Word: telethons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...guilt can only be a part of the answer; the Cerebral Palsy telethon out-manipulates this affair any day. In that one, they get 100 or so little victims up on a stage and parade them around for half an hour or more in front of the cameras. And anyway, most Americans are very good about assuaging their guilt without parting with cash. No, what does it for Jerry's kids is this--his annual show is an affirmation of most every value near and dear to a great mass of countrymen known, inadequately, as Middle America, people who feel...
...thing) huge stretches of what might be called Middle America." Because, to a sizeable and representative body of people who do not write music reviews but do travel to Las Vegas and know what they like, Wayne Newton is a paradigm of American entertainment. The Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon against Muscular Dystrophy is only 20 minutes old, and Wayne is the first entertainer to take the stage, a position befitting his status as king of Vegas. A nice down-tempo Johnny B. Goode, and then he segues into a classic, the classic maybe. "To dream the impossible dream...
Once an hour, WCVB-TV--Boston's Channel 5 and one of the 231 stations on the telethon's "Love Network," take over, and it's time for local celebrities. Not Harry Ellis Dickson, not Elma Lewis, not Charles Laquidara. It's Rex Trailer, a former cowboy who had a Saturday morning children's T.V. show about seven years ago. Now he leads trips to exciting Walt Disney World over April school vacation and, on Labor Day, helps raise money for Jerry's kids. Chet Curtis and Natalie Jacobsen, Channel 5's anchor team and newlyweds who recently had their...
...wants to hug another human again; a man with frozen facial muscles who says he wants only to smile. Jerry Lewis, talking about how long he's spent in this crusade, and then stage-whispering, "I got to get a dollar more than last year...I would like this telethon not to happen, but until this scourge is eradicated, it will. We will finish this battle, with you or without you. It will be a lot easier with...
These insights come from "Courses of Instruction," commonly known as the Harvard course catalogue. The catalogue is a little like the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon--too much of a good thing. Last year's edition--the 1981-82 version will not be released until September 8--ran an imposing 796 pages, far more than even the most dedicated of scholars can digest in the days before they must select their courses. The catalogue actually shows Harvard at its best; bureaucratic frustrations, inaccessible professors, and cranky students are nowhere to be seen. Harvard can be the best place...