The phrase is usually applied to individuals, typically in their obituaries, and always with the implication that they had what therapists might call anger management issues.
But in a local newspaper a while back, as part of an appreciation piece for a much-loved local GAA veteran who had just died, I saw it applied to the whole club team he had played in the 1970s, or at least to his fellow defenders.
The implication, it seems, was that they were known for close marking of opponents. Or, as the writer chose to put it, reaching for the time-honoured euphemism: “They did not suffer fools gladly.”
And while noting yet another appearance in print of this undying cliche, I found myself wondering what exactly it meant in a GAA context.
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In what way had the opposition forwards proven themselves fools? By trying to score? By having the temerity to think they could play open, attacking football and still expect to have the full use of their limbs afterwards?
Something like that, presumably. In fairness, I suspect there are a few veteran corner backs reading this, in Monaghan and such places, nodding in sympathy with that general sentiment. (The local newspaper I read was in the midlands, where attacking football was traditionally more tolerated, even before Jim Gavin’s new rules.)
Inability to suffer fools gladly remains a staple of individual obituaries, meanwhile. Not a day passes still when a writer somewhere does not consider it newsworthy that the deceased, during a long and distinguished life, had exhibited this intolerance.
And I still always find myself asking why. The death of someone who had suffered fools gladly would be a far bigger story, surely. If it ever happens, it might be worthy of the front page, or even a special commemorative supplement.
It would be preferable if the existence of such a unique human being came to public notice before death. Ideally, the person’s birth would be announced to the world by an unusual star in the sky. Failing which, one would hope that his or her good works would at least attract attention while they lived.
It’s about 2,000 years since the last recorded case. And that was ironic usage, so we can’t be sure there was a positive sighting even then. In his second letter to the Corinthians, St Paul chided his readers: “For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise.”
By which he meant that the Corinthians prided themselves on being broad-minded enough to listen to lesser, false preachers, while not paying sufficient to attention to the good ones (ie him).
Little did the great apostle realise then what a rhetorical monster he was unleashing on the world: a phrase that, invariably in the negative, would be used to excuse the impatience of countless thousands thereafter.
Mind you, it seems to have been in relatively recent times that the negative usage gained such popularity. As late as 1906*, in a biography of Charles Dickens, GK Chesterton attempted to make a positive case for fool-suffering.
“We always lay the stress on the word ‘suffer’, and interpret the passage as one urging resignation,” he wrote. “It might be better, perhaps, to lay the stress upon the word ‘gladly’, and make our familiarity with fools a delight, and almost a dissipation.
“Nor is it necessary that our pleasure in fools (or at least in great and godlike fools) should be merely satiric or cruel. The great fool is he in whom we cannot tell which is the conscious and which the unconscious humour; we laugh with him and laugh at him at the same time.”
[ Haloed Fellow Well Met – Frank McNally on GK Chesterton’s claims to sainthoodOpens in new window ]
This appeal for religiously inspired tolerance seems to have fallen on stony ground.
In the archive of The Irish Times, for example, the negative cliche made its debut in 1908, in a book review rather than an obituary, and used of an author (George Meredith) who was still alive at the time but was said to be noted for not suffering fools gladly.
If our archive is a guide, the intolerance of fools then took off in earnest from 1909 – when two instances of their not being suffered gladly were recorded – and has increased ever since.
As I’ve suggested here before, a person who suffered fools gladly would be an invaluable resource in many organisations today, or at least the ones who still answer their phones. He or she could be deployed as a lightning rod to attract cranks and time-wasters, freeing others for more productive work.
Manager: “Sorry to cut across you, caller, but I’m on the way in to a meeting and, besides, I’m not one to suffer fools gladly. Whereas Joe, who I’ll put you on to now, has a PhD in that sort of thing. He’ll happily listen to your mindless wittering all day. Hold on while I transfer you
* This article was amended on January 15th to correct the year referenced
