Posted on 11/06/2003 1:56:38 PM PST by stylin_geek
Cranky, rude, indispensable. Our group of grumpy know-it-alls—including Bill O'Reilly and Andy Rooney—explain (and you better pay attention) why America needs curmudgeons now more than ever
Curmudgeons keep the rest of us cockeyed optimists honest. That's why we need them more than ever. (If you don't like it, lump it.)
When author Ray Bradbury was 13, he saw W. C. Fields standing on a Hollywood street corner. Excitedly, the boy approached Fields with a sheet of paper for an autograph.
Fields signed his name, handed back the paper, and said, "There you are, you little son of a bitch."
Fields was something of a twisted patron saint of curmudgeonry. He didn't like children, and he made no pretense otherwise. Like all good curmudgeons, Fields attacked false sentiment—because it devalues the real thing.
We call curmudgeons "irascible," "grouchy," "grumpy"—even "mean." But the world needs curmudgeons. They refuse to see life through the filter of wishful thinking and are outspoken in their devotion to the harsh realities of life. They protect the rest of us, stumbling about blindly behind our rose-colored glasses, from ourselves.
Still, these are tough times for curmudgeons. In an age of fast-food intellect, when crudity is mistaken for cleverness, the articulate, witty curmudgeon seems out of place. Try imagining such saber-tongued cynics as Mark Twain, James Thurber, and H. L. Mencken grousing about America in 2003. Can you imagine Mencken, a man who once called the American people the most "sniveling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goose-steppers ever gathered under one flag in Christendom since the end of the Middle Ages," adapting to an era of Freedom Fries? (When Mencken was asked why he chose to live in the U.S. if he thought it was so horrible, he snapped back, "Why do men go to zoos?")
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, our nation is becoming curmudgeon intolerant. It's as though our American ears, like our American bellies, have gone soft. Look around and you'll see the triumph of the mindless happy. It began, perhaps, with the publication of I'm OK—You're OK and has culminated in more recent bookstore offerings such as You Can Be Happy No Matter What. On TV, upbeat Oprah rules, and, in their less-than-stellar 60 Minutes debates, Bill Clinton rejected one of Bob Dole's topics because it was too, well, cranky.
It's only in recent years that curmudgeons have gotten a bad rep, says author P. J. O'Rourke, the resident curmudgeon at Rolling Stone. "In Mencken's era, curmudgeons were role models," he says. "Robert Benchley, S. J. Perelman … even Will Rogers, for all his supposed friendliness, had a barbed tongue. The curmudgeon was above it all. He was a major player until the world was overwhelmed by the baby boom, and suddenly everyone had to be young forever."
Comedian Richard Lewis agrees that the domination of youth culture is at the heart of what's wrong with the world: "It's pathetic that people are trying to almost 'Frankenstein' themselves to stay young. I tell people my body is deteriorating as I'm standing there performing. And it's okay. Like the night I banged my knee slightly on the edge of a hotel bed, and the next morning it looked like I had Gorbachev's birthmark on my thigh."
O'Rourke and Lewis are unlikely curmudgeons. They're both barely old enough to have outgrown the label of "angry young man"—a temporary condition often confused with true curmudgeonhood. While curmudgeonry is not an inevitable part of aging (like wisdom, it doesn't automatically arrive at one's fifth decade, or even the seventh), a lifetime of experience does help nurture it. As Homer Simpson's father, Abe, says, "The good Lord lets us grow old for a reason: to gain the wisdom to find fault with everything he's made."
(Excerpt) Read more at aarpmagazine.org ...
Curmudgeons thrive at both ends of the political spectrum....At the far right is conservative columnist Ann Coulter, author of Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right. Steamed liberal critics—labeled in one recent Coulter column as "fanatical liars" and "traitorous"—have counter-labeled her "inflammatory," "sub-rational," and "snarky." But does she mind being called a curmudgeon?
"What an inane question," she answers. "Why, I ought to box your ears, you little urchin. Now get away from me before I sic the dogs on you. And stay off my lawn or I'll call the police—see if I don't!"
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