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Students, families “Assume the Position with Mr. Wuhl”
Thursday October 25 2007
HBO’s Robert Wuhl gave audiences in Leffler Chapel a lesson in history Saturday night. Wuhl presented his routine, “Assume the Position with Mr. Wuhl,” twice as part of the Homecoming and Family Weekend festivities. The two shows, given at 7 and 9 p.m., offered audiences the more comic side of our nation’s history.Wuhl began the evening by thanking the audience and the Elizabethtown staff who brought him to the College. He also gave a short routine recounting his experiences traveling to the area.
“Elizabethtown is a hard place to get to,” Wuhl said. His flight from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh was routine, he recounted, but he had a slightly shaky experience with the small aircraft that bore him along to Harrisburg from there.
“It doesn’t make you feel very confident when you’re boarding the plane and see that the outside of it is dented,” Wuhl said. He also said that what should have been a short flight took him over two and half hours to accomplish.
After laughing off his somewhat traumatic ordeal, Wuhl set about “Assume the Position.”
With the aid of a slideshow containing often humorous graphics, Wuhl taught his audience the following statements: History is Pop Culture; When the Myth Becomes Fact, Print the Myth; and As American as Apple Pie.
Several of Wuhl’s factoids proved to be genuinely surprising. He revealed that if Hilary Clinton received the presidential nomination, she would actually not be the first woman to do so. Victoria Woodhull, a famous suffragette, had received the nomination of the Equal Rights Party in 1872. Her running partner was none other than Frederick Douglass, the former slave and famous abolitionist. The U.S. government refused to put Woodhull’s name on the ballot, however, and her story is mostly lost to history.
Wuhl also recounted the story of Franklin Pierce, fourteenth president of the United States, thought by some as the worst president in history. Pierce served as an example of Wuhl’s statement, “history is pop culture.” Pierce was a relatively unknown politician before he decided to run for office, but with the help of his former college roommate, Nathaniel Hawthorne, he became a famous figure within months of the book’s publication. Hawthorne painted a portrait of Pierce that differs greatly from the real man; however, the voting public who’d read the book believed themselves to be electing the right man.
Another of Wuhl’s humorous revelations was that of Paul Revere and Israel Bissell. While Revere’s ride is more famous, Bissell actually rode from Massachusetts to Philadelphia to warn Americans that the British were coming. Why then was Revere the more famous? He got a poem written about him.
At the conclusion of the show, Wuhl answered questions from the audience. One audience member asked if any more installments of “Assume the Position” were in the works. Wuhl answered that HBO had not made an executive decision yet, but did not deny that there may be another episode of his hit show. After the question and answer session, Wuhl remained on stage to take photos with and sign autographs for eager fans.
Most of the audience seemed to have thoroughly enjoyed the show. “I thought the whole thing was really funny,” Kamron Malik, a sophomore, said.
Sophomore Jacky Elder agreed. “Even though it was history, he made it funny and interesting,” she said. “It wasn’t boring at all.”
Wuhl is the star of the HBO series “Arli$$,” a satire of professional sports that went on to be HBO’s longest running original series, and also one of the highest-rated. He was also nominated for Emmys for writing the Academy Awards host scripts for the 1991 and 1992 award shows, hosted by Billy Crystal.
Wuhl got his start in show business by performing stand-up comedy. He appeared in the movies “Good Morning Vietnam” and “Blaze and Cobb,” among others.
A native of New Jersey, Wuhl is active in many charities, including the National Breast Cancer Coalition, Save the Music, the Alzheimer’s Association of Los Angeles, St. Jude’s, Children Uniting Nations and Save the Bay.
The Etownian >> Features