So This is Depravity Read online

  We discovered too late that American education had decayed since our own experience of it. Teaching of mathematics seemed to be left entirely to parents. Teaching of Latin had ceased entirely, so that the teaching of English, which had never been very good anyhow, had become almost impossible.

  As those dear toy kids, the point of our lives, moved ahead into uncharted depths of pedagogical incompetence, we with dreams of our eternal kids going on to the great expense-account colleges in order to become tremendous college-trained kids worthy of us young marrieds—we sensed it all slipping away. The schools couldn’t even teach them to spell, much less parse a sentence, frame a paragraph, distinguish Hector from Achilles.

  We gritted our teeth, cursed those teachers, drove those kids and aged. Meanwhile, back at the schoolhouse, the sophomore class spent afternoons sappy on marijuana in the French class.

  By the late 1960’s, when the first wave of the kids was finishing high school, we young marrieds knew all right—boy, did we know!—that the kids had turned into people. Now, this week at our house, the last of the people who used to be our kids is finishing high school, and most of us who will sit there in the heat for the last commencement speech know the rest of the truth.

  We young marrieds have become somebody else, too. We feel it in the knees when we start to stand after sitting too long, which, like the wheezing and lower martini capacity, is discouraging. The better side of the coin compensates for that. Whoever we are now, most of us have probably learned that it is better to have people than kids, that people, in fact, are much easier to live with, once you grow up and quit screaming at them for not being kids anymore.

  Gaudeamus igitur!

  The Way It Was

  ​Thomas Jefferson and George Washington sat silently in a Philadelphia drawing room waiting for Benjamin Franklin. It was 10:30 P.M. and George Washington, who had eaten too much apple pandowdy at dinner, was suffering the distress of acid indigestion.

  He was wishing someone would invent a powder that gave fast, fast, fast relief, but it was still only 1775, and, since acid indigestion hadn’t yet been discovered, Washington thought he was probably having a heart attack. It wasn’t easy living in the eighteenth century, Washington reflected. Dentistry still in the Dark Ages. No football on television. Heart attacks after dinner every night of the week. Finally, to relieve the silence, Washington addressed Jefferson, who he thought was Button Gwinnett. “Do you often have an after-dinner heart attack, Button?” he asked.

  “I am sorry, sir,” said Jefferson, who was awed at being in the presence of the Father of His Country and genuinely sorry about having to sound like an ignoramus, “but I do not know what an after-dinner heart-attack button is, sir.”

  Washington scowled at Jefferson. An impertinent lout, Washington thought. What are the colonies coming to? Ask a man a civil question and he makes an asinine joke. Still, what could you expect of anybody named Button?

  Jefferson, who wanted to make a smart impression, said, “I do know, however, about certain inalienable rights with which man is endowed by his Creator.”

  “Some other time,” said Washington, who had heard footsteps outside. It would be Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, he reflected, come at his request to discuss the Declaration of Independence. Washington liked Franklin, but wished he wouldn’t drink and pinch barmaids because it was bad for the image of the Revolution.

  Like everybody from Massachusetts, Adams gave Washington a pain. He was one of those know-it-alls who thought it was a waste of time listening to anybody who hadn’t gone to Harvard. Washington liked to get under his skin by humming “Boola Boola” whenever Adams was making a speech to the Continental Congress, but just now he would need Adams’s approval for calling off the Revolution.

  When the newcomers entered, Washington smelled the applejack on Franklin’s breath and the superiority on Adams’s education. Franklin noticed the pain on Washington’s brow and immediately diagnosed a simple case of acid indigestion. He dissolved a spoonful of powder in a glass of water and urged Washington to drink. A moment later, Washington belched.

  “You are a genius, Dr. Franklin,” he said. “Tush,” said Franklin, “merely a small discovery I stumbled on between my research on electricity and inventing the Franklin stove.”

  “I’m not kidding,” Washington said. “This powder can do more for mankind than any revolution ever made. If we could produce and market large quantities of it, we could wipe out after-dinner heart attack all over the world.”

  Adams gave Washington a look of such contempt that Washington began humming “Boola Boola.” Franklin diplomatically suggested that it would be better to complete the Revolution before going into the bicarbonate-of-soda business, since otherwise the ruling tyrants in London would tax away all their profits.

  Washington said, all right, it was the Revolution he wanted to talk about. He thought they were making a mistake. Adams became furious. “If you don’t want to be the Father of Our Country, step aside,” he cried.

  Jefferson interrupted. “Are you saying,” he asked Adams, “that you are going to become the Father of Our Country? What about me?”

  “You!” said George Washington. “That’s ridiculous. Can you imagine a great country governed from a capital called Button, D.C.?”

  Franklin suggested everyone calm down and hear Washington’s case. Washington put it succinctly. “If we go ahead with the revolt,” he said, “200 years from now, our countrymen will have to celebrate its bicentennial. Do you know what that means for us, gentlemen?”

  Adams was ashen: “Boston will be overrun with tourists watching reenactments of old battles.” Franklin said: “The whole history of my sex life will be exhumed and displayed on television.” Washington said: “Plastic replicas of my false teeth will be sold at every roadside frozen-custard stand in the country.”

  Jefferson saved the Revolution. “I will go it alone,” he declared. The other three reluctantly joined him. Washington, because he couldn’t bear to have his country fathered by a man named Button. Adams and Franklin, because they thought Jefferson was Gouverneur Morris and believed the country would be a laughingstock if its first leader was called President Gouverneur.

  Portrait of a Great Man

  Here is a series of vignettes attempting to answer that most difficult question, Why was George Washington a great man?

  One day in the 1790’s word spread through the capital that George Washington was sick and tired of Thomas Jefferson’s constant bickering with Alexander Hamilton. That afternoon a man named J. Edgar Hoover was admitted to George Washington’s office.

  “I have been keeping an eye on this Jefferson,” said the visitor, “and have here ye goods to justify giving him ye heave-ho from ye Cabinet.” He offered George Washington a dossier.

  George Washington recoiled and asked what was in it. “Ye transcripts of Jefferson’s activities while wenching,” said Hoover, “as well as recordings of his dinner-table criticism of ye Government.” George Washington took the dossier and deposited it in his fireplace where it burned to ashes while he was having Hoover thrown into the street.

  “It would have been unworthy of my office,” he told Martha Washington afterwards, “to do ye throwing myself.”

  George Washington’s spelling was terrible. Everybody in the Government was laughing about it. “Ye President,” went the joke, “cannot chew gum and spell at ye same time.”

  One day Alexander Hamilton suggested that he hire a ghost-speller, who would make sure that George Washington didn’t spell anything indiscreetly.

  George Washington had Hamilton thrown out of his office with orders not to show his face there for a week. In his explanation to Hamilton, he wrote, “If I begin by hirring a gost to spel for me, I shall next higher gosts to rite my speches, and then gosts to do my thinkkeng, and then gosts to construck an immidge for me, and I shal end up with nuthing to do but travl around ye contry makynge foollish speches
and eating chiken diners.”

  Early in his Presidency George Washington was told that he should get out of the office and exercise more. James Madison urged him to take up golf and buy a summer house on Martha’s Vineyard, where he could go on summer weekends, and a winter house in South Carolina where he could go on winter weekends.

  “One could be called Ye Summer White House and ye other Ye Winter White House, and you could pay for them by taking a loan from—”

  George Washington had Madison thrown into the street before the sentence was completed.

  All through his later years George Washington was afflicted with a nagging mother. She would go around Virginia telling neighbors that George Washington was a merciless tightwad who never came to visit his old mother and wouldn’t send her enough money to live on.

  One day a man passionately devoted to George Washington came to see him. His name was Charles Colson. He had heard the stories told by George Washington’s mother and thought something should be done to shut the old lady up. George Washington recoiled. “For you,” Colson told him, “I would walk over your mother.”

  George Washington had Colson thrown out of the country.

  Tom Paine came to see George Washington about spreading freedom all over the world. Paine was particularly worried about Asia, which he feared would go monarchist unless George Washington committed the United States to stopping the spread of Royalism.

  If that occurred, Paine warned, the free world would be outflanked by monarchism in both the Pacific and Atlantic. Paine proposed a vast intelligence agency to destabilize hostile governments, a standing army prepared to fight anywhere on earth, a highly mobile Secretary of State and—

  George Washington interrupted to ask Paine if he was feeling well. “Never better,” Paine said. George Washington said, “In that case,” and had Paine thrown into the street.

  George Washington, who was always angry with the press, was furious one morning when the papers reported that he intended to change his image and, for this purpose, had ordered a new shoulder-length wig. Martha, who was in the office, said, “Somebody has been leaking to ye press, and I will bet it is John Adams.”

  George Washington said, well, there was nothing he could do about it. “Nonsense, George,” said Martha. “You are ye President—ye only President ye country has. You could create a Federal police force and have footpads trail this Adams to catch him while committing ye leaks.”

  George Washington had Martha thrown out of his office.

  Why Being Serious Is Hard

  Here is a letter of friendly advice. “Be serious,” it says. What it means, of course, is “Be solemn.” The distinction between being serious and being solemn seems to be vanishing among Americans, just as surely as the distinction between “now” and “presently” and the distinction between liberty and making a mess.

  Being solemn is easy. Being serious is hard. You probably have to be born serious, or at least go through a very interesting childhood. Children almost always begin by being serious, which is what makes them so entertaining when compared to adults as a class.

  Adults, on the whole, are solemn. The transition from seriousness to solemnity occurs in adolescence, a period in which Nature, for reasons of her own, plunges people into foolish frivolity. During this period the organism struggles to regain dignity by recovering childhood’s genius for seriousness. It is usually a hopeless cause.

  As a result, you have to settle for solemnity. Being solemn has almost nothing to do with being serious, but on the other hand, you can’t go on being adolescent forever, unless you are in the performing arts, and anyhow most people can’t tell the difference. In fact, though Americans talk a great deal about the virtue of being serious, they generally prefer people who are solemn over people who are serious.

  In politics, the rare candidate who is serious, like Adlai Stevenson, is easily overwhelmed by one who is solemn, like General Eisenhower. This is probably because it is hard for most people to recognize seriousness, which is rare, especially in politics, but comfortable to endorse solemnity, which is as commonplace as jogging.

  Jogging is solemn. Poker is serious. Once you can grasp that distinction, you are on your way to enlightenment. To promote the cause, I submit the following list from which the vital distinction should emerge more clearly:

  Shakespeare is serious. David Susskind is solemn.

  Chicago is serious. California is solemn.

  Blow-dry hair stylings on anchormen for local television news shows are solemn. Henry James is serious.

  Falling in love, getting married, having children, getting divorced and fighting over who gets the car and the Wedgwood are all serious. The new sexual freedom is solemn.

  Playboy is solemn. The New Yorker is serious.

  S. J. Perelman is serious. Norman Mailer is solemn.

  The Roman Empire was solemn. Periclean Athens was serious.

  Arguing about “structured programs” of anything is solemn. So are talking about “utilization,” attending conferences on the future of anything and group bathing when undertaken for the purpose of getting to know yourself better, or at the prescription of a swami. Taking a long walk by yourself during which you devise a foolproof scheme for robbing Cartier’s is serious.

  Washington is solemn. New York is serious. So is Las Vegas, but Miami Beach is solemn.

  Humphrey Bogart movies about private eyes and Randolph Scott movies about gunslingers are serious. Modern movies that are sophisticated jokes about Humphrey Bogart movies and Randolph Scott movies are solemn.

  Making lists, of course, is solemn, but this is permissible in newspaper columns, because newspaper columns are solemn. They strive, after all, to reach the mass audience, and the mass audience is solemn, which accounts for the absence of seriousness in television, paperback books found in airport book racks, the public school systems of America, wholesale furniture outlets, shopping centers and American-made automobiles.

  I make no apology for being solemn rather than serious. Nor should anyone else. It is the national attitude. It is perfectly understandable. It is hard to be Periclean Athens. It is hard to be Shakespeare. It is hard to be S. J. Perelman. It is hard to be serious.

  And yet, one cannot go on toward eternity without some flimsy attempt at dignity. Adolescence will not do. One must at least make the effort to resume childhood’s lost seriousness, and so, with the best of intentions, one tries his best, only to end up being vastly, uninterestingly solemn.

  Writing sentences that use “one” as a pronoun is solemn. Making pronouncements on American society is solemn. Turning yourself off when pronouncements threaten to gush is not exactly serious, although it shows a shred of wisdom.

  Sociologists could probably catalogue us all into our distinctive cultures by studying the people we are willing to read about on days when there is nothing worth reading about them. There are hordes of people in this country who will read about Johnny Carson’s wardrobe, others who cannot sate an appetite for news of Mick Jagger’s diet, and others who can sit through the night watching pictures of Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Pad. It is all a question of what you think is important enough to care about when there is nothing going on worth caring about. —American Olympians

  The Congress is 535 people, mostly men, mostly white, mostly lawyers and mostly out when you need them.

  —The House Is a Home

  The best thing about being President is that it gets you out of American life. I don’t know what the theory is behind this, but it is a fact. The first thing we do with a President is shunt him off on a siding where nothing American can ever happen to him. This is why you never see a President waiting in the rain at a bus stop. Somebody decided a long time ago that this was too American for Presidents to be subjected to. After a while, Presidents quite naturally forget that there are such things as bus stops, and if they stay in of
fice long enough they even forget that it rains.

  —The President’s Plumbing

  What a splendid time to be alive. Everybody holding down cholesterol intake, everybody reading The Complete Book of Running. Has there ever been another period in American cultural history when you had the choice of four movies, all playing simultaneously, about people inhabited by evil spirits?

  —Count Y​our Blessings

  Minions of Morality

  I was having a martini. It was good. The gin was excellent, the vermouth ratio was just right and the chilling was perfect, but the best thing about it was the annoyed expression it produced on the face of one of the other guests.

  Like the others, he was holding a glass of white wine. He approached with policeman’s tread. “You realize, of course,” he said, “that nobody drinks martinis anymore.”

  “Nobody but me.”

  “Do you have any idea how many brain cells it’s destroying?”

  “Billions,” I said.

  “And yet,” he said, “you go ahead and drink it anyhow. Isn’t that rather juvenile?”

  “That isn’t the worst of it,” I said. “I don’t jog either.”

  “Well, it’s your heart attack,” he said, “provided your brain doesn’t go first.” The thought of my imminently ghastly demise seemed to improve his day.

  I recognized him now. He was one of the agents of physical and moral uplift, the new American tyranny that was determined to bully everybody into living the fully uplifted life whether they wanted to or not.