Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [177]
Mother Smith said, “He makes me more than that. If I had a gun, I’d shoot him.”
For Dorothy, having read so many unkind things said about Betty Raye by the other candidates, the Carnie Boofer speech was the last straw. The next morning, after her “nine out of ten movie stars use Lux Soap” commercial, she broke with all convention and went out on a limb.
“You know, we never delve into controversy here on our show but darn it all and please excuse my French over the radio, but I just have to say something this morning. I, for one, am tired of some men, and you know who they are, going on and on about how a woman should not do anything more than stay in the home and take care of their family. Now, you know I am not against that. I am a homemaker myself. But these men have got to realize that times have changed.” Mother Smith broke into a rousing rendition of “How You Gonna Keep ’Em Down on the Farm After They’ve Seen Paree.” “That’s right, Mother Smith, and the same holds true for the women. Men have got to realize that they did not win the war all by themselves, for heaven’s sake. During the war we all worked in factories, ran the trains, drove the buses, joined the army, did everything the men did. Our own Ada Goodnight flew planes. But when it was over the men came home and wanted everything to go back to the way it was. We understood that, but once people find out they can do a thing and like to do things, it’s not right to tell them they can’t. We are supposed to be about playing fair in this country and that doesn’t seem fair to me. And if you agree, I think we need to let them know how we feel, don’t you? Well, enough of me ranting and raving on and on but like Mother Smith says, women fought too long and too hard to get the vote to be told they shouldn’t vote for one of our own. Now, we don’t believe in throwing brickbats at the other fellow but we can make a stand on Election Day, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t think it’s right to attack somebody just because she’s a woman. As you all may know, we were lucky enough to have Betty Raye stay with us and let me tell you this—anybody that could get Bobby Smith to read thirty-four books in one summer can certainly run a state! And that’s all I’ll say on the subject.”
That is all she had to say. In truth, not many women had been interested in politics until Neighbor Dorothy’s call to arms, but the day after her broadcast letters began pouring into the Democratic headquarters, complaining about Carnie Boofer. The politicians had crossed the wrong bunch this time. They had hit a big, mad hornets’ nest with a rock and shortly both the Democrats and the Republicans were running for their lives.
Since The Neighbor Dorothy Show was heard statewide, all the other candidates, including the Carnie Boofer supporters, immediately organized a call in protest to the offices of the Golden Flake Flour Company, asking them to take her off the air. But Jack Mann, president of the company, did what his eighty-two-year-old mother, Mrs. Suzanne Mann, owner and chairman of the board, told him to do, and that was nothing. She was sweetly reasonable. “You’ll take Dorothy off the air over my dead body,” she said.
Along with her thousands of other listeners, when Norma’s mother, Ida Jenkins, heard Dorothy’s show she puffed up like a white-breasted pouter pigeon and said, “Oh, woe to you, Mr. Carnie Boofer. You have crossed the wrong woman this time.” As president of the Federated Women’s Club of Missouri, past president of three garden clubs, and a top Presbyterian, Ida had a lot of clout and she knew how to use it. She alerted all the members of the women’s clubs and garden clubs in the state to write in—and they did, by the sackful.
But perhaps the strongest message was a telegram sent to Missouri Democratic headquarters by one man, whose mother and whose wife, Bess, were faithful Neighbor Dorothy Show listeners. A man with, you might say, a lot of influence with the Democratic Party in the state—and beyond. The