By Tobin Barnes“And he didn’t suffer fools gladly.”
You often hear those words. They’re used to describe cranky people, particularly once they’re dead. Evidently, such souls didn’t enjoy putting up with nonsense and incompetence.
But then, who does?
The words first made an impression on me when I was looking into the English playwright and critic-at-large George Bernard Shaw. He’s the only person to win a Nobel Prize for Literature and an Oscar for his play-turned-into-a-movie, “Pygmalion.”
Much in his world seemed to irritate him, from nonsensical spelling rules to Victorian morals, and he was quick to express himself on such subjects, sparing no false idols. He once said, “My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the funniest joke in the world.”
Another time I ran into the phrase was when I read that Paul McCartney said his late bandmate George Harrison also “didn’t suffer fools gladly.” Of course, I’ve run into many other uses of the phrase that I can’t now remember. Same for you, I would imagine.
When I think of fools, I don’t necessarily think of people who are stupid (that often cannot be helped), but rather of people who pretend to know more than they do.
They’re the puffed-up types who pester us with the nonsense and incompetence that drives people nuts. Unfortunately, too many of our politicians and authority-types fall into this category.
Go ahead, make up a mental list. I’ll wait.
(Dum-de-dum-dum-dum.)
Didn’t take long, did it?
Yeah fools.
They’ll bluster knowledge and competence but can’t back it up. They’re all hat and no cattle, as they say in Texas. They’ll boldly leap to the forefront to take on challenges they’re all too ill-equipped to handle.
And deep down they know it.
Yeah, fools.
They’re the people poet Alexander Pope was referring to when he said, “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
But wait.
We’re surrounded by fools. Heck, sometimes I surround myself with foolishness. Being a fool is part and parcel of being human.
That’s why I wonder about people who supposedly “didn’t suffer fools gladly.”
They must have been miserable.
P-o’d pretty much 24/7.
How could they have read the newspaper without getting apoplectic? How could they have sat down to Christmas dinner with black sheep, even white sheep, kith and kin? How could they have even walked down the street without blowing a gasket?
Veins must have stuck out of their faces like Kirk Douglas in “Spartacus.”
It’s like, take a chill pill, Man.
Fools aren’t going away anytime soon, Bro.
It’s the stuff of life, Homes.
Fools are already factored into the market as they say on Wall Street.
Some of our best Americans have been great with fools. Abraham Lincoln was a master. I’ve been reading another book about him, “Tried by War.”
Yeah, “another.”
I never grow tired of reading about gold old Abe. I don’t grow tired of writing about him either. I’ll have more to say about him soon.
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