"It ain’t what a man
don’t know that makes him a fool, but what he does know that ain’t
so."
— Henry W. Shaw
I copied the above into
one of my quote books (I am working on my fourth) decades ago. I’ve
repeated it myself, but had forgotten who said it when I wanted to
use it today, so I googled the quote – and found it attributed to
Mark Twain, though with some admissions that he may not in fact been
the first to say it.
My quote books aren’t
organized by subject, so I started paging through, and found it in
Book 2, attributed to Mr. Shaw, whom I suspect is the right author.
The point in the above quote therefore makes itself.
In fact Twain and Shaw,
the latter using the pen name Josh Billings, were contemporaries,
almost equally well-regarded at the time. I’ll bet someone later
thought the quote might seem cleverer if attributed to Twain.
One of my pet peeves is
the clever statements made by ordinary people, who then attribute
them to famous people, often in this era to Andy Rooney or Lee
Iacocca, so they’ll get published. I always check these statements
with snopes.com before passing them on, and often learn that they
are wrongly attributed. When I complain to the person who sent them
to me, they usually don’t understand why this bothers me. I see it
as a way of stealing someone’s identity, or using celebrities
without their permission to make a point with which they may or may
not agree.
What got me started on
this subject was learning last weekend that Gov. Chris Christie
didn’t hug President Barack Obama when the latter showed up after
Hurricane Sandy, bringing federal aid. At the time, the Republican
governor was supporting Mitt Romney’s second presidential bid, and
the image of the hug stayed in people’s minds, making Christie’s
criticism of Obama useless in the last days of the campaign. It has
since been affecting his own presidential campaign, as frequent
reference to it makes him seem too soft, too tolerant of the
Democrat president.
However, there never was a
hug. One of my Facebook friends posted that Fox News’ Greta van
Susteren recently apologized to Christie for being the first to
charge “hug”; she has recently seen a photo and in fact, he and the
president were just shaking hands, though Obama did that
Clinton-thing of grasping the opposite upper arm.
I would swear I once saw
“the hug”. Chip remembers it too, asked me: “was this a mass
hallucination?” All I could find on the internet was a photo of the
two of them walking with their arms around each other, which was odd
enough.
But I also heard, and have
repeated, that it bothered me more that Gov. Christie said he “wept”
when he got a call from Bruce Springsteen, riding with the President
on Air Force One. I decided that Christie is too emotional to be
president. Today, suspicious now of “what I think I know”, I looked
this up too; Christie was clearly kidding when he said that. So he’s
back on my list of possible candidates.
I don’t “know” this, but I
strongly suspect that Obama set up Christie to appear weak, and
therefore get him off the Romney campaign trail. The fact that it
worked is the fault of those of us who believed what we were told
and repeated it.
Of course this is a small
thing, in the context of the big things people believe that ain’t
so. Every October, living near Salem, we are reminded of the Witch
Hysteria, the giant delusion that many people shared in 1692,
resulting in the death of alleged witches. Then, fewer than forty
years ago, the delusion repeated itself as accusations against Day
Care providers, across the country and again in Massachusetts.
The Fells Acre Day Care
case was the worst, resulting in the false imprisonment of Violet,
Gerald and Cheryl Amirault. Eventually, most people came to realize
that there was never abuse at this Fells Acre, that the government’s
entire case was false, that the Amiraults were innocent. However,
the injustice goes on, as Gerald Amirault is still on parole, still
wearing and paying for his GPS ankle bracelet.
Candidate Charlie Baker
had promised to deal with this if he was elected. Yes, I believed
him. Must admit it’s not the first time I believed something a
politician told me that wasn’t so, making me a fool; bet I’m not the
only one.
In college freshman
Philosophy class, we studied the French philosopher Rene Descartes,
who famously said “I think, therefore I am,” arguing that this is
the only thing we could know for sure. I did that little exercise,
then slowly began piling on other things I was reasonably sure I
knew.
Politically, I remain
convinced that freedom and personal responsibility are the two
highest values, the basis for the American ideal. But I had always
thought that Americans, by definition, shared those values; it has
taken me many decades to realize that this could be wrong. NOW
what?
One of my favorite novels
is “Illusions” by Richard Bach (better known for “Jonathan
Livingston Seagull”), in which the protagonist repeats a favorite
phrase to an observer: “It’s only a movie.” I recall during my early
years of trying to make sense of activities on Beacon Hill,
conservative Taxation Committee Chairman Jack Flood (D-Canton) said
that a lot, just to get himself and the rest of us through the day.
Moving from literature to
music, I can still sing along with Judy Collins: “I’ve looked at
life from both sides now, from up and down, and still somehow: it’s
life’s illusions I recall, I really don’t know life at all.”
Or how about the advice of
the Stage Manager in “The Fantasticks”, when his young charges
insist on looking at reality: “Put on the mask! You must always wear
the mask!”
Now I’m wondering: how
many illusions am I willing to give up at this late point in my
life? I’ll go back to my quote books, Book One, my beloved Henry
David Thoreau: “To know that we know what we know, and that we do
not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.” I shall
continue to aspire….and share what I “know” with you.
Barbara Anderson of
Marblehead is a weekly columnist for the Salem News and
Eagle-Tribune Publishing Company.
