Liberals constantly complain about the lack of civil discourse in politics, even as they constantly lower the bar themselves.
Yet, compared to what once was common fare, politicians and pundits are a bunch of sissies these days.
It is bad enough that a collection of misfits from both major parties are in the running for the most powerful political office in the world. But that they should do it with such lack of skill in the art of insult makes this dreadfully long and painful election period even more unbearable.
Dubbing Sen. Marco Rubio “Little Marco” apparently is the height of insult today.
In 1860, Sen. Thomas Hart Benton said of the pint-sized Stephen Douglas:
“Douglas can never be president, sir. No, sir; Douglas never can be president, sir. His legs are too short, sir. His coat, like a cow's tail, hangs too near the ground, sir.”
Rubio doesn't do much better by referring to Donald Trump's manhood.
How much more effective he would have been to have said, as Lytton Strachey did of David Lloyd George, “My one ardent desire is that after the war he should be publicly castrated in front of Nurse Cavell's statue.”
Ben Disraeli said of an earl he didn't like, “... he insults the House of Lords and plagues the most eminent of his colleagues with the crabbed malice of a maundering witch.”
Disraeli got it back from another source who said of Disraeli, “He is a self-made man who worships his Creator.”
Donald Trump says Jeb Bush is “low energy”? How does that compare to this description of British Prime Minister Clement Atlee? “He brings to the fierce struggle of politics the tepid enthusiasm of a lazy summer afternoon at a cricket match.”
The media, of course, has indulged in insults -- especially about Trump who clearly, in their estimation, is Adolf Hitler on steroids.
The New York Times listed 202 things Trump has said that they labeled insults. But one was that the Times was “poorly run and managed,” so one wonders precisely what definition of “insult” they used.
Despite its best efforts, the media still must work hard to equal Harper Weekly's 19th century assessment of Abraham Lincoln:
“Filthy Story-Teller, Despot, Liar, Thief, Braggart, Buffoon, Usurper, Monster, Ignoramus Abe, Old Scoundrel, Perjurer, Robber, Swindler, Tyrant, Field-Butcher, Land-Pirate.”
(In case anyone didn't get the drift, Harper's didn't like Old Abe.)
Hillary Clinton's prevarications commonly are called “lies,” but wouldn't it be wonderful if someone said of her what Winston Churchill said of Stanley Baldwin:
“He occasionally stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.”
When it comes to exquisitely fashioned epithets, however, my favorite always has been the poet Hilaire Belloc's deserving tribute to politicians:
“Here richly, with ridiculous display,
"The politician's corpse was laid away.
"While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged
"I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.”
Lloyd Brown was in the newspaper business nearly 50 years, beginning as a copy boy and retiring as editorial page editor of the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. After retirement he served as a policy analyst for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
