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“Learn his remarks now, and also you need to cry, as a result of so little has modified” acknowledged the Des Moines Register, referring to the knowledge, humor, wit, philosophy, energy of statement, recognition, and political and cultural affect of Will Rogers, the chronicler of an age, serving, as a result of he did it higher than anybody else, because the unofficial conscience of his nation.
He noticed America’s quirks and weaknesses, the financial, political, social and particular person tragedy of the Nice Melancholy, the inventory market crash, the starvation of households, the Mud Bowl catastrophe, the Mississippi floods and the errors of the nation’s leaders.
In his lectures and speeches, books, stage and movie performances, and his “Will Rogers Says” day by day commentaries on the entrance pages of effectively over 400 day by day newspapers throughout the nation, Rogers, some of the extensively quoted of all Individuals, tried to prod the political events, presidents, his fellow residents, the privileged and Congress, described by Rogers as “the nationwide joke manufacturing unit,” to do the fitting factor.
In November 1928, Life journal declared Rogers the winner of the presidential vote by the nice silent majority, the unofficial president of the US.
In the present day, Will’s insights and commentary are astonishingly related.
On Washington: “This nation has come to really feel the identical when Congress is in session as we do when the child will get maintain of a hammer,” Rogers stated. Now the babyish hammer-swinging got here when President Trump barged in with a king-size sledgehammer to bang aside the long-awaited coronavirus aid invoice, calling it “a shame.”
On starvation: “What’s the matter with us?” requested Rogers. “No nation ever had extra, and no nation ever had much less. Ten males in our nation may purchase the entire world, after which thousands and thousands can’t purchase sufficient to eat.” This 12 months, it’s as much as 54 million Individuals, together with 17 million kids, who “lack meals safety.”
On Democrats and Republicans: “Yearly it will get tougher and tougher to inform the distinction between a Republican and a Democrat — course, exterior of appears. … However I’ve discovered the positive solution to inform one from the opposite this 12 months. It’s simply the way in which they speak. The Republicans say, ‘Nicely, issues may have been worse.’ And the Democrats say, ‘How?’ ”
On politics: “All the pieces is altering in America,” stated Rogers. “Individuals are taking their comedians significantly, and their politicians as a joke, when it was vice versa.”
“We’re the primary nation within the historical past of the world to go to the poorhouse in an vehicle,” Rogers stated. This 12 months, I observed the identical factor. Not like within the Thirties when America’s poor and unemployed stood for hours within the Nice Melancholy meals strains for some free bread or soup, this 12 months the hours of ready for meals occurred in miles-long strains of automobiles and vehicles.
On demise: “The great outdated horse-and-buggy days: then you definately lived till you died and never till you have been run over,” wrote Rogers. “Once I die, I need to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all of the passengers in his automotive.”
On private improvement: “There are three sorts of males,” declared Rogers. “The one which learns by studying. The few who be taught by statement. The remainder of them must pee on the electrical fence for themselves.”
On values: “Reside,” suggested Rogers, “in such a manner that you wouldn’t be ashamed to promote your parrot to the city gossip.”
Ralph Reiland, a Pittsburgh author and restaurateur, is affiliate professor of economics emeritus at Robert Morris College.
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Featured Commentary | Opinion
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