Been Reading a Lot of Wikipedia Lately
Although a commanding and powerful speaker, Harding was notorious for his verbal gaffes, such as his comment “I would like the government to do all it can to mitigate, then, in understanding, in mutuality of interest, in concern for the common good, our tasks will be solved.” His errors were compounded by his insistence on writing his own speeches. Harding’s most famous “mistake” was his use of the word “normalcy” when the more common word at the time was “normality.” Harding decided he liked the sound of the word and made “Return to Normalcy” a recurring theme. Critic H. L. Mencken disagreed, commenting on Harding’s inaugural address, “He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.” Upon Harding’s death, poet E. E. Cummings said “The only man, woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is dead.”
1 year ago