National Affairs: Laugh, Clown, Laugh

The patron saint of U.S. Congressional buffoons is the junketeer who, on the occasion of a visit to the court of— the Hellenes, inspected Queen Frederika of Greece from stem to stern and raucously proclaimed her "the cutest little Queenie I ever saw." The Congressman and his antics came a few years too soon: today he could play his role before the whir, glare and flash of a dozen cameras. In the harlequinade tumble for television, radio and newspaper publicity, more and more Congressmen have begun to play to the microphone and the lens.

Study in Underpants. Last year Wisconsin's Republican Senator Alexander Wiley impressed himself on the folks back home by posing for photographs with his gavel about to descend on the bald dome of New Jersey's G.O.P. Senator H. Alexander Smith; this year New Jersey's 320-Ib. Democratic Representative T. James Tumulty made a big impression by posing in his underpants (TIME. Jan. 24).

During this session, while the 84th Congress has been deliberating on the state of the U.S.. Maine's Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith has been seen on Edward R. Murrow's television program as she traipsed around the globe—e.g., to Formosa, India, Spain. A pixy TV program called Masquerade Party has achieved a clown's gallery of Senators, e.g., Indiana's Republican Senator Homer Capehart came with a Roman toga draped around his aldermanic figure, South Dakota's Republican Senator Karl Mundt and his wife appeared as Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane, Alabama's Democratic Senator John Sparkman (his party's 1952 nominee for Vice President) showed up disguised as a fireman.

Last week a Senate newcomer tumbled into the center ring. The chamber was nearly empty while Oregon's Democratic Senator Richard Neuberger was speaking —but his efforts were rewarded by thousands of words on the press-service wires.

Cried Neuberger: "The President of the U.S., according to news dispatches, is having the White House squirrels caught in box traps and carted many miles away from the White House because they have been scratching his putting green. I strenuously protest this undertaking. I urge the President of the U.S. to cease and desist before he does permanent and irreparable damage to an American tradition." Squirrel in Hand. Neuberger was briefly interrupted by Kentucky's Democratic Senator Alben Barkley, a veteran performer. Asked Barkley: "Would it be inappropriate here to paraphrase a quotation from the Bible, 'Foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but the son of man hath not where to putt'?" Indeed, replied Neuberger, Barkley's quotation was certainly pertinent. Then Neuberger offered to contribute the first $25 toward a Save-the-White-House-Squirrels Fund (to build a protective fence around Ike's putting green).

The results of Neuberger's speech were eminently satisfying: he posed for newspaper photographers with a squirrel nibbling on a nut in his hand; he was carefully questioned on television about his crusade for the squirrels.