“You’re in the Navy now!” Maybe we should’ve formed a press gang and grabbed people off the street.
Back in the 1970s, a friend of mine got a grant from a state university to start a humor magazine. I was to be one of the editors.
We would need writers, and other editors; so we announced a public meeting to try to find some. Bring samples of your work, our advertisement said. The meeting was open to all, and some two dozen attended.
My idea was, “Give everyone a shot, see what they can do, and take the best.” But my friend the publisher was not too sure. “I’m really bothered that there was only one black man at that meeting tonight. There should be more. We will need more blacks. Maybe we should recruit some.”
“Maybe we can hide in a doorway and grab a few as they’re going by!” I said. “For cryin’ out loud, it was an open meeting, open to all, and everybody who wants one gets a tryout. Are you going to make skin pigmentation a qualification for writing for a humor magazine? That’s not funny! That’s pathetic.”
He gave in, because I told him I’d quit if he didn’t. Everyone who wanted to was allowed to work on the magazine. We published two issues before the grant ran out.
I wonder how we would’ve made out if we had to make a profit and pay all our employees. Betcha anything we’d’ve gone under. Maybe we should have kidnapped a couple of blacks and forced them to write jokes at gunpoint. “Make us laugh, if you know what’s good for you!”
But liberalism is never funny, and their racism is never racism.
You are totally correct. Well written.
Sure would like to hear more about your humor magazine sometime.
I don’t know if any copies of it have survived; it was almost 50 years ago.