The Wit's Guide to Rudeness

Or, studied insults

The Rude Parrot, Ignacio León y Escosura, 1876

To the wit, rudeness is a tool. You may not want to swing a hammer around at the dinner table, but there’s no better way to drive a nail. Which explains this axiom:

“The well-bred man is never rude unintentionally.”

Often credited to Oscar Wilde or Lord Chesterfield, the line rightly belongs to everyone, no matter how bred. We might define unintentional rudeness as crudeness, perpetrated by those poor souls who don’t know the rules and are unaware that biting one’s toenails at the dinner table just isn’t done. But there’s also the problem of being unintentionally rude when we just can’t help ourselves, as the well-bred Christopher Hitchens explained:

“I seem to fail this test; a beloved friend once confided to me that my lip—I think he said the upper one—often has a ludicrous and sneering look and my wife added that it takes on this appearance just when I seem least to be aware of it.”

Of course, we can live in deep denial of such unpleasant truths. Maybe we’re just bringing our whole selves to work! That’s a good thing, right???

“Most young people believe they are natural, while they are only rude and coarse.”
—  François de La Rochefoucauld

And maybe we know that deep in our hearts we are polite and respectful but today we’re in a bit of a hurry so we can give that old lady a gentle shove and provide some helpful feedback to that inattentive driver with the knowledge that we mean well.

“Everyone else is rude; we are sometimes a bit preoccupied.”
— Lynne Truss

Measured by volume, that unintentional rudeness accounts for 90% of all human impoliteness. Not witty, not something to be proud of, just a byproduct of our species’ knack for self-absorption. It’s the thoughtful rudeness, the other 10%, that’s the fun stuff. 

“No one can be as calculatedly rude as the British, which amazes Americans, who do not understand studied insult and can only offer abuse as a substitute.”
— Paul Gallico

The master of studied insult may have been Karl Kraus (1874-1936), the crusading Viennese journalist who spent 37 years lobbing rhetorical tomatoes at his countrymen from the newspaper he owned:

“Many desire to kill me, and many wish to spend an hour chatting with me. The law protects me from the former.”

“If I return some people’s greetings, I do so only to give them their greeting back.”

“I trim my opponents to fit my arrows.”

“I knew a man who put his fingers in his nose as he spoke. Had it been at least his!”

For the record, Vienna kinda went to hell during Kraus’s time. Did his venom speed or slow the descent? In other words, does calculated rudeness have any effect? Consider that civil disobedience, for all its faults, is widely recognized as the best way to change a system. The opposite, call it uncivil obedience, may be the best way to keep things as they are. 

“It seldom pays to be rude. It never pays to be only half-rude.”
— Norman Douglas

---

A rude postcard

The analog division of this newsletter calls itself Riposte Cards, and paying subscribers receive regular mailings of witty postcards drawn by terrific artists. Our first installment featured a line from G.K. Chesterton drawn by Antony Hare:

The second installment is by Chip Zdarsky, a.k.a Mr Comics. In the bespoke postcard biz, he’s what we call a “get.” Chip and I once worked together at a family newspaper in Toronto, and his occasionally salacious work would generate shocked-and-appalled letters to the editor. He soon realized this was a feature, not a bug, and began a glittering career in comicdom with the series Sex Criminals, in which the protagonists discover that their coitus can stop time. (I must here note that he and collaborator Matt Fraction published a spinoff book of amorous advice called, ahem, Just the Tips.)

All of this to say that when Chip and I were exchanging great lines upon which to riff, he went there:

To receive this cartoon in the form of Riposte Card No. 2 (in a plain unmarked envelope!) as well as Riposte Card No. 1, subscribe today!

---

Quote vote

“Words are just, what? Nothing. Complicated air flow.”
—Kendall Roy, Succession

Words hurt, but which ones hurt the most? Let’s figure it out.

And speaking of the wittiest show on television…

The cursing calculus of Succession

---

This was supposed to be Get Wit Quick No. 196, but it cut in line and is thus No. 194. Reading my book Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting at the dinner table is hereby encouraged. Tapping the ❤️  below is only polite.