Georgi Mihailov writes…
Hi, Mark. Could I ask you about a line in one of the Garfield cartoons? I can't find the episode because there doesn't appear to be one that has dinosaur in the title, so I am just going to describe it for you.
Basically, it was a Barney parody. The dinosaur wanted to use a kiddie show in order to force all the people and their kids to obey him. In the end, Garfield foiled his evil plan and ended up convincing him to try his luck in show business with Garfield as his agent. However, the dinosaur became so successful, he fired him as his agent. Garfield then exclaimed, "The nerve of him. I taft-hartlied him on his first acting gig. And he couldn't even read a script."
What does it mean to "taft-hartly?" For a Bulgarian man, I am pretty in tune with American pop culture over the years but I have no clue what that means.
Well, first of all it means that you stumbled onto one of those jokes I occasionally put in something I write, knowing full well that about ten people will understand it. Don't feel bad that you are not one of those ten.
It was an episode of Garfield and Friends called "The Beast From Beyond" and it was kind of a spoof on Barney the Dinosaur, who was then big on TV in this country. The character was named Sidney and it might interest someone to know that Sidney's voice was supplied by Stan Freberg doing pretty much the same voice he'd once supplied for Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent on Time for Beany. Another "inside" joke.
The Taft-Hartley Act was a packet of laws passed in this country in 1947. It changed some rules for labor unions, weakening them in many ways. But when we say we "Taft-Hartleyed" someone, that's shorthand for saying we invoked one particular provision of the Act. It means you gave them a job in some field even though they were not (yet) a member of the labor union to which one belongs to work in that field. It generally applies to their first job. If they continue to work in that field, they are expected to join the appropriate union. (There are ways around this but most people don't want to use them.)
So let's say you're a new voice actor and I give you your first job doing a voice on my cartoon show. Since there's a possibility this may be your only such job ever, you don't have to join the union and fill out all those forms and pay that hefty initiation fee. I gave several people their first voice jobs so they were "Taft-Hartleyed" and then, if and when they got a second job, they joined the union. Basically, it means to hire someone who is not (yet) in the union. When we did this cartoon, I think I had just done that with one of several folks who got their first professional job on the show and went on to long and very real careers.
