Seventy-five years ago this week, the 55-year-old columnist and entertainer Will Rogers, along with the aviator Wiley Post, died in a plane crash near Point Barrow, Alaska. This was before the advent of the 24/7 news cycle, so it took a while for word to get around.
It wasn't until the next day that Senate Majority Leader Joe Robinson, a longtime friend of Rogers', stood up on the Senate floor to announce: "Will Rogers, probably the most widely known private citizen and certainly the best beloved, met his death some hours ago in a lonely, faraway place." Another friend, Vice President John Nance Garner, was overcome with emotion when asked for a reaction, saying simply, "I cannot talk about it."
Today, Rogers is known for a handful of folksy quotations, a charitable fund that bears his name, and a 1990s Broadway musical, The Will Rogers Follies. But in the decade or so before his death, he was, as Robinson suggested, a figure of immense fame, popularity, and influence.
Rogers also invented a new style of political commentary. If he could see the result today, he would be horrified.
Born to a part-Cherokee family in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), Rogers started out as a trick roper on the vaudeville stage. Little by little, he added humorous remarks to his act. By 1916, when he joined the Ziegfeld Follies, he was a monologuist who punctuated his remarks with an occasional lariat twirl.
In 1926, Rogers began contributing a daily "Telegram" - a sort of pre-digital Twitter feed, between 50 and 200 words long - to the New York Times. Eventually, it was syndicated in 600 newspapers, making Rogers the country's most widely read columnist.
He was also the most influential. In 1930, American Magazine quoted an anonymous "Washington statesman" as saying, "You can never have another war in this country unless Will Rogers is for it."
From the beginning, Rogers focused on politics. He wrote with a comic perspective, but with shrewdness and perspicacity as well. One could quote him endlessly, but here's one gem from the early days of the Depression, when he took issue with those blaming President Herbert Hoover for the hard times: "Mr. Coolidge and Wall Street and big business all had their big party, and it was just running out of liquor when they turned it over to Hoover."
(Like Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, and Yogi Berra, Rogers is often credited with things he never said. For a choice selection of authentic Rogers quotes, see www.willrogers.com/says/will_says.html.)
Rogers wasn't the first humorous political commentator, but he was the first to make his name poking fun at presidents in a personal, familiar way. He pioneered the enterprise of political kidding, opening the door for Art Buchwald, Johnny Carson, Molly Ivins, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and many others.
But the style has changed over the decades: The Will Rogers wink has been replaced by the smirk and the sneer.
Rogers' approach wouldn't work today. He palled around with politicians like Robinson, Garner, and even Franklin D. Roosevelt in a way that would not meet current journalistic standards. Perhaps because of his need for their approval, he sometimes came across as deferential.
On the occasion of Warren G. Harding's death, he recalled a tiff he had had with the former president and said it was overblown. "I don't think I ever hurt any man's feelings by my little gags. I know I never willfully did it. When I have to do that to make a living I will quit."
Yet Rogers was never reluctant to get his licks in - at both parties' expense. One of his most justly famous cracks is, "I don't belong to any organized party. I'm a Democrat." On the eve of one election, he noted, "A flock of Democrats will replace a mess of Republicans. It won't mean a thing. They will go in like all the rest of 'em. Go in on promises and come out on alibis."
The crucial - and now obsolete - element was goodwill. Rogers often attacked acts of corruption and stupidity, but rarely individuals. Senators, he said, "are a never-ending source of amusement, amazement and discouragement. But the rascals, when you meet 'em they are mighty nice fellows. ... When you see what they do official, you want to shoot 'em. But when he looks at you and grins so innocently, you kinder want to kiss him."
Will Rogers was attended to and beloved because of the matchless way he combined sharp-edged humor with decency and integrity. That combination is gone from our political discourse, and it doesn't look as if it will ever return.