Columnists
Choosing your insult
Roseanne Barr got herself and her top ranked television show axed this past week because she described a former member of Barack Obama’s staff as the product of the “muslim brotherhood and planet of the apes.”
While her grammar left a little to be desired, the comparison left so much to be desired that the reaction was swift and merciless. To compare someone to an ape, even as just one half of a mating pair, is beyond the pale.
So what about Donald Trump’s complaint that someone had written a column making him out to be “some kind of neanderthal.” That used to be regarded as an insult: the Oxford Dictionary defines it as referring to someone who is “uncivilized, unintelligent, or uncouth.” However, the definition no longer stands up to the latest in modern science. Genetic research has shown that we all carry between 1.5 per cent and 2.1 per cent neanderthal DNA, meaning that modern humans and neanderthals have a common ancestor (yet to be identified).
And now investigators are digging up evidence to indicate that neanderthals were more sophisticated than we had imagined. They have uncovered a series of paintings from three caves in Spain that have been dated, using uranium-thorium technology, at 64,000 years old. That predates the arrival of Homo Sapiens in Europe by some 20,000 years.
The paintings—black and red images of animals, as well as dots, hand stencils and fingerprints—demonstrate their capacity for abstract thought and descriptive skill. Says the lead investigator, “The findings point to further parallels between modern humans and neanderthals.” The two species “shared symbolic thinking and must have been cognitively indistinguishable.”
The neanderthals did, however, die out, so we are the evolutionary winners (assuming we don’t experience untimely extinction on account of our own brilliance). One recently touted explanation for our success: a more vertical forehead with more prominent eyebrows than the neanderthal, which increase our capacity to express subtle emotions. Groucho Marx would be pleased.
So Mr. Trump, and his detractor, dodged a bullet with “neanderthal” both coming up roses. But it’s not as though he has a paucity of detractors. He has been called a “”moron,” “dumb,” “crazy,” “stupid,” an “idiot” and a “dope” – and that’s just from among the people who work around him. Maybe we should examine the insult a little more carefully, since the present occupant of the White House seems to generate such a generous flow of it.
The insult normally has two components: the person who is being tarnished (Mr. Trump), and the person, place, thing or condition to whom he is being negatively compared (a neanderthal). So when we insult by comparison, we are effectively spreading a double insult.
That suggests we ought to be careful. To call someone a “jackass” is probably just rubbing the male-donkey lovers of the world the wrong way. Same if you call someone a “pig” or a “rat” or a “worm”: they each have a number of redeeming features and potential defenders who can push back on their account. Even moving down the sentience scale has its risks. You might call someone as “thick as a plank” but planks come from trees, and trees are now thought to be “brilliant at solving problems related to their existence,” according to the author of a recent bestseller. Call someone “as dull as dishwater.” and the next thing you know, a conservation group is trolling you.
And trouble also lurks with words that appear merely descriptive; they may have their origin in comparison. Can you call someone a “moron,” for example, without risking criticism for lumping people who are mentally challenged together in a negative way – especially if the person to whom they are being compared is Mr. Trump?
It’s hard to come up with a good insult that doesn’t besmirch innocent third parties. To keep our language lively, maybe we just have to run a risk and be prepared to call Mr. Trump “dumb as a bag of hammers,” if that’s how we see it.
Of course, there is no rule of human discourse that says we have to resort to insult at all. Perhaps it would be better if we stuck to challenging the substance of what people say and do with substance in return. And perhaps Mr.Trump has been put on this earth for the purpose of testing our capacity to do so. To the limit.
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