From Pish to Posh

A TREASURY OF AMERICAN POLITICAL HUMOR edited by Leonard. C. Lewin. 476 pages. Delacorfe. $6.50.

American political humor is as old as American politics, and the best of it has been collected in this volume. What strikes a reader as funny, writes Editor Leonard Lewin, depends on whose "sacred cow is gored." So he has selected his material from the right, the left and the middle, showing that political wit knows no ideology. Included are David Crockett's tale of how he traded drinks for votes when running for Congress; Artemus Ward on Honest Abe's reaction to his nomination ("Oh, don't bother me, I got 200,000 rails to split before sundown"); and Will Rogers on Wilson ("President Wilson says the Old Testament stayed as it was written and he thinks the League of Nations had just as good authors as it did"). Coming a bit closer up to date, there is H. L. Mencken on Warren Harding's inaugural address ("It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh"); and a constituent's letter to Texas Congressman Ed Foreman ("My friend over in Terebone Parish received a $1,000 check from the government for not raising hogs. What I want to know is what is the best kind of farm not to raise hogs on and the best kind of hogs not to raise").

And finally, Lewin quotes Oliver Jensen's version of the Gettysburg Address as it might have been delivered at an Eisenhower press conference: "We have to make up our minds right here and now as I see it, that they didn't put out all that blood, perspiration and--well-- that they didn't just make a dry run here, and that all of us here, under God, that is, the God of our choice, shall beef up this idea about freedom and liberty and those kind of arrangements, and that government of all individuals, by all individuals, and for the individuals, shall not pass out of the world-picture".

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