Posted 5:58 PM by Gene

The obitu -- excuse me, birthday greetings for Bob Hope have a somber tinge. Perhaps it's because he ceased as an active entertainer years ago -- unlike George Burns, who kept going until just months before he died -- and he is reported to be deaf and blind. Perhaps it's because so many of those he worked with -- Der Bingle, Dorothy Lamour, Jerry Colonna, just to mention his sidekicks -- are long gone. So is the entertainment industry he worked in, replaced by "media" and its streamlined synergized junk machine. There is also the kind of uninformed condescension from news hacks that marked the centenary of another show-biz survivor, Irving Berlin, a gung-ho Birchite Republican who wrote sappy patriotic tunes (he also wrote Top Hat and Annie Get Your Gun and some very unRepublican bawdy lyrics besides). And what news story is complete without the instant cliche -- that Hope was a "radical," a Lenny Bruce for the heartland. It is true Hope specialized in topical jokes, which led Andrew Ferguson to write an article for The Weekly Standard (on a Library of Congress tribute) blasting him for his corporate comedy -- his prepared jokes were always safe, formulaic, and unfunny. This we must expect from the man who played for Ike and "Whoops! Pardon" Ford and Gen. Patton and for the whole of bigwig society, who performed for the troops for so long (for too long) one of his touring company, the long-ago-beauteous airhead Raquel Welch, sneered that what the soldiers needed were prostitutes, and who invented the joke-writing assembly line, whose practitioners included Groucho Marx' singularly unfunny son Arthur, who wrote a score-evening "tell-all" of the man. And yet, no denying it, from my too little exposure to him in his prime, he was probably one of the funniest comedians who ever lived -- a man with a zinging delivery, perfect timing, and what is more, a way with ad libs, which his detractors never noticed and which he himself used too seldom. He was handsome, and suave, with more than a little of the roue in him -- he was allegedly a notorious womanizer. He could sing -- certainly not like Bing, but very pleasing, and he was as meant to sing Burke and Van Heusen as their mutual crony Bing. He starred in many popular movies, was an enduring hit on radio and television, and lived a thoroughly charmed life. Let us not say happy birthday to Bob Hope -- that would be like saying happy birthday to Ronald Reagan -- but let us remember him at his best, and mourn that the several generations of show-business giants he represents will not pass our way again.