I suppose this is well known among a select group of people, but not to me. So here is Albert Einstein after visiting the United States in 1921, just after his general theory of relativity had been confirmed via eclipse sightings. The quotes are from a story that ran on page 9 of the New York Times:
The excessive enthusiasm for me in America appears to be typically American. And if I grasp it correctly the reason is that the people in America are so colossally bored.
....New York, Boston, Chicago and other cities have their theatres and concerts, but for the rest? There are cities with 1,000,000 inhabitants. Despite which what poverty, intellectual poverty!
....Above all things there are the women who, as a literal fact, dominate the entire life in America. The men take an interest in absolutely nothing at all. They work and work, the like of which I have never seen anywhere yet.
This surprisingly detailed monologue was attributed to something Einstein told a "sympathetic-looking Hollander." But the Hollander in question was actually a Dutch reporter:
At the beginning of July, Einstein agreed to an interview with Nell Boni, a young Berlin correspondent for the Dutch newspaper Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant (who was also a family acquaintance). “He basically thought he was talking off the record,” [Ze'ev] Rosenkranz says.
Einstein's remarks were in German, translated to Dutch for the newspaper interview. Then they were translated back into German for the German press and finally into English for the Times.
When the shit hit the fan, Einstein initially tried to blame the whole thing on poor translation, but apparently kept digging himself into a deeper hole:
While Einstein issued one response after another, “he’s not exactly denying everything that he said,” according to Rosenkranz. “He wasn’t upset by the views that were published as much as how they were perceived and the selectiveness of it.”
This isn't really the Albert we've all come to know and love, is it? At the same time, he wasn't entirely wrong, was he?
POSTSCRIPT: There's endless complaining these days about how the New York Times "bigfoots" smaller news outlets, basically taking their stories and re-reporting them without giving any credit. But that's nothing! The 1921 piece about Einstein was literally cut and pasted from the Dutch newspaper with not only no attribution, but with an opening paragraph that makes it sound like a Times exclusive of some kind. That's bigfooting.
Every European knows that Americans are a bunch of materialistic, uncultured boors. Einstein is saying nothing unusual here.
Just out of curiosity I googled “what was America like in 1921” to see what Einstein saw and found this:
https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/america-1921-roaring-20s-100-years-ago/#
Lots of really interesting pictures. I’m glad I live in the 2020’s.
Einstein worked in the Swiss Patent office from 1902 to 1909. During this time he authored 3 Nobel Prize quality physics papers in his free time (Brownian motion, photoelectric effect, and Special Relativity). One gathers he really wasn't into putting a lot of effort into his day job.
Einstein’s denigration of women was wrong. It might bother Kevin more if he were female instead of male.
Yeah I caught that too. It appears he thinks women dominate the culture and that sucks because no penis.
He was wrong to be negative about it, but American civil society really was dominated by women in those days. Women didn't work if they had a husband who made enough to support the family on one income, and once their children were no longer small they had a *lot* of free time, and they often put that time to use in various community organizations.
Judging comments made over a century ago by modern standards is going to piss you off every time...
Eh, I dunno. Central City Opera is the fifth-oldest opera company in the United States, founded in 1932, just a little bit later, and that was a small town. Oscar Wilde came through America in 1882 and visited dozens and dozens of places, I don't think there was any "puppet show and Oscar Wilde" problems there. Shakespeare performances were also popular in America during that period. Broadway shows have always toured.
I'm not generally one to champion American culture and interest in such, but I think Einstein was just being a bit cranky.