The Art of the Insult

compiled by Bob Buddemeier

The true Word Nerd yearns for the Golden Age in which insults and critical commentary were art forms rather than tiresome strings of inappropriate adjectives and threadbare expletives.

The following examples were culled from two books by John Winokur, “The Portable Curmudgeon” and “The Portable Curmudgeon Redux.”  Some of them originated fairly far in the past – but consider the audience.

Any similarity to contemporary situations or people is entirely coincidental.

People, generic and specific

She was good at playing abstract confusion in the same way a midget is good at being short.  Clive James on Marilyn Monroe

I did not attend his funeral, but I wrote a nice note saying I approved it.   Mark Twain

Mr. Atlee is a very modest man.  But then he has much to be modest about.  Winston Churchill

He mistakes verbal felicity for mental inspiration.  Aneurin Bevan on Winston Churchill

In Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Canada has at last produced a political leader worthy of assassination.  Irving Layton

Taft meant well, but he meant well feebly.   Theodore Roosevelt on William Howard Taft

Places and their populations

London – Crowds without company and dissipation without pleasure.  Edward Gibbon

Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you’ll find the real tinsel underneath.  Oscar Levant

The English instinctively admire any man who has no talent and is modest about it.  James Agate

California:  It is the land of perpetual pubescence, where cultural lag is mistaken for renaissance. Ashley  Montagu

What a glorious garden of wonders the lights of Broadway would be to anyone lucky enough to be unable to read.  G. K. Chesterton

The arts and entertainment

Television – a medium.  So called because it is neither rare nor well done.  Ernie Kovacs

He writes his plays for the ages – the ages between five and twelve. George Jean Nathan on George Bernard Shaw

Most rock journalism is people who can’t write interviewing people who can’t talk for people who can’t read.   Frank Zappa

I didn’t like the play, but then I saw it under adverse conditions – the curtain was up.   George S Kaufman

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.   Dorothy Parker

The scenery in the play was wonderful, but the actors got in front of it.  Alexander Woollcott

This is not at all bad, except as prose.  Gore Vidal on “Winds of War,” by Herman Wouk

Aging

It is after you have lost your teeth that you can afford to buy steaks.  Pierre August Renoir.

As you get older the pickings get slimmer but the people don’t.  Carrie Fisher

Child-Proof Bottle Tops:  Allen Ginsburg said that he saw the best minds of his generation destroyed by madness.  I have seen the best minds of my generation go at a bottle of Anacin with a ball-pein hammer.  P. J. O’Rourke