Mark Twain
“It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.”
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Twain (1835 – 1910) was the originator of that great American novel – “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”. He was known – and enjoyed the reputation – during his life as one of the keenest wits of his day and his satirical – often sarcastic – sayings are much better known than the occasions, such as this, where he showed his softer side.
Twain has often been taken off High School syllabi by those who object to his use of the term “nigger” which in no way represented what he thought of black people in our modern sense. In his defence that would be a little like banning Shakespeare because he didn’t much like the Welsh!
George Clemenceau
“America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.”
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Clemenceau (1841 – 1929) was the Prime Minister of France not once but twice. Having said that he visited America and lived in New York for a time, admiring the American democratic process despite later coming out with the above! In fact his firm government of France was seen by many at the time as little more than a dictatorship.
After the First World War, Clemenceau had his historical reputation pretty much damaged for good by demanding huge reparations from Germany which many believe let to the rise of Hitler and a further conflict twenty years later. An attempted assassination on him during the peace conference may have meant a startlingly different Europe than the one we have today – had it been successful!
Oscar Wilde
“It is absurd to say that there are neither ruins nor curiosities in America when they have their mothers and their manners.”
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Wilde (1854 - 1900) was, despite the above, was charmed by America and feted by its citizens. Many people think he was English but in fact he was Irish and is best remembered for his plays such as The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband.
He was a major celebrity player of his day but fell from public grace when he was convicted of the crime of gross indecency. Basically he was sent down for being gay (and an uppity one at that!). The brilliance of his work, however, has ensured his immortality in our (slightly) more enlightened times.
Randall Jarrell
“The American male does not mature until he has exhausted all other options.”
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Jarrell (1914 – 1965) was born the year the First World War broke out and hailed from Nashville, Tennessee. He is mostly known for his poetry and was killed by a speeding car. One wonders, as Jarrell had recently been treated for depression, whether or not he jumped in front of the car.
Either way, having exhausted all his options he was run over by someone in the process of exhausting their own. His reputation is based on only 160 poems – one reason perhaps he is referred to as ‘minor’. Not Morris Minor, we hope!
Bobcat Goldthwaite
"America's one of the finest countries anyone ever stole."
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The archetypal whiny voiced American that most of the world loves to hate, Goldthwaite (b 1962 – no known assassination attempts much to my surprise).
Goldthwait is mostly known for his comedy, although he writes and directs as well (he would wouldn’t he!). His last film was “Let Sleeping Dogs Lie” in which a girl confesses to an encounter of a sexual nature with a dog and has to live with the consequences. A big fan of suspension of disbelief then!
Frank Zappa
"The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced."
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Zappa (1940 – 1993) is someone you either love or hate. He had a finger in almost creative pie imaginable and recorded over 60 albums. Most of them were not huge money makers but that didn’t stop him!
Politically he is known for his advocacy of freedom of speech – to the extreme somewhat but ironically he was a huge supporter of capitalism and independent business. It is very difficult to label the man cruel in any way until you consider the names he gave his children.
Here we go – are you ready? Moon Unit, Dweezil, Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen and Ahmet Emuukha Rodan. The spell and grammar checker is having a field day as I write. Zappa, you B****rd!
John Barrymore
“America is the country where you buy a lifetime of aspirin for one dollar and use it up in two weeks.”
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Drew’s Granddad, Barrymore (1882 – 1942) was an Actor and not the founder of a thespian dynasty as is thought, but part of one, his parents already being in the second oldest profession. He happened to be in San Francisco at the time of the earthquake in 1906 and decided to use it to his own ends, making some money as a reporter “on the spot”.
Unfortunately he had spent the earthquake and its aftermath at a friend’s house pretty much obliviously drunk and everything he wrote about the quake was pure fiction. He owned up twenty years later. His last words are reported as being, “Die? No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him”. He lied about that, too.
Albert Einstein
“Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves”
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So much has been said about Einstein it is difficult to say anything remotely fresh about him. So I won’t, except that he wrote both the general and special theories of relativity which make my head hurt when I think about them.
Although his body was cremated, his brain has been preserved in the hope that future generations will be able to work out what made him so clever. Spinach, probably.
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev
“Support by United States rulers is rather in the nature of the support that the rope gives to a hanged man.”
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This guy was seriously tough. However, you didn’t get to lead the USSR in the fifties and sixties by being a pushover. Krushchev (1894 – 1974) followed on straight from Stalin as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR. So, it might be gathered that he disliked the US, especially given comments like the above.
He was the first Russian Head of State to visit the US and was rather upset to be taken for dinner with two hundred Hollywood stars as his first engagement of the visit. He wanted to go to an Aerospace factory; he did, however, later speak of his regret at not meeting Mickey Mouse. As was the wont with Soviet leaders of the time he was removed from office by conspiracy and spent the latter part of his life closely watched by the KGB.
Stanley Rudin
“Frustrate a Frenchman, he will drink himself to death; an Irishman, he will die of angry hypertension; a Dane, he will shoot himself; an American, he will get drunk, shoot you, then establish a million dollar aid programme for your relatives. Then he will die of an ulcer.”
Can’t find anything about this guy’s life to be cynical about. He was funny, though!
