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Some of the sickest burns in history have been delivered by writers, but in this episode of The List Show we also cover historic insults from a famous actress, a pop star, and even a Valentine's Day card (sort of).
Would-be lover-boys and aspiring film critics will want to watch. You'll learn what Truman Capote said to a man who revealed a bit too much of himself and find out why you didn't want Dorothy Parker penning your eulogy.
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16 Sick Burns From History | Mental Floss
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0:00
Roger Ebert skewered dozens of awful movies during his decades as a film critic
0:04
but his review for Larry Bishop's 1996 crime comedy Mad Dog Time, with a cast that included
0:09
Jeff Goldblum and Ellen Barkin, just might be his most creative takedown. He wrote that
0:14
Mad Dog Time is the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen
0:19
viewed for the same length of time. Watching it is like waiting for the bus in a city where you're
0:24
not sure they have a bus line. It gets better, and by better I obviously mean worse
0:30
Ebert closed his critique with his suggestion for the film. Mad Dog Time should be cut into free ukulele pics for the poor
0:37
Hi, I'm Erin McCarthy, editor-in-chief of MentalFloss.com, and welcome to The List Show
0:42
At some point in your life, a well-meaning adult has probably spouted this wise old adage
0:46
if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. Fortunately for our purposes, a lot of people seem to have missed the memo—or flat out
0:54
ignored it. Today, I'm covering some of history's sickest burns. From a story of Truman Capote responding to indecent exposure with a withering comeback
1:02
to the time when Virginia Woolf compared James Joyce's Ulysses to pimple popping
1:06
Let's get started. One night at a packed bar in Key West, Florida, a woman approached Truman Capote and asked
1:17
him to autograph her napkin. He was happy to oblige, but the request irritated the woman's inebriated husband
1:23
As Capote later recalled, He staggered over to the table and after unzipping his trousers and hauling out his equipment
1:29
said, since you're autographing things, why don't you autograph this? A hush fell over the area as other bar patrons waited to see how Capote would respond
1:38
He didn't disappoint. I don't know if I can autograph it, he said, but perhaps I can initial it
1:44
Yet another reason to keep your pants on in public. Behind the posh facade of Victorian society were certain impolite customs, like vinegar valentines
1:52
These cards featured catty rhymes that insulted anyone from an unwanted admirer to the worst
1:57
singer on your street. Here's part of one that does just that titled, You Are a Nerve Destroyer
2:03
When a pig's getting slaughtered, the noise that it makes is sweeter by far than your
2:07
trills and your shakes, and the howling of cats in the backyard at night, compared with
2:12
your singings, a dream of delight. Your squalls and your balls are such torture to hear, a man almost wishes he had not an ear
2:21
Mission lasted well into the 20th century and crossed the pond to the U.S. too
2:26
Here's the poem from one vinegar valentine that shows a slick-haired suitor about to smooch a donkey
2:30
Hey lover boy, the place for you is home upon the shelf, cause the only one who'd kiss
2:35
you is a jackass like yourself. Whew, I'm gonna save that. For my enemies
2:45
As far as I know, Elizabeth Taylor never sent a caustic holiday card to any male co-star
2:50
But she did diss most of them in a 1981 interview for the Times of London, saying
2:54
reckon some of my best leading men have been dogs and horses Granted Taylor was a lifelong animal lover She owned a number of dogs during her life and she even handpicked the horse she rode
3:05
in the 1944 film National Velvet. But since animals are generally considered to be the worst possible co-stars, along with
3:11
kids, Taylor's comment seems pretty shady. Virginia Woolf was more than shady when criticizing James Joyce's novel Ulysses
3:19
In a 1922 diary entry, she expressed that the first few chapters had amused and charmed
3:23
her. For the rest of the first 200 pages, she was puzzled, bored, irritated, and disillusioned
3:29
as by a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples. But the pimple parallel ventured beyond
3:34
her private diary. She used it again when sharing her thoughts on that first chunk of Ulysses with
3:39
fellow writer Linton Strachey. The third through sixth chapters she wrote were
3:42
merely the scratching of pimples on the body of the boot boy at Claridge's
3:46
Wolf added, charitably? Of course, genius may blaze out on page 652, but I have my doubts
3:54
Wolf was far from the only 20th century writer to critique their contemporaries. Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer did it right in each other's faces on national television
4:02
In 1971, the two appeared on The Dick Cavett Show, sometime after Vidal had published a piece in the New York Review of Books
4:08
in which he'd accused Mailer of misogyny and likened him to Charles Manson
4:13
The segment was more of a verbal boxing match than an interview. At one point, Mailer said
4:18
It's hard when you have a lot in your head to write something that's true. Gore has never encountered this problem
4:24
Vidal's response? What did you say? I wasn't listening. Mailer had actually headbutted his opponent backstage before the show
4:31
and it wasn't the last time the feud turned physical. At a party years later, Mailer threw his drink in Vidal's face and also punched him
4:38
Vidal kept his cool delivering some version of this mic drop moment. Norman, once again, words have failed you
4:45
H.G. Wells and Henry James were frenemies, too. They started out as friends, but both
4:50
began to feel like the other's work fell short of expectations. In a 1921 letter to
4:55
Mary Ward, James described Wells as having, "...so much talent, with so little art.
4:59
He didn't stop there. In the same letter he said of Wells, "...I really think him more
5:03
interesting by his faults than he will probably ever manage to be in any other way.
5:08
Wells shared his thoughts on James' work in his 1915 satirical novel Boone
5:12
It is like a church lit but without a congregation to distract you, with every light and line
5:17
focused on the high altar. And on the altar, very reverently placed, intensely there, is a dead kitten, an eggshell
5:24
a bit of string. In 1947, a creative writing student at the University of Mississippi asked William Faulkner
5:30
to rank the leading writers of the era, himself included. Faulkner awarded himself second place behind Thomas Wolfe
5:36
Ernest Hemingway came in fourth. Not too shabby, until you hear what Faulkner had to say about him
5:41
He has no courage, has never crawled out on a limb. He has never been known to use a word that might cause the reader to check with a dictionary
5:49
to see if it is properly used. According to A E Hotchner 1966 memoir Papa Hemingway this light eventually made its way to Papa himself He shook it off with a string of very powerful small words Poor Faulkner Does he really think big emotions come from big words
6:06
Faulkner had been dissing other authors since the 20s. In one piece, he called Mark Twain a
6:10
hack writer who would not have been considered fourth-rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of
6:15
the old-proven surefire literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial
6:20
and the lazy. Not only an affront to Mark Twain, but also to anyone who liked his work
6:26
But before you feel too sorry for Samuel Clemens, you should know that Faulkner did later recognize
6:30
his genius. And Twain dished out some even harsher insults in his heyday. In an 1898 letter to a
6:36
fellow writer, Twain complained that he couldn't bring himself to critique Jane Austen's work
6:40
Not because he loved it, but because he loathed it so much that he couldn't conceal my frenzy
6:45
from the reader. And then he wrote this creatively horrifying Barb. Every time I read Pride and
6:51
Prejudice, I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shinbone. Every time you
6:56
read Pride and Prejudice? Sounds like you've read it a lot, Mark. While the Huck Finn author was busy
7:01
harboring resentment toward Austin, Theodore Roosevelt was penning poison about, well, everyone else. Usually in private correspondence, but still. He called author Henry James
7:11
a little emasculated mass of anadity. Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan
7:16
was labeled a professional yodeler, a human trombone. And Postmaster General John Wanamaker
7:22
was an ill-constitutioned creature, oily, but with bristles sticking up through the oil
7:27
But nobody got the bull moose treatment quite as bad as William Howard Taft. TR basically handpicked Taft to take over the Oval Office after him. And Taft succeeded in
7:36
getting elected. Unfortunately, TR's one-time protege failed to live up to expectations
7:40
and so became the inspiration for some of TR's most biting burns. He called Taft a puzzle wit
7:46
a fathead, and a flubdub, with a streak of the second rate and the common in him
7:51
Teddy was also fond in measuring people's intelligence in units of what he called
7:55
guinea pig power, a creative spin on using horsepower to talk about engine output
7:59
According to TR, British Ambassador Sir Mortimer Durand had a brain of about eight guinea pig power
8:05
It wasn't a compliment, but compared to Roosevelt's assessment of Taft, Brains less than a guinea pig? It might well have been
8:13
Journalists have also done their fair share of roasting politicians over the years
8:16
In 1936, H. L. Mencken wrote an article in The American Mercury lambasting Franklin
8:21
Roosevelt for, in Mencken's view, being a shameless opportunist. If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he so
8:29
sorely needs, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House backyard come Wednesday
8:34
The piece was so inflammatory that someone at a White House press conference asked Roosevelt
8:38
himself for a response. He said he hadn't read it. But according to Mencken's biographer
8:43
Marian Elizabeth Rogers, Mencken didn't believe that. Meanwhile, across the pond, conservative politician Stanley Baldwin was serving his third and
8:51
final stint as the UK Prime Minister In George Orwell opinion which he shared in a 1941 essay titled The Lion and the Unicorn Socialism and the English Genius Baldwin royally botched the country foreign policy As Orwell wrote
9:04
Critic Dorothy Parker had similar feelings toward Calvin Coolidge, though hers were more
9:14
about personality than policy. The 30th president could apparently be conversational and witty behind closed doors, but in public
9:21
he often seemed taciturn, earning him the nickname Silent Cow. In January 1933, Parker
9:26
was reportedly at a theater performance when she found out that Coolidge had just died
9:30
Her response? How can they tell? Some sources cite Parker's remark as, how do they know
9:36
Which was also reportedly how playwright Wilson Misner responded to the news of Coolidge's
9:40
death. The possibility that two people uttered this same sick burn makes it twice as rough
9:45
and twice as fortunate that Coolidge, at least, never heard it. The creators of the Broadway musical Girl O' Mine, on the other hand, probably did find
9:52
out what Parker had to say about their project. Her not-so-glowing review was printed in the April 1918 issue of Vanity Fair
10:00
Parker wrote, Girl O' Mine is one of those shows at which you can get a lot of knitting done
10:05
I turned a complete heel without once having my attention distracted by anything that happened
10:09
on the stage. By all means, go to Girl O' Mine if you want a couple of hours undisturbed rest
10:14
If you don't knit, bring a book. But as Mariah Carey taught us, saying basically nothing can sting worse than even the most
10:21
inspired insults. While talking to German media outlet Taff in the early 2000s, Carey gushed about Beyoncé
10:28
I love Beyoncé, she said, calling her fabulous and a great writer, a great singer, among
10:33
other things. When asked for her opinion on Jennifer Lopez, the Queen of Christmas delivered the most
10:37
scathing forward retort in pop star history. I don't know her. The moment has gotten the meme treatment ever since, and Carey has leaned into it as part
10:45
of her legacy. Upon seeing a fan sporting an I Don't Know Her shirt at a concert, she snuck the words
10:51
I Still Don't Know Her into the song Love Takes Time. The diva also sort of hinted at how the beef began in her 2020 memoir The Meaning of Mariah Carey
10:59
When Carey divorced Sony executive Tommy Mottola and left the label in the late 1990s, she
11:04
was already working on the soundtrack for her 2001 movie Glitter. The first single, Loverboy, was supposed to include a sample from Yolo Magic Orchestra's
11:12
song Firecracker. According to Carrie, Mottola and Sony sabotaged that plan to get back at Carrie for her departure
11:19
After hearing my new song, she wrote, using the same sample I used, Sony rushed to make a single for another female entertainer on their label, whom I don't know
11:27
For what it's worth, Carrie has clarified that she wasn't saying she didn't know who JLo was
11:32
just that she didn't know her well enough to share a positive opinion. In 2018, she told Pitchfork that she was trying to say something nice or say nothing at all
11:40
So maybe that's not such great advice after all. Depending on how you see things
11:44
this video was either a lot of fun or a lot of well-crafted negativity
11:49
To cleanse the palate, comment below with the best compliment you ever received
11:53
Or if you just can't help yourself, a great burn you've heard is okay too
11:56
Who are we to judge? Thanks for watching
#education