There's a great shortage of fine putdowns in history. The few illustrious ones you should remember can and should be memorized with ease.
- Nancy Astor: "If you were my husband I'd poison your coffee." Winston Churchill: "If I were your husband, I would drink it."
- Margot Asquith, correcting Jean Harlow's mispronunciation of her name: "The T is silent. As in 'harlot'."
- Gore Vidal, after being punched in the face by Norman Mailer: "I see words have failed you yet again, Norman."
- Aristocratic lady: "Dr. Johnson, your penis is sticking out!" Dr. Johnson: "Madame, you flatter yourself. It's HANGING out."
- A British MP to Benjamin Disraeli: "Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease." "That depends, sir," said Disraeli, "on whether I embrace your policies or your mistress."
- Jay-Z: "I've been in it five/ smarten up Nas Four albums in ten years n****? I can divide/ That's one every let's say two, two of them shits was due/ One was - NAHHH, the other was "Illmatic" That's a one hot album every ten year average." Nas: "You a fan, a phony, a fake, a pussy, a Stan/ I still whip your ass, you thirty-six in a karate class/ You Tae-bo hoe, tryna' work it out, you tryna' get brolic?"
- Chesterton: (eyeing Shaw's thin frame) I see there has been a famine in the land. Shaw: (looking at the fat Chesterton) And I see the cause of it. Shaw: If I were as fat as you, I would hang myself. Chesterton: If I were to hang myself, I would use you for the rope.
Adding new Colorado coach Jon Embree to the list of history's great dissmasters would be premature, but in the most indirect of ways there is nothing meaner to say about your coaching predecessor at a school than this:
"You can't evaluate either one of them and there are some things from how they practiced I think inhibited their ability to show what they could do," Embree said. "Not talking to them but other people around the program, they might have been over-kicked. So they were very leg-weary. It's an unknown."
"Our kickers were over-kicked." God, that's mastery. You could either say "your previous coach had no idea what he was doing," or you could say that and score infinite style points. Oscar Wilde and the Council of Bitchcraft are applauding from their seats in the great beyond, and possibly commenting on your appalling taste in footwear, Jon Embree. (HT: The Good Doctor.)