When, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spoke of his audience as “the salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13), he was obviously paying them a high compliment. Salt preserves; it also adds taste and flavor. Even today, being called “the salt of the earth” is frequently a good thing—but not always.
Let’s start by accentuating the positive: “I don’t mean to name drop,” confides a columnist for The Irish Sun, “but I have interviewed Angelina Jolie three times now.” The reporter’s verdict, as displayed in the feature’s title: “Angelina Is Salt of the Earth.” Elsewhere in the starry heights, Clint Eastwood’s character in the movie Gran Torino, Walt Kowalski, is favorably described by The Australian as “a salt-of-the-earth kind of guy.”
Several notches down (or, for some, a number of notches up) is the world of sports. A reporter for Montreal’s Gazette is emphatic in his praise for one of Team Canada’s players in the 2010 Winter Olympics: Brenden Morrow is a “salt-of-the-earth person, salt-of-the-earth player … [He] embodies nearly all the characteristics Canadians so admire in hockey players: bravery, unselfishness, resilience, toughness and honesty.” Come to think of it, those are traits that we all admire, and not only in hockey players.
Whole teams, not just individual players, are also worthy of this description. Thus, according to London’s Guardian, the Burnley Football Club has the following as part of its “manifesto”: “We are … back-to-basics, spit and sawdust, salt of the earth … A sensible club for credit-crunch Britain and everyone’s favorite underdog.”
And not just teams, but also cities. A letter writer to the Liverpool Daily Echo had no doubt that her lost bag would be returned to her “because Liverpool people are very honest and they are the salt of the earth.” Echoing this thought are the sentiments of a gentleman who wrote a letter to another Liverpool publication, the Daily Post: “Grit. Well, what else could it be? John Wayne had it. His last movie was all about it … Not the rock salt variety, but the real salt of the earth. People. Liverpool has grit.”
Among those less than satisfied with a salt-of-the-earth designation are “the public and the council” of Hastings, New Zealand. As reported in The Dominion Post of Wellington, the city’s residents “roundly rejected” the slogan—“Hastings—Salt of the Earth”—that had been developed at a cost of $39,000. The article did not provide any rationale for such widespread rejection; all I do know is that, according to the current Web site for Hastings, the new slogan depicts Hastings as “The Warm Heart of the Hawkes Bay.” Having viewed pictures of the area, courtesy of the Web site, I’m tempted to head there right away—and I won’t be surprised if I’m greeted by people who, despite their reluctance to accept the epithet, are indeed salt of the earth.
As for last words, I’ll leave readers with two. The first comes from 80-year-old Ronnie Corbett, described in London’s Daily Mail as a “diminutive comic … still going strong”: “My wife says I’m the salt of the earth. That’s why she keeps me in the cellar.” The other, attributed to English novelist Mary West in The Times of London, goes like this: “The point is nobody likes having salt rubbed into their wounds, even if it is the salt of the earth.” I doubt that either of these sayings would make it into the Biblical Book of Proverbs. But then again, no one ever called Solomon “the salt of the earth.”
When, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spoke of his audience as “the salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13), he was obviously paying them a high compliment. Salt preserves; it also adds taste and flavor. Even today, being called “the salt of the earth” is frequently a good thing—but not always. Let’s start by accentuating the positive: “I don’t mean to name drop,” confides a columnist for The Irish Sun, “but I have interviewed Angelina Jolie three times now.” The reporter’s verdict, as displayed in the feature’s title: “Angelina Is Salt of the Earth.” Elsewhere in the starry […]
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