A very drunk man sits down with the ladies having some tête-à-tête. He was talking aloud which disturbed the ladies. One lady, who could not hold her temper, told the man blankly, “If you were my husband, I would poison you.”
The man, embarrassed by what he heard, stood up. He faced the lady and without much ado told her: “Ma’am, if you were my wife, I would drink the poison.”
Here’s another one. At a dinner party one evening, there was a heated exchange between British statesman Winston Churchill and a female member of the parliament. At the end of the argument, the lady said scornfully, “Mr. Churchill, you are drunk.” Replied Churchill, “And you, madam, are ugly. But I shall be sober tomorrow.”
That’s what criticism is all about. Actually, criticism is the practice of judging the merits and faults of something or someone in an intelligible (or articulate) way. According to Wikipedia, criticism can be: directed toward a person or an animal; at a group, authority or organization; at a specific behavior; or at an object of some kind (an idea, a relationship, a condition, a process, or a thing).
Criticism can also be personal (delivered directly from one person to another, in a personal capacity), or impersonal (expressing the view of an organization, and not aimed at anyone personally). It can be delivered in verbal (expressed in language) or non-verbal (expressed symbolically, or expressed through an action or a way of behaving).
In some instances, criticism can be explicit (the criticism is clearly stated) or implicit (a criticism is implied by what is being said, but it is not stated openly). Oftentimes, it is the result of critical thinking or spontaneous impulse.
Wikipedia explains: “To criticize does not necessarily imply ‘to find fault,’ but the word is often taken to mean the simple expression of an objection against prejudice or disapproval. Often criticism involves active disagreement, but it may only mean ‘taking sides.’ It could just be an exploration of the different sides of an issue. Fighting is not necessarily involved.”
Take the case of what had happened when British Royal Princess Margaret met with a London-born actress Elizabeth Taylor. The “Hollywood royal” was decked out with one of the biggest diamonds in the world that had cost British actor Richard Burton over US$1.1 million dollars.
According to some accounts, here was what happened. On clocking the 69.42-carat diamond, the Princess Margaret was ‘gob smacked’ and quipped to Elizabeth: “Is that the famous diamond? But it’s so large – how very vulgar!”
“Yes,” the two-time Oscar winning actress replied. “Ain’t it great?”
Then Elizabeth – who was well known to have connections with people who enjoyed the ‘high life’ – asked her to try on the huge diamond. When Princess Margaret was wearing the 69.42-carat diamond, the actress made a saucy comment: “It doesn’t look so vulgar now, does it?”
Revenge is a deceiver – it looks sweet but is most often bitter. The following anecdote appeared in the journal of the English clergyman, Augustus Hare. It has been told to him by his old friend, the Honorable Augusta Barrington.
“George IV, as Prince Regent, was very charming when he was not drunk, but he generally was. Do you remember how he asked Curran to dinner to amuse him – only for that? Curran was up to it, and sat silent all through dinner. This irritated the Prince, and at least, after dinner, when he had had a good deal too much, he filled a glass with wine and threw it in Curran’s face, with ‘Say something funny, can’t you?’ Curran, without moving a muscle, threw his own glass of wine in his neighbor’s face, saying, ‘Pass His Royal Highness’s joke.’”
In Bennett Cerf’s 1944 book Try and Stop Me, he tells about author-critic Max Eastman commenting that Ernest Hemingway’s just-published novel Death in the Afternoon was an example of the “false-hair-on-the-chest school of writing.” He titled the article as “Bull in the Afternoon.”
Shortly after the piece had been published, the two men happened to meet in the office of Maxwell Perkins, Hemingway’s editor. Here’s what transpired, according to The Book of Lists (The ‘90s Edition):
“The results of that meeting were not revealed until years later, when a copy of Eastman’s Art and the Life of Action was put up for auction. It was autographed not by Eastman but by Hemingway and Perkins. According to the catalogue, on page 95 of the book there was a spot where it had hit ‘Mr. Eastman’s nose when Mr. Hemingway struck him with it in a gesture of disapproval.’”
Here’s another story from The Book of Lists. After the premiere of Arms and the Man (1898), Irish author George Bernard Shaw took the stage to make a curtain speech. When the applause subsided, there was a solitary boo from London critic Reginald Golding Bright.
Shaw looked directly at Bright and said, “My dear fellow, I quite agree with you, but what are we two against so many?”
English author Samuel Johnson is one person who would get even with those people who would exploit him. When he was completing his dictionary, a London journal published two anonymous “previews” of the book. The articles were favorable but superficial. When he learned that the wealthy Earl of Chesterfield had written them, he was furious.
After all, he had applied to him repeatedly for patronage while writing the dictionary, but the earl had been cheap, giving the poverty-stricken writer no more than ten pounds (about US$250). Now, Johnson felt, he was trying to take credit as a patron. In the dictionary, he defined patron as “commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery.”
Critics should never mess with children of famous people. In 1950, the daughter of American president Harry S. Truman, Margaret, gave a public singing recital in Washington. Her performance, however, was attacked by the Washington Post’s music critic, Paul Hume.
The Book of Lists said Truman wrote Hume a letter. “I have just read your lousy review buried in the back pages,” the American president penned. “You sound like a frustrated old man who never made a success, an eight-ulcer man on a four-ulcer job, and all four ulcers working. I have never met you, but if you do you’ll need a new nose and plenty of beefsteak and perhaps a support below.”
Surprisingly, Hume published the letter. As expected, it caused an uproar. However, most Americans approved of Truman’s fatherly behavior. Years later, Margaret wrote, “Dad never felt the slightest remorse about sending it. He always insisted that he had a right to be two persons – the President of the United States and Harry S. Truman, father of Margaret, husband of Bess Wallace. ‘It was Harry S. Truman, the human being, who wrote that note,’ he said.”
Russell Lynes reminds: “The only graceful way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can’t ignore it, top it; if you can’t top it, laugh at it; if you can’t laugh at it, it’s probably deserved.”
