“I know nothing!” – the memorable catchphrase of a forgotten political party

Many people associate the catchphrase “I know nothing!” with the television character Sergeant Schultz (actor John Banner).

It was one of his frequent lines in the 1960s comedy series Hogan’s Heroes, along with “I see nothing.”

However, more than a century before Hogan’s Heroes first aired in 1965, the phrase “I know nothing” was popularized by a now largely-forgotten political group that has clear similarities to some current ones.

It was typically called the “Know Nothing Party” and its members were dubbed “Know Nothings” for short.

The Know Nothings started out as an unofficial anti-immigrant movement.

Its followers were primarily white Protestants who thought of themselves as the real, true-blue “native Americans.”

They felt that the growing influx of immigrants from Europe and elsewhere undermined the American way of life, took away the jobs of “real Americans” and insidiously influenced local elections.

The Know Nothings especially hated German immigrants, Jews and Irish Catholics. But they generally feared and disliked almost every other ethnic and racial minority.

The “Know Nothing” name arose as a result of the standard answer members of the movement were told to give to any reporters (or other disreputable types) who asked about the group’s secretive meetings and activities.

They were instructed to respond by saying “I know nothing.” As a result, they came to be commonly referred to as the “Know Nothings.”

In 1843, leaders of the movement in New York formed an official political party. They named it the American Republican Party.

Within a few years, local chapters sprang up in other states. They eventually coalesced into a national group called The Native American Party.

In 1855, the group was renamed The American Party, though it was still often unofficially called The Know Nothing Party.

On February 18, 1856, the American Party held its first national convention to nominate a presidential candidate.

Former U.S. President Millard Fillmore was chosen as the party’s presidential nominee and Andrew Donelson of Tennessee was named his running mate.

Their campaign slogan, which reflected the party’s Know Nothing heritage, was: “I know nothing but my Country, my whole Country, and nothing but my Country.”

Unsurprisingly, the American Party’s political platform wasn’t geared toward creating a “big tent.”

Planks included requiring political office holders to be “native-born” Americans, limiting the annual number of new immigrants allowed to come to the United States (especially Catholics), requiring public school teachers to be Protestants, and requiring daily Bible readings in public schools.

The American Party also had a plank proposing restrictions on the sale of liquor. At the grassroots level, I suspect that one wasn’t particularly popular with most white males (who were the only legal voters at the time) regardless of how they felt about “foreigners.”

In the 1856 presidential election, Democrat James Buchanan won with 45% of the vote. Republican candidate John C. Fremont got 33%.

The Know Nothings' American Party candidate Millard Fillmore got about 22% of the vote nationally. At the state level, he lost in every state except Maryland.

Historically, 22% isn’t a bad percentage for a third party in the United States.

Nonetheless, Fillmore’s defeat took the wind out of the Know Nothing movement and the American Party quickly faded away.

They did, however, leave behind a memorable catchphrase that some observers see as a fitting description of the views of anti-immigrant movements, past and present.

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“Talk to the hand!”

If you’re not a fan of actress Fran Drescher or cutesy romantic comedies, you may have avoided seeing Drescher’s 1997 rom-com The Beautician and the Beast.

But it’s unlikely that you’ve avoided awareness of the movie’s catchphrase: “Talk to the hand!”

The line is repeated several times in the film, initially by Drescher, then by her co-star Timothy Dalton.

That use helped launch “talk to the hand” (and the upraised-hand gesture and head turn that go with it) into widespread use, as a way of telling someone “I don’t want to hear what you have to say.”

It’s also the most noted and notable thing about the movie, which was released in the U.S. on February 7, 1997.

The heavily-aired trailer for the movie helped promote the catchphrase. It was used twice in that, once by Drescher and once by Dalton.

Of course, the scriptwriter of Drescher’s movie (Todd Graff) didn’t actually coin “talk to the hand.”

As mentioned on many websites, it had previously been used by the African-American actor and comedian Martin Lawrence in his TV series Martin, which aired on the Fox network from 1992 to 1997.

Lawrence is often credited with coining the phrase. A few sources credit comedian Joan Rivers. My guess is that it was street slang before any celebrities used it.

“Talk to the hand” is the short version of several longer variations that were floating around in African-American circles in the early 1990s and possibly before that. Quips like:

      “Talk to the hand, ‘cause the face ain’t listening”

      “Talk to the hand, ‘cause the face don’t want to hear it”

      “Talk to the hand, ‘cause the face don’t understand.”

Like many idioms, “talk to the hand” soon migrated from black culture into the vernacular of both Hollywood celebrities and white teens.

By the time The Beautician and the Beast was released in 1997, a now-defunct teen clothing company called Stickworld was already selling T-shirts emblazoned with “Talk to the hand!” (and other current teen slang phrases) at Sears and JC Penney.

However, for better or worse, The Beautician and the Beast deserves a good share of the credit for making the phrase part of mainstream American culture.

Within weeks after the movie was released, most people — including otherwise unhip white moms and dads — knew the line and hand gesture, even if only from seeing the movie trailer or hearing or reading the line repeated by someone else who knew about the movie.

As often happens with some idioms, broad awareness led to overuse.

Eventually “talk to the hand” became passé, unhip and annoying.

It’s not heard much today.

The Beautician and the Beast is even less remembered — except to those who know it as the movie that had that earworm of a catchphrase: “Talk to the hand!”

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“We don’t need no stinking badges!” – the misquote that became a famous quote

“We don’t need no stinking badges!” is one of the few famous lines that is both a famous quote and a misquote.

It’s also the source of many variations about stinkin’ things we don’t need.

The evolution of this line began in 1927 with the publication of the novel The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, a tale of greed, betrayal and madness written by the mysterious author and leftist/anarchist B. Traven (c. 1890-1969). 

The main characters are three American prospectors searching for gold in Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountains: Fred C. Dobbs, Bob Curtin and an old-timer named Howard.

In a scene later made famous by the movie version, the prospectors run into a group of shady-looking, heavily-armed Mexicans, who they suspect are bandits. 

Indeed, the Mexicans are bandits and the meeting ends up in a gunfight. But just before the shooting starts, the leader of the bandits tells the prospectors that they are federales — the local “mounted police.”

Dobbs says skeptically of that claim: “If you are the police, where are your badges?”

In Traven’s book, the bandit leader replies angrily (and colorfully):

“Badges, to god-damned hell with badges! We have no badges. In fact, we don’t need badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges, you god-damned cabron and ching’ tu madre!”

The answer given by the head bandido in the 1948 movie adaptation of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a bit different than that.

Most notably, it leaves out the English and Spanish profanities. (You can look up the meaning of cabron and ching’ tu madre on this web page.)

The famed film was released in the U.S. on January 7, 1948. Some sources say January 6th, but I believe that is either a local premiere date or simply wrong.

In the movie, Fred Dobbs is played by Humphrey Bogart and he asks the same question as in the book: “If you are the police, where are your badges?”

The bandit leader, called “Gold Hat” in the script and played by actor Alfonso Bedoya, responds sneeringly:

      “Badges? We ain’t got no badges! We don’t need no badges!
       I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!”

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre became one of the most highly-praised and popular movies ever made. So, it’s no surprise that Bedoya’s famous “no badges” lines spawned some humorous parodies.

What is unusual is that one of the parody versions became far better known than the lines in the original film.

In fact, many people mistakenly think it comes from the 1948 movie.

That renowned version is, of course:

       “Badges? We don't need no stinking badges!”

If you’re a Mel Brooks fan, you know those lines are in his hilarious movie, Blazing Saddles, which was released on February 7, 1974.

What you may not know is that the same lines were first spoken by Micky Dolenz in 1967, in the TV comedy show The Monkees.

Mickey says it in the episode titled “It’s A Nice Place To Visit” (the first episode of Season 2), which originally aired on September 11, 1967.

In that episode, Mickey and two of his Monkees bandmates, Peter Tork and Michael Nesmith, dress up as Mexican bandits to rescue their singer Davy Jones from a “real” Mexican bandit who has taken him prisoner.

Before they leave to save Davy, Nesmith says: “Wait a minute, don’t you think maybe we oughtta take something out with us, like a club card or some badges?”

Dolenz replies with a heavy Mexican accent (about 9 minutes in): “Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!”

I don’t know if Mel Brooks was a Monkees fan, but seven years later he made those words immortal by putting them in the script for Blazing Saddles.

In a now famous scene in that movie, the corrupt State Attorney General Hedley Lamarr, played by Harvey Korman, has a sheriff’s badge given to one of his Mexican bandit henchmen, played by Rick Garcia. 

Korman says to Garcia: “Be ready to attack Rock Ridge at noon tomorrow. Here’s your badge.”

Garcia contemptuously throws the badge on the ground and replies with a thick Spanish accent: “Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!”

Few people know those same words had been previously used in a Monkees episode.

But because of the huge popularity of Blazing Saddles, they became a famous movie quotation and sparked countless satirical variations based on the linguistic formula “We don’t need no stinking [fill in the blank].”

I’ve posted some of my favorite variations in a post on my Quote/Counterquote blog.

You can also click this link to see some recent examples from news stories and blogs — unless, of course, you don’t need no stinking examples.

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“Strange but true” — there are quotes by Lord Byron you probably didn’t know you knew…

Although Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron) is one of the most famous of all English poets, few of us can recite a lot of lines from his poems.

Thanks to some popular modern biographies, Ken's Russell's movie Gothic (1986), the BBC drama Byron (2003), and other movies and TV shows, many people are aware that Byron had an outrageously wild personal life.

It was a life crammed full of sex (including affairs with both male and female lovers and probably his own sister), drugs (opium in particular) and rocky relations with the British Establishment, which he repeatedly poked in the eye with his scandalous lifestyle and radical liberal politics)

As memorably summed up by one of his many lovers, Lady Caroline Lamb, Byron was “mad, bad and dangerous to know.”

In fact, I’d guess more people are familiar with Byron’s proto-rock ‘n’ roll star reputation than his poetry.

There are some lines from Byron poems which are familiar to almost everyone.

The best-known is “She walks in beauty, like the night,” the opening words of his poem “She Walks in Beauty” (published in 1815).

Another bit of verse written by Byron popularized two idiomatic expressions you undoubtedly know and have probably used, though you may not know they come from one of his poems.

On December 17, 1823, Cantos XII, XIII and XIV of Byron’s epic satirical poem Don Juan were first published.

Canto XIV contains the lines:

“‘Tis strange — but true; for Truth is always strange;
       Stranger than fiction.”

Those words by Byron are generally credited as the origin of the sayings “strange but true” and “truth is stranger than fiction.”

So, while few people know it, they are paraphrasing a quotation by Byron when they use those phrases — both of which could aptly be applied to aspects of Byron’s personal life.

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“Greed is good!” – the famous movie misquote and it’s real life inspiration

On December 11, 1987 Oliver Stone’s film Wall Street was released in U.S. theaters.

The movie stars Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko, a mega-rich, ethically-challenged Wall Street investor who specializes in corporate takeover schemes.

Gekko has no pangs about taking over, gutting, and reselling companies regardless of the impacts on employees and local communities.

In fact, he’s proud of his takeover record, as he explains in the memorable speech he gives that includes the line usually misquoted as “Greed is good,” a shortened version of what Douglas actually says.

That now familiar saying is partly based on an actual speech given by the real-life Wall Street investor and money manipulator Ivan Boesky.

On May 18, 1986, Boesky gave the commencement address at the UC Berkeley’s School of Business Administration.

At the time, Boesky was a widely admired financial wizard who was riding high.

One of the things he told the students was this proto-Gekko quote.

     “Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.”

Boesky was feeling a tad less good the following year, when he was convicted of filing false trading records and sentenced to three years in prison, after also paying a record $100 million to settle a conviction for insider trading.

Boesky’s rise and fall and his infamous Berkeley quote were part of Oliver Stone’s inspiration for Wall Street.

Gekko clearly echoes Boesky in the scene in which he calls greed good.

In that scene, he’s speaking to a meeting of shareholders of the company Teldar Paper, which he wants to take over.

To encourage them to approve his takeover bid, he tells them he has studied the company and found that the current management is wasting money and shortchanging shareholders.

Then he says:

“I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them. The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms – greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge – has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you.”

The Teldar shareholders like what Gekko says and give him a standing ovation.

And, despite the fact that Gekko is a slimy character who is ultimately goes to prison for insider trading involving another company, and despite the financial scandals and meltdowns that happened before and after Wall Street was released, there are many people who like and essentially agree with the philosophy he expresses in that speech.

It’s fits the Ayn Randian “enlightened self-interest” creed of hard core advocates of business and opponents of “over-regulation” – a subset of people who have increasingly dominated American politics.

The end of Wall Street is somewhat uplifting. Gekko goes to jail and Bud Fox, the young protégé who initially helped him in a crooked takeover scheme (played by Charlie Sheen), blows the whistle on Gordon and redeems himself.

If Gekko existed in real life, he’d probably view the current push to reduce the regulation of businesses and financial markets as uplifting.

Indeed, events of the past few years might remind many people of something else Gordon Gekko says in Wall Street. 

He explains to Charlie Sheen’s character:

“The richest one percent of this country owns half our country’s wealth, five trillion dollars...We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you’re not naive enough to think we’re living in a democracy, are you buddy?”

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