Criticism and Controversy
Schafer has come under criticism from TV and radio historians who have noted his deceptive presentations in his albums. If Schafer could not obtain an actual audio recording of the event (as many of these bloopers occurred live and were not always transcribed onto recordings), he would simply hire actors and recreate the event—without offering any disclaimer. This led to some misrepresentations. For example, the blooper by Harry Von Zell described above was not recorded, so Schafer recreated it. Had Von Zell's mispronunciation occurred as the President was being introduced to an audience, as presented by Schafer, it would have been highly embarrassing. However, Von Zell's blooper occurred at the end of a brief presentation in honor of the President's birthday, which, while still embarrassing, was not quite as mortifyingly so as President Hoover was not present.
Schafer is historically remembered for an unwitting libel he committed by dramatizing an incident that never happened. In his vinyl record Pardon My Blooper!, Volume 1, Schafer replicated the famous radio show host "Uncle Don" Carney, who broadcast on WOR in New York City to millions of children from 1928 to 1947. In Schafer's brief drama, Uncle Don mistakenly believes his microphone is off, then utters a contemptuous indecency.
Schafer's motivation to recreate Uncle Don included widespread popular rumors, some surprisingly misremembered testimony, and a contemporary, though probably false story in Variety about one of Uncle Don's many imitators. On April 23, 1930 Variety reported that "about two weeks ago" an unnamed children's bedtime story announcer at an unnamed station in Philadelphia had blurted out—after the show had concluded and he believed the mic power was off—"'I hope that pleases the little b_______'" (sic). But—Variety claimed—the mic was open, the Federal Radio Commission was listening, bundles of complaining telegrams arrived, and the announcer was fired. Indecent language used in front of women and children carried great opprobrium in 1930, yet this stunning story did not appear in Philadelphia newspapers.
Again, no audio existed, so Schafer recreated this blooper. Schafer's "Uncle Don" segued from a gentle goodbye song to the children, then misopedically declared, "We're off? Good, well, that oughta hold the little bastards!" There is absolutely no factual evidence that Uncle Don ever said this, and Schafer's false recording perpetuates an unflattering urban legend that the real Don Carney spent his life denying.
Another example of a recreated blooper stemming from a second-hand report is that of a Canadian announcer stating "This is the Dominion network of the Canadian Broadcorping Castration," which utilized one of Schafer's voice actors. This alleged error has also passed on into urban legend in Canada, although it has never been confirmed as to whether it ever occurred.
Not all of Schafer's bloopers were recreated; one of his Pardon My Blooper albums, for example, included a rare outtake from a 1939 Bing Crosby recording session for "Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams" in which Crosby good naturedly starts swearing at his producer for changing the arrangement of the song he was singing. By the 1950s and 1960s transcribed recordings had become more commonplace, particularly for news broadcasts, so Schafer was able to include genuine recordings of some broadcasters, particularly the aforementioned Paul Harvey and Lowell Thomas, the latter being featured on several occasions.
Read more about this topic: Kermit Schaefer
Famous quotes containing the words criticism and/or controversy:
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
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