"Some of my best friends are Jewish/Harvard men/Yale men" (1921)

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

Mel Gibson had once told the press something on the order that some of his
best friends are Jewish.
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I took another look, checking the Harvard Crimson. Heywood Broun's name
often comes up here. Don't know what the Yale Dictionary of Quotations  has.
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_http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=414472_
(http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=414472)



COMMENT

"Some of My Best Friends Are  at Harvard"

Published On Wednesday, April 27, 1921  12:00 AM

By NO WRITER  ATTRIBUTED









The sincere and magnanimous  sentiments voiced by Heywood Broun re Harvard
appreciation of the Eli, should  receive the hearty commendation of every
advocate of "Big Three" amity. And it  is to further this move for mutual friendship
and understanding between these  intellectual centers that I perpetrate this
eulogy. Some of my best friends are  at Harvard, and on that account I want to
correct certain false impressions  about these collegians.

The outstanding conception of the Cantabrigian  student, in the popular mind,
is a snobbish, and pompous individual, scion of a  bloated meat-packer,
correctly dressed and redressed for every occasion,  insensible to the lure of the
classic fount, but pursuing the social whirl in  liveried equipage. This is
all wrong!

The species is really extremely  democratic. They are masters of the
"five-dollar party," can wear their clothes  unpressed for a week without suffering
social ostracism, can hold their heads  high in a Ford, and bathe regularly in
the buoyant waters of classroom  erudition. Moreover, their sportsmanship
cannot be questioned. During the past  football season, I say them give sincere
applause to the vain efforts of  Centre's gridiron warriors, and remain uncovered
during the singing of "My Old  Kentucky Home."

It is not true that they light their own cigarette and  then blow out the
match. The rumor that they pass their classmates without  speaking has no
foundation in fact. And lastly, they are amply endowed with a  broad sense of humor,
and laugh heartily at the traditional quips aimed at their  university.

I repeat it: some of my best friends are at Harvard. They  are Princetonian
studying in the graduate schools. And one of the chief reasons  why they are my
friends is because they join me in a daily even-song: "To Hell  With
Harvard!" --Campus Critic,   In The Daily Princetonian.
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_Review  2 -- No Title_
(http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=0&did=822326132&SrchMode=1&sid=2&Fmt=10&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=HNP&TS=1154439465&c
lientId=65882)
EDMUND LESTER PEARSON. The Independent and the Weekly Review (1921-1922). New
York:  Nov 12, 1921. Vol. 107, Iss. 3791; p. 166 (1 page)
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Mr. Heywood Broun's sense of humor is  all but perfect. (...) Bit, with this
entirely human exception, his writings as  represented, say, by his "Seeing
Things at Night" (Harcourt, Brace) strike me as  invariably amusing,
goof-humored, and readable. He must be loved if only for his  paper called "Some of My
Best Friends Are Yale Men." It required not only  originality but daring for a
New York newspaper man to begin to break down the  aged tradition that while
Harvard is given to effeminacy and spat, Yale is the  nursery of sturdy American
democracy. Mr. Broun pointed out to New York  newspapers that an athletic
victory by Harvard cannot always be set aside by the  Supreme Court on the ground
that Yale was not looking when it  happened.

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