Smile, Darn You, Smile
By ED FISHER
I: CH of the popular arts in America is taking its turn at the new game of spoofing the President. So far there has been a JFK Colouring Book, a best-selling collection of funny-captioned political photographs (a la Private Eye) called Who's in Charge Here? and Vaughan Meader's whoppingly successful gramophone record. A comic strip called Caroline is in the works, and a portfolio of sheet music entitled Sing Along with Jack is being rushed to press as fast as a new technological break-through in the mediaeval craft of music-engraving will permit: spec(' is of the essence since it is now apparent that the first- corner in each department of the Muses is bound to make a fortune. Doubtless there are furious races being waged among choreographers, rug- weavers and manufacturers of 'portrait' table- cloths.
The second-corners in each medium—I was about to say 'imitators'—have not dune nearly as well. 'Imitators, though, is a misleading distinc- tion since nearly all these products are imitations of each other. The • tyle and formula have been fixed. The tone is invariably 'good-humoured' and politically simple-minded. No renaissance of savage political wit is intended. Mr. Kennedy, the putative victim. is supposed to entoy the fun and invite the author to his next White House Arts Dinner. Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen is supposed to enjoy it almost equally well; only a few 'far-outs' like Khrushches and Goldwater are dealt what are meant w be stinging slaps. The jokes are primarily based on the President's accent, his family, has wealth, ills intorrnality, his presumed 'flip approach to stutly problems of State. The total effect is over whelmingly adula- tory, a roughneck's valentine. a squirming 'we love you, Jack, warts and all expressed in beatnik, which is not a jargon that lends itself easily to declarations of love or affirmation. this is what makes the feat so endearing to the buyers: it satisfies a fierce. newly awakened public need, a need to render the language of cynicism—parody, wisecrack, mimicry—into an unaccustomed vehicle of praise. This is precisely what most of the nation's Young Enlighteneds had been trying to do for themselves since Kennedy came on the scene, precisely the tone of transition they have been trying to take in their painful climb out of the pit of Total Disillusionment which. was the intellectual fashion of the Eisenhower years. the produdt of this effort may he mawkish but it is curiously touching, too, and hopeful.
Unfortunately, this attempt to build a bridge between the Old Cynicism and the New Idealism has become big business, and since it has been amply proved that the prize is exclusively to the swift in each artistic medium, standards of taste have begun to plummet. The frenziedly thrown-
together Sing Along with Jack book, for instance,
will consist of familiar old tunes with such titles as 'I'm Called Little Caroline,' Vive la Dynasty,' 'I Dream of Jackie with the Bouffant Hair' and
similar facile horrors. So far the theory that since Mr. Kennedy is a lidder.he cannot object
to being kidded back has held good. But some unlucky 'satirist' is bound to push him too far and be taught the Lesson of Cuba. all over again.
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