Mark Twain Verses the NFL (David Glenn Cox)

David Glenn Cox -- World News Trust

"Shakespeare is dead, Chaucer is dead, and I’m not feeling too good myself!" Mark Twain

Oct. 20, 2009 -- With such statements Mark Twain was proclaiming that his ego knew no bounds. Yet to know this greatest man of American letters is to know that he was at the same time forever self-deprecating. "I remember when I was young man studying for the gallows."

Twain spent his career lampooning sacred American cows and defending the weak and powerless. His scathing attacks on organized religion, contrasted with his ardent defense of Satan, made Twain, in his day, a controversial figure.

"I have no special regard for Satan, but I can at least claim that I have no prejudice against him. It may even be that I lean a little his way, on account of his not having a fair show. All religions issue bibles against him, and say the most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side. We have none but evidence for the prosecution and yet we have rendered the verdict. To my mind, this is irregular. It is un-English. It is un-American; it is French."

Twain was never shy. Despite his protestations of dislike for interviews and photographers, he missed very few of either. "Yes, you are right -- I am a moralist in disguise; it gets me into heaps of trouble when I go thrashing around in political questions."

If Twain had been a part of an investment group to buy an NFL franchise, would the NFL have decided in his favor? Most definitely not! Twain was the Rush Limbaugh of his day; he was an entertainer, a sawdust philosopher and pundit. But Twain never backed down from the words which he spoke. He never mealy mouthed or claimed that he was a persecuted victim, even when indeed he was. That was part of Twain's moral greatness; he made his outrageous statements to make us look at ourselves. Framed and couched in innocence, they were ambushes with the intent of a murderous attack upon our beliefs.

"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing."

The primary difference between Limbaugh and Twain is that Twain always included himself when he criticized America’s failures. Limbaugh holds himself above the fray like a ghost or cherub watching the events from up on high. He sees himself as value's judge and jury. "I shall not often meddle with politics, because we have a political Editor who is already excellent and only needs to serve a term or two in the penitentiary to be perfect."

Both men used their pulpits to amass fortunes, but Rush is only an actor. You get the impression that he doesn’t really believe half of what he says but says these things for attention and shock value. If you read enough Twain you see a man who through his writings is pursuing a psychoanalytic evaluation of his own personality, and that of his country. He loved humankind but lost patience with our failings. He loved America and described its rich multi-faceted society. In his masterpiece "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," Twain paints the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in American prose.

Every word is intentional and placed where the master directs it will do the most good. It is a book about freedom and the failure of American reconstruction. The only free men in the entire book are the runaway slave Jim and the poor white trash boy Huck. The book was not received well; librarians pulled it from their shelves for "rough grammar." Even today the argument goes on about Twain’s use and over use of the "N" word. The character of Jim is the first African American ever written about as a full human being. Jim is the hero; he cares for Huck like he was his own child.

Huck battles his conscience, fighting the societal-imposed stereotypes and Huck casts them all down and declares, "All right then, I’ll go to hell!" Huck chooses his friend over society and Twain is saying that it is America that can go to hell! Huck says, "I got to thinking that he was most free and who was to blame for it." In nineteenth-century America that makes Limbaugh’s comments about Halfrican American and Donovan McNabb seem mere piffle. Twain disguised his contempt for America’s failures in the body of a little boy, for if a grown man said such things he might have been pulled limb from limb.

His repeated use of the "N" word was purposeful and intentional; it was a term used by the ignorant characters in the book. It was Twain using a literary device to say, "Now you look here America, you look at yourself and look hard. Look who is calling the innocent and oppressed such vile names, slave holders, religious bigots, bankers, judges, policemen and the ignorant among the general public." Twain was trying to make us look at ourselves and some don’t see themselves yet, over a hundred years later.

"I have always preached...If the humor came of its own accord and uninvited, I have allowed it a place in my sermon, but I was not writing the sermon for the sake of humor. I should have written the sermon just the same whether any humor applied for admission or not."

There are many similarities between Limbaugh and Twain, but there are also a great many differences that disqualify Limbaugh from even being compared in the same light to Twain. Twain rebuked us and lampooned us, poked fun at our follies and called us fools when we were fools because he was seeking to bring out our better nature. To laugh at us and we all laugh together and maybe learn to be better.

Limbaugh just wants us to agree with him. Twain would be disallowed an NFL franchise because of what he said about America and Americans. Limbaugh was disallowed for what he says about America, as well, but for the opposite reason.

"But the truth is, that when a Library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn't anger me."

"To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's character, one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours."

Check out David Glenn Cox's recent novel, The Servants of Pilate.