If you are going to insult someone...

A teacher  once admonished me for swearing by saying that profanity is simply a sign of a deficient vocabulary. I thought of that teacher when I read Garrison Keillor's column in today's paper. His best paragraph needed not a single bit of profanity because of his well-developed vocabulary...

Having been called names, one looks back at one's own angry outbursts over the years, and I recall having once referred to Republicans as "hairy-backed swamp developers, fundamentalist bullies, freelance racists, hobby cops, sweatshop tycoons, line jumpers, marsupial moms and aluminum-siding salesmen, misanthropic frat boys, ninja dittoheads, shrieking midgets, tax cheats, cheese merchants, cat stranglers, pill pushers, nihilists in golf pants, backed-up Baptists, the grand pooh-bahs of Percodan, mouth breathers, testosterone junkies and brownshirts in pinstripes." I look at those words now, and "cat stranglers" seems excessive to me. The number of cat stranglers in the ranks of the Republican Party is surely low, and that reference was hurtful to Republicans and to cat owners. I feel sheepish about it.  "PROTESTANTS UNITE! A CALL TO ACTION," Mankato Free Press, May 18, 2006.

I like both the style and the sentiment. And just imagine how much fun Keillor had writing it. He is, in my opinion, the closest thing to Twain, Menken or Thurber writing today.  Quite a few of his weekly columns can be found here.

Comments

[Graham Wegner]

Your post reminds me of Chevy Chase's rant in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation which although profane in parts has the great phrases of "snake-licking...dog kissing....worm-headed sack of monkey ____ he is!!" Almost Monty Pythonesque in its quality, don't you think?

[Dennis Fermoyle]

You may be right about swearing being a sign of a deficient vocabulary, but have you ever golfed? "You ninja dittohead!" or "You shrieking midget!" just doesn't do it when you've hit a banana ball into the drink for your third lost ball on the same hole.