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.