Heather Cox Richardson:

From Cafe and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is Now & Then. I’m Heather Cox Richardson.

Joanne Freeman:

And I’m Joanne Freeman. This week we’re going to talk about the relationship between comedy and politics and pretty obviously we got the idea because of the big event that took place this past Saturday night, the Annual White House Correspondent’s Dinner, also known as Nerd Prom, which I hadn’t heard until the preparing for this episode. And I love it because it’s so descriptive. Significantly to Now & Then, Heather, you were in attendance, so we should start off with just a few words from you as to what it was like.

Heather Cox Richardson:

So, I think people should be aware, it’s very big. I don’t do numbers really, but I believe it’s 2,600 people were in attendance. It’s in a giant, giant room. I actually thought of you, Joanne, because it was such a public space kind of scene. Tons and tons of people, obviously beautifully dressed. But what I took from it and why I thought of you in addition to the public space was that as a historian, the power of watching 2,600 people turn out to watch comedians make fun of our president and vice president to their faces was such a powerful reflection on the idea that our leaders are responsible to the people and they do not have the right to silence us.

And it was especially powerful because of Evan Gershkovich, who is still in prison in Russia for writing about the Wagner group. And in some ways, criticizing the Putin regime in Russia. And literally, one of our own is in prison for doing what 2,600 people were openly doing in gowns and tuxedos.

Joanne Freeman:

It was a performance of democracy.

Heather Cox Richardson:

That’s exactly what it was. And again, I sort of felt like maybe people didn’t get that because there’s so much criticism about how “Oh, it’s good.” So, it’s whatever. By the way, it’s not a taxpayer funded event. The White House Correspondent Association is a private organization that raises that money for scholarships and awards and to fund their own work, which is to sort of bring order to the press. And interestingly enough, the whole tone of it came from the fact that the White House Correspondent Association literally organizes, because the press has become such a free for all in the late 19th and early 20th centuries chasing after Grover Cleveland, for example, when he got married to Francis Folsom.

And to the point that he’s like, they’re on their honeymoon and it’s like paparazzi, and he starts to push back. And that goes on for a while until during the Wilson administration, Wilson starts to hold press conferences and he thinks they’re silly. He thinks people are asking stupid questions. So, there’s a rumor that Congress is going to start deciding who can speak, and that of course makes the reporters go bonkers. And they organize their own group, the White House Correspondent Association, and that’s in 1914.

And then, in 1921, they’re so jerked up by the fact that they have a newspaper man in the White House. And then, Warren G. Harding was a newspaper man and not a bad newspaper man, much better newspaper man than he was a president. For their annual dinner where they elect their people, they have a real dinner. And they modeled on the Gridiron Club, which is the one you and I deal with in the 19th century, which is a club that roasts politicians. That’s why it’s the Gridiron. And the Gridiron Club is famous for its comedy sketches and how brutal they are to people like William Howard Taft who hates them.

So, they decided to do something similar and it’s prohibition, and of course there’s not supposed to be any liquor. And of course, Harding looks the other way at that. So, their first annual dinner in 1921 is a raucous affair. And while Harding doesn’t go, many of the members of the White House do. And that’s what gives it its flavor. So that’s why it gets its kind of glitzy comedy reputation.

Joanne Freeman:

But what I love about what you’re saying here is it does indeed have this sort of glitzy black tie, big dinner reputation. It also has this political angle, though it’s a performance of democracy. But in addition, I don’t want to say it’s a form of protest, but it’s a place where there are strong political statements being made. All of those things at the same time, which to me really captures some of the power of humor. It can be all of those things at the same time. Really good humor can be biting and nasty and funny and relevant at the same time.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And it is no coincidence that Trump would not go to the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, called it silly, wouldn’t have any part of it. And people looked at it in the lens of present politics. But to have a president who not only did not go himself but told his staff and the people in his administration that they couldn’t go either, that was him saying, “We are not responsible to the people. We don’t have to listen to this. We can do whatever we want. We’re not going to be part of that.” It was a really big deal.

Joanne Freeman:

It was a strong statement. We’re not responsible to the people. This is like, initially when he became president, he would go onto Air Force One and not turn around and wave at the press because he didn’t really care. But also, the obvious side of not going, number one, you’re not performing democracy. And number two, you are refusing to have anyone make fun of you.

Heather Cox Richardson:

More than not performing democracy. You’re destaining to democracy. And it was a big deal to have the president and the first lady and the vice president and the second gentleman there, and there were some real barbs aimed at them and they were funny about, I mean, it was funny. First of all, Biden was funny. Roy Wood Jr. was funny too. And I have to say before we go on, two things. First of all, major shout out to the restaurant workers who were at a dinner that fed 2,600 people. Good food, on time, and cleaned up. The other shout out is here to this podcast. Because one of the things about Wood was his standup routine was very good, but a lot of it was pretty deeply in the weeds.

You really had to know the political scandals in the journalist column for the last year in order to understand them. And there was a really funny constructed joke about NFTs that got almost no response. If you listen to the tape, you could tell people didn’t get it.

Roy Wood Jr. (archival):

Just when you think of everything you could buy on earth, a billionaire will come up with a new thing. You all will buy space rockets, you bought Twitter. This man bought a Supreme Court justice. Do you understand how rich you have to be to buy a supreme, a black one on top of that. There’s only two in stock, and Harlan Crow owns half the inventory. We can all see Clarence Thomas. But he belongs to billionaire Harlan Crow. And that’s what an NFT is.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And I’m like, “I get it. I get it. I’m the only person who gets it because I know what an NFT is and how they work because I’m on the Now & Then podcast.

Joanne Freeman:

We had a long conversation about it.

Heather Cox Richardson:

That’s right. Before and after, because I thought they were really, really cool. And our guy, Matt Billy, explained it to us what they wanted.

Joanne Freeman:

Matt, you’re getting a shout-out. One of the things that apparently President Biden took advantage of and did quite well was at one point really capitalizing on the Dark Brandon meme. And there’s a long, entangled history of Dark Brandon, which actually to me really highlights precisely what humor can do. You can’t really control it. As far as the dark Brandon Meme goes, I’m sure many of you have seen it. There’s a stylized image of Biden, and he’s smiling and he has these red laser beams shooting out of his eyes. Supposedly, that started in one way or another because of a bunch of different things meshing together at a NASCAR race and a crowd chant was misheard.

And it became on the right a kind of code for F. Joe Biden. Then in 2022, far right, Donald Trump supporters created dark MAGA memes and created a kind of authoritarian looking version of Trump. And he had sometimes blue lasers for eyes. And immediately of course, that led to Dark Brandon with this sort of seemingly sinister Joe Biden with the red lasers coming out of his eyes. Except liberals embraced it, right? And particularly, when Biden did something powerful as president, Dark Brandon came right out. To the point that, and this stunned me last week, his campaign for 2024 is selling Dark Brandon merchandise.

I will confess, I bought a Dark Brandon t-shirt. Because the simple fact that they seized it, used it and now are campaigning with it, said so much about the culture of this moment and says so much about humor. Of course, I went on to Twitter and post and everything else, and I said, “You know what? Dark Brandon it’s like Yankee Doodle. And of course, I am the human being who would say that, but it’s exactly the same in the sense that Yankee Doodle, the song, stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni, was mocking the colonials. It was the British making fun of the colonists.

These idiots, they stick a feather in their cap and they think there’s some big fabish character, The Dolts. And the Americans said, “Oh yeah, okay, yeah, we are Yankee Doodle.” And they would play the song. If the British had poorly had a battle or lost a battle, they would play Yankee Doodle back at the British. A great example of this, which is you can morph and reshape and own things that are aimed at you as weapons. If you do it in a clever enough way, you can shoot it right back at the people who aim it at you. And I’m using all those shooting metaphors because humor really is in many ways a complicated and really powerful weapon.

Heather Cox Richardson:

One of the things that Biden did very well, he was actually very good, very funny, I shouldn’t have said that with such surprise, but it’s not always that a leader can step into that role because there’s so many possible pitfalls. You can’t make the wrong joke. And he poked a lot of fun at his age, which of course is the elephant in the room for the upcoming election. And of all the jokes he made, there was one that was spectacular.

Joe Biden (archival):

Folks, I know a lot has changed in the press. I’ve had a lot of conversations with a lot of you. This is not your father’s press from 20 years ago. No, I’m serious, and you all know it better than I do. But still, it is absolutely consequential and essential. After all, I believe in the First Amendment, not just because my good friend Jimmy Madison wrote it.

Joanne Freeman:

It’s a founder joke. What that does is, it’s a way of him, sort of thumbing his nose and saying, “Yeah, I am old. What of it? I can even make a joke about it.”

Heather Cox Richardson:

The whole point of this episode today is look at the way humor has been used to shape American society and to reflect American society. So usually, I like to make fun of you and say, “We don’t have anything to do in the Early Republic because nothing happened.” And it’s killing me because there’s literally no way you can do American political humor without starting in the early republic.

Joanne Freeman:

So, Seba Smith from Maine created a satirical character named Jack Downing that he used as a kind of mirror and prod to mock and expose political anxieties and political conflict in the nation at this point, and democracy actually were really growing. And it’s a great example of how humor can be used as a weapon. Now, Smith was born in Buckfield, Maine in 1792. He attended Bowden, started his own newspaper, the Portland Courier in 1829. And he began including in the courier letters that he created from the fictional character Jack Downing. And the Downing character as Smith created him, was this simple rural young man who wrote about his adventures as he traveled to Portland to sell “his load of axe handles and mother’s cheese and cousin Nabi’s bundle of footings.

And he was very folksy. When you read it, it’s mis-spelled. It looks like it sounds, and the letters in one way or another show him attempting to climb the economic and political ladder. But eventually, Smith has Downing travel to Washington DC to lobby for a post in the Jackson administration. And he ultimately goes up the ranks in the federal government and he begins to comment the Downing character and through him Smith on the politics in Washington.

And I should say at this point, so Downing is writing letters. The form of which this comedy took was letters to various relatives. Newbie thinks this is highly funny. But what’s interesting is, what he was doing would’ve been the form that most people got their political news in, which was newspaper letters. People would write letters to editors about what was going on. The idea of newspaper correspondent that comes from this early practice. You would send people to Washington, they would correspond with the editor and write letters about what they saw. So, Downing is taking part in that practice in a sense, mirroring or repeating what people would see anyway in newspapers.

As a matter of fact, at one point within Downing’s letters, he decides that to save postage, he’s going to ask a newspaper editor to print his letters. So, then everyone back home can see them and he doesn’t have to send them. So, he’s kind of even making fun of himself.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And that whole concept of being a fake person, writing to talk about politics in the 19th century really takes off after Major Jack Downing. And when we were prepping for this, I said, “I have a really hard time with this because Major Jack Downing is so much more ubiquitous than Seba Smith that I always have a hard time remembering, which is real and which is fake.” Because Lincoln talks about Major Jack Downing. I mean, everybody knows Major Jack Downing. And you’re going to see these letters throughout the 19th century. Even L. Frank Baum, who wrote The Wizard of Oz, has his own fake character.

But in this period, because people are really struggling with what a democratic small and big D too Democratic government looks like. And so, I’ve always loved Major Jack Downing because he’s supposed to be every man. But he’s every man and he is sort of street smart, but not world smart. So, he’s always puncturing the balloon of people who are running the country, who always are being manipulative or whatever.

Joanne Freeman:

Which is the best way to stab at with a not very sharp knife, meaning they’re not trying to kill. But people in positions of political power have a certain amount of pomposity and self-importance. So, a great way to swat at them and skew them a little bit and find humor in them and expose the pomposity, is to do this very sort of thing.

Heather Cox Richardson:

So, if you’re a politician who’s trying to be taken very seriously, you recognize that you have to stay within the lines a little bit so that you’re not too easy to make fun of. And that recognition that a comedian has a pipeline to potential opposition is no small thing.

Joanne Freeman:

So, Smith himself, later in life, he writes massive book called 30 Years Out of the Senate, which is in itself comical because every senator in this period is writing 30 years in the Senate. So, already he’s swatting at that. But he says in the preface that he created Downing, “Wishing to show the ridiculous position of the legislature in its true light, and also, by something out of the common track of newspaper writing to give increased interest in popularity to his own newspaper.”

But what he says, which is interesting, and along the lines of what you were just saying, Heather, he says, “Even politicians laughed.” So, for example, in the early 1850s, Downing goes away and then Downing comes back in the 1850s as a character. And he begins in these letters to advise President Franklin Pierce on the possibility of annexing the entire world, which even now makes me laugh. So Smith, as Downing says, “Now, when all this rumpus gets to its highest pitched in Europe and all the nations get at it pell-mell, it’ll be just the time for us to strike and go annexing and carry out our manifest destiny in a handsome manner, our manifest destiny to annex the entire world.”

Heather Cox Richardson:

As a 19th century historian, you could write a book about that because of all the different schemes to do exactly that in different factions. And he just cuts through all that.

Joanne Freeman:

And says it. One little anecdote I want to mention before we go on, only because it showed someone appealing to the public by using someone who appeals to the public. And that is in 1833, John Quincy Adams, who was tickled by Downing. And if you’ve seen a picture, a photograph, a daguerreotype of John Quincy Adams, he’s not a chuckling kind of fellow. Even he was amused. But he writes in his diary about how Tennessee legislator David Crockett went to the newspaper, Joseph Gales, who was editing the National Intelligencer. And requested him to put in the newspaper, “And inform the public that he had taken for lodgings two rooms on the first floor of a boarding house where he expected to pass the winter and to have for a fellow lodger Major Jack Downing.”

So, there you have David Crockett, who himself makes himself a character in a lot of ways. And he goes to the newspaper upon getting in town and says, “Yeah, tell folks I’m boarding with Jack Downing.” That’s as the kids would say, “Meta.”

Heather Cox Richardson:

And blurring the lines obviously between, if you’re reading the news…

Joanne Freeman:

Yes.

Heather Cox Richardson:

I find it interesting that, as I say, I always have to think about which is the author and which is the character between the two names. Because Major Jack Downing is so much bigger a character for historians who study this period than Seba Smith is. But Major Jack Downing ends.

Joanne Freeman:

He does, and obviously between when he ends in the 1850s and the Civil War, things get to be ridiculously understated, spicier in the realm of national politics. I just want to mention one example of the humor of that period because it is really striking that in the late 1850s, there’s a lot of humor smacking at the government in part out of frustration, in part mocking them, in part prodding them, in part sort of pointing a finger, venting, frustration, highlighting what the press is or isn’t doing.

And a great example of this is in this magazine called Vanity Fair, which is not related to the modern one, which was a humor magazine. And at one point, I joked it should be called Congressional Fights Quarterly because it really makes fun of all of the fighting and craziness going on in the Congress in the late 1850s. But like a lot of the other humor we’re talking about here, it used the form of how people would come across news at the time as part of the joke. There is, for example, “one story” that captures precisely what congressional debate would’ve looked like in the newspaper.

But as you’ll hear in a moment, this comedy piece is showing precisely what’s happening in Congress, i.e., nothing. So, in this little piece, it’s a back and forth of debate in Congress. Mr. Snooks, Democrat of Coney Island, rose to introduce some resolution concerning the State of the Union. Mr. Grimes, Republican of Kennebec, said he hoped November would discuss such exciting manners in these times. Mr. Jones, opposition of South Amboy wished to present a bill for the better preservation of the Confederacy. Mr. Robinson, Republican of Siasconset expressed great sorrow that gentleman should introduce such disturbing subjects now.

So, basically, it’s one person after another person after another person saying, “Oh, no, no, no, it’s too upsetting for us to talk about the State of the Union.” But it’s said in the precise fussy language that it would’ve appeared in the newspaper. Again, really smacking at the fact that Congress at a moment of crisis is doing nothing.

Heather Cox Richardson:

As you read that, I’m struck by how much it sounds like the way the current day Congress and legislators talk about gun safety. Ooh, can’t talk about that now. One of the things about humor, I think, especially when there seems to be such an extraordinary disjunction between what ordinary Americans want and what lawmakers are doing, is that there’s more and more voices saying, “Come on guys, this is ridiculous.”

Joanne Freeman:

Well, Alice Miller is Alice Duer Miller. Her great, great grandfather was William Duer. And so, early Americanist geek that I am, when I saw her name first Alice Duer Miller, I thought, “Duer, Duer? Is she related to William Duer?” And then, I discovered, lo and behold, she is. William Duer is this financial speculator in the late 18th century who causes a huge crash by grasping around investing in things and reinvesting in things and taking money and giving money. And I should note that we covered William Duer in our June 2022 episode, “The Mirage of Money or NFTs WTF?”

So, Alice Duer Miller is a descendant of my William Duer. Alice Miller, basically is someone who uses satirical verse to talk about the hypocrisy of the anti suffragist movement. So, she’s a woman using satire to smack at people who oppose giving woman the vote. And again, along the lines of what we’ve already said, satire and humor mean that you can be a lot more direct in what you’re doing because you’re being indirect. So, in February of 1914, Miller began publishing a column entitled Our Women People in the New York Tribune, which was a major newspaper of the time.

The title was a response to President Woodrow Wilson’s contentions that he would “bring the government back to the people.” And in the first weeks of her column, Miller kept showing collections of Wilson’s statements revealing his blaring blind spot about giving the vote to women. In not a very long amount of time, she began also publishing satirical poems and short blurbs, again, pointing to the hypocrisy of things like statements, slogans like giving the vote to the people and then not giving the vote to women.

So, for example, she has a dialogue between a father and a son that hits this very, very directly. In the dialogue, the son says, “Father, what is a legislature?” And the father says, “A representative body elected by the people of the state.” And the son says, “Are women people?” And the father says, “No, my son. Criminals, lunatics, and women are not people.” The son says, “Do legislators legislate for nothing.” The father says, “Oh, no, they’re paid a salary.” The son asked, “By whom?” The father, “By the people.” Son, “Are women people?” “Oh, of course, my son. Just as much as men are.” Smacking at the hypocrisy and the ridiculousness of that stance.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Well, and what’s interesting about that particular exchange is that this has been one of the arguments for women’s suffrage since the Civil War. Hey, hang on a minute here. We’re paying taxes. Why are we not able to have a say in how those taxes are spent? And that’s actually going to be a wedge into women’s suffrage in the American West in the States. So, it’s a hot political issue that people are getting really hot under the collar about and fighting about. But this just cuts right to the heart of it in a way that how do you not reason this? I mean, how do you not see how ridiculous this argument is when it’s that obvious and short and kind of funny in exchange? But she gets better than that.

Joanne Freeman:

She gets more specific in relation to Vice President Thomas Riley Marshall who said his wife’s opposition to women voting decided his views on women’s suffrage. He said, “My wife is against suffrage, and that settles me.” So, Miller writes a poem in Marshall’s voice suggesting that this sort of passive man is presenting this flimsy excuse for not supporting women’s suffrage. And here’s her short poem.

“My wife dislikes the income tax, and so I cannot pay it. She thinks that golf all interest lacks. So now, I never play it. She is opposed to tolls repeal. The why I cannot say. But women’s duty is to feel and man is to obey.” Now, what I love about that is she’s striking at the ridiculousness of saying that women shouldn’t vote, but in doing it, she’s smacking at the manhood of Marshall in saying, “Well, my wife says that she doesn’t like it, so I won’t say it either.” It’s powerful humor because it’s got that kind of edge to it. Oh, really? So, she says it. And so, you’re going to say it because you have no power, no thoughts of your own. I don’t know. I think that’s kind of biting.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And it’s in doggerel verse, which is incredibly easy to remember. Du-du-du-du-du-du-du. And that is way more catchy, an early earworm, if you will, than any two-hour speech on the subject. And she had so many wonderful things that she wrote about, but this one just rings so freaking true that I think we have to nod to it, and that’s that she ties opposition to female voting into a subject that even today is a hotly contested subject. Many people will get exactly what she’s saying. When in May of 1914, she wrote the cutting-edge criticism of women’s role in society under the title, “Why We Oppose Pockets for Women.”

So, she sets the whole thing up to look as if she’s talking about pockets when of course she’s really talking about the votes. “So, the reasons that women don’t have pockets is because pockets are not a natural, right? The great majority of women do not want pockets. If they did, they would have them because whenever women have had pockets, they have not used them.” Joy is losing it. “Because women are required to carry enough things as it is without the additional burden of pockets. Because it would make dissension between husband and wife as to whose pockets were to be felt. Because it would destroy man’s chivalry toward woman if he did not have to carry all her things in his pockets.

“Because men are men and women are women. We must not fly in the face of nature. Because pockets have been used by men to carry tobacco pipes, whiskey flasks, chewing gum, and compromising letters. We see no reason to suppose that women would use them more wisely.” God, I just love that.

That’s amazing.

Joanne Freeman:

Now, Miller continued to write rather prolifically until her death in 1942. She actually became a member of the famed Algonquin Roundtable. I’m guessing many people listening now have heard of this. It was this famous table where these witty, intelligent literary figures would engage in conversation. It’s still there.

Heather Cox Richardson:

It’s literally a table in a restaurant.

Joanne Freeman:

Yes.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And it was full of the writers and the people around the writers for the New Yorker. This is James Thurber and E.B. White and Alexander Walcott, and they were all, of course, under the editorship of Harold Ross and Dorothy Parker and Shirley Jackson who wrote The Lottery. And just this incredible set of wits, of course, but people who were really expanding understandings of humor and the way to skewer a modern society with it. What I find fascinating about her and why I put that whole setup there is because she actually quite secretly wrote a speech for Woodrow Wilson.

Alexander Wilcott told the story that Woodrow Wilson was supposed to announce a new policy to the nation, and Woodrow Wilson was famous for going on and on and on and maybe being more earnest than people cared about. So, they hired a ghost writer to write the speech for him, and the result was a White House statement that was so much like Wilson and so masterly that the president issued it as his own without altering any of it. The speech was so masterful that the Manchester Guardian actually cried out in envy of a country that could have at its head a man who was such a master at prose and at conveying his intentions.

And of course, the ghost writer was Alice Miller, who had taken a side apart from Wilson before that. And the reason that I care about that so much is because here’s a woman who is a master of her craft and who is known as a humorist, but gets it. She knows how to communicate, and she could put that in service to politics if that were her medium. But in fact, because of the circumstances that she can’t vote, that she can’t at the time run for officer herself or do any of those things, she needs to put it in the service of a different kind of political engagement, which is making fun of the people who are passing legislation or not that she cares deeply about.

Joanne Freeman:

She knows the language and logic of politics. She has to write about it with such wit and logic and intelligence. And the fact that she ends up writing this speech for Wilson shows how skilled she is at capturing and understanding and using and tincturing the logic and the culture and the language of politics.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And interestingly, Wilson and his handlers recognized her skill. It’s interesting that she did it. It’s as interesting that he tapped her to do it.

Joanne Freeman:

Right. Plus, there’s the statement that the Manchester guardian is envious about such a man being at the head of a nation as such a master of pros and some part of Migos.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Yeah. Well, how often could we say that in history? How often could we do that? And then we come to one of my absolute favorites. It turns out, maybe I can explain that, Dick Gregory. Dick Gregory was born in St. Louis in 1932 to working class parents. His mother was a housemate. He was drafted into the army in 1954, and he quickly drew the attention of his fellow GIs for his ability to do standup comedy, which I guess is worth mentioning, is actually incredibly difficult to do.

A dear friend of mine is a standup comic. And so, I go to the shows, and man, it is such heavy lifting. I mean, it’s everything we do to comment on the modern world, but you have to be funny. Anyway, so people who can do it, and there aren’t that many, you can draw attention in a hurry. When he gets out of the army in 1956, he begins to perform in Chicago. And this is of course, two years after the Brown vs Board of Education decision, beginning the real process of desegregation in the country. And in 1961, Hugh Hefner, who had founded Playboy, listened to one of his sets and hired him to start working in the Playboy Club in Chicago. And quickly, he just takes off.

He ends up performing in New York and San Francisco Comedy Clubs and an ABC News documentary on Black America features him. What he did is to do the same thing about the United States and race issues as Alice Miller had done about sex issues. But interestingly enough, what one of the reasons I find Gregory so fascinating is because he does it as himself. He does it in the first person. And that’s a whole new genre of criticism and critique of society when you’re not hiding behind a fictional character or you’re not hiding behind anonymity, even if people know who you’re writing it. But rather you’re saying I, and that assumption of that identity, that comedic identity to comment on racial issues has an immediacy, a rawness that really characterized the civil rights movement, and he was freaking funny.

Joanne Freeman:

It’s just striking the power of I, and particularly, of a black man standing up with his own identity and with humor, speaking truth to power. There’s a raw power and a reality to that that you can’t get past. But you’re right, I can’t even imagine what it takes on so many levels to stand up and do that in this time period.

Heather Cox Richardson:

It has an immediacy that’s really hard to get away from in a way that Alice Millers was new for the era, and it’s got those jingles, and you can feel the whole pockets thing is hilarious. But listen to this.

Dick Gregory (archival):

And we have a lot of racial prejudice up North, but we’re so clever with it. Take my hometown, Chicago. I mean, you can’t see it just going in there. When Negros in Chicago move into one large area and it look like we might control the votes, they don’t say anything to us. They have a slum clearance. You do the same thing on the West Coast, but you call it freeways.

Heather Cox Richardson:

That’s exactly what the freeways did. Not only in the West, but all over the country, and people cared about the freeways. They cared about the fact that their lives were being carved up. The immediacy of that just really jumps out at you.

Joanne Freeman:

So not surprisingly in this era, that kind of humor, the immediacy and the pressingness of what it is that he’s talking about here, he gets into the world of activism and he ends up being a close ally of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And he travels to Birmingham, Alabama in May of 1963, where he was jailed for four days by the notorious Sheriff Bull Connor. The day after he got out on bail, Gregory performed before a crowd of 2,000 people at St. John’s Baptist Church in Birmingham, where he repeatedly made fun of Connor and other racist southerners

Heather Cox Richardson:

In Birmingham, the sheer courage.

Joanne Freeman:

And listen to what he said, which couldn’t be more direct and require more bravery. He says…

Dick Gregory (archival):

I don’t know how much faith you have in newspapers, but I read an article in the paper a couple days ago where the Russians, did you see this big, they gave it a lot of space where the Russians claimed that they found Hitler’s head. Did you even see that? Well, I want to tell you that’s not true. If you want to find Hitler’s head. Just look right up above Bull Connor’s shoulders.

Joanne Freeman:

Bam.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Spectacular, spectacular.

Joanne Freeman:

Bam.

Heather Cox Richardson:

So, Gregory gets involved more directly in politics and launches a bid to unseat Richard Daley as Chicago’s mayor, as a right in candidate. Actually, in the end, he got almost 20,000 votes, which is the most ever for a non-ballot candidate in the city’s history. And he continues to run for office, even for president as a protest candidate. But while he’s on his political campaigns, he also undertakes hunger strikes to protest the Vietnam War, and begins to be more and more involved in serious civil rights endeavors rather than in simply the incredibly sharp-edged comedy.

Joanne Freeman:

So, for example, during his presidential campaign, he actually printed fake dollar bills, putting his face in the place of George Washington’s face on the dollar bill.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Which is so powerful because, of course, the faces on our money are what people see every single day. They define our country. So, he puts his own face on fake dollar bills.

Joanne Freeman:

And some of the bills even entered circulation and were featured on the CBS evening news. Walter Cronkite actually held one up on air. Now, the Treasury Department condemned the entire gag, and there was fear very briefly that Gregory might be indicted for fraud, but he managed to play a role in diffusing the controversy, which I think is rather wonderful. He said, “Eventually the Feds had to return our money because we found out there was a federal law that said any facsimile of American money was a violation of the law. Well, our answer to that was, until you put a black person’s face on American money, nothing that has my picture on it is a facsimile of American money. So, they gave us the money back and we continued our campaign.” Again, bam.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Freak the power of that.

Joanne Freeman:

Yeah, yeah.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Freaking brilliant how he manages to do that. And again, his skewering of racial patterns in America was both so immediate and so revealing of the stupidity of it. It just made such a difference in American comedy, of course. But also, because one of the people who goes on to look up to him is George Carlin. And a lot of George Carlin’s edge really mirrors that of Dick Gregory’s. But it really brings home just how ridiculous the racial lines were in the same way that Alice Miller pockets suggested that this is just stupid, that women shouldn’t have the vote. And Gregory becomes such a skewering voice on race.

Joanne Freeman:

As you said at the outset, right? He’s using I. Now, twice I’ve said in response to his humor here, bam, because there’s such a power to it. But he’s making those direct stabs as himself, like that’s guts, that’s bravery, and that’s also in its way power.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Yes, it’s a demonstration. He is demonstrating that power at the same time and he’s doing it. And one of the reasons I sound so reverent is because when we were prepping for this, I realized that my first introduction to race issues was reading Dick Gregory’s, first of all material, but then his autobiography. I was a kid. I was very young, and I didn’t have any context of any of this. And for Dick Gregory to be your first introduction to race issues in the United States is obviously going to give you a different perspective than if your first introduction is somebody different than Dick Gregory.

And he really helps me now to think about the power of humor because the chances that my family would’ve had a collection of civil rights speeches in the late 1960s, just not that, I mean the bookstores didn’t have that sort of thing in Maine or all that. But somehow, somebody in my family got a copy of his writings and of his autobiography and liked it enough that it was sitting on the top of the TV, and I picked it up very young and read it. And you think of the sheer power of comedy to travel in places where political speeches might not, or political arguments might not, and certainly that lawmakers might not. But you think about the power and you think about the fact that Dick Gregory was really my introduction to race issues.

Joanne Freeman:

And you were a kid at the time, and this really touches on something that I think this entire episode shows, and that is that whether it’s coming from on high or not, humor, and particularly in the realm of politics, is a supremely democratic tool and weapon. There’s a contagion to it, and that’s its power. If people grab onto it and use it and understand it and share it, that’s when humor has a power. So, it’s people who can capture that and spread it around.

Heather Cox Richardson:

I agree with that, and I think that’s really important. I think that there is a way that comedians are trying to define the country, not just to poke back against power, but to say, this is my country over here, the one that has pockets, and it’s as real to me, and I am trying as hard to put it into shape as you are making the laws. So, it’s the commands of people out of power to say, “This is how I visualize society.” And it’s a huge counterweight to those in power who have a different vision. So, it is democratic as a vision. It’s also, I think, a political act to create that world.

Joanne Freeman:

It’s humor as politics. And what you’ve just described, Heather, is humor as activism, which brings us back to where we started because we started with you at this dinner and the president accepting and using and tossing back humor about his age. And what you saw going on in that room on the part of the president himself was a form of politics, it was kind of political assertion. Not necessarily activism as one might define it, but it was politics. So, he was performing and offering in a way, a kind of power that he was owning what was thrown at him and throwing it back at people.

And we’re now here talking about it. I’ve read about it all over the place this morning. Again, there’s a contagion to humor that gives it a power. But what’s particularly wonderful about it is that the people who start off giving a joke don’t necessarily have power over what it does or where it goes. It’s a supremely democratic form of activism in the sense that ultimately, it depends on the people who hear it.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And what really jumped out at me on Saturday night was the fact that our leaders, if they believe in the democratic system, they accept it. They don’t like it. They never like it. But under the First Amendment, they have no right to shut it down. And so that, I just have found very, very moving that the president and the vice president and their spouses sat there and took it. And that’s not something that happens in every country.

Joanne Freeman:

That’s democracy, and that’s a salute to the people.