Trumpling Tirades 0
Daniel Ruth reviews the now-infamous Billy Bush-Trump tape and is not impressed.
(snip)
What Trump failed to understand (so what else is new?) is that indulging in obscenity-laced monologues is a perverse art form, requiring timing and tone of voice.
A great example of this occurred on April 29, 1983. The Chicago Cubs had gotten off to a horrible start to the baseball season. After losing yet another game, the team was booed by the Wrigley Field patrons. When asked about the catcalls, the soon-to-be ex-manager Lee Elia delivered a three-minute masterpiece of vulgarity, including at least 35 permutations of a four-letter word we dare not print. The oration deserves to be enshrined in Cooperstown.
Bennett Cerf told the story that Mark Twain’s wife was horrified at Twain’s swearing. Having been a crewman on a riverboat, a roustabout, and a reporter in the western gold fields, Twain’s vocabulary was robust and colorful.
One morning, he cut himself shaving (remember, this was before the days of safety razors) and let fly with five minutes of creative and colorful cussing, not repeating himself once.
When he was done, Mrs. Twain, standing in the bathroom door, dispassionately repeated back to him everything he had said.
He looked at her and said, “My dear, you have the words, but you are lacking in melody.”
