Riposte III

I love stories about people who come up with the perfect comeback--or insult--at the very moment it's needed. The story about Frank Zappa in the earlier "Riposte" post is one of my favorites.

I had been trying to remember the famous exchange between Winston Churchill and George Bernard Shaw, between whom there was no love lost, when my friend Michael Sudheer sent me a whole passel o' retorts, including the one I was looking for. Made my day!

Here are a few of them. As my dad used to say (as he laid his winning cards down at the end of a poker hand), "Read 'em and weep..."

The Winston Churchill/Geroge Bernard Shaw exchange:
Shaw: I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of your play. Bring a friend...if you have one.
Churchill's reply: Cannot possible attend first night; will attend second...if there is one.

Groucho Marx struck a similar note: I've had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it.

An exchange between Churchill and Nancy, Lady Astor:
Astor: If you were my husband, I'd give you poison.
Churchill: If you were my wife, I'd drink it.

A barb from Oscar Wilde: He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.

Then there was the time, long ago, when Dick Cavett introduced the nauseatingly accessible Rod McKuen as America's most understood poet.

And when Ghandi repsonded to the question of what he thought of Western civilization: I think it's a good idea.