Word: humorously
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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That courage sets Baker a little apart from the long and distinguished line of American newspaper humorists who preceded him, a line that is older than the nation itself. The first regular humor column in the New World appeared in Boston's New-England Courant in 1722 under the byline "Mrs. Silence Dogood," a pseudonym for young Benjamin Franklin. In one typical effort, Dogood/Franklin needled Harvard for turning out budding scholars who were "as great blockheads as ever, only more proud and self-conceited." Well, it seemed funny at the tune...
...perhaps because those masters flourished in simpler times, they were merely funny. Baker has taken newspaper humor a step further. He has turned it into literature?funny, but full of the pain and absurdity of the age. Those qualities probably keep a few readers away. Said an otherwise admiring Jack Rosenthal, assistant editor of the Times's editorial page, when asked to cite any deficiencies in the column: "Too serious...
Much of Baker's humor is the fife accompaniment to the Sousa march of his own sturdy good sense, as when he announced in a recent column his refusal to buy a car that cost more than the house he grew up in, $5,900. When Baker expresses pain, it tends to be with only the parody of a whimper, as in a 1977 column he titled "A Taxpayer's Prayer": "O mighty Internal Revenue, who turneth the labor of man to ashes, we thank thee for the multitude of thy forms which thou has set before...
When Syndicated Humorist Art Buchwald heard that Russell Baker had won a Pulitzer Prize, he addressed a memo to half a dozen of the nation's top humor columnists accusing Baker of spending $100,000 to lobby for the prize and suggesting a response to any queries about the award: "I have no comment until I read one of Baker's columns." When Baker received the bulletin, he fired off one of his own, thanking his colleagues for planning a gala testimonial dinner in his honor. "Unfortunately, I cannot accept," he added, "as I will be busy throughout...
Such is the state of professional relations among the nation's leading humor columnists that some of their best lines are written to each other, and some of their worst. Buchwald, 53, whose political word-cartoons now appear in 510 newspapers, has been trading quips with Baker since they met in Washington 17 years ago. On a bookshelf in Buchwald's office is a photo of Baker, with the inscription: "To Art Buchwald, who with Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon was all that made Washington worthwhile for ten long years...