DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 174, 13 October 1927, Page 14

DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

THE SMART ALECK (Copyright , 1927) ‘p'ANNY HEASLIP LEA has written an amusing article on the Smart * Aleck . . ' She puts him about the place he belongs. She said the first Smart Aleck was a fool on the king’s throne steps. All he got was a laugh and occasionally a good kick from the king. We forget sometimes that the Smart Aleck is merely the fool in modern dress. Smart Aleckness is largely a point of view. It is a bystanding, cruel and indifferent way of looking at things. You are never to be interested. You are to have no moral background. Your whole duty is to laugh at humanity, and the more serious a human being is the more he is to be laughed at. We have discovered, says Miss Lea, that “it is easier to be smart than to be intelligent and all the Smart Aleck needs is a quick tongue and a total disregard of other people’s feelings.” The Smart Aleck is own brother to the man who laughs when another has an accident of a serious character, when he falls down or bumps his nose or some such thing. The ordinary man’s sympathies are aroused by such a happening, but a Smart Aleck’s risibilities alone are appealed to. He laughs only for applause, and Miss Lea says he would knife his own grandmother for a bon mot. Smart Aleckness is really a form of the well-known inferiority complex. The Smart Aleck’s whole, ambition is to achieve “a line.” He is of no value as to telling the truth. All he wants is to make some famous saying. He hates, sympathy, and prides himself upon admiring nothing. He lacks sincerity, and Miss Lea says he would rather be bright than prime minister. You have got to use your brains to be prime minister or hold down any other kind of a serious job, but to be a Smart Aleck you need only to use your wits. What he wants is catch phrases and he is ready to ridicule anything in the world in order to get cine.