If you’re like me, you enjoy good invective. As far as I’m concerned, the best invective involves colorful phrases stated in original language. Hmm, that sounds like one of Jude’s posts. Invective is often associated with politics but a lot of political invective is of the “your socialist mama wears army boots” variety. Boring.
The best use of invective that I’ve seen of late comes from a New Orleans Times-Picayune story with the prosaic headline, Parents say bus driver has bad attitude. This sounds like the sort of story I’d usually skip but check this passage out:
Polk said his daughter was upset because D’Antoni had
singled her out and “made fun of her” on the bus, tearing up a hat she
had been given as part of her pre-kindergarten class at Abney
Elementary School.“I told him I was going to rip off both his legs and then
beat him with them,” said Polk, who added that he did not raise his
voice as he spoke to the driver.
That’s invective of sublime quality, folks. It’s worthy of Larry David or Pauly Walnuts or Barney Frank or the late great Earl Long; not names I would ordinarily string together in a sentence but if the rant fits, wear it…