Seems almost everyone has thin skin nowadays, but thin skin stretches back centuries, if not to human origins. Members of our species easily take offense because personal identity and sense of worth lie encapsulated by an easily scratched and cut psychological epidermis.
Of course, not all personalities are thin-skinned. But how does one tell the difference in skin thickness? For centuries, the only test for psychological skin was the pinprick of sharp comment across a backyard fence or village common. With the rise of civilizations, we have added more tests: Printed words at first, then broadcast ones, and now the wars on social media. These more recent tests are verbal scalpels that make deep cuts through any thin skin.
Some people, however, bear nary a scratch from the verbal thorns as they walk through the briars of gossip and hearsay. They have formed elephantine layers of emotional protection. There’s no way to tell just by looking who has thick and who has thin skin, however; the impoverished svelte might be thick-skinned and the affluent Rubenesque, thin-skinned. And neither relative fame nor relative obscurity serves as a distinguishing characteristic of skin thickness though the former typically sends its bearer along a route with more jaggers.
Today the balms and bandages for psychological cuts lie as much in the hands of judges as in the hands of village healers, sympathetic listeners, or psychological counselors. In a litigious society, the threat of a civil suit provides an extra protective layer that wards off the cutting edges of libel and slander. The prospect of litigation is the reason that at the end of old-time radio programs, TV shows, and films the audience might hear or read the well-known disclaimer that all persons portrayed are fictitious. The advisable statement disavows any seeming connection between the fictional characters and “real” people. The disclaimer serves to protect the artist from a thin-skinned subject.
Of course, in any society the fashion of the day makes portrayal of the cultural minority more susceptible to those thorny portrayals, as evidenced by the current “late night” network comedians who apparently choose to jab at the skin of conservatives rather than scratch the skin of liberals. But given the pendulum swings of culture, one needs only look back to those comedians of the mid-twentieth century who were more inclined to throw darts into the other skin. Then, as now, those in power stab those out of power and with the backing of a condoning culture feel no need for disclaimers in their direct attacks. For any with thin skin, each milieu determines who must dodge the stabbing criticism, libel, and slander. And in the current milieu few would understand how skin thickness affected previous generations or will affect future generations.
Those who have used disclaimers over the past 100 years as protection against legal action by the offended are not the first to do so. Alphonse Daudet published The Nabob in 1898. In the 1902 English translation of the book by George Burnham Ives, the publisher inserts this “Note to the French Edition,” a disclaimer that reads:
“We have been informed that at the time of the publication of The Nabob in serial form, the government of Tunis was offended at the introduction therein of individuals whom the author dressed in names and costumes peculiar to that country. We are authorized by M. Alphonse Daudet to declare that those scenes in the book which relate to Tunis are entirely imaginary, and that he never intended to introduce any of the functionaries of that state.” *
What can anyone say here, but “Wink, Wink”? The publisher thought a disclaimer was necessary to protect author, translator, and publisher. They weren’t, however, the first to worry about scratching thin skins. Others, notably eighteenth-century picaresque author Alain-René Lesage, felt a similar need.
Daudet himself begins The Nabob by quoting from Lesage’s beginning of Gil Blas: “As there are persons who cannot read a book without making personal application of the vicious or absurd characters they find therein, I hereby declare for the benefit of such evil-minded readers that they will err in making such application of the portraits in this book. I make public avowal that my only aim has been to represent the life of mankind as it is."
Now, you might wonder about the fuss here. For starters, consider that we live in an Age of Nabobs, the nouveau riche of our times acquiring vast wealth at a pace far exceeding that of previous eras. The term nabob became part of the English language as Brits who had served in India returned to England with great wealth. Eager to enter a society peopled by nobility, the nabobs were eventually portrayed as buffoons of faux pas by dramatists and novelists. But wealth breeds power if not actual respect. Today’s nabobs wield those scalpels that cut their opponents deeply. The need for thick skin is real because the ultra nouveau riche control who stabs and who gets stabbed through various media platforms.
You might remember from history that Spiro Agnew once used the term “nattering nabobs of negativism” to refer to the press. The term was coined by late Nixonian speech writer
William Safire who used it to impugn the Press. The alliterative expression became instantly famous, even though, in truth, members of the press did not specifically fall into the class of nouveau riche. But today, the term might be more appropriate, for the Press has risen to a state of inordinate wealth, that is, if we count social media as part of the Press. Instant billionaires now control who can pierce the skin of personal identity and whose skin is protected by a layer of artificial and biased covering.
The thin-skinned have fallen as a million cuts have turned skin gangrenous. That is not a new development, but the scale, the numbers of people affected, has grown exponentially. At this time few of those favored by the Nabobs of the Net bother with an “all persons fictitious” disclaimer, so emboldened are these new nattering nabobs of negativism. The power of the nouveau riche has spread to the population in general—as long as that population sides with the cultural rulers. Access to social media makes anyone on the planet a media nabob who can intrude into any social class if the ruling nabobs allow.
History is replete with stories of psychological skin piercing. No doubt the lost writings of the ancients contained many barbs because some of the surviving texts include cutting words little different from those of today, their writers motivated by the same kinds of emotions and beliefs revealed in our various media. That cutting words have long been a problem is evidenced by Levitcus 19:16 in a line that reads “Do not go about spreading slander among your people.” St. Paul also notes the problem in. Second Timothy 3:3 when he writes, "They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control. They will be cruel and hate what is good." One had to have thick skin in biblical times. And in medieval times with writers like Dante, who had no trouble criticizing and placing even Church leaders like Nicolas III, Boniface VIII, and Clement V among those who should suffer in Hell. And, of course, in modern times with millions of sharp-tongued critics who write on social media.
With the rise of realism in art and literature came the rise of “true stories” that abound now and TV’s popular reality shows, in which little is held back. Unlike those who wrote disclaimers for the old Dragnet TV series and other shows, disclaimers that professed, “the names have been changed to protect the innocent,” those who write the “true stories” of today have little regard for the “innocent.” Even the innocent, or especially the innocent, need thick skin. But there’s no need for the protected class to worry—at least not until the cultural pendulum swings again. Fortunately, the cultural pendulum does swing, and like that famous sharp blade in Edgar Allen Poe’s story of the Inquisition, doesn’t always slice the skin of intended victims. Sometime—we don’t know when—a deus ex machina will alter circumstances, fortunes will reverse, the persecuted will become persecutors, and different skins will be jeopardized by cutting tongues. What fortune the nouveau riche nabobs now enjoy will eventually reverse. Croesus is no longer rich, and Goebbels no longer controls the media.
But no one should take comfort in the eventual reversal of fortune, because the cutting pendulum continues to swing. No one can assure himself or herself that bruises, scrapes, nicks, and cuts won’t occur, that the skin will be unbroken, or that others will cease trying to stab or slice.
Having skin is necessary. On a cellular level, it’s the membrane. Organic molecules could not have become life until they were encapsulated in a protective covering. Protection by a layer of thick skin has always fostered survival, has allowed life to continue. Thick-skinned elephants do well in rough brush.
Understanding that those who slash usually do so under their own protective layer of cultural nabobs doesn’t prevent the cutting, but it does protect personal identity and self-worth. Elephantine skin might not seem as attractive as sylphic skin, but it serves a purpose. It isn’t only beauty that is “skin deep.” Personal identity and self-worth lie just below the surface.
How thick is your skin?
*Daudet, Alphonse. The Nabob in two volumes. Trans. George Burnham Ives. Boston, Little, Brown, and Company. 1898; University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. Vol. 1. Published online by Project Gutenberg at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20646/20646-h/20646-h.htm Accessed January 26, 2021.
Of course, not all personalities are thin-skinned. But how does one tell the difference in skin thickness? For centuries, the only test for psychological skin was the pinprick of sharp comment across a backyard fence or village common. With the rise of civilizations, we have added more tests: Printed words at first, then broadcast ones, and now the wars on social media. These more recent tests are verbal scalpels that make deep cuts through any thin skin.
Some people, however, bear nary a scratch from the verbal thorns as they walk through the briars of gossip and hearsay. They have formed elephantine layers of emotional protection. There’s no way to tell just by looking who has thick and who has thin skin, however; the impoverished svelte might be thick-skinned and the affluent Rubenesque, thin-skinned. And neither relative fame nor relative obscurity serves as a distinguishing characteristic of skin thickness though the former typically sends its bearer along a route with more jaggers.
Today the balms and bandages for psychological cuts lie as much in the hands of judges as in the hands of village healers, sympathetic listeners, or psychological counselors. In a litigious society, the threat of a civil suit provides an extra protective layer that wards off the cutting edges of libel and slander. The prospect of litigation is the reason that at the end of old-time radio programs, TV shows, and films the audience might hear or read the well-known disclaimer that all persons portrayed are fictitious. The advisable statement disavows any seeming connection between the fictional characters and “real” people. The disclaimer serves to protect the artist from a thin-skinned subject.
Of course, in any society the fashion of the day makes portrayal of the cultural minority more susceptible to those thorny portrayals, as evidenced by the current “late night” network comedians who apparently choose to jab at the skin of conservatives rather than scratch the skin of liberals. But given the pendulum swings of culture, one needs only look back to those comedians of the mid-twentieth century who were more inclined to throw darts into the other skin. Then, as now, those in power stab those out of power and with the backing of a condoning culture feel no need for disclaimers in their direct attacks. For any with thin skin, each milieu determines who must dodge the stabbing criticism, libel, and slander. And in the current milieu few would understand how skin thickness affected previous generations or will affect future generations.
Those who have used disclaimers over the past 100 years as protection against legal action by the offended are not the first to do so. Alphonse Daudet published The Nabob in 1898. In the 1902 English translation of the book by George Burnham Ives, the publisher inserts this “Note to the French Edition,” a disclaimer that reads:
“We have been informed that at the time of the publication of The Nabob in serial form, the government of Tunis was offended at the introduction therein of individuals whom the author dressed in names and costumes peculiar to that country. We are authorized by M. Alphonse Daudet to declare that those scenes in the book which relate to Tunis are entirely imaginary, and that he never intended to introduce any of the functionaries of that state.” *
What can anyone say here, but “Wink, Wink”? The publisher thought a disclaimer was necessary to protect author, translator, and publisher. They weren’t, however, the first to worry about scratching thin skins. Others, notably eighteenth-century picaresque author Alain-René Lesage, felt a similar need.
Daudet himself begins The Nabob by quoting from Lesage’s beginning of Gil Blas: “As there are persons who cannot read a book without making personal application of the vicious or absurd characters they find therein, I hereby declare for the benefit of such evil-minded readers that they will err in making such application of the portraits in this book. I make public avowal that my only aim has been to represent the life of mankind as it is."
Now, you might wonder about the fuss here. For starters, consider that we live in an Age of Nabobs, the nouveau riche of our times acquiring vast wealth at a pace far exceeding that of previous eras. The term nabob became part of the English language as Brits who had served in India returned to England with great wealth. Eager to enter a society peopled by nobility, the nabobs were eventually portrayed as buffoons of faux pas by dramatists and novelists. But wealth breeds power if not actual respect. Today’s nabobs wield those scalpels that cut their opponents deeply. The need for thick skin is real because the ultra nouveau riche control who stabs and who gets stabbed through various media platforms.
You might remember from history that Spiro Agnew once used the term “nattering nabobs of negativism” to refer to the press. The term was coined by late Nixonian speech writer
William Safire who used it to impugn the Press. The alliterative expression became instantly famous, even though, in truth, members of the press did not specifically fall into the class of nouveau riche. But today, the term might be more appropriate, for the Press has risen to a state of inordinate wealth, that is, if we count social media as part of the Press. Instant billionaires now control who can pierce the skin of personal identity and whose skin is protected by a layer of artificial and biased covering.
The thin-skinned have fallen as a million cuts have turned skin gangrenous. That is not a new development, but the scale, the numbers of people affected, has grown exponentially. At this time few of those favored by the Nabobs of the Net bother with an “all persons fictitious” disclaimer, so emboldened are these new nattering nabobs of negativism. The power of the nouveau riche has spread to the population in general—as long as that population sides with the cultural rulers. Access to social media makes anyone on the planet a media nabob who can intrude into any social class if the ruling nabobs allow.
History is replete with stories of psychological skin piercing. No doubt the lost writings of the ancients contained many barbs because some of the surviving texts include cutting words little different from those of today, their writers motivated by the same kinds of emotions and beliefs revealed in our various media. That cutting words have long been a problem is evidenced by Levitcus 19:16 in a line that reads “Do not go about spreading slander among your people.” St. Paul also notes the problem in. Second Timothy 3:3 when he writes, "They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control. They will be cruel and hate what is good." One had to have thick skin in biblical times. And in medieval times with writers like Dante, who had no trouble criticizing and placing even Church leaders like Nicolas III, Boniface VIII, and Clement V among those who should suffer in Hell. And, of course, in modern times with millions of sharp-tongued critics who write on social media.
With the rise of realism in art and literature came the rise of “true stories” that abound now and TV’s popular reality shows, in which little is held back. Unlike those who wrote disclaimers for the old Dragnet TV series and other shows, disclaimers that professed, “the names have been changed to protect the innocent,” those who write the “true stories” of today have little regard for the “innocent.” Even the innocent, or especially the innocent, need thick skin. But there’s no need for the protected class to worry—at least not until the cultural pendulum swings again. Fortunately, the cultural pendulum does swing, and like that famous sharp blade in Edgar Allen Poe’s story of the Inquisition, doesn’t always slice the skin of intended victims. Sometime—we don’t know when—a deus ex machina will alter circumstances, fortunes will reverse, the persecuted will become persecutors, and different skins will be jeopardized by cutting tongues. What fortune the nouveau riche nabobs now enjoy will eventually reverse. Croesus is no longer rich, and Goebbels no longer controls the media.
But no one should take comfort in the eventual reversal of fortune, because the cutting pendulum continues to swing. No one can assure himself or herself that bruises, scrapes, nicks, and cuts won’t occur, that the skin will be unbroken, or that others will cease trying to stab or slice.
Having skin is necessary. On a cellular level, it’s the membrane. Organic molecules could not have become life until they were encapsulated in a protective covering. Protection by a layer of thick skin has always fostered survival, has allowed life to continue. Thick-skinned elephants do well in rough brush.
Understanding that those who slash usually do so under their own protective layer of cultural nabobs doesn’t prevent the cutting, but it does protect personal identity and self-worth. Elephantine skin might not seem as attractive as sylphic skin, but it serves a purpose. It isn’t only beauty that is “skin deep.” Personal identity and self-worth lie just below the surface.
How thick is your skin?
*Daudet, Alphonse. The Nabob in two volumes. Trans. George Burnham Ives. Boston, Little, Brown, and Company. 1898; University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. Vol. 1. Published online by Project Gutenberg at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20646/20646-h/20646-h.htm Accessed January 26, 2021.
RSS Feed