Best Smackdowns of All Time

[Osama bin Bambi]

Basically, post here any examples, historical or recent, of smackdowns so awesome that you find yourself nodding your head in agreement and wishing you were the one who had said them. I didn't know where to put this thread because I wanted to include political and religious smackdowns.

Actually, I was inspired to start this thread by a letter from Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird.

In 1966, the school board of Richmond, Virginia wanted to ban Lee's book because it was deemed "immoral literature." In response, Lee wrote to the editor of a local paper:

Recently I have received echoes down this way of the Hanover County School Board's activities, and what I've heard makes me wonder if any of its members can read.

Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence that “To Kill a Mockingbird” spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct, Christian in its ethic, that is the heritage of all Southerners. To hear that the novel is "immoral" has made me count the years between now and 1984, for I have yet to come across a better example of doublethink.

I feel, however, that the problem is one of illiteracy, not Marxism. Therefore I enclose a small contribution to the Beadle Bumble Fund that I hope will be used to enroll the Hanover County School Board in any first grade of its choice.

[dpareja]

Before a German publishing house would translate The Hobbit into German (in 1938), they wanted proof that Tolkien was indeed Aryan.

Tolkien wrote to his publisher on the matter:

I must say the enclosed letter from Rütten & Loening is a bit stiff. Do I suffer this impertinence because of the possession of a German name, or do their lunatic laws require a certificate of arisch origin from all persons of all countries?

Personally, I should be inclined to refuse to give any Bestätigung (although it happens that I can), and let a German translation go hang. In any case I should object strongly to any such declaration appearing in print. I do not regard the (probable) absence of all Jewish blood as necessarily honourable; and I have many Jewish friends, and should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine.

You are primarily concerned, and I cannot jeopardize the chance of a German publication without your approval. So I submit two drafts of possible answers.

This was a letter he wrote in reply (which was not sent; a second version was, and this is the version returned to him and included in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien):

Thank you for your letter. I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject - which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.

Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its sustainability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung.

Take particular note of the mention of Gypsies.

[Witchyjoshy]

I think this is from one of C.S. Lewis's memoirs, but it's a quote I hold dear to me simply because it is a smackdown on a particular attitude rather than a particular person.

“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

[mythbuster43]

No epic smackdown thread is complete without this

Lloyd Bentsen: Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.
Dan Quayle: That was really uncalled for, Senator.
Lloyd Bentsen: You are the one that was making the comparison, Senator — and I'm one who knew him well. And frankly I think you are so far apart in the objectives you choose for your country that I did not think the comparison was well-taken.

[Scotsgit]

"Hollywood is the only place in the world where you fail upwards" - Kevin Smith.

When the German Ambassador to France (in the 30's) saw Picasso's The Bombing of Guernica, he enquired of the artist "Oh, was this you Monsieur Picasso?"  Picasso replied "No Monsieur, it was you".

[dpareja]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/story/2013/04/24/wdr-diaperless-babies-elimination-communication.html

This might not be as great as the above, but one quote from Huma Kazmie in this article got me:

There's a whole group of people who [say], 'Oh no, we don't want any kind of vaccination, we just want to go natural.' OK, so if you want to go natural, don't use electricity, don't use anything. Just go natural.

[dpareja]

I won't post it all here (there may be public domain issues), but T.S. Eliot's The Triumph of Bullshit is worth a look. He wrote it in response to his critics.

[Hoplite]

Take particular note of the mention of Gypsies.

Why is that? I didn't look it up, but I always thought the Rom (Gypsies) were of the same stock that migrated into Romania from an area of the Caucasus north of Persia/Afghanistan and thence originally from southern points like northern India. Anyway.

[dpareja]

Take particular note of the mention of Gypsies.

Why is that? I didn't look it up, but I always thought the Rom (Gypsies) were of the same stock that migrated into Romania from an area of the Caucasus north of Persia/Afghanistan and thence originally from southern points like northern India. Anyway.

Gypsies are probably the "acceptable target" in Europe now, and back then were more or less the second-most acceptable, after Jews. In the Holocaust, they probably suffered the largest losses proportionally after Jews.

(Side note: Canada recently implemented a list of "safe countries" from which it is very hard to claim refugee status, if in the relevant Minister's judgment the country has fair courts and other such things. Among them are a few Eastern European countries, from which most of the claimants are Gypsies--to whom the courts are not quite as fair.)