WHAT’S SO FUNNY: Finding a man to dislike

As I drove past some election signs the other day I was thinking about who I liked and who I didn’t, and I got onto one of those trains of thought that wanders off onto a siding. This one came to a stop at the image of Will Rogers, the political humorist of the 1920s who once said, “I never met a man I didn’t like.”

Rogers has been dismissed as a fool or a liar by many because of that statement. It’s clearly too sugary for belief. After all, everybody doesn’t like somebody sometime.

On the other hand, there’s something to be said for most people if you can find it, and as I thought further I had a hard time coming up with a list of people I, Sherwood Kiraly, could say I officially disliked.

At first the only one to come to mind was Billy Mays, a commercial spokesman for household products who shouts everything he says and comes on TV just as you’re drifting off to sleep. He’d gotten me again the night before.

A moment later I added Lou Dobbs, a CNN newsman who sits in front of a U.S. flag graphic and proclaims that he’s for the middle class — a courageous stand in an overwhelmingly middle-class country. Lou’s supposed to be a journalist, but he seems to be running for something.

From him I wandered off to reflect on Bill O’Reilly, but as I did so I realized that as much as these guys might annoy me on the home screen, I hadn’t met any of them, so they didn’t qualify under the terms of Will Rogers’ original statement.

And among the men I had actually met, I was shocked to find that I couldn’t think of anyone I disliked.

Or hardly anyone. Couple of my early teachers, maybe. My sister’s ex-husband. Some classmates. Some fellow employees. A few bosses.

There’s a critic whose obituary I could read without grief. But aside from those, and the neighbors who glare when I walk my dog past their yard, I couldn’t think of anybody.

Well, wait. I also don’t like people who don’t like me. Now and then someone else takes the initiative and dislikes me first — I’m at a loss to say why. But once he makes his position clear, it’s always pretty much “And the same to you” on my part.

But that’s it — except for women, who were left out of Rogers’ statement and whom I don’t dislike either, as a rule.

In fact, almost all the women I ever got upset with were women I originally liked quite a bit.

So all in all, you can just about call me Will.

Oh, and the guy who sold me my first car.

SHERWOOD KIRALY is a Laguna Beach resident. He has written four novels, three of which were critically acclaimed.