This is a PS to my last post about Alistair Cooke:
Below is Tom Lehrer's script for Whatever Happened To Hubert?, from his 1965 album 'That Was The Year That Was' http://bit.ly/aqToae
By way of preamble, it's worth saying that nobody took themselves less seriously than Hubert Humphrey, who was acknowledged even by political enemies to be a true gentleman, self-deprecating and amusing in company - you get the feeling he would have enjoyed Lehrer's send-up. Also, the story about Lyndon Johnson's comment is apocryphal: they were good friends.
"I wonder how many people here tonight remember Hubert Humphrey. He used to be a senator. From time to time you read something about him pinning a medal on somebody or making a speech, or every now and then you read something in one of those Where Are They Now? columns. Whatever became of Deanna Durbin and Hubert Humphrey and so on. This became quite an issue last winter at the time of Winston Churchill's funeral when President Johnson was too ill to go and somebody suggested that he send Hubert and he said 'Hubert who?'; And all America was singing...
Whatever became of Hubert?
Has anyone heard a thing?
Once he shone on his own,
Now he sits home alone,
And waits for the phone to ring.
Once a fiery liberal spirit,
Ah, but now when he speaks he must clear it.
Second fiddle's a hard part, I know,
When they don't even give you a bow.
'We must protest his treatment';
Says each newspaper reader.
As someone remarked to Schubert,
'Take us to your Lieder';
(Sorry about that)
Whatever became of Hubert?
We miss you, so tell us please.
Are you sad? Are you cross? Are you gathering moss
While you wait for the boss to sneeze?
Does Lyndon, recalling when he was VP,
Say, 'I'll do unto you like they did unto me?';
Do you dream about staging a coup?
Hubert, what happened to you?"
Tom Lehrer c. 1970
