This is presented in the interest of our nation’s vital need for civility, intelligence and humanity in our discourse as key components in the battle against mindless acquiescence to paradigms of brutality, shameful prejudice, dumbed-down, anti-democratic diatribes and brain-damaged ramblings that a big part of our national politics is now committed to. I found the following on the Internet and feel it is worth sharing. I thank whoever went to the trouble to assemble them.
The following were presented as “insults from an era before the English language got boiled down to four-letter words.”
- “He had delusions of adequacy.” —Walter Kerr
- “He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.” —Winston Churchill
- “I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure. —Clarence Darrow
- “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” —William Faulkner (of Ernest Hemingway)
- “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?” —Ernest Hemingway (of William Faulkner)
- “Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it.” —Moses Hadas
- “I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” —Mark Twain
- “He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.” —Oscar Wilde
- “I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend, if you have one.” —George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill
- “Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second… if there is one.” —Winston Churchill, in response
- “I feel so miserable without you; it’s almost like having you here” —Stephen Bishop
- “He is a self-made man and worships his creator.” —John Bright
- “I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.” —Irvin S. Cobb
- “He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others.” —Samuel Johnson
- “He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up. —Paul Keating
- “He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.” —Forrest Tucker
- “Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?” —Mark Twain
- “His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.” —Mae West
- “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.” —Oscar Wilde
- “He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts… for support rather than illumination.” —Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
- “He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.” —Billy Wilder
- “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But I’m afraid this wasn’t it.” —Groucho Marx
- The exchange between Winston Churchill and Lady Astor: She said, “If you were my husband I’d give you poison.” He said, “If you were my wife, I’d drink it.”
- “He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.” —Abraham Lincoln
- “There’s nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won’t cure.” —Jack E. Leonard
- “They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.” —Thomas Brackett Reed
- “He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them.” —James Reston (about Richard Nixon)
This week, we have been assailed by the desperate efforts of Trump World to equate the trial of President Biden’s son with the conviction of Trump on 34 felony charges of, as what it boiled down to, an attempt to disenfranchise every voter in America on the eve of the 2016 election, resulting in one of the worst U.S. administrations in our history to date.
The major media must take the blame for falling into line behind this feeble attempt at asserting moral equivalency. While the media reported accurately on what are obviously huge differences between the Hunter Biden and Donald Trump cases, the optics remained something that Trumpists used to cancel out the impact of the Trump convictions.
It is pathetic that the media fell into this, with the only upside being that the “rule of law” was affirmed in both cases.