DISSIN’ FOR FUN

BACK IN OCTOBER 2022, MY BOOK REVIEW of Colin Jarman’s Barbed Quotes: Mudslinging, Backstabbing, and Celebrity Dishing offered only one quote concerning politicians.

I guess I thought Trump would just peter out. Well, how wrong can a person be (other than a MAGA supporter)?

Barbed Quotes: Mudslinging, Backstabbing, and Celebrity Dirt Dishing, compiled by Colin M. Jarman, Contemporary Books, 1999.

Here I return to Jarman’s most entertaining collection with focus on the category of Politicians. There’s a refreshing retro quality to all this because the book was published in 1999, back before Trump followed his star as The Apprentice huckster and long before he proved himself an educator (Trump University), the least graceful loser in American political history (2020), and a $59.99 Bible salesman (2024). But enough of Trump. Jarman offers plenty of dissin’ on other folks. 

Ted Koppel on Richard Nixon (1984). “Here is a guy who’s had a stake driven through his heart. I mean, really nailed to the bottom of the coffin with a wooden stake, and a silver bullet through the forehead for good measure—and yet he keeps coming back.” 

Gee, does this remind you of someone else?

Anonymous: “The trouble with some of the big guns in politics is that they are of small caliber and are big bores.”

Cynthia Heimel (1992): “The outcome of twenty-five years of Republican rule (Jimmy Carter was a mere blip in 1976) is that Americans have learned to hate themselves, like children of repressive, conformist families.” 

Another one that remains cogent today.

Jay Leno (1996): “The Republican convention started this past weekend, so don’t forget to turn your clocks back four hundred years.” 

Or 90 years to Germany and Italy. 

A Republican Campaign Joke (1992): Q: How can you tell Al Gore from his secret service agents? A: He’s the stiff one.”

Tom Lehrer: “Satire died the day that Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Tom Lehrer, New York City-born, 1928, mathematician, teacher, singer/songwriter, rapier wit. Image from tomlehrer.org.

See also “Take my Math Text, Please.” 

Matt Groeing (1993): “Dan Quayle is more stupid than Ronald Reagan put together.”

Bill Clinton (1992): “Putting Bush and Quayle in charge of the economy is like making General Sherman the fire marshal of Atlanta.”

Bob Dorman (1992): “Al Gore is looking for a brain. Hillary is looking for a heart. I hope the national media is not listening, but people tell me that Clinton is looking for Dorothy.”

See not unrelated “A Mocking Apology.”

 Nikita Khrushchev, letter (1960): Roosevelt proved that a president could serve for life. Truman proved that anyone could be president. Eisenhower proved that your country can be run without a president.” 

Gee, isn’t he the one who took his shoe off and stamped it at Disneyland?

Ben Bradlee: “When [Lyndon B.] Johnson wanted to persuade you of something, you really felt as if a St. Bernard had licked your face for an hour.” 

Richard M. Nixon (1976): “People have said my language is bad, but Jesus! You should have heard LBJ.”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Newsweek (1994): [Of LBJ] “Uncle Cornpone and his little Porkchop.” 

Jay Leno “The Tonight Show” (1997): “The Kennedys are like the dinosaurs in The Lost World: they have big teeth, breed like crazy, and wherever they go, women are running and screaming.” 

Christopher Buckley (1992): “[H. Ross] Pirot is the sort of man of whom it is said, ‘In your head, you know he’s right; in your gut, you know he’s nuts.”

Pirot, you recall, was a third-party candidate, not to put a worm in your brain. 

Thanks, Colin Jarman, for your neat book. I’m leaving its other great barbed quotes for readers. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024