Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 217, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 September 1915 — “HIGH BROW” AS A STIGMA [ARTICLE]

“HIGH BROW” AS A STIGMA

Remarkable What a Hold Appellation Has Taken on the Minds of Americans. The worst fault, however, into which our age-long service of mediocrity has led us is a weak-kneed, pusillanimous deference to mediocrity itself. The college has borrowed the vice from everyday American'life. For example, the most deadly weapon in the yellow journalist’s armory is the term “high brow.” A politician may be called “grafter,” “boss,” or even “muckraker,” and escape unscratched; but if he is denounced as a “high brow,” and the label sticks, his career is ended. A playwright or a novelist may be written down as “cheap,” he may be said to plagiarize, he may be shown to be vicious or unclean, without serious damage to his reputation; but let him be proved a “high brow” and the public will fly from him as if he were a book agent. Now the widespread American belief that knowledge makes a man impractical is responsible for some of this curious odium; but far more is due to our servile deference to mediocrity. The weight of public opinion is usually against the expert, the specialist, the thinker, the exceptional man in general, for public opinion, whether right or wrong, is always mediocre, and there are few among us who do not in this respect yield somehow, somewhere, to public opinion. The doctor distrusts tiie advanced political theorist, the politician distrusts the advanced dramatist, the dramatist sneers at the Innovation of science. We are all made timid by the enormous majorities which uphold mediocrity. Harper’s Magazine.