Who, Me?

The skit was certainly no broader in its assault on humor than many another on Arthur Godfrey & His Friends (Wed. 8 p.m., CBS-TV). Dressed as whitewings, Godfrey, Crooner Morton Downey and Hollywood Comic Jack Carson appeared on the screen pushing street cleaners' brooms. Said Godfrey: "Well, we've dished a lot of it out. Let's clean some of it up."

On this occasion, Godfrey's usually good timing was off-base as well as off-color. Just the day before, speaking at the University of Oklahoma, Wayne Coy, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, had said: "When a comedian gets so big that his network can no longer handle him. then we have a case of the tail wagging the dog. The boy who used to express himself with chalk on a wall is now provided with a television screen . . . This type of comedian is stilt peddling livery stable humor."

In New York, the protests began to mount. In a sharp wire to CBS, testy Walter Damm, manager of the Milwaukee Journal's station WTMJ-TV, said: "Godfrey's remarks . . . were the most obnoxious and filthy ever inflicted on a television audience . . . Unless [his] remarks and gestures conform to decency in the future, the Journal Co. will refuse to carry him further." Variety headlined, CBS OUT ON A GODFREY LIMB, and warned that industry-wide censorship might result. Urging Godfrey to "pipe down a little," New York Herald Tribune Columnist John Crosby wrote: "I hate to align myself with the forces of prudery, but I can't quite see myself coming out four-square for scatology."

At week's end, Godfrey had flown off to the rural quiet of his Virginia farm, where he complained that "the audience often thinks something is dirty that I don't mean to be dirty."

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