James Ottavio Castagnera: Insults, 101
[Jim Castagnera is a Philadelphia attorney and author, who writes a weekly newspaper column, “Attorney at Large.”]
Last week center-left rival Romano Prodi squeaked out a narrow win over incumbent Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. Their election race was even closer in the insult category. Personally I think Prodi narrowly won there, too, when he remarked, “The prime minister clings to data the way a drunkard clings to lamp posts, not for illumination but to keep him standing up.” Wow, I wonder what that sounds like in Italian. And did Prodi do that thing with his hand under his chin that Italian men use to emphasize their disdain?
Berlusconi was no slouch by the way. He retorted on Italian national TV, “Prodi is like a useful idiot. He lends his cheery parish priest’s face to the left, which is 70 percent made up of former communists.”
Meanwhile, the insults hurled at Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld by a batch of recently-retired generals, calling for his resignation, seem wimpy by comparison. The worst they could come up with was that he created an “atmosphere of arrogance” at the Pentagon. Well, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah!
Civil War General George McClellen was a military man who could hurl an insult. He once said of President Lincoln, “He’s nothing more than a well-meaning baboon.” I’m not sure if that was just before or just after Abe cashiered him.
While Italian politicians may be the current reigning champs of the political insult, we Yanks have a distinguished history of scathing epithets. For example:
• Novelist Gore Vidal on President Ronald Reagan: “A triumph of the embalmer’s art.”
• Newspaperman H.L. Mencken on President Franklin D. Roosevelt: “If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he surely needs, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House backyard come Wednesday.”
• Independent presidential candidate and billionaire Ross Perot on Vice President Dan Quayle: “An empty suit that goes to funerals and plays golf.”
• LBJ on JFK: “The enviably attractive nephew who sings an Irish ballad for the company and then winsomely disappears before the table clearing and dishwashing begin.”
Sometimes a class act comes along in national politics, capable of directing the insult at the issue instead of at an opponent. Thus, Ronald Reagan on the right to choose: “I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.”
Reagan was my idea of a real gentleman. He was once called “the Teflon President,” because he let insults and accusations just slide off him with the help of a hearty chuckle. No doubt that’s how he reacted when he heard what Gerald Ford once said: “Ronald Reagan doesn’t dye his hair. He’s just prematurely orange.”
Richard Nixon suffers badly by comparison. He was at once an easy target for attacks and atypically thin-skinned for a lifelong politician. When he lost a mid-sixties bid for the California governorship, after having lost the presidency to JFK by a whisker, he famously told the press corps, “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.” All the same he came back to rise to the White House, only to crash from that Olympus in the worst American political scandal of the last century. On the way down into the abyss, Tricky Dick became the target of some classic comments, such as this one by Nixon-impersonator David Frye:
“There’s a bright side to Watergate. My administration has taken crime out of the streets and put it in the White House, where I can keep an eye on it.”
I’m waiting for the Italians to top that one.
Last week center-left rival Romano Prodi squeaked out a narrow win over incumbent Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. Their election race was even closer in the insult category. Personally I think Prodi narrowly won there, too, when he remarked, “The prime minister clings to data the way a drunkard clings to lamp posts, not for illumination but to keep him standing up.” Wow, I wonder what that sounds like in Italian. And did Prodi do that thing with his hand under his chin that Italian men use to emphasize their disdain?
Berlusconi was no slouch by the way. He retorted on Italian national TV, “Prodi is like a useful idiot. He lends his cheery parish priest’s face to the left, which is 70 percent made up of former communists.”
Meanwhile, the insults hurled at Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld by a batch of recently-retired generals, calling for his resignation, seem wimpy by comparison. The worst they could come up with was that he created an “atmosphere of arrogance” at the Pentagon. Well, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah!
Civil War General George McClellen was a military man who could hurl an insult. He once said of President Lincoln, “He’s nothing more than a well-meaning baboon.” I’m not sure if that was just before or just after Abe cashiered him.
While Italian politicians may be the current reigning champs of the political insult, we Yanks have a distinguished history of scathing epithets. For example:
• Novelist Gore Vidal on President Ronald Reagan: “A triumph of the embalmer’s art.”
• Newspaperman H.L. Mencken on President Franklin D. Roosevelt: “If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he surely needs, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House backyard come Wednesday.”
• Independent presidential candidate and billionaire Ross Perot on Vice President Dan Quayle: “An empty suit that goes to funerals and plays golf.”
• LBJ on JFK: “The enviably attractive nephew who sings an Irish ballad for the company and then winsomely disappears before the table clearing and dishwashing begin.”
Sometimes a class act comes along in national politics, capable of directing the insult at the issue instead of at an opponent. Thus, Ronald Reagan on the right to choose: “I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.”
Reagan was my idea of a real gentleman. He was once called “the Teflon President,” because he let insults and accusations just slide off him with the help of a hearty chuckle. No doubt that’s how he reacted when he heard what Gerald Ford once said: “Ronald Reagan doesn’t dye his hair. He’s just prematurely orange.”
Richard Nixon suffers badly by comparison. He was at once an easy target for attacks and atypically thin-skinned for a lifelong politician. When he lost a mid-sixties bid for the California governorship, after having lost the presidency to JFK by a whisker, he famously told the press corps, “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.” All the same he came back to rise to the White House, only to crash from that Olympus in the worst American political scandal of the last century. On the way down into the abyss, Tricky Dick became the target of some classic comments, such as this one by Nixon-impersonator David Frye:
“There’s a bright side to Watergate. My administration has taken crime out of the streets and put it in the White House, where I can keep an eye on it.”
I’m waiting for the Italians to top that one.