Bughum

To Arch Oboler, the nicest thing about winning a prize is making the acceptance speech. In his twelve years of radio writing, he has done plenty of both. But unlike his writing (Alter Ego, Free World Theater, etc.), Oboler's speeches seldom please radio. In Oklahoma City, in a talk he titled "Bughum" ("humbug, backwards"), Arch paid his respects to radio:

"An amazing assortment of evasions, half-truths and untruths activate the kilocycles. Radio actresses whose only acquaintance with hose washing is an occasional rinsing of ... nylons in a hotel bedroom . . . stand before microphones and read 'authentic testimonials' about soap flakes. . . .

"Tremendous [cigaret] campaigns are concocted out of nothingness. . . . Nostrums, patent medicines . . . stomach and head soothers . . . speak their own brand of falsehoods . . . through joke and jingle.

"Radio advertising has not assumed its responsibilities to the basics of honesty. . . . We must clean house. Only those articles which have special values should be permitted to extol those values.

"You may ask what this has to do with radio writing. Simply that some of us can't write honest radio under such circumstances."

Then he went back to Hollywood to begin work on another speech on the same theme. The occasion: a Peabody Award (TIME, March 25), this month. Said he: "I will amplify my feelings about radio's part in the post-atomic world. My feeling is that most people are as nauseated as I am. It isn't enough to be amused when you have to endure those horrible jangle-jingles."

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