Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (34 page)

In the end, he got the revenge he wanted. The Democrats regained control of the Senate in 1922 and announced they were reopening “the Newberry case.” Newberry gave in to the inevitable and resigned. Ford never ran for office again.

P. T. BARNUM

Ran for:
U.S. House of Representatives

The Story:
In 1865, the world-famous showman (known for his alleged comment: “There’s a sucker born every minute”) ran for—and won—a seat in the Connecticut state legislature. The reason: he wanted to have a hand in abolishing slavery permanently. He was rewarded in 1867 with the Republican nomination for U.S. Congress. Strangely, his opponent was also named Barnum.

The rest of the country seemed appalled by the idea. In a typical editorial,
The Nation
called him a “depraving and demoralizing influence” and said Connecticut should be ashamed of itself. Barnum himself noted that by the election time, “half the Christian community” believed he wore “horns and hoofs.”

Outcome:
A Democratic landslide swept Connecticut, and Barnum was soundly defeated. The man responsible for innumerable hoaxes said
he
wanted nothing more to do with “oily politicians.” But in 1875, he was elected mayor of Bridgeport; and in 1877 he was again elected to the state legislature.

HUNTER THOMPSON

Ran for:
Sheriff of Aspen, Colorado

The Story:
In 1970 Thompson, the infamous “Gonzo” journalist, jokingly ran for sheriff of the glitzy ski resort as a “freak power” candidate. His platform: He promised to ban cars, tear up the roads and turf them, rename Aspen “Fat City,” and put stocks on the courthouse lawn to punish “dishonest” dope dealers.

Outcome:
Amazingly, he lost the race by less than 1,000 votes.

SHIRLEY TEMPLE BLACK

Ran for:
U.S. House of Representatives

The Story:
In the 1930s, little Shirley Temple was one of the world’s most famous movie stars. In 1966 she was Shirley Temple Black, a committed conservative Republican.

In 1967, the U.S. representative from her district died, and she ran for the Republican nomination in a special election. She started out as the odds-on favorite…but lost steam as her positions seemed more and more at odds with her compassionate little-girl movie character. In a magazine interview, for example, she belittled funds spent on rat control in slums, scoffing, “I’d like to know who
counted
the rats.” She was also a Vietnam hard-liner, while her opponent—a Vietnam vet with a war injury—was a moderate.

Outcome:
She lost the primary, 69,000 to 35,000, and was bitter about it for years. For some reason, she thought that if she’d had two more weeks to campaign, she would have won.

Can’t find anything to write on when you get a brainstorm? Do what these people did—grab whatever’s in front of you and start scribbling.

W
RITTEN ON:
A cocktail napkin

BY:
Rollin King and Herb Kelleher

THE STORY:
Kelleher was a lawyer. King was a banker and pilot who ran a small charter airline. In 1966, they had a drink at a San Antonio bar. Conversation led to an idea for an airline that would provide short intrastate flights at a low cost. They mapped out routes and a business strategy on a cocktail napkin. Looking at the notes on the napkin, Kelleher said, “Rollin, you’re crazy, let’s do it,” and Southwest Airlines was born.

WRITTEN ON:
Toilet paper

BY:
Richard Berry

THE STORY:
Berry, an R&B performer, was at a club in 1957 when he heard a song with a Latin beat that he liked. He went into the men’s room, pulled off some toilet paper, and wrote down the lyrics to “Louie, Louie.”

WRITTEN ON:
The back of a grocery bill

BY:
W. C. Fields

THE STORY:
In 1940 Fields needed money quickly. He scribbled down a plot idea on some paper he found in his pocket, and sold it to Universal Studios for $25,000. Ironically, the plot was about Fields trying to sell an outrageous script to a movie studio. It became his last film,
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break
(1941). Fields received screenplay credit as Otis Criblecoblis.

WRITTEN ON:
The back of a letter

BY:
Francis Scott Key

THE STORY:
In 1814 Key, a lawyer, went out to the British fleet in Chesapeake Bay to plead for the release of a prisoner. The British agreed, but since Key had arrived as they were preparing to attack, they detained him and his party until the battle was over. From this vantage point Key watched the bombardment, and “by
the dawn’s early light” saw that “our flag was still there.” He was so inspired that he wrote the lyrics to “The Star Spangled Banner” on the only paper he had, a letter he’d stuck in his pocket.

WRITTEN ON:
A cocktail napkin

BY:
Arthur Laffer

THE STORY:
In Sept. 1974, Arthur Laffer (professor of business economics at USC) had a drink at a Washington, D.C. restaurant with his friend Donald Rumsfeld (an advisor to President Gerald Ford). The conversation was about the economy, taxes, and what to do about recession. Laffer moved his wine glass, took the cocktail napkin, and drew a simple graph to illustrate his idea that at some point, increased taxes result in decreased revenues. The graph, known as the “Laffer Curve,” later became the basis for President Reagan’s “trickle-down” economics.

WRITTEN ON:
A napkin

BY:
Roger Christian and Jan Berry

THE STORY:
In the early 1960s Roger Christian, one of the top DJs in Los Angeles, co-wrote many of Jan and Dean’s hits with Jan Berry. One night he and Jan were at an all-night diner and Christian began scribbling the lyrics to a new song, “Honolulu Lulu,” on a napkin. When they left the restaurant, Jan said “Give me the napkin…I’ll go to the studio and work out the arrangements.” “I don’t have it,” Christian replied. Then they realized they’d left the napkin on the table. They rushed back in…but the waitress had already thrown it away. They tried to reconstruct the song but couldn’t. So the two tired collaborators went behind the diner and sorted through garbage in the dumpster until 4 a.m., when they finally found their song. It was worth the search. “Honolulu Lulu” made it to #11 on the national charts.

WRITTEN ON:
The back of an envelope

BY:
Abraham Lincoln

THE STORY:
On his way to Gettysburg to commemorate the battle there, Lincoln jotted down his most famous speech—the Gettysburg Address—on an envelope. Good story, but just a myth. Several drafts of the speech have been discovered—one of which was written in the White House on executive stationery.

Think your heroes will go down in history for something they’ve done? Don’t count on it. These folks were VIPs in their time…but they’re forgotten now. They’ve been swept into the Dustbin of History.

F
ORGOTTEN FIGURE:
Fanny Elssler, Viennese ballerina

CLAIM TO FAME
: A superstar of the 1840s, Elssler toured America for two years and inspired what newspapers referred to as “Elssler Mania.” Wherever she went, “The Divine Fanny” drew hordes of admirers. They rioted outside her hotel in New York and mobbed her carriage in Baltimore. In Washington, Congress adjourned so lawmakers wouldn’t miss her performance. Poems and songs were written about her. At the end of her tour, she went back to Europe and (as far as we know) never returned.

FORGOTTEN FIGURE:
Peter Francisco, American soldier

CLAIM TO FAME:
Every war has its working-class heroes. During the Revolutionary War, this 19-year-old, known as the “strongest man in the Colonies” and “the American Samson,” was the people’s favorite. They told stories of Private Francisco’s exploits—like the time in 1780, during a retreat, when he “lifted a 1,100-pound cannon and
carried
it to the rear”; the time when he was ordered by a British cavalryman to drop his musket and he used his bayonet to “lift the hapless horseman from the saddle”; the time in 1781 at Guilford Courthouse when, “with his thigh laid open by a bayonet, Francisco chopped down 11 British troops before collapsing.” By the end of the war, he had become the most famous regular soldier in the Continental Army. After the war, he was rewarded with a job as sergeant at arms for the Virginia legislature.

FORGOTTEN FIGURE:
Belva Ann Lockwood (née Bennett), pioneering crusader for women’s rights

CLAIM TO FAME:
One historian writes: “Lockwood’s entire career was a living example of women’s potential, even in the stifling atmosphere of the 19th century.” In 1873, at age 43, she became an attorney; and in 1879, she was the first woman to plead a case before the United States Supreme Court. She persuaded male lawmakers in Washington to pass a hill awarding equal pay to women employed by the federal government. In 1884 and 1888, she ran for president as the candidate of the National Equal Rights Party…and won Indiana’s electoral votes—something no woman candidate has done since (at least, not yet).

FORGOTTEN FIGURE:
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, Civil War soldier, the only woman to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor

CLAIM TO FAME:
Achieved national prominence during the Civil War, serving as a nurse and later as a spy and surgeon (she was the first woman to hold a medical commission). In the field she dressed like male officers, wearing gold-striped trousers, a felt hat encircled with gold braid, and an officer’s greatcoat. She always wore her hair in curls, though, so that “everyone would know that I was a woman.” For her service to the sick and wounded, President Andrew Johnson awarded Walker the Congressional Medal of Honor; she was the first and only woman in history thus recognized.

“Immediately after the war,” writes one historian, “her attire was so notorious that she was arrested on several occasions for ‘masquerading as a man.’ However, Walker was never prosecuted, since a grateful Congress had passed a special act granting her the right to wear trousers, in recognition of her wartime services.”

Walker avidly campaigned for women’s political rights…and for their right to wear pants. She also campaigned against cigarettes; she always carried an umbrella “with which she batted offending cigarettes from the mouths of startled men.”

She wore her medal proudly, but in 1917, when Walker was 85, a government review board revoked it (along with the medals of 911 other Civil War veterans) on the grounds that “nothing in the records show the specific act or acts for which the decoration was originally awarded.” When asked by the Army to return her medal, she replied, “Over my dead body!” “She wore the medal every day, and was wearing it when she took a bad fall on the Capitol steps” on her way to petition Congress for one of her reform causes. A few months later she died…and when she was buried, the medal was still pinned securely to her Prince Albert coat.

Businesses spend plenty of time and plenty of money setting up elaborate promotions. Sometimes they backfire so badly that they’re funny (to us—not them). A tip of the BRI hat to Nash and Zullo’s
Misfortune 500
for much of the info here.

C
ompany:
United Airlines

Promotion:
“Fly Your Wife for Free”

Businessmen were invited to buy a ticket and bring their wives along at no charge. Part of the promotion included a letter from the airline thanking people for taking advantage of the offer. Soon letters poured in to United from angry wives saying
they
hadn’t been their husbands’ companions, and demanding to know who had.

Company:
MCA Records, Canada

Promotion:
Press kit for the “Miami Vice” soundtrack

The cops on TV’s “Miami Vice” nailed a lot of drug smugglers in the 1980s. When the show’s soundtrack was released, MCA Canada sent reviewers copies of the tape…plus a small bag of white powder (it was sugar). Bad idea. Critics howled that MCA was promoting cocaine use. MCA Canada tried to blame the idea on their California parent company. Then they found out it came from their own promotions department. “Well,” a spokesman explained, sheepishly, “normally our promotions staff isn’t that creative.”

Company:
Rival Dog Food

Promotion:
A media event to publicize Rival’s new dog food In the mid-1960s, the president of Rival invited the press to lunch. He brought along a special guest—a pedigreed collie—which sat at the main table with him and was served Rival’s new “all-beef dinner” for its meal. A clever way to get attention, except that the dog wouldn’t eat it. Wouldn’t even sniff it. “In desperation,” write Nash and Zullo, “the Rival president reached into the dog’s bowl and ate the stuff himself—to the cheers of reporters. The next day, newspapers carried stories with headlines such as RIVAL PRESIDENT EATS DOG FOOD, BUT DOG WON’T.” “I’ve never used an animal since,” said the chairman of Rival’s PR firm, who was fired the next day.