The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT 'Punch' Takes a Sock at America By William E. Bohn The original idea which inspired the current anti-American number of the British magazine Punch I challenge any man to discern...
...And now, just when their elegant, eloquent and superbly tailored Prime Minister gets his nerve up and, in the old British way, sends troops against one of the lesser breeds?why, we decide not to go along...
...I confess that as far as I am concerned this issue of Punch is successful...
...That, surely, is enough to bring their hatred down upon us...
...And don't worry lest these essays widen the present gulf between the two great English-speaking nations...
...The Redigested Digest is, it seems to me, the most successful feature of the issue...
...Here is a publication directed against America by Englishmen—and its humor rests on the assumption that we on this side of the water are Victorians...
...It takes one back to college days and the endless take-offs on successful Broadway shows...
...The things the writers say against us are parallel with those which George Bernard Shaw kept flinging at the English: We are stodgy, stiff, pretentious, have religiosity instead of religion, politics instead of statesmanship...
...The jokes directed against the Americans are chiefly aimed at institutions and qualities which we have inherited from the English and which we still share with them...
...Such cranky schismatics were singing their hymns and preaching their doctrines all over England while America was still the red men's happy hunting ground...
...Canada...
...Laughing together may help us forget our differences over Nasser...
...These English writers are making fun of the same things that we make fun of ourselves...
...Paul Dehn's Oklahomov is a charmingly successful example of the old-fashioned parody...
...It is easy to think of reasons why we are not especially popular among the citizens of that cozy, tide-bound isle...
...We have shared with them I forget how many billions in order to stiffen the bones of their sterling...
...But when articles were accepted and the issue was finally put together, something strange took place...
...But this sort of sectarianism is one of our most English characteristics...
...There is one feature of this number about which I am inclined to do a little carping...
...I am not, of course, objecting to getting a laugh out of such antics...
...The Reader's Digest is one of our most English institutions...
...The USSR and Red China are the only independent countries outlined in a color of their own...
...Britain and Western Europe are designated American colonies...
...Not all the sketches come off, but three or four are good enough to make you forget your troubles...
...There was no surer, easier way of making a hit with the customers...
...THE HOME FRONT 'Punch' Takes a Sock at America By William E. Bohn The original idea which inspired the current anti-American number of the British magazine Punch I challenge any man to discern from a study of its text...
...The peculiar combination of health, religion and free enterprise which characterizes one of America's most popular and readable journals is spoofed in a most delightfully successful way...
...These are never touched...
...So a lot of Britishers probably don't like us...
...The mastery of the American lingo exhibited here and in companion sketches proves better than anything else could do how closely the sharing of plays has drawn the English-speaking world together...
...Under this heading Alex Atkinson gives hasty descriptions of nine or ten minuscule American religious sects...
...There could be no more sincere compliment to American dramaturgy than such a cleverly turned satire...
...And, of course, the success of this enterprise all over the world and in a dozen languages proves that it surmounts any national lines...
...Some of the lyrics are really superb...
...One feature of this issue of the famous funny paper should be studied by classes in psychology and social science...
...There arc plenty of features of American life which conic to us from Ireland or from the Continent...
...Now, when they attack a small and relatively powerless nation, we stand off in a coolly critical way...
...Twice, when they were attacked by the Germans, we came to their rescue...
...If some Americans had not thought of it first, the English would have invented it...
...The members of this sect—all 82 of them—believe that only virgins and Republicans will get into heaven...
...This propaganda comes as a strange feature from a journal published in a oountry which has sent its troops to Africa and complains because we have not gone along...
...South America...
...I can easily imagine a group of editors discussing an issue of Punch with a special punch directed against the guys who made themselves so unpleasant when the Tommies were heading for Port Said...
...That is the "Handy Guide to U.S...
...I think it would have been funnier, incidentally, to entitle it the Predigested Digest...
...The first one...
...for example, is the Separate Union of Old Order Gospel Conference...
...The only feature which is a complete failure is the "Map of the United States Empire...
...The jabs are at our theater, our religions, our government, our politics—all inherited in direct line from the home of the Puritans...
...Faiths...
...Australia, a good part of Africa and some features of Asia belong to Yankeeland...
Vol. 39 • December 1956 • No. 50
