White Fang Obama and Soupy America

By Harold Witkov

The recent passing of television icon and funny man of the fifties and sixties, Soupy Sales, has saddened baby boomers across America. Soupy (Milton Supman) was best known for his Soupy Sales Show, which always featured a pie in the face moment for him, usually provided by a quick white paw on the screen (from a dog named White Fang). As a child, I can recall watching the show and always trying to anticipate just when the pie would strike.

Pie in the face humor goes back a long ways. To me, it always seemed to say to the recipient, "Ha, ha, the joke is on you."

As a youngster, I could not get enough Soupy Sales. Similarly today, it seems that many Americans cannot get enough President Obama. Whereas I would watch The Soupy Sales Show with "pie anticipation" for Soupy, I have quite a different feeling when President Obama is on the TV screen. To watch the President address the nation as he so often does gives me the anticipation that the thrown pie is instead heading our way and the joke will soon be on us.

Thomas Lifson adds:

For me, Soupy Sales will always be remembered for telling his audience of children to go look in Mommy's purse, and find a dollar bill, and put it in an envelope, and send it to him at WXYZ TV, Detroit. Somehow, there seems to be a lot of this spirit in Obama, except that he doesn't need the kids because he has got the IRS. And he also tells us that it is good for us.

Of course, Supman got into trouble over this, as plenty of innocent children took his advice. But it also made his enduring reputation all the more pointed.