Thursday October 15, 2020
17 Days* until the election on November 3rd
97 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
There’s so much to talk about. Instead I’m going to write about Eddie Haskell.* He was the character on “Leave It To Beaver” that was the older brother, Wally’s, “bad” friend.
- The actor who played Eddie, Ken Osmond, died May 18th.
If you aren’t familiar with Eddie Haskell it would be hard to describe him and his role. He represented the road parents did not want their kids to take in 1950s America. Eddie would be the kid not going to college. Instead he would be the one getting a job as a mechanic or some blue collar job. Occupations looked down upon at that time.
But the real genius of Eddie Haskell was his faux fawning over June Clever, Beaver’s mom. It wasn’t sexual. There was no innuendo. It was a genuinely phony display of interest. Whenever he was in the presence of June Clever it was as if this switch went off. He was overly indulgent and phonily interested and polite. It was over the top, but restrained.
I’ve known guys to have a switch that goes off whenever a woman enters the room. I can be in the middle of a conversation with one of them and a woman enters the room. Bang, switch goes off, their honing radar goes on, and I’m forgotten.
It is said this was true of Robin Williams, but in a comedic on-stage presence. If you were talking to him and another person entered the room. Bang, the switch went off and he went into his on-stage persona. Maybe, the number was after two people – I forget.
So it was with Eddie Haskell. He would be talking with Wally, Beaver’s older brother, about something like dropping out of school to make big money fixing cars, and Beaver’s mom, June Cleaver would enter the scene. Eddie would stop everything to fawningly say hello to her, and then ask some question concerning her well being.
It was patten of phony pseudo-ingratiating, much like Trump does when talking about something, which he knows nothing about. (Ie “As you know, many people are saying …” etc.)
Eddie had a standard pattern of phrases too. “Hello Mrs. Clever. My you are …”
She always played it straight. She never demurred. It was always, “Hello Eddie … “ and there was no acknowledgement that it was phony. Maybe a “that’s nice” comment, but that was about it.
As soon as she left the scene Eddie would drop back into his normal voice and go back to whatever he had been talking about. There wasn’t any malice to what he was saying or doing to anyone, not even Beaver, the younger brother. I mean he might say something to try and elevate his stature in regards to “the Beav” as Wally called his younger brother. But it was always done with this phony air of authority, at best.
Haskell was often imitated by us watchers of the show, because it was so easy to do, and because it represented a “don’t you get it?”, “don’t you see I’m being obviously disingenuous?” kind of humor.
It was fun when everyone “got it” and was thus “in on the joke.” It was awkward when someone took it for real and didn’t understand.
You can only be funny with obvious bad manners or bad behavior if other people recognize what you are doing for what it is.
I rarely do such humorous things now. Too many people “don’t get it.”
*We are now within spitting distance of the election and my counts may be off. I will revise and recalibrate soon.
17 Days* until the election on November 3rd
97 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
PS Keeping His Promise? (WTF?)
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