Didn't play then either
This morning The Economist has an article on how the DC shutdown 'plays in Peoria'. Good coverage of ordinary people, and especially good understanding of gerrymandering. (Brit journalists often fail to pick up the dirty realities of American politics.)

Fibber and Molly were the main source of the 'plays in Peoria' theme. They grew up in Peoria, played in vaudeville, then on radio. Fibber (Jim Jordan) made a strict rule for the writers of his radio series: If it couldn't happen in Peoria, it won't happen on the show. He especially wanted to avoid inside jokes that would only be meaningful to Hollywood fatcats or NY intellectuals**. This restriction makes Fibber episodes a good reference for common culture: if you hear a word or idiom or topic, you can be sure most Americans understood it.

I always have some Fibber episodes on my bedtime playlist. I've recently bought a set of episodes from the late '50s that hadn't been in the usual circulation before. Nice to get 'new' stuff from a reliable source of entertainment.

Last night I was listening to a 'new' episode from 1955 in which Fibber writes an outraged letter to his Congressman. The show's writers rarely dipped into partisan politics, but this time they were pissed enough to sternly denounce a bill that would shut down all education funding until the budget was balanced.

Sounds familiar. A shutdown didn't play in Peoria in 1955, doesn't play now!



**Footnote: Chief writer Don Quinn left in '48 to do Halls Of Ivy. In this grotesquely condescending and unctuously smarmy 1951 interview he makes it painfully clear that he chafed under Fibber's restriction, that he felt Infinitely Intellectually Superior to those horrid midwestern Amerikkkans, and that he HATED HATED HATED having to obey Bourgeois Capitalist Imperialist Running Dog Slobs.

Labels: Danbo

  ¶ 6:54 AM