HOUSE OF MIRTH

No longer do we have to turn on radio programs featuring Stoopnagle and Budd, Fred Allen, or even Joe Penner, in a desperate search for amusement. We have merely to listen to Hugh Johnson caterwauling about "musical blatant bunk from the rostrum of religion" in reference to Father Coughlin, or another "Pied-Piper (Huey Long) tootling on a penny whistle," all the while mixing his idioms in a grandiloquent style that is the despair of professional comedians. The newspapers also provide farcial tilts, with the highly electric crackles of the buffoon from Louisiana alternating with the heavy artillery of Senator Robinson. The wonder is that the professional comedians don't unionize in an attempt to preserve their interests and send a lobby to Congress.

Congressional competition, however, seems to be well started, and we suspect that the honorable senators would regard this lobby with grave disapproval, as an attempt to impinge on their senatorial rights and privileges. The pity is that the radio, so justly famed for providing the populace with what, they want, is not yet installed in our parliamentary chambers.

Some sorrow may be expressed by devotees when philharmonics, orchestras, radio dramas, and the like are forced off the other; but carpers must remember that a greater good will be served. Who knows, the nation may laugh itself out of the depression, despite a few fatalities among the more weakly constituted who are unable to stand the strain of an eight-hour laughing jag each day.

The possibilities have been only partly explored. "Stand by everybody. We are about to present the comic opera entitled "The Kingfish Departs from his Baton Rouge Aquarium in an Attempt to Get in the National Swim.' A shark named Farley," continues the narrator, "is threatening to gobble up the miserable invader" . . . And won't the senators howl with glee, and the radio listeners each rock back and forth in helpless mirth when they hear a few sombre stooges inquire "what about the public works program and the future of the NRA."