There was Actually a Time when Political Insults were Creative, Hilarious, and Savage
Politicians today should do better
Deplorables. Radical Leftists. Garbage. For the past year (or two, or ten), we have heard insults hurled by politicians at their opponents, which is nothing new either in America or elsewhere. What is new, however, is the inferior quality of those insults, which has made this frustrating every-four-years exercise far less entertaining than it used to be.
This decline in erudite insults perfectly reflects the decline in the use of creative language across the board. In a world dominated by tweets, the shorter the phrase the better, and even newscasts have abandoned the traditional 30-second soundbite for 5-second ones. Neither ever contained any context, but as we now have the attention spans of cocker spaniels with ADHD, that rarely matters. Look…squirrel!
There is no doubt that the race-to-the-bottom situation we currently face with regard to political insults was taken to a new low by former President Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign. He would hit an opponent with a one-word insult and then simply repeat it so many times that it stuck: “Crooked Hillary,” “Lyin’ Ted,” and “Pocahontas Warren” are just three examples. It worked especially well for a man who lacks both creativity and a…
