In Neon
How would you like a job where, if you make a mistake, a big red light goes on and eighteen thousand people boo? –Former hockey goalie Jacques Plante
Mass Criticism
If one person call you an ass or a donkey, pay no attention to him. But if five people call you one, go out and buy yourself a saddle. –Arabian proverb
Response to Cranks
Garry Moore once devised an answer to take care of crank letters. “The enclosed letter,” he would write, “arrived on my desk a few days ago. I am sending it to you in the belief that as a responsible citizen you should know that some idiot is sending out letters over your signature.”
Praise or Criticism?
The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism. –Norman Vincent Peale
A Critical Spirit
Then there’s the story of the conscientious wife who tried very hard to please her ultracritical husband, but failed regularly. He always seemed the most cantankerous at breakfast. If the eggs were scrambled, he wanted them poached; if they were poached, he wanted them scrambled. One morning, with what she thought was a stroke of genius, the wife poached one egg and scrambled the other and placed the plate before him. Anxiously she awaited what surely this time would be his unqualified approval. He peered down at the plate and snorted, “Can’t you do anything right, woman? You’ve scrambled the wrong egg!”
Alternatives
An aspiring politician gave his speech his best shot. He felt that it was a stirring, fact-filled campaign speech. Then the candidate looked out on his audience and asked, “Are there any questions?” Someone in the back row called out, “Who else is running?”
Common Ground
Nothing gives you more in common more quickly than finding out you dislike the same person.
Plain Envy
A man and his dog were walking the beach when they come upon another visitor to the beach. The owner of the dog was proud of his dog’s newly mastered feat, so he said to the visitor, “Watch this!” whereupon he tossed a piece of driftwood far out into the sea and the dog immediately ran on top of the ocean, fetched the wood, and ran back. The visitor just shook his head in disbelief. Whereupon the owner repeated the procedure twice. Finally he asked the visitor, “Did you notice anything unusual?” The visitor responded, “Your dog can’t swim, can he?”
One-Track Mind
A boss commented to his secretary about one of his men: “Harry has such a bad memory, it’s a wonder he remembers to breathe. I asked him to pick up a newspaper on his way back from lunch, but I’m not ever sure he’ll remember his way back to the office.” Just then Harry burst in the door, brimming with enthusiasm. He exclaimed, “Guess what, boss! At lunch I ran into old man Jones who hasn’t given us an order in sever years. Before he left, I talked him into a million-dollar contract!” The boss sighed and looked at his secretary, “What did I tell you? He forgot the newspaper.”
Sweet Criticism
When someone says, “I hope you won’t mind my telling you this,” you can be sure you will.
Easy Criticism
Criticism comes more easily than craftsmanship.
A Novel Reaction to Criticism
For a number of years, until her death in 1976, I worked off and on with Kathryn Kuhlman as a writer. Although she was very sensitive to criticism, she never let it deter her from her goal. Instead, she used it to help her get there—always seeming to make the very best out of even the harshest criticism.
Shortly after she went on nationwide television with her weekly program, she received a letter from a public school official in the little town of Iredell, Texas.
“I love you and love your program,” he wrote. “It would have been much better, however, if you didn’t have to spend so much time tugging at your skirt trying to pull it down over your knees. It was really distracting. Why don’t you wear a long dress instead?”
Kathryn read the letter. “You know, he’s right,” she said to her secretary.
She never wore another street-length dress on her TV program. A lesser person would have responded with anger, or passed it off as just another senseless remark. But she was not that sort of lesser person. She heard. She coped. She let it help her toward her goal of communicating. All of which was possible because there was no root of bitterness to give a bad taste to everything that came into her life which presented another viewpoint. –Jamie Buckingham
Making Life Sweeter
Life itself would be impossible if it weren’t for the imperfections of others.
Experts
Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair. –George Burns
Surviving Criticism
Tom Wolfe is the well-known author of The Right Stuff (about the astronauts) and a number of other popular books. He has written articles that have assaulted our current culture. After one particularly strong satirical piece, her was attached furiously by numerous critics. In a West magazine interview, he spoke about his response to being so vilified:
Q: Were you scared the first time you saw their fury come at you?
A: I was. Walter Lippmann, a confidant of presidents who wrote on my very own paper, called me an ass. J. D. Salinger, who hadn’t uttered a word to the press in a decade, sent a telegram calling my articles yellow journalism. E.B. White described me as a horseman riding very tall in the saddle, dragging an innocent victim on the ground behind him . . . . I thought the sky was falling. I wondered how I could possibly survive this. A week later, it gradually began to dawn on me nothing had happened except that people had become terribly interested in me. It was a valuable lesson.
It’s part of the perversity of our times. If you are denounced enough, you become swell. Claus von Bulow walks into a restaurant, and people part like the Red Sea. You can’t be denounced enough nowadays.
Blame Hunters
Some people find fault as if it were buried treasure.
The Way It Works
The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the stupidity of your actions.
The Critical Spirit
A salesman, visiting his barber for a haircut, mentioned that he was about to take a trip to Rome. The barber, who came from Italy, said, “Rome is a terribly overrated city. What airline are you taking and what hotel are you staying at?”
When the salesman told him, the barber criticized the airline for being undependable and the hotel for having horrible service. He told him, “You’d be better off to stay home.”
But the salesman insisted: “I’m expecting to close a big deal, and then I’m going to see the pope.”
The barber shook his head and said, “You’ll be disappointed trying to do business in Italy and I wouldn’t count on seeing the pope. He only grants audiences to very important people.”
Two months later the salesman returned to the barber shop. The barber asked, “And how was your trip?”
The salesman replied, “Wonderful! The flight was perfect, the service at the hotel was excellent. I made a big sale, and I got to see the pope!”
The barber was astounded. “You got to see the pope? What happened?”
“I bent down and kissed his ring.”
“No kidding? And what did he say?”
“Well, he looked down at my head and then said to me, ‘My son, where did you ever get such a lousy haircut?’”
Mediocrity Every Morning
A guest in a seaside hotel restaurant called over the head waiter one morning and said, “I want two boiled eggs, one of them so undercooked it’s runny, and the other so overcooked that it’s about as easy to eat as rubber. Also, grilled bacon that has been left on the plate to get cold, burnt toast that crumbles away as soon as you touch it with a knife, butter straight from the deep freeze so that it’s impossible to spread, and a pot of very weak coffee, lukewarm.”
“That’s a complicated order, sir,” said the bewildered waiter. “It might be a bit difficult.”
The guest replied, “Oh, but that’s exactly what you gave me yesterday!”