platitude

The awful truth is that the truth is often awful.  The human race, ever striving to avoid or at least soften reality, came up with the platitude, a spoonful of easily digested truth.  Shakespeare and Benjamin Franklin are two of our most adept in all thing platitudinous.  It could be argued that Shakespeare merely recorded the homilies of his day, but Ben Franklin we, with typical American arrogance, consider a true original.  For my money, I’ll stick with Mark Twain who, as one of his literary heirs, Biff Rose, would say,”He told the truth but with a wink.”   Twain, like his contemporary P.T. Barnum, knew there was a sucker born every minute and he rubbed it in.  “Familiarity breeds contempt, and children”, ” He laughs best who laughs least”, “We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a  talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen we do possess”, “If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything”.  Twain wrote hundreds of these all to human observations and  the reason they are still relevant is that we still avoid the truth like the plague.  Our society is mired in sound bites, half-truths, outright lies and as Twain says, ” The most outrageous lies that can be invented will find believers if a man only tells them with all his might”.  Twain would have loved the Tea Party.  You get my point – I cannot improve on the wisdom of the ages so I will end with one final quote from the  cinematic heir to the Clemensian throne, Groucho Marx. “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”  Mark Twain would be so proud.

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