Life, 1928-10-12 · page 7 of 44
Life — October 12, 1928 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This Will Rogers column critiques a 1924 presidential campaign for degenerating into personal attacks. Rogers argues the candidate under discussion won't resort to mud-slinging, contrasting whispered scandals with loudly publicized ones. The text references specific attacks: questions about a candidate's attendance at Mother Lodge, the White House, and Tom Heflin's range. Rogers notes Republicans (not "Kinsmen") are making Oklahoma look foolish with narrow attacks. The illustration shows two mules being worked hard—a visual metaphor for exhausting political labor or the strain of campaigning itself. Rogers's point: politicians should discuss substantive issues rather than personal character attacks, which he views as beneath serious political discourse. The satire defends dignified campaigning.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
OUR CANDIDATE WON’T SLING MUD “The Things They Whisper Ain’t as Bad as What Watt the Campaign is degenerating into just what I thought it would. It started out to be honorable, But honor in politics is just as much lost as John W. Davis's platform of “honesty” was in ‘24. It was a “noble experiment” but it just dident bring home any soup bones. It started in by “Whispering”—but Al can't whisper. He has a bass voice, and anytime he whispers he is shouting. Well, at first, we was all hearing so many whispers that it begin to look like everybody that spoke to you had lost their voKe, We layed it to bad colds for awhile, then we discovered that everybody could- ] ent have Phenomonia at once. So it finally dawned on us that it was “Scandal.” We dident know it was scandal, for in politics practically everything you hear is sandal, so a thing has got to be mighty scandalous to be worth repeating. Well the funny thing about it was the They Shout Out Loud” by WILL ROGERS things that they had been whispering was not as bad as the things they had been saying out loud, But it was just the idea of whispering that made everybody sore, So they quit whispering and started say- ing worse things at the top of their voice. Al kinder put the soft pedal on whis- pers down in the old home State of Oklahoma. I don’t know why he picked on us, We wasent the originators of bed linen for wearing apparel. Why dident he go to Cocacolaville? That's the Mother Lodge. Why did he make the great State of Oklahoma look like she was so narrow that she dident want anybody to get through the White House door with a cross? Why dident he pick out Tom Heflin’s range, or Jim Watson's pasture? It’s not Klansmen that are making us look so funny in Oklahoma, it’s Repub- licans. You see the State was originally layed out and settled by Democrats who made the run in there and took a chance on building it up. Well being a new Country and needing some moncy to develop it wtfy we had to do some borrowing, so there is where the Republicans got in. They made the loans, and took care of the foreclosures, and now we can’t get ‘em out for they own everything. But Al made the boys a mighty good talk there and they treated him like a Gentleman which was unusual treatment for a Politician, Well that speech was kinder what you would call the starting of the open air scandal, Right then Scandal went from a whisper to a shout, and now they are at it hammer and tongs. Hoover won't answer any of it but Work is so busy heaving back denials and cooking up new ones that it’s the only time he has ever lived up to his name. If he had expended as much energy in his Cabinet position as that, we would have been out of debt. Mr. Moses (not the Lawmaker one, comicbooks.com