Editorial: Trump’s potty talk: an insult to the tradition of political insults

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// ]]>To avid followers of the blood sport of politics, few things are more delicious than a well-phrased political insult.

The tradition is long, bipartisan and global.

Consider one-time GOP presidential contender Pat Buchanan’s jab that “Bill Clinton’s foreign policy experience is pretty much confined to having had breakfast once at the International House of Pancakes.”

Or U.S. Rep. Barney Frank’s presidential putdown that “People might cite George Bush as proof that you can be totally impervious to the effects of Harvard and Yale education.”

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Or, this swipe at British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher from one Conservative member of Parliament: “She probably thinks Sinai is the plural of sinus.”

In contrast, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump prefers to attack his opponents’ intellect by calling them, simply and crassly, “stupid” or “losers.” At the same time, Trump has insisted, “I have, like, this incredible vocabulary.”

But even Trump hit a new low this week in the insult arena. He sounded like a schoolboy fixated with toileting when he referred to the bathroom break Hillary Clinton took during last week’s Democratic presidential debate as “disgusting.”

“What happened to her?” Trump asked the crowd at a Michigan rally Monday.

“I’m watching the debate and she disappeared. Where did she go? Where did she go? . . . I know where she went. It’s disgusting,’’ said Trump, an apparent germaphobe who has admitted he hates shaking hands.

“I don’t want to talk about it,’’ Trump continued. “No, it’s too disgusting. Don’t say it. It’s disgusting. Let’s not talk about it.”

Talk about juvenile.

This is the man who could be the next leader of the free world? It’s a scary thought indeed that child-like potty talk would emerge from a person who could one day be sitting in the Oval Office.

The real estate magnate and reality show star assumed a commanding lead in a CNN/ORC national poll released Wednesday, drawing 39 percent support among Republican voters versus Ted Cruz’ 18 percent. But Trump also is clearly winning the battle of outrageous political insults.

At the same Michigan rally, Trump contended that Clinton was favored to win the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination but instead “got schlonged” by Barack Obama.

Trump’s use of the vulgar Yiddish word for male genitalia sent commentators afire — all the way across the pond.

In England, The Guardian’s Megan Carpentier expressed disgust that Trump thought the best way to describe a woman’s campaign loss was to portray her as “getting bested by a penis.”

The Irish Times cited both Trump’s “disgusting” bathroom and “schlonged” comments as an attack on Clinton “in vulgar terms.”

Asked about both insults, presidential historian Michael Beschloss told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow this week that Trump’s remarks are virtually unprecedented in presidential races.

“It’s pretty much going into new territory,’’ Beschloss said.

Trump is fond of calling his opponents, simply, “weak.” Jeb Bush is “weak on immigration, which is a terrible thing,’’ and Marco Rubio is “very weak,’’ Trump has contended.

Decades ago, sharp-tongued Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating made a similar point with aplomb, saying of an opponent: “He’s like a shiver waiting for a spine to crawl up.”

Teddy Roosevelt, then-Assistant Secretary of the Navy, offered this spin on President William McKinley: he had “no more backbone than a chocolate éclair.”

Or consider this plum from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, referring to a Labour leader: “He’s a sheep in sheep’s clothing,’’

After years of listening to the fractured English of former mayors Richard J. Daley and Richard M. Daley, some Chicagoans may have set unusually low standards for the rhetorical flair of their elected leaders. But what’s the excuse of Trump supporters nationwide?

Up until this week, Trump has shown a penchant for demeaning, bullying, Islamophobic and misogynistic comments, and he apparently hasn’t lost any supporters as a result. But his recent potty talk remarks have devolved into an entirely new category: the sophomoric.

They amount to an insult to the tradition of political insults.

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