Political insults, old and new.

[Lord Muck oGentry]

Political insults nowadays strike me as pretty feeble. Let's face it, being called a federast or being accused of political correctness or airy-fairy civil libertarianism is more likely to make you laugh than squirm.

But back in the old days you damn well knew you'd been insulted- when someone called you a bourgeois objectivist or an imperialist running dog* you were insulted, and jolly well stayed insulted.

Bring back the old epithets, I say, before modern blandness ruins the game!






* Spotty dog, actually
http://www.georgianindex.net/dogs/dogs.html

[dalriada]

I love this one...

One night in the House of Commons, Churchill, after imbibing a few drinks, stumbled into Bessie Braddock, a corpulent Labourite member from Liverpool. An angry Bessie straightened her clothes and addressed the British statesman.

"Winston," she roared. "You are drunk, and what’s more, you are disgustingly drunk."

Churchill, surveying Bessie, replied, "And might I say, Mrs. Braddock, you are ugly, and what’s more, disgustingly ugly. But tomorrow," Churchill added, "I shall be sober."

http://www.bizbag.com/Churchill/morning.htm

[wudang]

Or Dennis Healey describing Geoff Howe's attack on him as "like being savaged by a dead sheep".

Or when John Wilkes was told "I do not know if you will die of the pox or on the gallows", he replied "that would depend, sir, whether I embraced your mistress or your principles".

[Lord Muck oGentry]

Churchill's attention was drawn to an obscure backbencher, one Bossom.
" Neither one thing nor the other", he grunted.

[dalriada]

George Bernard Shaw once sent two tickets to the opening night of one of his plays to Winston Churchill with the following note

"Bring a friend, if you have one."

Churchill wrote back, returning the two tickets and excused himself as he had a previous engagement. He also attached the following

"Please send me two tickets for the next night, if there is one."

*ouch*

[codger]

These days Churchill is mostly famous for being the last white man to be named Winston



OK, I'll get me coat........

[dalriada]

I love this one (even if the quote may well be misattributed).

Actress Jean Harlow, at a party with the Asquiths to saw no reason to address Lady Asquith formally, but repeatedly called her 'Margot', pronouncing the name with a hard 't'. Finally Lady Asquith could take no more and delivered the following withering put-down:

'Miss, the 't' is silent, as in Harlow.'

*ouch*

[dashwood]

i like the one by the priminister of new zeland on people emagrating to australia, he said it would boost the average IQ of both contries,