Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader (29 page)

The Cat in the Hat

• In the early 1950s, novelist John Hersey was on a panel that analyzed how reading was taught in a Connecticut school system. In May 1954,
Life
magazine published excerpts of the panel’s report (called “Why Do Students Bog Down on the First R?”). In it, Hersey wrote that one of the major impediments to learning was the dull “Dick and Jane” material students were given—especially the illustrations. Kids, he said, should be inspired with “drawings like those wonderfully imaginative geniuses among children’s illustrators, Tenniel, Howard Pyle, Dr. Seuss.”

• A textbook publisher read the article and agreed. He contacted Dr. Seuss and asked him to create a reading book. The publisher sent Seuss a list of 400 words and told him to pick 220 to use in the book. The reason: People felt this was the maximum that “kids could absorb at one time.”

• “Geisel went through the list once, twice and got nowhere,” reports
Parents
magazine. “He decided to give it one more shot; if he could find two words that rhymed, they’d form the title and theme of the book. Within moments,
cat
and
hat
leaped off the page. But then it took him 9 months to write the entire book.”

At least 8% of the U.S. population is the result of unwanted pregnancies.

Condoms used to be an embarrassing subject. Now they’re advertised in the magazines that BRI members often stash in the bathroom. Here’s some condom trivia.

O
RIGIN

Condoms were invented in the mid-1500s by Gabriel Fallopius, an Italian doctor. (He was also the first person to describe fallopian tubes in medical literature.) His creation was made of linen and soon earned the nickname “overcoat”. Fallopius believed that they prevented syphilis. They didn’t.

NAME

Legend has it that condoms were named after the Earl of Condom, personal physician to King Charles II of England in the mid-1600s. The king feared catching syphilis from his dozens of mistresses and ordered the earl to devise a solution.

• Condom’s invention, a sheath made of oiled sheep intestine, became popular among the king’s noblemen (who were also looking for protection against venereal disease). It was the noblemen, not Condom, who called the prophylactics “condoms.” Condom hated having his name associated with them.

• Condoms became known as “rubbers” in the 1850s, when they actually
were
made of vulcanized rubber. These were thick, expensive, and uncomfortable. Owners were supposed to wash them out and reuse them until they cracked or tore. Disposable, thin latex condoms did not become widely available until the 1930s.

MISCELLANY

• Four billion condoms are sold worldwide every year—enough to circle the globe 16 times.

• How does the U.S. Food and Drug Administration test the strength of condoms? By filling them with air until they pop. The average condom swells to the size of a watermelon before it bursts. Government regulators also cut condoms into rubberband-like pieces and stretch them until they snap.

• Most Muslim countries forbid the sale of green condoms, because green is a sacred color in Islam.

If you bury a traffic ticket, it will decompose in about four weeks.

Even cartoon characters and dolls can be accused of being a bad influence on children. Here are a few who have caused major controversy.

T
he Character:
Mighty Mouse

The Controversy:
Did Mighty Mouse take cocaine on April 23, 1988, in the TV cartoon show,
Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures?

The Fight:
In 1988 a Tupelo, Mississippi, watchdog group called the American Family Association (AFA) complained to CBS about a scene in a
Mighty Mouse: The New Adventure
cartoon. Reverend Donald Wildmon, head of the AFA, described the scene as follows: “Mighty Mouse is down in the dumps, and he reaches in his cape, pulls out a substance and sniffs it through his nostrils, and from that point on in the cartoon he is his normal self.” Wildmon charged that the substance Mighty Mouse “snorted” was cocaine.

The Reaction:
CBS producer Ralph Bakshi, who was responsible for the cartoon, angrily rejected the accusation: “This is Nazism and McCarthyism all over again. I don’t advocate drugs—that’s death. I’m a cartoonist, an artist, not a pornographer. Who are these people anyway? Why does anybody listen to them?” According to Bakshi, Mighty Mouse was actually sniffing crushed flowers he had placed in his pocket during an earlier scene. According to the CBS version of the story, Mighty Mouse was sad because the female character he was attracted to did not love him. So he took out the flowers she’d given him in the earlier scene and sniffed them.

The Characters:
Popeye the Sailor and Olive Oyl

The Controversy:
Should Popeye and Olive take a pro-choice stand on abortion?

The Fight:
In July 1992, Bobby London, the artist who wrote and drew the syndicated
Popeye
comic strip for King Features, decided “to show these old cartoon characters coping with the modern world.” He submitted a strip with the following plot:

Ten percent of drinkers will go on to become alcoholics.

• Olive Oyl receives a baby Bluto doll in the mail and doesn’t want to keep it.

• She and Popeye get into an argument about what to do with it. Olive Oyl tells Popeye that she wants to “send the baby back to its maker.”

• Two priests happen to be walking by and hear the argument. They mistakenly assume that Olive Oyl is talking about having an abortion and try to persuade her not to do it. When that fails, the priests try to get passers-by to help. Olive Oyl tells them that “she can do what she wants to do, because it’s her life.”

The Reaction:
King Features fired London and withdrew the strip before it was published.

The Character:
Mattel’s Barbie doll

The Controversy:
Does Barbie promote the “radical agenda” of environmentalism?

The Fight:
In the wake of Earth Day 1990, Mattel decided to promote its new line of Barbie dolls with the “Barbie Summit,” an all-expenses-paid gathering of children who had submitted winning suggestions on how to improve the world. In the commercial announcing the contest, Barbie asked viewers how they would help make the world a better place—and offered a seemingly innocuous suggestion: “We could keep the trees from falling, keep the eagles soaring,” she said.

But the Oregon Lands Commission, an anti-environmentalist lobbying group, was outraged with the ad. They claimed it was exposing children to “the preservationist’s radical agenda.” “We want to wake up corporate American to the fact that powerful, monied groups are at work shutting down the engines of this country and they are doing it in the name of environmentalism,” the commission’s spokesperson claimed. The commission organized a boycott, telling its 61,000 members that buying Barbie dolls “would help stop timber harvesting.”

The Reaction:
Mattel went ahead with the promotion, which was a success. “We kind of thought,” explained a Mattel spokesperson, “how can anybody criticize a program that is designed to give children a voice in a world they are going to inherit?”

Forty-three thousand Americans were injured in accidents involving jewelry in 1991.

Recently, Citizen Kane was voted the #1 movie of the century. Here’s some info on America’s most celebrated feature film, provided by BRI member Ross Owens.

B
ACKGROUND

On October 30, 1938, the Mercury Theater of the Air broadcast a radio dramatization of H. G. Wells’s
War of the Worlds
, in which Martians invade the Earth (
Ed. note:
See “Mars Invasion,”
Bathroom Reader
#3). The plot was implausible, but the performance was so realistic that thousands of Americans believed it—and actually fled their homes or prepared for a full-scale Martian war.

The man behind the radio play was 23-year-old Orson Welles (who produced and directed the broadcast). The publicity he received made him a national celebrity, and two years later RKO studios hired him to direct
Citizen Kane
, a film about a newspaper mogul who destroys his life in an endless pursuit of power.

WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST

• In many ways, it’s amazing that
Citizen Kane
was ever made. Though its characters were supposedly fictional, the film was actually a scathing biography of real-life press baron William Randolph Hearst—head of the Hearst Newspaper chain and one of the most powerful people in America. Naturally, he wanted the movie stopped.

• When he learned that RKO was making the movie, Hearst tried to have the film destroyed. Working through the head of MGM studios, he tried to bribe RKO president George Schaefer with $800,000 (the amount
Citizen Kane
cost to make) to destroy the film’s negative. Schaefer refused.

• When that attempt failed, Hearst threatened to sue the studio for libel. RKO took the threat seriously; it delayed the film’s release for two months until its lawyers were convinced that the suit wouldn’t stand up in court.

• Hearst kept the heat on. Before the film hit the theaters, rumors began spreading that Hearst was planning to attack the entire film industry—not just RKO—in newspaper editorials. This frightened the major Hollywood studios (which also owned or controlled most U.S. moviehouses), so they refused to show
Citizen Kane
in their theaters. It had to premiere in smaller, independent theaters.

When asked, 38% of American kids name a movie star as their hero.

THE OUTCOME

• The film premiered in 1939. It was a commercial flop, due in large part to Hearst’s attacks...plus the fact that his papers wouldn’t accept advertising for it.

• Hearst’s influence was felt even at the Academy Awards—where Hearst supporters in the audience booed loudly every time the picture was mentioned. Nominated in 8 different categories (including Best Picture),
Kane
won only one award—for Best Original Screenplay. It lost Best Picture to a film called
How Green Was My Valley
.

• Orson Welles never recovered from the disaster. RKO refused to give him the level of artistic freedom he had making
Kane
, and most of his later film projects either failed or were never finished.

THE SECRET WORD

The Idea.
The first scene of the movie shows Charles Foster Kane crying out the mysterious name “Rosebud” on his deathbed. The name remains a secret until the last scene, when it’s revealed that Rosebud was the name of Kane’s childhood sled. The idea of giving Charles Foster Kane a sled was first suggested by Herman J. Mankiewicz, the film’s screenwriter. As a boy, Mankiewicz had had his favorite bicycle stolen, an experience he never forgot. He thought a similar story would be useful in the film.

The Name.
No one knows exactly how the sled got the name “Rosebud.” Some suggestions:

• Orson Welles sometimes told interviewers that Rosebud was the pet name Hearst had given mistress Marion Davies’s nose...but in other interviews, he claimed it was the nickname Hearst had given to Davies’s private parts.

• Welles’s biographer, Charles Higham, points out that the 1914 Kentucky Derby winner was Old Rosebud—and that a reporter in the movie suggests that Rosebud may have been a racehorse.

• Rosebud may actually have been the nickname of one of the staff’s ex-girlfriends. In 1942 a woman threatened to sue Herman Mankiewicz, claiming she’d been the writer’s mistress in the 1920s and that Rosebud was a nickname he’d given
her
.

The average Mother’s Day gift costs about $27.

Disorderly Conduct
and
Disorder in the Court
are two books featuring amusing selections from court transcripts. They make great bathroom reading material—especially for lawyers. These quotes are taken directly from court records. People really said this stuff.

B
ORED IN COURT

Defendant:
“Judge, I want you to appoint me another lawyer.”

Judge:
“And why is that?”

Defendant:
“Because the public defender isn’t interested in my case.”

Judge (to Public Defender):
“Do you have any comments on your defendant’s motion?”

Public Defender:
“I’m sorry, Your Honor, I wasn’t listening.”

JUDGE & JURY

Judge:
“Is there any reason you could not serve as a juror in this case?”

Potential juror:
“I don’t want to be away from my job for that long.”

Judge:
“Can’t they do without you at work?”

Potential juror:
“Yes, but I don’t want them to know it.”

Judge to Defendant:
“You have a right to a trial by jury, but you may waive that right. What do you wish to do?”

Defendant:
(Hesitates.)

Lawyer to Defendant:
“Waive.”

Defendant:
(Waves at the judge.)

UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY

Lawyer:
“Have you ever been convicted of a felony?”

Defendant:
“Yes.”

Lawyer:
“How many?”

Legal experts say: every year, about 12% of the U.S. population is arrested.

Defendant:
“One, so far.”

Judge:
“The charge here is theft of frozen chickens. Are you the defendant, sir?”

Defendant:
“No, sir, I’m the guy who stole the chickens.”

Defense Attorney:
“Are you sure you did not enter the Seven-Eleven on 40th and N.E. Broadway and hold up the cashier on June 17 of this year?”

Defendant:
“I’m pretty sure.”

ALICE IN LAWYERLAND

Lawyer:
“Could you briefly describe the type of construction equipment used in your business?”

Witness:
“Four tractors.”