The late George Carlin, probably the closest thing this generation will ever have to possessing its own Swift or Voltaire, once satirized the advertisement industry with his verbal machine gun; a relentless fusillade of clichés and aphorisms concerning "knowledgeable, courteous, efficient, well-trained, friendly, professional salesmen" who, whilst "servicing the account", could provide the consumer with a "deluxe, economy-sized, user-friendly, state-of-the-art, moderately priced, modular, environmentally responsible.....".
Thumbing through a 1962 issue of The Levittown Tribune the other day, I was amused not only by the typical "he held the line in taxes" tommyrot (too bad the line moved whilst he was holding it) that one sees in electioneering today but how Levittowners, when I was in diapers, suffered to endure the sloganeering and the pitchmen who, unfortunately, had an uncanny gift for making even the most honest public servant seem too-good-to-be-true. One advert praises its candidates' as "men of proven ability, quality, integrity, and capacity" with such a coating of sugar that it must surely have created a spike in diabetes cases in Levittown. Local congressman John W. Wydler, a Levittown resident, is described as "a vote in Congress for the middle-income homeowner" which would be something akin to the Endangered Species Act in 2013.
Meanwhile, Baby Boom childrearing guru Dr. Benjamin Spock endorsed third party candidate Henry N. Purvis because "he understands that above all other issues is whether we can find a way to preserve the world for our children". A logical goal coming from someone named "Spock".
Perhaps the most interesting trend in this age before the ten-second soundbyte was the transformation of candidates into Batman/Superman cartoon action figures in a manner so over-the-top that one expects the villain of the piece to be a bully kicking sand in the face. The Hon. Alexander Berman was "an ardent cyclist and holds Nassau County's Number 1 bicycle license" according to the caption accompanying the sketch of him cycling about town. The Hon. Albert A. Oppido is shown, ala Churchill at Blenheim, painting a pastoral scene in watercolors whilst Sen. Edward J. Speno is seen in a hospital bed where he was once misdiagnosed with terminal cancer.
My favorite is the cartoon of District Attorney William Cabin in Mickey Spellane-meets-Dick Tracy panels shown arresting vicious thugs in dark alleyways and interrogating Nazi soldiers as he served as a translator in the U.S. Army. He is, the reader was informed, "one of the main reasons why gangsters and organized crime hoodlums find it unhealthy to operate in Nassau County". A kind of suburban Elliot Ness.
Capturing the essence of the Leave it to Beaver ideal, John Wydler, in one advert, is depicted mowing his lawn with a push-mower in his "modest Ranch-style home on the outskirts of Garden City". Outskirts: Makes it sound like he's got a whole frontier to mow and if he can do that by the sweat of his brow than he can handle whatever it takes to represent Levittown in Congress.
One is everlastingly grateful that this particular genre went extinct in subsequent decades otherwise we might see professional actors in carefully choreographed Youtube dramatizations depicting the candidates rescuing motorists from auto wrecks as the theme form Superman trumpets in the background. And, curiously enough, none of these cartoon versions of the candidates actually resemble the men they are supposed to represent. They are merely Eisenhower era stock images like one would see in a 1950's advertisement for pipe tobacco or hair tonic.
To their credit, the spin-doctors of 1962 didn't engage in mud-slinging or sandal-mongering. They were content to present their candidates as Charles Atlas, John Wayne, and Abe Lincoln all rolled into one.
Want to learn more about the history of Levittown and the surrounding communities? Visit www.levittownhistoricalsociety.org
