The Damned Human Race

twain

Last Wednesday was the 100th anniversary of Mark Twain’s death.  To mark the occasion, Ben Click, our enterprising department chair, set up a panel to discuss what Twain had to say about  “race, religion, politics, and the ‘damned human race.’”  

On the panel were Peter Sagal, star of National Public Radio’s “Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!”; Mo Rocca, former humorist from “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”; CNN political analyst Amy Holmes; and Dr. John Bird, noted Twain scholar.  We filled up the gym with about 1200 people.

Twain biographer Ron Powers calls Twain “our nation’s first rock star,” and there was a rock concert atmosphere to the evening, with lots of clapping and cheering.  Sagal, who moderated the panel, started by asking about Twain’s impact on public events of his time.  This opened up a discussion on the effectiveness, and lack of effectiveness, of satire. 

Twain, for instance, was vehemently opposed to the war in the Phillipines, which he saw as a pure empire-building venture, and he broke with Teddy Roosevelt over it.  Yet the war went on anyway, and his blistering “war prayer,”  which Sagal said is one of his favorite Twain pieces, could not be published during his lifetime.

Likewise Huckleberry Finn didn’t seem to put a damper on racism.  In fact, lynchings rose the decade after the book came out.  Other Twain attacks similarly seemed to fail in their effect.

So if America’s most famous satirist couldn’t move public opinion, is satire useless?

Amy Holmes notes that sometimes humor can be used to smuggle ideas in that would be ignored otherwise.  The idea of the writer as official fool, which I discussed recently, was brought up—the panelists saw Twain playing such a role in American society.  But the king didn’t take the fool seriously, Sagal objected.  To which Holmes replied that the king wasn’t the fool’s only audience.

Rocca noted that sometimes satire did have an impact, citing Tina Fey’s satire of Sarah Palin as particularly effective.  “I had to check to make sure that it was Tina, not Palin, who said that she could see Russia from her home,” he noted.  He pointed out that sometimes humor could be used to reinforce a general impression.  Therefore, in the hands of Fey, Palin became a superficial beauty queen contestant, while satirists were able to turn Jimmy Carter (following his fishing boat encounter with a swamp rabbit) into a wimp and Gerald Ford (after his stumble) into a bumbler.

Do we have, and could we have, a Mark Twain today?  Someone mentioned Jon Stewart, to which Holmes (who is conservative) objected, finding him too partisan.  Bird, however, noted that Twain was very opinionated and would take strong stands, sometimes unpopular ones.

And yet in one sense he did seem to rise above the fray, making, say, remarks about Congress that could be appropriated by either political side.  (An example: “Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”)  Sagal wondered whether there wasn’t a problem with this, especially in our own time when many seem more interested in criticizing than governing.  Bird acknowledged that Twain could be very pessimistic.  In fact, Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court anticipates many of the horrors of the 20th century, including trench warfare and genoicide.  Nevertheless, he didn’t stop trying to make a difference.  He was never a thorough-going cynic.

An audience member wondered what Twain would think of the Tea Party movement.  Sagal cited as relevant the chapter in Huckleberry Finn where Colonel Sherburn, after shooting a man who is heckling him, faces down an angry lynch mob.  Isn’t this a kind of liberal fantasy, Sagal wondered—the power of shame to defuse crazy talk. Was Twain naive?

Then again, as John Bird pointed out, the scene could also be seen as a rightwing fantasy: a man with a gun and lots of self assurance singlehandedly dispersing a mob. 

Bird didn’t think that Twain would think much of the Tea Party movement (too incoherent).  He also noted the brilliance of Twain having Huck slink off just as the rest of the mob does. “I could a stayed if I wanted to,” Huck says, “but I didn’t want to.”

I have only touched on a few of the high points of the night.  Here’s another: at one point, following a question from the audience, the panel somehow steered off into Lord of the Flies, and Sagal, after noting that he identified with Piggy, noted that he is surrouded by Piggies at National Public Radio. 

But the best line of the night went to Mo Rocca: he told us all that he thought that we were “the best damn human race ever.”

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