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(Read this at your own peril, Ladies!) |
 Well-Known Chauvinist |
Why are the great quotations always from men? Conspiracy?
"Wit
is the salt of conversation, not the food."
English essayist William Hazlitt, 1778-1830
By
CHUCK McFADDEN
of TheColumnists.com
ARE MEN wittier than women?
If you look at the books, they are. The various collections of Best Quotations are loaded with verbal jewels uttered or written by men, with relatively few entries from women. In fact, not only are there far fewer entries by women, they are on the receiving end of some of the wittiest lines ever uttered.
Nancy Astor, to Winston Churchill at a dinner party: "Winston, if you were my husband, I'd poison your coffee."
Churchill: "Nancy, if I were your husband, I'd drink it."
Woman to Churchill at another dinner party: "Mr. Churchill, you're drunk."
Churchill to woman: "And you, madam, are ugly. And in the morning, I shall be sober and you shall still be ugly."
(Winston
was not noted as a Woman's Libber.)
Member of Parliament No. 1, to a political adversary: "You,
sir, shall die either on the gallows or of a foul sexual disease."
Member of Parliament No. 2, replying: "That, sir, depends on whether I embrace your morals or your mistress."
(Roars of laughter.)
Is it unfair? Well, sure it is. Remember, the books were put together by men. My theory is that the male near-monopoly on recorded witticisms most likely results from the fact that throughout the "long, dark corridor of human history" (Winston again) women have been in subservient roles. Their utterances historically have not been thought noteworthy enough to be recorded. Or perhaps they have been recorded, but some male pig appropriated something funny said by a woman as his own. Been known to happen.
ARE
WOMEN more kindhearted than men, more nurturing, and therefore
less likely to wittily savage someone? Well, maybe, but we've
all heard of women inflicting gory, funny verbal wounds on one
another and sometimes on men. They're just not usually recorded
for posterity.
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There was, of course, Dorothy Parker, bless her.
"If I'd had one more drink, I'd have been under the host," she once said.
It doesn't exactly fall into the category of wit, but Parker was in New York one day for a meeting with William Randolph Hearst on a work of fiction she had just completed.
It doesn't have a happy ending, Hearst complained.
Parker walked over to an office window, flung it open, and declared:
"Mr. Hearst, there are 8 million stories out there, and not one of them is going to have a happy ending."
THE WOMAN I happen to be married to is right up there with Parker. She doesn't have a high opinion of people who ride motorcycles, for instance. Thinks they're immature.
"Helmets should be a requirement for motorcyclists -- like diapers." (Barbara McFadden.)
I am a graduate of the University of California, and as part of my job I write a bimonthly newsletter for UC. It's a roundup of research discoveries made by UC's large and talented faculty.
"Gosh, it's like the faculty is giving me a liberal education," I gushed one day.
"Why not? God knows they tried once before," said You Know Who.
Ahem. We men, of course, have a well-deserved reputation for wit under trying circumstances. The trying circumstances are frequently our own fault. Nonetheless.
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(Then smile and ask you to take the garbage out ) |
Herman Mankiewicz, the famed screenwriter, wit and drunkard, once attended a dinner party while he was slightly under the weather. Well, he was 'way under the weather. The hostess was noted for being prim and proper and observing all The Rules. (Why she ever invited Mankiewicz no one knows.) As the evening progressed, Mankiewicz got greener and greener. Finally he got up from the table and tottered off to a nearby bathroom. The guests heard him being noisily sick into the toilet.
"Don't worry," he shouted to the hostess. "The fish came up with the white wine!"
Playwright George Bernard Shaw was sometimes not kind.
"The fickleness of the woman I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me," he wrote in Philanderer.
Neither was Lord Byron:
"There
is a tide in the affairs of women
Which, taken at the flood, leads--God knows where."
SO, WE men go swaggering through life, burping, bragging, leaving our underwear on the floor and tossing off witticisms, frequently at the expense of women. And women put up with it (hey, mostly they do, still, even with the rise of Women's Liberation.) Are they smiling quietly to themselves, knowing the actuarial tables show they're probably going to collect our life insurance?
Nah.
They are probably remembering the words of that sage Adlai Stevenson: "Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them."
© 2001 by Charles M. McFadden. The illustrations are from the IMSI Master/Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. East, San Rafael, CA 94901-5506, USA.
Former reporter McFadden ponders men and women from his home in the Oakland hills.
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You can contact Chuck McFadden with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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