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Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President, from Washington to Trump
Insulting the president is an American tradition. From Washington to Trump, presidents have been called "lazy," "feeble," "pusillanimous," and more. Our leaders have been derided as "ignoramuses," "idiots," "morons," and "fatheads," and have been compared to all manner of animals--worms and whales and hyenas, sad jellyfish, strutting crows, lap dogs, reptiles, and monkeys.
Political insults tell us what we value in our leaders by showing how we devalue them. In Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels, linguist Edwin Battistella collects over five hundred insults aimed at American presidents. Covering the broad sweep of American history, he puts insults in their place-the political and cultural context of their times. Along the way, Battistella illustrates the recurring themes of political insults: too little intellect or too much, inconsistency or obstinacy, worthlessness, weakness, dishonesty, sexual impropriety, appearance, and more. The kinds of insults we use suggest what our culture finds most hurtful, and reveal society's changing prejudices as well as its most enduring ones. How we insult presidents and how they react tells us about the presidents, but it also tells us about our nation's politics.
Readers discover how the style of insults evolves in different historical periods: gone are "apostate," "mountebank," "flathead," and "doughface." Say hello to "moron," "jerk," "asshole," and "flip-flopper." Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels covers the broad sweep of American history, from the founder's debates over the nature of government to world wars and culture wars and social media.
Whatever your politics, you'll find Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels an invaluable source of invigorating invective-and a healthy perspective on today's political climate.
Political insults tell us what we value in our leaders by showing how we devalue them. In Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels, linguist Edwin Battistella collects over five hundred insults aimed at American presidents. Covering the broad sweep of American history, he puts insults in their place-the political and cultural context of their times. Along the way, Battistella illustrates the recurring themes of political insults: too little intellect or too much, inconsistency or obstinacy, worthlessness, weakness, dishonesty, sexual impropriety, appearance, and more. The kinds of insults we use suggest what our culture finds most hurtful, and reveal society's changing prejudices as well as its most enduring ones. How we insult presidents and how they react tells us about the presidents, but it also tells us about our nation's politics.
Readers discover how the style of insults evolves in different historical periods: gone are "apostate," "mountebank," "flathead," and "doughface." Say hello to "moron," "jerk," "asshole," and "flip-flopper." Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels covers the broad sweep of American history, from the founder's debates over the nature of government to world wars and culture wars and social media.
Whatever your politics, you'll find Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels an invaluable source of invigorating invective-and a healthy perspective on today's political climate.
228 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2020
About the author
Edwin L. Battistella
11 books31 followersEdwin L. Battistella teaches linguistics and writing at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon. He is the author of six books and over fifty articles.
Sorry About That: The Language of Public Apology (Oxford University Press, 2014 [in production]) analyzes the public apologies of presidents, politicians, entertainers, and businessmen, situating the apology within American popular culture and showing how language creates sincere or insincere apologies, why we choose to apologize or don’t, and how our efforts to say we are sorry succeed or fail.
A Year of New Words (Literary Ashland Press, 2013) is a short series of essays and a glossary reporting on my 2012 project of making up a word a day.
Bad Language: Are Some Words Better Than Others? (Oxford University Press, 2005) and Do You Make These Mistakes in English? The Story of Sherwin Cody’s Famous Language School (Oxford University Press, 2009) are about language attitudes. Bad Language was a cultural history of language attitudes—why we consider some uses and words better than others. It was named one of the Chicago Tribune’s “10 Best Books on Language” in 2005 and it was an Oregon Book Award finalist in 2006.
Do You Make These Mistakes in English? was a cultural history of the self-education movement focusing on the life of writer Sherwin Cody, an entrepreneur of English whose long-running correspondence course invited the upwardly mobile to spend just fifteen minutes a day improving their English. It made the Library Journal’s 2009 list of Best Sellers in Language.
Markedness: The Evaluative Superstructure of Language (SUNY Press, 1989) and The Logic of Markedness (Oxford University Press, 1996) are about linguistic theory, specifically the structuralist concept of asymmetry between opposites and its later development in generative grammar.
Battistella served as Dean of the School of Arts & Letters at Southern Oregon University from 2000-2006 and as interim Provost from 2007-2008. He is on the board of directors of Oregon Humanities, the state humanities council, and on the editorial board of The Oregon Encyclopedia, and the Executive Committee of the Linguistic Society of America. He has been interviewed on the BBC, NPR’s Jefferson Public Radio, for C-Span2’s Book TV and in the NEH magazine Humanities.
He also moderates the Literary Ashland blog and twitter feed.
Sorry About That: The Language of Public Apology (Oxford University Press, 2014 [in production]) analyzes the public apologies of presidents, politicians, entertainers, and businessmen, situating the apology within American popular culture and showing how language creates sincere or insincere apologies, why we choose to apologize or don’t, and how our efforts to say we are sorry succeed or fail.
A Year of New Words (Literary Ashland Press, 2013) is a short series of essays and a glossary reporting on my 2012 project of making up a word a day.
Bad Language: Are Some Words Better Than Others? (Oxford University Press, 2005) and Do You Make These Mistakes in English? The Story of Sherwin Cody’s Famous Language School (Oxford University Press, 2009) are about language attitudes. Bad Language was a cultural history of language attitudes—why we consider some uses and words better than others. It was named one of the Chicago Tribune’s “10 Best Books on Language” in 2005 and it was an Oregon Book Award finalist in 2006.
Do You Make These Mistakes in English? was a cultural history of the self-education movement focusing on the life of writer Sherwin Cody, an entrepreneur of English whose long-running correspondence course invited the upwardly mobile to spend just fifteen minutes a day improving their English. It made the Library Journal’s 2009 list of Best Sellers in Language.
Markedness: The Evaluative Superstructure of Language (SUNY Press, 1989) and The Logic of Markedness (Oxford University Press, 1996) are about linguistic theory, specifically the structuralist concept of asymmetry between opposites and its later development in generative grammar.
Battistella served as Dean of the School of Arts & Letters at Southern Oregon University from 2000-2006 and as interim Provost from 2007-2008. He is on the board of directors of Oregon Humanities, the state humanities council, and on the editorial board of The Oregon Encyclopedia, and the Executive Committee of the Linguistic Society of America. He has been interviewed on the BBC, NPR’s Jefferson Public Radio, for C-Span2’s Book TV and in the NEH magazine Humanities.
He also moderates the Literary Ashland blog and twitter feed.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 25, 2020
This book was a perfect read to wrap-up my annual reading challenge: quick, fun, entertaining with yet full of U.S. History, US Politics and linguistics insightful information. Until I read this book, I believed that today's politics had reached an all-time low. I was surprised to discover that all U.S. Presidents had to put up with digs at their personality, background, and leadership skills. Even the greatest. Our First Amendment gives us the right to voice our opinion, so insulting a sitting President will always be a thing. The insulting simply varies through time: vocabulary, social context, and method of conveying.
Thank you Goodreads and Oxford University Press for this ARC inn exchange for my honest review.
Thank you Goodreads and Oxford University Press for this ARC inn exchange for my honest review.
October 8, 2024
Presidential insults predate the presidential position. It was fun to follow the evolution of how one goes about insulting the president. While the insults are not new, what the insulters are insulting is.
It's a quick read, so if you're even mildly curious for any reason (mine was of the etymological bent) you should pick this up!
It's a quick read, so if you're even mildly curious for any reason (mine was of the etymological bent) you should pick this up!
July 6, 2021
I'll be honest: I picked up this book almost purely because it reminded of this skit: Adam Ruins Everything - Other Donald Trumps Throughout History (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIv7d...). It was funny as hell and, given the opportunity to learn more about how and why other presidents had been insulted, I picked up the book that looked similar.
Much as people like to think of yesteryear's politics as somehow 'cleaner' than today's - or maybe most have just forgotten; this isn't what usually makes it into history classes, after all - that is not the case. Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels has significantly less of a comedic bent than the Adam Conover's skit, but it's still very interesting to learn that literally every single president and presidential candidate in US history has thrown and been on the receiving end of all manner of insults. Fair warning: an amazingly high proportion of them were misogynistic and/or homophobic in tone, likely because - for large portions of history - that was among the worst kind of insult a person could lob at someone else. I think my favorite parts of this book were the care that the author took in grounding all of the insults in context, so readers could better understand what was going on in that place/time that made something so inflammatory, and the etymological notes, which explained how an insult was used and how it changed over time (usually to become less meaningful; for example, calling someone a 'puppy' nowadays might get you a raised eyebrow like 'you couldn't come up with anything better than that?' whereas a couple hundred years ago it was among the worst of insults to manhood).
Overall, I really liked this book. It was interesting topic approached in a straightforward and clear manner with care taken to explain what insults meant in the context of place and time. This is a book that I would recommend, especially to those who think modern political discourse is somehow a radical takeoff from the first years of the republic.
Much as people like to think of yesteryear's politics as somehow 'cleaner' than today's - or maybe most have just forgotten; this isn't what usually makes it into history classes, after all - that is not the case. Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels has significantly less of a comedic bent than the Adam Conover's skit, but it's still very interesting to learn that literally every single president and presidential candidate in US history has thrown and been on the receiving end of all manner of insults. Fair warning: an amazingly high proportion of them were misogynistic and/or homophobic in tone, likely because - for large portions of history - that was among the worst kind of insult a person could lob at someone else. I think my favorite parts of this book were the care that the author took in grounding all of the insults in context, so readers could better understand what was going on in that place/time that made something so inflammatory, and the etymological notes, which explained how an insult was used and how it changed over time (usually to become less meaningful; for example, calling someone a 'puppy' nowadays might get you a raised eyebrow like 'you couldn't come up with anything better than that?' whereas a couple hundred years ago it was among the worst of insults to manhood).
Overall, I really liked this book. It was interesting topic approached in a straightforward and clear manner with care taken to explain what insults meant in the context of place and time. This is a book that I would recommend, especially to those who think modern political discourse is somehow a radical takeoff from the first years of the republic.
December 29, 2021
Battistella's latest, Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels, is laugh out loud funny. Dastardly, demeaning invectives are baked into America's political landscape from its earliest maneuvers. The best are sophisticated, sophist and thoughtful; the worst are tweets. This one is a must read for 2020.
[Disclaimer: he's my dh and a genius]
[Disclaimer: he's my dh and a genius]
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews