previous books The Comedians,
Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy and We
Had Little Real We Have a Little Real Estate Problem, The un heralded story
of Native Americans and Comedy. His newest book is called Outrageous, A History
of show Business and the Culture Wars. This is very timely clipnester Off.
Yes, I hope. So that was the sort of whole idea I've been
hearing for the past several years that you can't say anything anymore, you can't
joke about anything anymore. So I wanted to write an entire history of that
that is not just the last five years, but the last two hundred years.
So people being outraged by the entertainment industry is nothing new, No,
absolutely not. I mean I remember in my life time the hysteria that greeted
the Simpsons when it first came out. They said that it was a bad
example for children. Bart Simpsons saying don't have a cow eat my shorts was
considered unethical, immoral, a bad example, you know, a bad example
for the American family. President George Bush said that we should see more things
on TV like the Waltons and less things like the Simpsons. And Simpsons Hysteria
was followed by a Beavis and butt heead hysteria. They accused a Beavis and
butt Head of encouraging arson. There were calls in government to have the show
removed from the air. Same thing happened when South Park came out. Same
thing happened with SpongeBob square Pants, who was accused of furthering a homosexual conspiracy.
All of these things happened in my lifetime before the invention of social media,
right, and also going as far back as radio days. Yeah,
I mean, there's many, many examples. This is the thing that I
really want to d home with this book is that people say you can't joke
about anything anymore. But if you look at what comedians were contending with on
radio in the nineteen thirties, the nineteen forties, the nineteen fifties, if
you go back and listen to some of those shows, some of them are
so sanitized. They don't even feel like comedies. Sometimes they feel like dramas.
Some of them are very boring, and that was by design. They
were sponsored by major cigarette companies and other corporations, and they did not want
to offend anybody. So there were no references to politics, no references to
religion, no references to sexuality. Of course, you could not cuss,
and in those days, a word like God was considered a cussword, so
the restrictions were very, very severe. The famous radio comedian Fred Allen made
a reference to saffron the material, and they took it out of the script.
They said, you can't say saffron. That's an obscene. He goes,
what are you talking about? It's an implication. So there were all
of these rules and restrictions that were far more severe back then than today.
If you look at what you can say today on satellite radio and podcasts compared
to the history of AM and FM radio, what you can say on streaming
services and cable TV compared to the tradition of ABC, CBS, NBC,
we actually have far greater freedom of expression, not less, but a lot
of people ignore that because of the new taboos that have emerged. Most that
have to do with racial slurs or things that people consider bigoted that maybe people
didn't consider bigoted forty years ago. But if you compare that to the totality
of the twentieth century, we have far less taboos today than in the past,
not more. Clipnester off The brook is Outrageous, A History of Showbiz
in the culture Wars and he is. The book is out now. Everywhere
you get books, you're mentioning some of the Fred Allen, for one,
one of his good friends, and it was a full rivalry between he and
Jack Benny. I remember hearing a Jack Benny episode where he makes reference to
getting dance lessons and Rochester is cleaning up after the dance lessons and he makes
reference to, okay, let me put the ironing board away and let the
air out of all the balloons, insinuating the dance lesson was a burlesque act.
And I remember hearing it, and of course this was a recording.
I wasn't hearing it live, but I remember hearing it and thinking, how
did they get away with that? In like nineteen fifty two when that broadcast
aired. Yeah, yeah, well they had their workarounds there how they could
sort of get things past the censors. And of course there was a famous
stick that they did in both radio and television. As many comedians have recited
this variation of this story. They would intentionally put in the dirtiest joke,
maybe something explicit they know would never be allowed on the air, so the
sensors would be distracted by that and say take that out, and not say
take out the other thing, like the ironing board gag. They didn't notice
it, So that way they would sneak in the thing with this sort of
decoy that they knew would never get on the air. Clipnster Off is with
us. Outrageous is the book, and it is the history of being outraged
by the entertainment industry throughout the years. You have several specific examples like Will
Rogers, our own Will Rogers. No oh yeah, yeah yeah. People
do not know this story. And of course people know Will Rodgers in Oklahoma,
but other places in America people just know the name, they know the
catchphrase. Never met a man I didn't like, but they don't really know
why he was famous. Of course, he was a syndicated columnist. Will
Rogers says his syndicated column is really what made him famous. He was a
star in vaudeville and then the Zigfield Follies on Broadway, and of course in
movies. He was under contract to Fox, the same studio that had Shirley
Temple in the early nineteen thirties, and in nineteen thirty four, Will Rodgers
was doing a coast to coast radio broadcast for the Shell Oil Company. The
name of the show was the Shell Chateau and he was introducing a western roundup
song. I think it was called the Last round Up. It was like
a cowboy song, and Will Rogers introduced it by saying, you know,
it may sound like a cowboy song to you, but it's just a good
old N word spiritual to me. But he didn't say en hyphen word.
He said the word. And then people thought, well did I mishear that,
because even in nineteen thirty four, you did not say that word on
coast to coast radio. It was already taboo. NBC and CBS has policies
against using that word on the radio. And then the song ended and he
came back on. Will Rogers said, see, doesn't it sound like an
N word spiritual? It sounds like a great N word spiritual to me,
he said it three times. Well, the switchboard lit up. People were
complaining they could not believe that the great Will Rogers would use the most vicious
racial slur on coast to coast radio three times. And there was a protest
movement as a result, especially in the black press. Black newspapers, editorial
writers, African American letter writers all complain, how dare Will Rogers slur us?
How dare he insult our entire race? We demand that he apologized,
otherwise we're going to boycott all Shell gasoline stations and all Shell oil products.
So Shell went back to Will Rogers said, Okay, next week, you
gotta go on the air, say you misspoke and apologize because this is gonna
affect our bottom line. So Will Rogers goes on the air the next week
and he says, so it seems some of you listeners out there are a
little bit oversensitive. I used a word last week with no meaning of malice,
and you all took it the wrong way. I wasn't saying anything racist.
I've been using the N word my entire life, and nobody has ever
complained. Shell Oil was in the control room going, what are you doing
you've made it way worse. And so from then that moment forward, the
Black press became even more aggressive and they expanded their boycott campaign not just the
shell gas stations, but to movie theaters showing Will Rogers movies. And Will
Rogers films were pulled from Fox theaters in black neighborhoods as a result of this
boycott pressure. So this was just several months one year before Will Rogers died.
By the time that he died in August nineteen thirty five in the infamous
plane crash, this story was forgotten and at the time it was mostly covered
in the Black press. Variety and some of the showbiz periodicals covered it,
but mostly the white press ignored it. So the story today is completely forgotten.
But the whole controversy that occurred and his subsequent apology and non apology making
it worse is very, very very much like the type of story you would
hear today as timely as if it was in yesterday's time. Headlines and more
stories like this too available in outrage. Just Cliff nestro Off a history of
show business and the culture warsh Thanks for bringing that great story to us and
for joining us today. Thank you thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews,
the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday
afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia presentation