One of the commonest and tiredest expressions of political speech is variations of the introductory clause, "Words cannot express," followed by a generalized expression of grief, dislike, favor, or some other purported emotion. Words cannot express my sorrow, my affection, my contempt, &c.
Well, yes, actually they can, but you're a witless phony, which may account for your election to the US Congress.
The recent death of Tom Wolfe, practitioner of the "new journalism," has temporarily raised the profile of his fellow practitioner, friend, and occasional antagonist, Hunter Thompson, who, especially in the contempt category, was generally capable of finding words to convey his strong feeling. The accompanying communication was to his biographer, William McKeen. A letter to Wolfe included the expression, "You thieving pile of albino warts," which provided the headline for a New York Times book review, by Christopher Buckley, that included a compendium of Thompson's lexical repertoire. First, the adjectives of abuse:
vicious, rancid, savage, fiendish, filthy, rotten, demented, treacherous, heinous, scurvy, devious, grisly, hamwit, filthy, foetid, cheapjack, and hellish.
Then "favorite gerunds and verb forms":
Festering, stinking, crazed, deranged, soul-ripping, drooling, rabbit-punching and knee-crawling, to say nothing of even more piquant expressions.
Why is it that for me the expression about the albino warts calls to mind the prim mug of Mitch McConnell? Anyway, it's not that this is some new skill that humanity has acquired. Here, in King Lear, is Kent meeting up again with the contemptible Oswald in Act II:
Oswald: Why dost thou use me thus? I know thee not.
Kent: Fellow, I know thee.
Oswald: What dost thou know me for?
Kent: A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch; one whom I will beat into clamorous whining if thou deny'st the least syllable of thy addition.
Oswald: Why, what a monstrous fellow art thou, thus to rail on one that is neither known of thee nor knows thee.
Kent: What a brazen-faced varlet art thou to deny thou knowest me! Is it two days ago since I tripped up thy heels and beat thee before the King? [Draws his sword.] Draw, you rogue, for though it be night, yet the moon shines. I'll make a sop o' th' moonshine of you. You whoreson cullionly barbermonger, draw!
Though an editor's gloss would sometimes help, you get the idea. I personally like how Oswald's foppishness is a recurring theme in the indictment: "glass-gazing" means always before a mirror, and "cullionly barbermonger" means he's the despicable sort who's continually off to the barbershop to get fixed up. I can imagine Oswald serving in the House of Representatives, but not Kent, though it would boost the ratings of C-SPAN.
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