Scala Jerkitudinis: The Subspecies
The Great American Jerk is a chameleon who changes colors according to circumstances, from obsequious to bullying, from pious to lewd. He may, on some occasions, display buck-waving generosity and on others check-splitting stinginess, but underneath there is always the baby boy or girl who wants what he or she wants, whether it is money, service, or just attention.
To deal with them, you have to learn to spot the Jerk in his many forms, and never be fooled by an apparent act of kindness or generosity that is really only a means to gaining power over you. Knowledge, as they say, is power, and the first step in protecting yourself from Jerks is to see through their phony justifications---"I'm a rugged individualist," or "I am sensitive," or "I have a meat protein allergy and could die if a single drop of fat even touches my grilled tofu"—and learn to recognize them for what they are.
Hint: If you want to get an infallible Jerk-detector, go out and buy a mirror. "What are you laughing at?" asked an ancient poet, "Change the name and the jokes' on you."
Jerks come in all shapes and sizes, colors and ethnicities, sexual orientations and religions, and there are more distinctive subspecies than there sins and vices. One obvious way of looking at the overall phenomenon is to consider it in light of the seven deadly sins: lust, greed, gluttony, sloth, anger, envy, and pride, and, as we go along, we shall apply these traditional categories even though many of the Jerk's sins are far too petty to be mortal, that is, deserving of eternal death. However, many of the venial sins are the lite beer version of the mortal: a man who flirts with every waitress is not necessarily hell bent on committing adultery and the irritable store clerk does not inevitably have death in his heart against the customers who distract him from taking inventory. But since the focus of this exercise in urban anthropology is the American Jerk, we won't be wasting time if we take a few minutes to consider some of the more characteristic subspecies to be found in hotel bars, supermarkets, and cocktail parties.
Let's begin with the basics. Rather than breaking down Jerks into categories of severity—rating them from one to ten—we can agree to divide them broadly into what I am calling Boors and Louts.
The boor is someone who does not know how to behave. He constantly makes a fool of himself by using the wrong fork or insisting upon steak in a seafood restaurant. He will pay embarrassing compliments to women he has just met and make himself the life of every party by telling anecdotes about his not very interesting life—anecdotes in which he inevitably plays the hero. Most of his offenses, however, are the result of ignorance, not malice. He honestly does not realize how tedious people find him. If he has a good heart and is willing to observe or take advice, he may even be cured of his (and our) affliction.
The Lout displays the same range of offensive behavior as the boor, but he is probably incorrigible. The Lout, in other words, is a boor who knows he is just fine the way he is and does not have to listen to anyone about anything. On the same occasion, he can call a Queen by her first name and insult a cop or someone else's servants by offering them a bribe. Foreigners, he knows, all understand English, especially if it is mixed in with a few pidgin phrases. "No rikee rice?" he inevitably asks an Asian. Every Mexican is named Pedro, and every French girl is ready to go to bed with him. If he is rich, then he knows that everything and everyone can be bought, and if he is not rich, he thinks he has superior knowledge of the world that makes him master of every situation. If the price of oil goes up, the fault lies with the Bushes, the Saudis, or the Jews. And, no, he cannot be only partly right. Whatever little bit of "truth" he has discovered is the whole truth, a one-size fits all explanation of the universe that explains everything.
To put it more simply, the Boor is an unconscious, the Lout a conscious (at least partly conscious) Jerk. The former must be endured and, if he is a friend or relation, patiently schooled without letting him know what a fool he has been. It is not helpful to say things like, "Only a complete idiot would tell a grandmother she looks hot for her age." Lead by example and occasionally explain how someone might misinterpret his well-meaning remarks. Since Louts are incorrigible, there is little use in correcting them. We don't want to teach them, as badger would say, "we want to learn 'em—learn 'em, learn 'em!"
Any classification of American Jerks into types will be somewhat artificial. A glutton may be a braggart as well as the dissatisfied diner who dresses down the waiter and the entire chef in public. The same sister-in-law who insists on planning your joint vacation to place she has never been and where you are an old hand may be the woman in your party who screams out inanities in the breakfast room of the quiet English hotel you managed to arrange. Though the Jerk may display several faces to the world, he is not so much a Jekyl and Hyde personality as a Hyde A and Hyde B, but, while there are certainly underlying causes that link sloth, lust, and gluttony, on any one occasion what we see, generally, is one the ugly faces of Mr. Hyde. Let us take a look at a few mug shots.
The Buffoon.
W.S. Gilbert was a professional comic writer who apparently did not appreciate the antics of "funny fellows, comic men, and clowns of private life," all of whom he puts on the Lord High Executioner's little list to be eliminated—"They'd none of them be missed." In the first five minutes, the life of the party is amusing. That is because he is giving you his best material, the stuff he prepared before leaving home. As a student, I shared a house one of these entertainers, whom Prof. Wilson has had the privilege of getting to know later on. This wit actually kept a card file (by now it has probably been computerized) of jokes and anecdotes, classified by topic and source. Oscar Wilde led the pack, followed by H.L. Mencken and W.C. Fields.
The material was entertaining for a half hour or so, if you had never heard it before, but anyone who needed to have a serious conversation in his presence was out of luck. If you did poorly on a test, he had the right quip for the occasion; your attempt to reconcile with your girlfriend was stymied by his performance of the bar scene in One-Eyed Jacks, and God help you if your mother died.
Cockeyed Optimists
The clowns of private life are often, so the cliché runs, sad people. That may or may not be true, but the ones I have known are almost to a man indifferent to the feelings of their audience. They are incorrigibly cheerful about other people's misfortunes. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse may be rampaging through your garden, but they will comfort you with an irrelevant platitude—"It's always darkest before the dawn"—or an inappropriate quip. Chesterton has a story in which no one can figure out why a jovial man has been murdered. He was always so happy. The wise Fr. Browne finally figures out that this cheerful exuberance masked a blank indifference to suffering, which everyone found insufferable.
St. Paul, not always the most sensitive of men, gave excellent advice "Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep."
Anyone who has had a serious illness in the family, has run into the cheery consolation of the optimists who take any slight sign of recovery as conclusive evidence that all the troubles are over. Even if you have made it plain that a full recovery—if it ever happened—would take years, this persistently chipper attitude, far from cheering you up, will cause a good deal of resentment. Such people do not mean to be a Jerk, but their blithe self-assurance is often typical of people who always know your business better than you do.
The Practical Joker
The ultimate bad taste in the clowns of private life is displayed not by the punster, who derails every conversation with his distorted echoes of what you have said, but by the practical joker. There is hardly anyone who has not given way to the temptation to pull a fast one on a good friend. A few years ago I was on a fishing trip with an aging writer whose attention was beginning to slip a little. He left his wallet on the counter, where we were buying supplies, and I pocketed it. Later, as he was driving down the road, I asked him if he could change a twenty. Not finding his wallet, he panicked momentarily before seeing the wallet I was holding in my outstretched hand.
"You Jerk," he said, "I read in one of your books that it is always wrong to use people as props for your own diversion. And then you do something like this? What if I'd had a heart attack or swerved off the road?"
It is a good question. I had chosen to alter his reality and would have had to accept responsibility for any unintended consequences. This is a small example. I have known men who spent days plotting elaborate pranks on their "best friend." Some of them verged on malevolence and sadism. One of my father's friends got a plumber drunk, and while they were drinking, a third friend took the man's toolbox and nailed it to the plank floor in front of his apartment door. When they dropped him off, they watched as he yanked and yanked at the handle of his toolbox until he finally pulled the whole plank out of the floor.
I knew a prominent American historian who filled the dean's car with fireworks that he wired to the ignition. The dean was hospitalized and the historian lost the best job he ever had. If he had ever been willing to talk about it, I feel sure the historian would have justified his prank on the grounds that it was revenge on the dean who had cracked down on his fooling around with coeds.
Here is a pretty basic principle, which may sound familiar. If you wish to be left alone to pursue, harmlessly, your life's goals and to be the star in your own autobiography, you must grant other people the same privilege. In disrupting the course of someone else's life, by, for example, playing a trick that a friend look like a fool on some program like Candid Camera or , you are saying two things: first, that you accept full responsibility if anything goes wrong with the experiment, and, second, that you do not object to having your own ambitions frustrated by any fool who wants to waste your time.
The Busybody
One of the Joker's basic assumptions is that he has the right to play with your life. There is a large class of men and women, many of whom work for the government, who are not joking, when they interfere. They think they know your business better than you do, which is why they are justified in regulating, snooping, gossiping, and, to sum up a complex phenomenon in a single word, busbybodying the rest of mankind.
But the average gossip or busybody is a social worker without the license. He, more often she, with little or no encouragement will plan your vacation, straighten out your love life, or redecorate your living room. We have a friend, a really dear lady, who cannot visit our office without cleaning up any area that does not meet her high standards. Friends of hers back home have told me that she not only straightens pictures, when she visits, but moves furniture and offers advice on coordinating the colors.
The Know-It-All
Some busybodies are self-proclaimed experts in cooking or gardening or wine-bibbing. They cannot sip the sherry you have given them without making comparisons with the superior Amontillado they got on sale at wine.com--"Probably paid less for it than this generic stuff." I once made the mistake of inviting to dinner the professional wit who consulted his joke files before parties. He poked at the first course--a perfectly executed recipe from Julia Child--and inquired painfully, "Is it supposed to taste like this?"
There are men who cannot help offering advice. Anytime some poor devil is working on his car or fixing his lawnmower, a gaggle of loafers is sure to appear, each one giving his expert opinion on what is wrong and how to fix it. I do the same thing sometimes in order to seem normal, even though I haven't the slightest idea of how things work. Hardly a day goes by that some friend or reader or supporter does not give me advice on what to put in my next column or what subject I should pick for my next book—these are people, mind you, who have never published so much as a letter to the editor in their local paper. One of my favorite bits of advice concerns how to raise money. Sometimes the proposal is less than breath-taking: "Have you ever thought of sending out a letter asking readers for contributions?" or "Why not advertise in other magazines or, wait a minute, rent their mailing lists and send out subscription forms?" Others do take my breath away. "Why not ask—you can fill in the blanks with Donald Trump, Clive Cussler, Bob Dylan ("I hear he turned Christian")—to join your board of directors. Then he would have to give you money."
These people mean well, but I wonder if they ever stop to ask themselves if it is not a little insulting for someone with absolutely no knowledge or experience to offer such suggestions. Surely, they can see the implication, that we are ignorant lay-abouts who do not know our business. Some of these would-be counselors belong to a group I call the Toppers. There is nothing you can say to one of these that he cannot top. If you have just come back from hiking the Appalachian Trail, he will relate his adventures hiking in the Himalayas or at least tell you about someone he may have met who claimed to have climbed Everest. If you are a jazz enthusiast and a fan of Dizzy Gillespie, he will be sure to extol the superior abilities of Miles Davis. Sometimes, the Topper falls into the groove of monomania, and whatever the topic of conversation—French pop music, Portuguese wine, Southern League baseball in the 1960's—he will revert to some know-it-all relative: "Funny you should mention Memphis. This same cousin of mine played a season in the Northern League for Fargo-Morehead, and he almost got traded up to Memphis…"
While older men frequently fall into the anecdotal vein, completely oblivious to the yawns and rolling eyes they are inspiring (ask my junior colleagues), young men are so self-conscious about making an impression that they have to top every bon mot or insight. These are the Yes-butters, who listen patiently to your discourse on, say, Jefferson's local patriotism, and just as your last words are fading away, pop in with a depressingly familiar cliché: "Yes, but, the really important aspect of Jefferson's thought is his philosophy of natural rights."
The point is never actually to have a point but only to have the last word—and the first word, if they can manage it. In his youth, Dr. Johnson knew the novelist Samuel Richardson, who must have stepped on one of the young Johnson's lines once too often, because the Great Cham told his young admirer James Boswell, "That fellow Richardson...could not be contented to sail quietly down the stream of reputation without longing to tase the froth from every stroke of his oar." The type is far more common today.
This conversation-killing strategy is not confined to the young. I have a friend in his 70's who cannot hear an innocent fact—the date of the Spanish Armada or arrival of the gypsy moth in the country—without jumping in with, "But the thing about it is…" followed, usually, by a piece of grotesque misinformation he picked up from The Smithsonian magazine—an ever flowing font of false facts and politically correct misinterpretation.
The worst part of this is that some of these jokers may actually know a great deal, even about the subject at hand. The fact that they may be often right, though, does not make them either more generally reliable or less offensive.
I used to have an older friend—let us call him Mr. Smart-Pants—who exemplifies this type. Smart-Pants was an able and competent man in many fields. A successful highschool and college athlete, he could still play scratch golf. He was also a crack shot. A former Navy pilot, he could drive better and more aggressively than most men on the NASCAR circuit. He could fix just about anything; heck, he could build just about anything. He had built several businesses and was a whizz in the stock market. He'd been everywhere, done nearly everything, and could talk affably and without bragging about many things. A man's man, a boon companion, Smart-Pants, as all his friends complained, could also be an intolerable know-it-all. He told his doctor what course of treatment to prescribe, lectured the golf pro at his club, and knew everybody's business better than they did. In his teens, he had lost all interest in religion, but ignorance did not prevent him from pontificating—and, believe me, that is the word—on the shortcomings of a Christian theology he had never studied. And, while he had never taken any interest in classical studies, he had no hesitation explaining Roman history to me or holding forth on the Greek roots of scientific vocabulary. He was a good man, even a great man, whom I respected, admired, and for the most part really liked, but he was perfectly winning to bore other people to tears.
The Humble Interviewer
Experts, Toppers, and Yes-butters are all ambitious types who look at conversation as a competition in which they are bound and determined to come out ahead. At the end of the spectrum, so it would seem, are the self-effacing passive-aggressors, who only want to learn from their conversational victims. Doctors and lawyers are subjected to the third degree all the time, but in most cases the motive is a harmless desire for free advice. But when the subject is a German literature teacher from Iowa, the interrogation can seem bizarre. So how did you get interested in German? No German blood, really? Where did you go to school? I don't know anything about German literature but when I was a kid I liked the cowboy novels of Karl Mai—do you ever teach Karl Mai? Never read him? What about Gunther Grass, isn't he famous. And if this vein peters out, there is always the fascinating topic of the cultural opportunities to be had in greater Des Moines.
As a graduate student, I used to have tea with a faculty wife who could almost smell the unwholesome dissidence of anyone who might have ever had an opinion different from her own. I once, incautiously, mentioned that I was reading Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time, which was being published, in those days, novel by novel. After remarking that only an Anglophile snob could possibly like Powell, she proceeded to grill me on her favorite novelist, who turned out to be C.P. Snow. I had read Snow and thoroughly disliked him as a novelist with ideas--as a novelist he made a great scientist—but I adroitly concealed my opinion on this and every subject until she virtually had me pinned to the wall on feminism or prohibition or something or other on which I knew my opinion would be offensive. "Oh, I don't think anyone is interested in my uninformed opinions," I ventured."
"On the contrary, Mr. Fleming, I am passionately interested in everything you think." This clearly was not true, because she was only interested in one person's opinions, namely her own. That was my first clue that the Humble Interviewer was as self-centered as the Topper. I ran across this advice, the other day, in an etiquette book from the early 19th century: "Never ask a question under any circumstances. In the first place it is too proud; in the second place, it may be very inconvenient or very awkward to reply."[i] A few pages later, the author was more precise: "If you wish to inquire about anything, do not do it by asking a question; but introduce the subject, and give the person an opportunity of saying as much as he finds it agreeable to impart. Do not even say, 'How is your brother today?' but 'I hope your brother is quite well.'"[ii]
[i] The Laws of Etiquette, Or Short Notes and Reflections for Conduct in Society, by a Gentleman; Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, and Blanchard, 1836, P. 52
[ii] Op. cit. 61
Here is a rule of life, which--had I followed it--would have made me rich, influential, and happy. ANSWER NO UNASKED QUESTIONS!
I may not object to hearing you tell me, unasked, how cold it is today or how you are feeling, but I am quite sure I don't want your opinion on how flat my column fell, how sorry you are that one of my children is a Jerk, or how badly my striped tie goes with my checked jacket. You may have heard that I have been having problems with someone, and you probably think it is kind to offer advice on how to handle the situation. Perhaps it is, but only if I invite the advice.
If I may quote from a great American poet and philosopher, Hiram King Williams: "Why don't you mind your own business, cause if you mind your own business, you won't be minding mine." Or, as he advises in the conclusion, "If you mind your own business, you'll stay busy all the time."
Or to quote another literary master:
“If everybody minded their own business,” the duchess said in a hoarse growl, “the world would go round a deal faster than it does.”
More to come as in...
The Matchmaker
The Expert
The Drama Queen
The Rugged Individualist
[i] Romans 12:15
Entries(RSS)
Dr. Fleming,
This is so good it is scary. What you have revealed to me is that for years I was a lout who by the grace of God has grown into a simple boor. It all reminds of a poem on the clock face of a great Cathedral in London:
When as a child I laughed and wept,
Time crept.
When as a youth I dreamed and talked,
Time walked,
When I became a full grown man,
Time ran,
And later as I older grew,
Time flew.
Soon I shall find while traveling on,
Time gone.
Will Christ have saved my soul by then?
Please reserve me a copy if it ever becomes a book and I would not be slighted in the least if you would mention the personal conversion of your Okie friend and former lout, now boor, who you were so intrumental in guiding through the land of louts to the borders of boredom. Pray that I and perhaps other readers, will persevere unto the end.
I agree with Robert - a truly superb piece.
Speaking of excellence, Dr. Fleming, this last issue of Chronicles is magnificent. Terrific from cover to cover (though Srdja Trifkovic's and Dr. Wilson's pieces deserve special mention, in my opinion).
If anyone visiting this site has not yet subscribed, please do so now - you're missing a lot more than you think. It's worth many, many times the subscription price.
Thanks for the kind words. I agree with you, both that it is particularly good even by our standards and that Drs Wilson and Trifkovic did a fine job. McGrath is also very good. For those who like to put together jigsaw puzzles, my column is a bridge between the earlier "Jerks" pieces and this new piece
Great start, and I'll be looking forward to the next chapters. It used to be that being a Jerk was a punchable offense. All one had to do was explain the situation to any normal cop, and that would be that. Today, it's like the Age of the Jerk, or Jerks Run Riot, and their brazenness is getting out of hand.
Just a few hours ago a serious boor cornered me, and out of the clear blue, started caviling with me about what I thought about Obama's birth certificate. I'm not all that interested, but when I replied it was a matter most thoughtful people would be interested in, he asked if I was "in with Trump and Palin." I got his drift, of course, and mentioned a legal principle of circumtantial evidence enunciated by several courts in the past two decades, which is that elaborate efforts at concealment provide powerful evidence of guilt.
Anyway, that's the background and it short-circuited Jerk #1's feeble mind long enough for Jerk #2, an Absolute Jerk for taking it seriously, to get right in my face, really upset, saying a man's innocent until proven guilty, that we have more things to worry about, blah, blah, blah. I replied that guilt was indeed the issue, and the presumption should be guilty in view of the elaborate efforts to conceal Obama's records. This went back and forth a bit to the point the Absolute Jerk, who has an embarrassing resemblance to the Pillsbury dough-boy, became hostile. As Dr. Fleming points out, they're real chameleons, and as soon as I returned his hostility by stepping into his face, he staggered back as if I'd shoved him. If these two Jerks are representative, let's add cowardice to the list.
This is excellent! These Jerk articles prompt introspection of the same sort that's prompted by The Screwtape Letters. I'm nervously looking forward to The Rugged Individualist particularly.
Dr. Fleming, a great catalogue, but may I suggest an addendum to your list of up and coming species:
- The Syncophant
- The Social Climber
"sycophant," even. Bleh. Pardons.
There is a way that seems right to a man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death. Better add ignorant evangelist to the list! Coming to think of it, the unteachable are quite insufferable, too.
At some time or other I have been either a lout or a boor, but if any of you are offended, then quite frankly -- I'm glad!. But I do know how to apologize. However, I will not suffer the terminally offended.
Addition and Revision:
The Know-It-All
Some busybodies are self-proclaimed experts in cooking or gardening or wine-bibbing. They cannot sip the sherry you have given them without making comparisons with the superior Amontillado they got on sale at wine.com--"Probably paid less for it than this generic stuff." I once made the mistake of inviting to dinner the professional wit who consulted his joke files before parties. He poked at the first course--a perfectly executed recipe from Julia Child--and inquired painfully, "Is it supposed to taste like this?"
There are men who cannot help offering advice. Anytime some poor devil is working on his car or fixing his lawnmower, a gaggle of loafers is sure to appear, each one giving his expert opinion on what is wrong and how to fix it. I do this in order to seem normal, even though I haven't the slightest idea of how things work. The worst part of this is that some of these jokers may actually know a great deal, even about the subject at hand. The fact that they may be often right, though, does not make them either more generally reliable or less offensive.
I used to have an older friend—let us call him Mr. Smart-Pants—who exemplifies this type. Smart-Pants was an able and competent man in many fields. A successful highschool and college athlete, he could still play scratch golf. He was also a crack shot. A former Navy pilot, he could drive better and more aggressively than most men on the NASCAR circuit. He could fix just about anything; heck, he could build just about anything. He had built several businesses and was a whizz in the stock market. He'd been everywhere, done nearly everything, and could talk affably and without bragging about many things. A man's man, a boon companion, Smart-Pants, as all his friends complained, could also be an intolerable know-it-all. He told his doctor what course of treatment to prescribe, lectured the golf pro at his club, and knew everybody's business better than they did. In his teens, he had lost all interest in religion, but ignorance did not prevent him from pontificating—and, believe me, that is the word—on the shortcomings of a Christian theology he had never studied. And, while he had never taken any interest in classical studies, he had no hesitation explaining Roman history to me or holding forth on the Greek roots of scientific vocabulary. He was a good man, even a great man, whom I respected, admired, and for the most part really liked, but he was perfectly winning to bore other people to tears.
Some people are born on third base but go through life believing they hit a triple. Others learn to hit but die from envy of one who can play music. Most of us,like most poets, are pretty damned average. Perhaps one aspect of the Jerk is he can't stand the boredom or enui of ordinary human life.
Robert has hit upon one type of Jerk I have been pondering--the Billy Liar type who cannot accept humdrum reality and most improve upon it, either by misrepresenting it--we used to call it lying--or by overdramatizing it. At the simplest level, there are people who enthuse over pollution-enhanced sunsets or maudlin poetry; then there are the people who hype their friends into geniuses and heroes and the people they don't like into comic supervillains. These people are especially intolerable when they insist on diverting every conversation into channels that give them thrills. If the more typical Jerks tend more often to be men, there is a reason we refer to people as drama queens...
Dr. Fleming's evolving catalog of American jerkdom should be the raw material for a book. Each type of jerk makes for a side-splitting chapter.
About 30 years ago, the late conservative sociologist, Robert Nisbet, came out with a book called "Prejudices." In the spirit of Mencken, he pontificated, A through Z, on subjects whose "settled" opinion are anything but. Paul Fussell's early-Nineties book, "BAD," is in that vein as well. "Jerks" (or whatever its eventual title) would be a welcome addition to the curmudgeon's bookshelf.
There appears to be some of all of the sub-species in all of us
when we care to face truth. Repeating St. Paul rejoice and weep.
We can all be together.
I am guilty...we had this know it all on a river trip who was telling all the clients how much better this other company he normally worked for was than ours--though his work with us was minimal and his people and boating skills were abysmal. As he was a rookie and had no people on his boat, i did take a delight in slathering his oar handles with sunscreen, but I was probably only a boor rather than a lout, as I did not do this above a major rapids.
Forget writing them all down in a book. Do it in television form instead, possibly a 13 part miniseries because you'll stand a better chance of reaching your target audience. I'm pretty sure some drug company will sponsor it.
Signed, Know-it-all!
The "practical 'joke,'" so-called, is in fact hostile aggression under a thin coating of pretended humor.
BTW, have people here noticed the disappearance of the admonition to people behaving juvenilely, to "Act your age!"? The practical joker wil respond to the aggrieved victim with the faux-plaintive, "Can't you take a joke?" The proper reply to that is, "Because we are both adults, that doesn't come into question."
If those opinions make me a curmudgeon, or misanthrope, then so mote it be.
I am guessing the Matchmaker is most likely going to be a woman?
Hardly a day goes by that some friend or reader or supporter does not give me advice on what to put in my next column or what subject I should pick for my next book—these are people, mind you, who have never published so much as a letter to the editor in their local paper. One of my favorite bits of advice concerns how to raise money or boost circulation. Sometimes the proposal is less than breath-taking: "Have you ever thought of sending out a letter asking readers for contributions?" or "Why not advertise in other magazines or, wait a minute, rent their mailing lists and send out subscription forms?" Others do take my breath away. "Why not ask—you can fill in the blanks with Donald Trump, Clive Cussler, Bob Dylan ("I hear he turned Christian")—to join your board of directors. Then he would have to give you money."
These people mean well, but I wonder if they ever stop to ask themselves if it is not a little insulting for someone with absolutely no knowledge or experience to offer such suggestions. Surely, they can see the implication, that we are ignorant lay-abouts who do not know our business.
The other day I annoyed an old grouch in passing. When I saw him again yesterday he grimaced with annoyance. Not knowing what to do, I asked him how he was, to which he answered: "Are you a doctor?"
Howard W. Galloway's post reflects my own thoughts. This could be read as my nightly examination of conscience.
Dr. Fleming @18,
I've never suggested a topic for your next book, nor do I have one in mind, but I might suggest that at least some of the folks who do are simply appealing to you to treat a subject that is important to them; this subject could have been badly dealt with by others or simply ignored and hence they appreciate your ability to treat the subject incisively and competently. I would venture that few if any had in mind any ideas about you not knowing your business. They simply are offering encouragement.
I write this not to quibble, only to propose that there are more than adequate numbers and categories of jerks out there without trying too hard to expand the universe!
I should be clear that what I had in mind was people who ask me, for example, to take up some pop theme currently in vogue and do a middle-brow Glen Beck or who think I could be the next Moses Hadas and vulgarize the classics. I don't advise engineers and scientists on what research to undertake or businessmen on companies to invest in. I assume that such people are too busy doing what they are doing to listen to advice from me. Remember the Silver Rule; ANSWER NO UNASKED QUESTIONS. (PS I did also make it clear that many of these people are well-meaning friends, but if I am going to pillory my own errors, I am going to spare no one.
"who think I could be the next Moses Hadas and vulgarize the classics."
Not a chance. The classics don't depend upon scholars or vulgarizers for their survival or pleasure. Thank God. rr
" Questions are a burden to others and answers are a prison to oneself." - The Prisoner
Excellent quote, Mr. Nicoletti. And to Dr. Fleming's Silver Rule I would add the Bronze: "Ask no unnecessary questions." The banality about curiosity killing the cat is far too one-way to underscore the larger problem of indiscretion in the search for knowledge.
I have, I confess, a bitter self-interest in this rule. I have ceased trying to meet people in France for the simple reason that when I do meet someone I can be 90 percent guaranteed to be asked, "Where are you from? I hear an accent." This is a bit annoying in itself (slightly less annoying is the person who is discreet enough not to say anything but as soon as "England" is mentioned in a conversation, however remotely, interpolates "Are you English??" Happily here I can answer "no," but if they pursue further with the search I will of course be trapped.), mostly because I know that once I indulge my interrogator with the answer I am guaranteed to get a string of other, less discreet questions all of which I am far less keen to answer:
- "Where in the United States are you from?"
- "How long have you been in Paris?"
- "Do you like Paris?"
- "How long do you think you'll stay in Paris?"
- "Do you go back often to the States?"
- "Do you miss your family?"
- "Is your family traditionalist Roman Catholic?"
Yes, people are just trying to make conversation, but frankly these are not the stuff friendships can be built on; the deeper answers to such questions are things I tend to reveal only to my closest friends. Why can't people as about American geography, gastronomy, œnology, highways/cars, cinema, etc.... stuff that is not about ME, that will be far more useful in enriching their feel for the country without probing someone's personal intimacies and to wit be infinitely more interesting and picturesque to discuss??
Is it safe to postulate that the Jerk seldom does anything that is actually illegal? Although frequently acting in ways that in a civilised society would merit a beating.
Can we classify as a Jerk a common academic type, utterly useless at his calling, who grabs a minor administrative post where he can pettily persecute his betters?
Can we say that Colin Powell, former Chief of Staff and Secretary of State, is a buffoon in doing the Watusi on camera?
Is it possible that George W. Bush is both a Buffoon and a Jerk?
Today, I observed the real value of this article. A friend came to my cubicle and initiated a conversation about rising commodity prices, corn in particular. He mentioned that his father-in-law recently had to sell several head of cattle, because he could no longer afford the rising feed costs. I immediate began to inform my colleague that his father-in-law should have resorted to grass feeding and only supplement with corn feeding in the last few weeks as bovine dooms day approached. The content of Dr. Fleming's article came to mind no sooner than the last word of my agricultural educational session escaped my tongue. I immediately apologized and informed my friend that, having never owned a single cow, bull, horse, goat, or sheep in my life, I am nearly completely ignorant of the subject matter.
I also quickly recalled part of a meditation I recently heard given by a priest. Although we may examine ourselves and find that we have refrained from venial and mortal sin, our responsibility is to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If we are without sin, but our character (I guess what we now call personality) is unattractive, then the successes of our efforts will be limited, if we have any success at all.
Dr. Wilson,
It is good to have you back.
Can we classify as a Jerk a common academic type, utterly useless at his calling, who grabs a minor administrative post where he can pettily persecute his betters?
I would think so but I am not for sure. I hate them and have resented them for years. I was almost over them until you reminded me of these petty foggers and now I must go lay down. The threads are still better with you than without, even though your mention of graduate assistants, administrative assistants, assistant to assistant deans, etc., has diturbed me.
'Can we classify as a Jerk a common academic type, utterly useless at his calling, who grabs a minor administrative post where he can pettily persecute his betters?'
I believe so, Dr Wilson, and I wonder if there is any real difference at all between them and those who hold government bureaucratic jobs.
We see that type in business too, though to a lesser extent so far, despite the best efforts of political correctness and affirmative action,
two evils which enable jerks, just like buying booze for an alcoholic.
@25 NGPM
The Greeks ask a lot of questions, too. A honeymooning Danish couple stopped in a small town, and while in a restaurant, the husband stood up, introduced himself and his wife, announced that they were recently married, had always wanted to see Greece, and so it went, everybody listening intently, until the end when the man asked if there were any further questions. Somebody in the crowd then asked how many children they had. It might have been an insult or just plain ignorance.
But about questions; the French have a way of answering a negative question by saying "si" instead of "oui." And the Vietnamese will not answer a question with No. Instead they say, "Yes, I don't want any." I often hear questions like "Wouldn't it be better if ..." so now I answer with, "yes I don't know if your way is better, but I can mathematically prove my way is optimal." This method seems to grate on the know-it-alls I'm happy to say. Language lessons!
Peasants everywhere grill outsiders. Rural Greeks are socially conservative and shocked.by the nude bathing and public fornication engaged in by Brits, Germans, and Scandinavians. The questioner was making a statement.
As for French, si is required response to a negative question expecting the answer no. Latin is especially subtle in asking questions of fact, which may neutral (prefaced by enclitic -ne tacked onto the first word), questions expecting yes(prefaced by nonne) and no (prefaced by num). In English we translate around these constructions and while we can make the same distinctions, it is far less elegant. Often we have to depend on tone of voice which is difficult in print and varies between dialects and speakers.
If I may quote from a great American poet and philosopher, Hiram King Williams: “Why don’t you mind your own business, cause if you mind your own business, you won’t be minding mine.” Or, as he advises in the conclusion, “If you mind your own business, you’ll stay busy all the time.”
Ole Hank would be right proud, I am sure, to be quoted this way.
Each of us looking in the mirror, followed by some long and hard thought, is doubtless the best means of our dealing with our own jerkiness, whatever may be its component parts. It's called the Fall of Man. The real jerks are the people who make no attempt to correct what probably began as a character tic and increased by increments until their pride turned into a genuine annoyance to others.
Did you ever think of Dr. Jekyll as a man who stayed up nights searching for the means to reach out to his inner jerk?
Dr Fleming,
I wonder if you could hash out the difference between the "Billy Liar" type you refer to as opposed to the Southern yarn-spinner type so prevalent down here. Where is the line between improving and exaggerating a folk tale (which writers from Mark Twain to James Dickey owe their livelihoods to) and abject lying?
This is an excellent article. To the taxonomy of Jerks I would add the singer who cannot sing, usually found in a car ride or in public with headphones. It is not enough for these people to quietly listen to and enjoy their music. They have to sing, too.
Added to the above:
The Know-It-All
Some busybodies are self-proclaimed experts in cooking or gardening or wine-bibbing. They cannot sip the sherry you have given them without making comparisons with the superior Amontillado they got on sale at wine.com--"Probably paid less for it than this generic stuff." I once made the mistake of inviting to dinner the professional wit who consulted his joke files before parties. He poked at the first course--a perfectly executed recipe from Julia Child--and inquired painfully, "Is it supposed to taste like this?"
There are men who cannot help offering advice. Anytime some poor devil is working on his car or fixing his lawnmower, a gaggle of loafers is sure to appear, each one giving his expert opinion on what is wrong and how to fix it. I do the same thing sometimes in order to seem normal, even though I haven't the slightest idea of how things work. Hardly a day goes by that some friend or reader or supporter does not give me advice on what to put in my next column or what subject I should pick for my next book—these are people, mind you, who have never published so much as a letter to the editor in their local paper. One of my favorite bits of advice concerns how to raise money. Sometimes the proposal is less than breath-taking: "Have you ever thought of sending out a letter asking readers for contributions?" or "Why not advertise in other magazines or, wait a minute, rent their mailing lists and send out subscription forms?" Others do take my breath away. "Why not ask—you can fill in the blanks with Donald Trump, Clive Cussler, Bob Dylan ("I hear he turned Christian")—to join your board of directors. Then he would have to give you money."
These people mean well, but I wonder if they ever stop to ask themselves if it is not a little insulting for someone with absolutely no knowledge or experience to offer such suggestions. Surely, they can see the implication, that we are ignorant lay-abouts who do not know our business. Some of these would-be counselors belong to a group I call the Toppers. There is nothing you can say to one of these that he cannot top. If you have just come back from hiking the Appalachian Trail, he will relate his adventures hiking in the Himalayas or at least tell you about someone he may have met who claimed to have climbed Everest. If you are a jazz enthusiast and a fan of Dizzy Gillespie, he will be sure to extol the superior abilities of Miles Davis. Sometimes, the Topper falls into the groove of monomania, and whatever the topic of conversation—French pop music, Portuguese wine, Southern League baseball in the 1960's—he will revert to some know-it-all relative: "Funny you should mention Memphis. This same cousin of mine played a season in the Northern League for Fargo-Morehead, and he almost got traded up to Memphis…"
While older men frequently fall into the anecdotal vein, completely oblivious to the yawns and rolling eyes they are inspiring (ask my junior colleagues), young men are so self-conscious about making an impression that they have to top every bon mot or insight. These are the Yes-butters, who listen patiently to your discourse on, say, Jefferson's local patriotism, and just as your last words are fading away, pop in with a depressingly familiar cliché: "Yes, but, the really important aspect of Jefferson's thought is his philosophy of natural rights."
The point is never actually to have a point but only to have the last word—and the first word, if they can manage it. In his youth, Dr. Johnson knew the novelist Samuel Richardson, who must have stepped on one of the young Johnson's lines once too often, because the Great Cham told his young admirer James Boswell, "That fellow Richardson...could not be contented to sail quietly down the stream of reputation without longing to tase the froth from every stroke of his oar." The type is far more common today.
This conversation-killing strategy is not confined to the young. I have a friend in his 70's who cannot hear an innocent fact—the date of the Spanish Armada or arrival of the gypsy moth in the country—without jumping in with, "But the thing about it is…" followed, usually, by a piece of grotesque misinformation he picked up from The Smithsonian magazine—an ever flowing font of false facts and politically correct misinterpretation.
The worst part of this is that some of these jokers may actually know a great deal, even about the subject at hand. The fact that they may be often right, though, does not make them either more generally reliable or less offensive.
I used to have an older friend—let us call him Mr. Smart-Pants—who exemplifies this type. Smart-Pants was an able and competent man in many fields. A successful highschool and college athlete, he could still play scratch golf. He was also a crack shot. A former Navy pilot, he could drive better and more aggressively than most men on the NASCAR circuit. He could fix just about anything; heck, he could build just about anything. He had built several businesses and was a whizz in the stock market. He'd been everywhere, done nearly everything, and could talk affably and without bragging about many things. A man's man, a boon companion, Smart-Pants, as all his friends complained, could also be an intolerable know-it-all. He told his doctor what course of treatment to prescribe, lectured the golf pro at his club, and knew everybody's business better than they did. In his teens, he had lost all interest in religion, but ignorance did not prevent him from pontificating—and, believe me, that is the word—on the shortcomings of a Christian theology he had never studied. And, while he had never taken any interest in classical studies, he had no hesitation explaining Roman history to me or holding forth on the Greek roots of scientific vocabulary. He was a good man, even a great man, whom I respected, admired, and for the most part really liked, but he was perfectly winning to bore other people to tears.
The Humble Interviewer
Experts, Toppers, and Yes-butters are all ambitious types who look at conversation as a competition in which they are bound and determined to come out ahead. At the end of the spectrum, so it would seem, are the self-effacing passive-aggressors, who only want to learn from their conversational victims. Doctors and lawyers are subjected to the third degree all the time, but in most cases the motive is a harmless desire for free advice. But when the subject is a German literature teacher from Iowa, the interrogation can seem bizarre. So how did you get interested in German? No German blood, really? Where did you go to school? I don't know anything about German literature but when I was a kid I liked the cowboy novels of Karl Mai—do you ever teach Karl Mai? Never read him? What about Gunther Grass, isn't he famous. And if this vein peters out, there is always the fascinating topic of the cultural opportunities to be had in greater Des Moines.
As a graduate student, I used to have tea with a faculty wife who could almost smell the unwholesome dissidence of anyone who might have ever had an opinion different from her own. I once, incautiously, mentioned that I was reading Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time, which was being published, in those days, novel by novel. After remarking that only an Anglophile snob could possibly like Powell, she proceeded to grill me on her favorite novelist, who turned out to be C.P. Snow. I had read Snow and thoroughly disliked him as a novelist with ideas--as a novelist he made a great scientist—but I adroitly concealed my opinion on this and every subject until she virtually had me pinned to the wall on feminism or prohibition or something or other on which I knew my opinion would be offensive. "Oh, I don't think anyone is interested in my uninformed opinions," I ventured."
"On the contrary, Mr. Fleming, I am passionately interested in everything you think." This clearly was not true, because she was only interested in one person's opinions, namely her own. That was my first clue that the Humble Interviewer was as self-centered as the Topper. I ran across this advice, the other day, in an etiquette book from the early 19th century: "Never ask a question under any circumstances. In the first place it is too proud; in the second place, it may be very inconvenient or very awkward to reply."[i] A few pages later, the author was more precise: "If you wish to inquire about anything, do not do it by asking a question; but introduce the subject, and give the person an opportunity of saying as much as he finds it agreeable to impart. Do not even say, 'How is your brother today?' but 'I hope your brother is quite well.'"
The yarn-spinner is an artist who improves his material in order to make it more entertaining and meaningful. He does not expect to be taken literally and he has no illusions about what is real. The Billie Liar type, one step beyond Walter Mitty, obsessively improves upon reality and makes himself the hero of every drama. First he half-persuades himself, then lies to others.
Arthur obviously has read and understood RL Stevenson. That is exactly the point of Jekyl and Hyde. The good doctor, a convinced Darwinist, wants to get in touch with his more primitive self. He is not a victim like the fictional wolfman. He is deliberately liberating the beast.
On Toppers, perhaps some of you will recall the Simpsons episode in which Homer ends up living with a bear. When the hunter brings a group to shoot the bear, the following dialogue takes place as the irrepressible Cletus has to top Grant the hunter:
Grant: Unless we take him down!
Cletus: Yeah! All the way down!
Grant: What you said didn't really add much.
Cletus: I know, I just wanted to belong.
Grant: Well, we all feel that way sometimes.
To Dr. Fleming at #3, I did not mean any disrespect in omitting Dr. Trifkovic's honorific; his name is a striking one that always leaps to my mind without it.
Apologies to the good Dr., and thanks again for everything, to all at Chronicles.
No disrespect on your part was assumed. Indeed, I had not even noticed your omission. I may sometimes seem a little stuffy here, but it is to counter the rudeness that has been encouraged by virtual familiarity. In fact, I had always discouraged the use of "Dr" as a title except for the sawbones, but I realized that it was a losing battle. I do not dislike the easy familiarity of Americans who know each other and drop titles, though I prefer the change to be made formally as the Italians do with a Possiamo darci del tu. (May we give each other the thou, that is speak familiarly).
Not sure if you're still following this Dr Fleming, but I wonder how a different kind of jerk you havent covered - the cosmopolitan - fits in with the rugged individualists. Different sides to the same coin? By cosmopolitans, I mean the jerks who owe no allegiance to any one place and insist on destroying a small town's culture in their quest to remake it into New York or California that they've just fled. You see alot of these on the 'HGTV' channel, which now has an international cosmopolitan jerks program.
Thanks for the good point, which I shall ponder. Actually, you don't have to worry on whether I am keeping up because our system is set up to send to my email and new comment, which is why I may appear to be doing nothing but monitoring my web columns. I have a big chunk on the rugged individualist but I am trying to tone the savagery of my contempt for Ayn Rand and her flock of individualist sheep. I keep telling myself I should, in the words of the late Bobby Bland (whom I am pleased to say I saw three times live), pity the fools.
"I am trying to tone the savagery of my contempt for Ayn Rand and her flock of individualist sheep."
I cannot WAIT to get your unmitigated thoughts on the Rand cult! Such a screed could not come at a more handy time with so many singing the praises of the film of Atlas Shrugged.
Overlapping with many of the above, but not quite the same as any of them, is the Attention-Seeker. I won't provide the link because I know it will be eaten by the spam filter, but Google "USA chant on NYC subway fail" for a humorous example of an Attention-Seeker being met with stony and mostly dignified (although some respond in Jerkish kind by giving him the finger) silence. The thing that marks him as a true Attention-Seeker is that he does not merely attempt to start a chant spontaneously, he begins it with a lengthy "look at me" preface.
Thanks, it is a wonderful video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jox5vMFASLA. The comments are also interesting because many people, perhaps a majority seem to get the point.
Dr. Fleming, thanks for the reminder on why I don't ride the subways anymore. I wish I had stories for you to put into the book but it's been over five years, what I do remember though is the outer boros being no where near as clean and calm looking.