Senator Bobby - Wild Thing - 45rpm Novelty! 1967
My 10th grade history teacher played this for us in class one day. He was trying to make the point that nowadays the Kennedys are heavily mythologized, but back in their day, comedians used to get a lot of mileage out of mocking their idiosyncratic speech patterns. After their assassinations, this kind of humor quickly went out of style, and they became martyrs.
I was thinking about this today (for whatever reason it randomly popped into my head), and I thought, "Hmm. I wonder if that old record my history teacher played for us is on Youtube." Turns out, it is.
...It would have been back in 1993 and 1994 that I was taking 10th grade American history. Strange to think that about the same distance of time now separates 2019 from 1994 as 1994 was separated from 1967. I wonder if there are 10th grade high school history teachers now who are teaching their students about 1994.
Funny how the Simpsons' Mayor Quimby brought that all back around again, isn't it? I suspect the Kennedy inflection became mockable again once stories finally started filtering out about what a bunch of inveterate horndogs (if not outright sexual predators) the Kennedy men were.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it occurred to me after posting this that people make fun of the Kennedy accent all the time.
ReplyDeleteI wonder. Possibly my high school teacher was just wrong about this. Or possibly by the 1990s, enough time had passed that it was no longer such a sensitive issue. (That, plus the revelations about the Kennedys sex lives, as you mentioned.) What's your impression? Can you think of anyone mocking the Kennedys before the Simpson?
Maybe it also helped that Quimby was just a generic Kennedy instead of specifically mocking Bobby or John?
I also did a bit of research on the song, and it turns out it wasn't just an obscure track. It was actually a hit back in its day:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senator_Bobby
...but I certainly don't remember hearing this on any of the oldies stations. Probably the Bobby Kennedy tragedy killed the popularity of this song specifically. Maybe that's what my high school teacher was thinking of.
I was a devoted listener to the Dr. Demento show through the '80s, and I don't recall this particular piece. OTOH, had DD played it (and it is absolutely in his wheelhouse) I would not have registered it as noteworthy -- it's not the sort of thing that tickles my funny-bone. But there wasn't a president from any administration that did not receive a thorough drubbing on that show.
ReplyDeleteYou've nudged me to do a little historical research. Quimby first appeared on "Bart Gets An F" -- October 1990. I guess your high school teacher was not into watching The Simpsons on Sunday nights!
>>>it's not the sort of thing that tickles my funny-bone
ReplyDeleteNo? Ah, it definitely got a smile out of me.
>>>I guess your high school teacher was not into watching The Simpsons on Sunday nights!
Yeah, it's a fair bet he wasn't. He was from the generation more familiar with pop culture in the 60s than the 90s.
The world-wide web is failing me. Back in the '70s Rich Little (impersonator of the stars, and international comic sensation! also: Canadian) had a shtick impersonating Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker delivering a speech in French:
ReplyDeleteJD: [gruff, unintelligible pidgin French]
Translator: "My ladies, and ... my eye."
etc.
I thought it was hilarious, even though I didn't know John Diefenbaker from John Adams. I recall hearing it another time over the radio while my dad was driving me somewhere, and it cut him up. I haven't asked (yet) but suspect he probably voted for "Dief The Chief." Anyway -- its inability to fetch giggles among people not intimately familiar with the political scene is probably what contributes to its current obscurity.