Thursday, February 24, 2022

Insults - Must try harder

(中文在下方)

The rumpus between Era News anchor Catherine Chang and former presenter for a now banned Chinese company and now TMD spokesperson Christina Yang seems to be entertaining the entire country right now. 

Who needs to watch professional wrestling when these two are going at it hammer and tongs, although I have to say they don’t even get close to the mark when it comes to proper insults. 

Broken flower vase? Your face is not pretty enough to be a flower vase, you are just an empty bottle? Why are you hanging around me to get attention, is it because someone is not even a bottle?

This really is little league stuff when it comes to decent insulting and these two clearly have a lot to learn. Although I have to say Catherine Chang’s come-back to the KMT’s Bai Qiao-yin who clumsily waded into the row was pretty good, when she said she had no recollection of Bai when she interned at Chang’s TV station so she obviously wasn’t a very successful intern.

There are three issues here as far as I can see…

1) If you are a party spokesperson you have to be all sorts of an idiot to publically take on a high profile journalist. It is asking for trouble and you are bound to lose. 
2) Mayor Malfunction has hired yet another dud.
3) Public figures in Taiwan really need to work harder on their verbal abuse.

The most recent masterful example of political insult I can think of came from Dominic Cummings the former head of the Brexit Vote Leave campaign who branded the then Brexit Secretary David Davis as being as “thick as mince” and “as lazy as a toad”.

In the 1860s British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli said of rival William Gladstone. “If Gladstone fell into the Thames, that would be a misfortune, and if anybody pulled him out, that, I suppose, would be a calamity.”

British statesman David Lloyd George said of Winston Churchill. “He would make a drum out of the skin of his own mother in order to sound his own praises.” While Churchill described Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee as “A sheep in sheep’s clothing.”

At the time, I particularly enjoyed Labour health secretary Frank Dobson on the outspoken Tory MP Edwina Currie that “When Edwina Currie goes to the dentist, he needs the anesthetic.”

More up to date is broadcaster Ian Hislop on Prime Minister Boris Johnson. “People always ask me the same question, they say, ‘Is Boris a very very clever man pretending to be an idiot?’ And I always say, ‘No.‘”

Another that springs to mind is from a former girlfriend of British Conservative Party ‘heavyweight’ politician Nicholas Soames who said of having sex with him as “Like having a large wardrobe fall on top of you with the key still in the lock.”

Which takes us full circle given the row between Catherine Chang and Christina Yang all started with the thinly veiled fat insult aimed at ex-Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Ju, now President of the Control Yuan and Chair of the National Human Rights Commission, that she was a ‘heavyweight’. 

Of course, the Brits, and Australians come to that, see most insults as a term of endearment…

Tinkerty Tonk...

《 學習英國毒舌》

年代電視主播張雅琴與一家現已因詐騙關門的中國公司的前主持人,也就是現任TMD發言人楊寶楨之間的鬥嘴,似乎正在娛樂整個台灣。

當這兩個人用錘子和鉗子進行比賽時,誰還需要看職業摔跤?不過我不得不說,在適當的侮辱方面,他們甚至沒有達到接近毒舌的標準。

破碎的花瓶?當花瓶你的臉不夠漂亮,你只是一個空瓶子?你為什麼要蹭聲量,是不是因為有人連瓶子都不是?

要談到體面的侮辱,這些真的是小聯盟等級,這兩個人顯然有很多東西要學。但張雅琴給笨手笨腳的KMT發言人白喬茵的回覆真的很不錯,她說該發言人在她的電視台實習時,她一點印象也沒有,可見不是什麼優秀的工讀生。

這個事件我看到三個重點。

第一,如果你是政黨發言人,你一定是個全方位的白痴,才會想到要和一位知名記者公然對決。這是自找麻煩,你一定會輸。

第二,運作故障的市長又雇了一個無用之人。

第三,台灣的公眾人物需要更加努力學習如何口頭羞辱他人。

我能想到最近一個政治毒舌相當傑出例子,是來自英國脫歐公投大將Dominic Cummings,他形容當時的脫歐秘書David Davis「笨得跟絞肉一樣 」(thick as mince) 「像蟾蜍一樣懶惰」(as lazy as a toad)

(註:英文的 thick 有笨的意思,和絞肉一樣粘可見有多笨)

在1860年代,Benjamin Disraeli 談到了William Gladstone:「如果Gladstone掉進泰晤士河,那將是一場不幸,如果有人把他拉出來,我想,那將是一場災難。」

David Lloyd George談到Winston Churchill:「他會用自己母親的皮做一個鼓來讚美自己。」,而丘吉爾則將工黨首相Clement Attlee描述為「披著羊皮的羊」。

(註:羊是非常溫馴的,還要穿著羊皮就是完全的懦弱無能)

那段時期我還特別喜歡工黨衛生部長Frank Dobson 對總是直言不諱的保守黨議員Edwina Currie的評語:「當她去看牙醫時,牙醫需要麻醉劑。」

近期對政治人物的的羞辱來自廣播人Ian Hislop對首相Boris Johnson的評論。「人們總是問我同樣的問題,他們說,會不會強生其實是一個非常聰明的人,但他只是假裝是個白痴?我總是說,不是。」

另一個毒舌來自英國保守黨“重量級”政治家Nicholas Soames的前女友,她說與他發生性關係「就像一個大衣櫃落在你身上,而鑰匙還在插在門鎖裡。」

這讓我們繞了一圈回到這件事的原點,因為張雅琴和楊寶楨之間的爭吵,是從楊寶楨對前高雄市長、現任監察院院長、國家人權委員會主席陳菊的暗示性侮辱開始的,毫無疑問陳菊是一個重量級的政治人物。

不過要知道,許多來自英國人和澳洲人的毒舌,其實都是一種喜愛寵愛的表現,而不是羞辱。

Tinkerty Tonk...掰掰!


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