By Tony Deyal,
Contributor
Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
Matthew, 18:6.
IT WAS United States President, Gerald Ford, who said, "Things are more like they are now than they have ever been." Winston Churchill said, in 1939, "Atomic energy might be as good as our present day explosives, but it is unlikely to produce anything very much more dangerous."
Another Englishman, the Lord Chamberlain of England, once said to Lillian Hellman, "We're well aware of the male homosexual problem in this country, which is of course minor, but to our certain knowledge there is not one lesbian in England."
The editor of the old New York World sent a telegram to his Washington correspondent that is as relevant to today's journalism as it was then, "Send all the details. Never mind the facts."
The fact is that I took these quotations from a very interesting book, edited by Ross and Kathryn Petras (published by Doubleday and printed in 1993), The 776 Stupidest Things Ever Said. Fortunately for me, and for most of you reading this, the Petras were not around when we made our own dumb statements. Posterity would never know what we said to make posteriors of ourselves. While I exclude my initial, "Will you marry me?" as being too common to be considered unique or even mildly interesting, there are others. However, I stick with the book for the time being.
Sam Goldwyn
For instance there was the Irish legislator, a very staunch Catholic, who said sternly, "The only way to stop this suicide wave is to make it a capital offence punishable by death."
Movie mogul, Sam Goldwyn, is famous for his mangling of the English Language. He said, "I never put on a pair of shoes until I've worn them for five years." Commenting on a woman's hands he said, "Frances has the most beautiful hands in the world, and someday I'm going to make a bust of them."
After being told that a Western he was filming needed more Native American extras, Goldwyn ordered, "Get some more from the reservoir". Commenting on a blockbuster film, Goldwyn said, "This will start with a bang in Hollywood and degenerate throughout the whole world." He also insisted, "A verbal contract is not worth the paper it's written on," and "Any man who needs to go to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined." When told that a certain director was "too caustic", Goldwyn exclaimed, "To hell with cost, pay him what he wants."
The Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Joseph Califano Jr., gave a glowing reference to an individual, "Your commitment and compassion, your humanitarian principles and your interest in protecting individual liberty and freedom have made an outstanding contribution to furthering the cause of human dignity." The individual was Jim Jones, cult leader and mass murderer.
No wonder US Republican Senator from Utah, Orrin Hatch, defended the death sentence by saying, "Capital punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of human life."
In a Kenyan boarding school, the Deputy Principal, Joyce Kithira, commenting on a raid of the girls dormitory by a gang of boys who raped 71 girls and killed 19, said, "The boys never meant any harm against the girls. They just meant to rape." And in Baghdad, during the Gulf War, an Iraqi radio announcer, trying to undermine the morale of the American troops, warned, "While you are away, movie stars are taking your women. Robert Redford is dating your girlfriend. Tom Selleck is kissing your girl. Bart Simpson is making love to your wife."
Space limitations make it impossible for me to add more quotations from the book. However, I want my readers to consider the fitness of what follows and its consistency with the quotations I have used. It came from the Appeal Court of Trinidad and Tobago. A man, (and not a cartoon character like Bart Simpson) Andrew Malchan, who killed his two step-children by beating them with a "coffee" stick, had the death sentence previously imposed upon him quashed and changed to manslaughter convictions.
Beaten to death
The children, Gary Cipriani (eight years old) and Adrian Cipriani (five years old) were beaten to death and their bodies placed in bags and buried behind the home in which their mother and two other siblings lived with Malchan and another woman. In September 1997, Malchan, in a rage, beat Gary for more than an hour. The boy was later discovered dead by his mother. In November, Malchan beat Adrian with the same stick because the little boy had spilled some coffee. Malchan strangled Adrian and buried him in the backyard.
In an article in Thursday's edition of the Trinidad Express, Journalist Fulton Wilson wrote, "Yesterday, the court gave its written reason for imposing the manslaughter verdicts. It noted that the instrument that was used to chastise the children was not unusual for country folk."
I grew up and lived in the country for most of my life. Belts, straps and whips, I know well, from parents and teachers alike. But I am still very much alive like most of my contemporaries (and readers) who also grew up in rural areas. From my perspective there is nothing commonplace about coffee sticks. Certainly, nobody in my neighbourhood owned or used one, even though Siparia and its environs are coffee and cocoa growing communities.
More than the instrument, no parent ever played such a deadly and mortal tune on my head or the heads of any of my friends, family or acquaintances.
My only other comment is a quotation from Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. While he speaks about parents, I can only apply his words to children, "To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness."
Perhaps, instead of a milestone in the history of local jurisprudence, we should have got ourselves some millstones.
Tony Deyal was last seen citing another quotation that he considers ambiguous but appropriate. This one is from William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. It goes like this, "Caesar did never wrong save with just cause".
