Dating an undated skit script or assigning skit characters to actual faculty members requires textual analysis skills not taught in economics graduate school. But puzzle solving is, so let’s see what we can do with the following skit written by Robert Solow.
Current events and transitory cohorts of graduate students are our main clues to work with.
- The TV-series M*A*S*H began its run of many years in September 1972.
- Andrew Abel, Jeff Frankel and Dick Startz, mentioned in the script, all entered the M.I.T. graduate economics program in September 1974, so the earliest they could have been mentioned would have been in the January 1975 show.
- David Lilien belonged to the previous year’s cohort so he would have been around in 1975-1977.
- I was in that cohort with Messrs. Abel, Frankel, and Startz, and I am honestly surprised that I do not remember this faculty skit at all. However I do remember well that the faculty, as well as our cohort, wrote and performed independent Wizard of Oz skits in 1976. So it appears that either 1975 or 1977 were likely years for the following skit.
- Rudiger Dornbusch taught at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business 1974-75 before coming to M.I.T. in 1975.
Solow’s authorship is firmly established in the prologue to the 1986 faculty skit, where it is written:
“…we were tempted to re-run some of the great Solow skits of the past. There was the 1974 Watergate Skit, in which Paul Colson Joskow testifies to Senator Sam Peltzman that he would run over his grandmother to get a t-statistic above two. There was the 1978 Star Wars skit [a coming attraction here at Economics in the Rear-View Mirror], in which Milton Vader and his minions capture the wookie Jerrybaca and hold him captive in the Chicago Money Workshop. And in the incredible 1973 [sic] MASH skit [below], Hawkeye Hall and Trapper Jerry Hausman find Radar Diamond and Hot Lips Friedlaender cavorting in the Chairman’s office…”
We can see how memory plays tricks even on professors, since there is really no way except in a perfect foresight world that in 1973 Robert Solow would have alluded to members of the cohort of 1974-75.
The Synopsis below was printed on an unattached page and while it clearly leads into the M*A*S*H skit, I somewhat doubt that it was actually recited in performance. The idea of a faculty skit of graduate students trying to write a skit seems undeveloped. Still this synopsis’ characterization of our cohort’s skits as “a series of separate episodes in which they make fun of the idiosyncrasies of the faculty” fits the data well. Thus if forced to choose a single date for the following skit, I would probably go with 1977.
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Synopsis
It is Friday afternoon and the tenth year class still hasn’t thought of a good idea for a skit. A group including Able Andrew [Andrew Abel], Jacob Frankel [Jeffrey Frankel], “Skinny” Lilien [David Lilien], Dick Stops [Dick Startz]…, are meeting in desperation. Finally they decide that the best they can do is to have a series of separate episodes in which they make fun of the idiosyncrasies of the faculty.
- Marty Weitzman (Jeff Harris can do this perfectly. He will write his part).
- Jerry Hausman. Lecture to be given very fast. Stop after each point and grin.
- Frank Fisher. Obvious.
- Bob Hall. This character lectures with one toe on top of the other and his arms folded. Then he hops around the room in that position.
- Rudi Dornbusch. This depends on being able to do the accent.
And so on. At the end, someone says this isn’t a very good idea after all and a second skit, based on “mash” is tried.
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Announcer: We are about to tell you a heartwarming story that almost nobody knows. It is the story of a devoted, selfless, kind, hardworking people who are yet charming, humorous, sexy, brilliant and lighthearted even while they tend the youthful victims of a heartless bloody War, the famous WOE or War on Error, perhaps more accurately called the War on Other People’s Error or WOOPE. The warm, sympathetic, lovable heroes of this story are the Doctors of the Massachusetts Economics Students Hospital or M.E.S.H.
As the scene opens, we observe the crusty but kindly commanding officer of MESH, Col. Brown [E. Cary Brown], looking at latest casualty lists.
BROWN: (broad smile, laughing, etc.) Able Andrew [Andrew Abel], flunked; Dick Stops [Dick Startz], flunked; Ray Hartman [Raymond S. Hartman], Ray Hartman, flunked, flunked. This is awful, hohoho. Here’s one who lost his Fellowship. Here’s one who lost both his Fellowships. War is hell.
(PAD [Peter Diamond?] comes in and puts sheet of paper on desk)
BROWN: (shouts) Radar.
PAD: Yessir.
BROWN: Where is that new duty roster for next month?
PAD: Just gave it to you, sir.
BROWN: Hmmm, I see Major Samuelson is doing the history of surgical thought. How far does he go?
PAD: Up to Marx’s transplantation problem.
BROWN: I suppose someone’s assigned to each ward: yes, someone for G-1, and for G-2, G-3, M-2, M-3—say how come nobody’s assigned to M-1?
PAD: Demand for M-1 has dropped off a lot lately.
BROWN: Oh, yes, another outbreak of Goldfeld’s Syndrome. How well I remember the first case I ever saw, back at old Fort Sam Brookings in the old days. Why, boy, they had real cash balances in the Regular Army.
(Enter Hawkeye Hall [Robert Hall] and Trapper Jerry [Jerry Hausman].)
PAD: Hi Hawk, Hi Trapper. What’s up?
HH: Up, down, what difference does it make. It’s all a random walk anyway. I’ve got kids out there dying of underconsumption and all I can tell them is that their consumption is way below trend, but there’s no reason to expect it ever to get back to trend. Properly discounted, they’re already dead.
BROWN: Couldn’t you just amputate a bit of the life cycle—maybe they’re just suffering from Modigliani’s Disease—you know the symptoms, compulsive talking, recurrent forecasting errors, complete absence of bequests—why I remember back at old Fort Sam Brookings…
HH: Modigliani’s Disease? There’s no such thing. That stuff all went out with, with, with econometrics. Nowadays it’s all up down up down. Well, maybe a totally unexpected amputation might work. But only once. No, it’s hard telling those innocent soldiers that everything they were taught up until yesterday, even by me, is all wrong.
TJ: I think the smart ones realize that tomorrow it will appear that what we’re telling them today is wrong too. That’s rational expectations for you. Once you get on it’s hard to get off. I hear that over at the Illinois Economics Graduates Hospital or IEGH the surgeons have stopped doing econometric operations altogether. They’d rather let everybody die at the natural rate. One of our enlisted men, Olivier Lawrence [Olivier Blanchard?], is supposed to have suggested that at least time was an exogenous variable, so maybe you could do a few econometric operations. But Major Lucas [Robert Lucas], the executive surgeon at IECH, told him that only the deviations of time from trend can possibly matter and that’s…
PAD: Up down up down….
TJ: Thanks, Radar. According to Lucas’s method of surgery, all coefficients are either zero or one—dealer’s choice.
(Enter HotLips [Anne Friedlander] and Major Frank [Frank Fisher])
HL: Colonel, I’d like to have this crumb courtmartialed. He almost killed one of our students by disconnecting the MPS transfusion from the main computer. He said that if anyone ever put the peripheral equipment and the main-frame in the same market, he’d never be able to go near Yorktown Heights again. Hark! Do I hear a chopper?
PAD: No, Major HotLips it’s just one of the students with Modigliani’s disease.
HL: Radar, just stay in the supply room and out of the women’s shower.
HH and TJ: Up down up down.
HL: Colonel you’ve got to do something about these clods. And as for Frank here, when I think…what did I ever see in him?
F: Well, I’m a little hard not to see. But I’ll get even with you all. I got out of econometric surgery while there were still exogenous variables. Anti-anti-trust is where the money is now. You’ll regret your temper, HotLips. When these creeps are starving and broke, unemployed econometric surgeons, doing illegal surprise amputations for peanuts, I will be dancing in Yorktown Heights, testifying in the fifty-third year of the IBM case, on one side or the other. Colonel, if you can’t have some discipline in this MESH, I’m going to file a complaint with Judge Edelstein.
BROWN: I think I’ll apply for reassignment to old Fort Sam Brookings.
(Enter Corporal Klingenbusch, dressed in his usual.)
TJ: Gorgeous outfit you’ve got there Klingenbusch [Rudiger Dornbusch?].
K: Victory at last. I’ll be in old Fort Sam Brookings before you. It worked. At last I get to leave this nut house. I’ve been discharged. I’m going home to Japan.
HH: How did you work it Klingenbusch?
K: Easy. I didn’t satisfy the transvestality condition.
ANNOUNCER: And so we leave the dedicated Doctors of MESH. Perhaps you are wondering why none of the beloved students, for whom MESH lives and breathes, actually appeared in this story. The reason is simple and typical, not to say rationally expected. There was no space.
[Handwritten note at the end of the typed text:]
J. Harris (appears): My name is Jeff Harris. I am a chest-cutter by profession. This is the most ridiculous hospital I have ever seen. It makes the University of Pennsylvania look like heaven. I wouldn’t trust these people to do veterinary surgery although, in fact, I think some of them may be veterinarians, at best.
Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Economists’ Papers Archive. Papers of Robert M. Solow, Box 83.
Image Source: Robert Solow in his office, MIT Museum Website.