Speaker 1: Hello puzzlers, and welcome to the Puzzler Podcast, home of
Speaker 1: the Chocolate Mint on your Daily Puzzle Hotel Pillow. I
Speaker 1: am your host, A J. Jacobs, and I am here
Speaker 1: with guest puzzler author Andy Borrowitz of The Borrowitz Report
Speaker 1: and Books of Plenty. Welcome Andy, thanks for having me,
Speaker 1: aj thank you for coming. Andy. You have a great
Speaker 1: Newish book called Profiles and Ignorance, How American Politicians Got
Speaker 1: Dumb and Dumber, and it contains many wonderful anecdotes about dumbness,
Speaker 1: including you have a Lyndon B. Johnson quote on Gerald
Speaker 1: Ford which I have two comments on it or questions
Speaker 1: about it. One. So the quote is about Gerald Ford.
Speaker 1: LBJ said he's so dumb he can't fart and chew
Speaker 1: gum at the same time. Now, first of all, I
Speaker 1: always heard it as walk and chew gum. So what's
Speaker 1: going on here?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, Lennon Johnson was a very coarse course guy.
Speaker 2: He was just really profane and and I think it
Speaker 2: was cleaned up. That was in an era where you know,
Speaker 2: now they use like swear words on CNN of all places,
Speaker 2: but in those days like they would clean up quotes
Speaker 2: for interesting the family newspaper member, like not you know,
Speaker 2: family news right to be said in a family newspaper.
Speaker 2: So I believe that quote is accurate. But what is
Speaker 2: not accurate was his assessment of Gerald Ford's intelligence because
Speaker 2: Jerald Ford was an extremely smart guy. I like that
Speaker 2: he graduated at the top of his class at Yale
Speaker 2: Law School, which kind of hard to do, right, and
Speaker 2: he was like an economics major, and like, he's a
Speaker 2: very smart guy.
Speaker 1: So well, maybe he wasn't commenting on the smartness, just
Speaker 1: on like his you know, coordination, coordination abilities, but he.
Speaker 2: Was also a great athlete.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that is accurate. First of all, I like
Speaker 1: you are you know, you've so so far this week
Speaker 1: stuck up for Eisenhower and Gerald Ford.
Speaker 2: I'm nostalgic for those kinds of Republicans, I really am.
Speaker 2: The Republican Party was in favor of equal rights for
Speaker 2: women before the Democrats were. They abolished slavery, as you know,
Speaker 2: that's right, some good things to go back aways, you
Speaker 2: have to go back aways. But they did some great things.
Speaker 1: Well we can talk about that because this is a
Speaker 1: quiz we created for you that's all about insults that
Speaker 1: are sometimes they may be accurate, they may be inaccurate,
Speaker 1: but they are insults lobbed at politicians. Oh wow, or
Speaker 1: by the press or by other politicians.
Speaker 2: Oh what a rich area.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read you a couple and then you're
Speaker 1: going to try to suss out who was the speaker
Speaker 1: or target. Are you ready for their first one?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 1: This was a newspaper called this politician sooty and scoundrelly
Speaker 1: in aspect, a cross between the nutmeg dealer, the horse swapper,
Speaker 1: and the nightman. That's tough words. That's tough words.
Speaker 2: So I have to guess who they're talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, who were they talking about? I will give you
Speaker 1: a little more of the same quote. They kind of
Speaker 1: got personal about his appearance. They said he's the leanest, lankiest,
Speaker 1: most ungainly massive legs and arms and hatchet face ever
Speaker 1: strung on a human frame.
Speaker 2: Well, this sounds a little bit like honest, Ave Lincoln.
Speaker 1: It is honest, Abe Lincoln.
Speaker 2: I do not know, by the way, that being the
Speaker 2: nutmeg dealer was an insult.
Speaker 1: Well I looked into it.
Speaker 2: I try that on Twitter. Yeah, say to Elon Musk, you, sir,
Speaker 2: nothing but a nutmeg dealer.
Speaker 1: I will tell you to unpack it just a bit.
Speaker 1: Their nutmeg dealers were notoriously sleazy because they would cut
Speaker 1: their nutmeg with non nutmeg material and nutmeg at the time.
Speaker 2: That yeah, it's like there's paprika in here.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 2: They were excuse, I will not vote for you.
Speaker 1: Sir, a nightmaan. I don't know if you know what
Speaker 1: a nightman is, but that's basically a poop holler. Like
Speaker 1: These were the men who were before flush toilets. So it,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, this wait an insult all right, here's
Speaker 1: one is a little little more high brow. This is
Speaker 1: from one politician to another. He said that his target
Speaker 1: was the kind of politician who would cut down a
Speaker 1: redwood tree and then mount the stump to make a
Speaker 1: speech for conservation.
Speaker 2: Which that sounds more current, That sounds more like maybe
Speaker 2: twentieth century. Twentieth century here, yep, yep, you got that
Speaker 2: cut down a redwood tree and make a stump up conservation.
Speaker 2: Gosh it, Well, if.
Speaker 1: You want the insulter, and then you can guess the insultee.
Speaker 2: Yes, who lobbed that gem?
Speaker 1: That was lobbed by Adelie Stevenson Madley.
Speaker 2: For Adley was he saying that about Ike. Nope, no, no,
Speaker 2: was he saying it about Richard Nixon.
Speaker 1: He was saying it about Richard Nixon. I'm just going
Speaker 1: to do one more because I love it. It happens
Speaker 1: to be my favorite insult. And this was a politician
Speaker 1: saying it about another politician, but it was not ad hominint.
Speaker 1: It was actually about the guy's argument. So this politician,
Speaker 1: politician A said, politicians be argument is quote as thin
Speaker 1: as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the
Speaker 1: shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death.
Speaker 2: I mean that, Oh my gosh, that's so wordy. That's
Speaker 2: what a wordy? But brilliant.
Speaker 1: You don't think it's brilliant? Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2: I don't know homeopathic soup? Is this a nineteenth.
Speaker 1: Century it is nineteenth century?
Speaker 2: I was guessing.
Speaker 1: I just feel like he's taking the swipe at like
Speaker 1: the goop culture and homeoposies.
Speaker 2: That's true, but it's a little ahead of its time.
Speaker 2: So who is the insulter? You've got to lead me
Speaker 2: down the path a little bit, all right.
Speaker 1: The insulter was one who we've mentioned before, the nutmeg
Speaker 1: dealer himself.
Speaker 2: Oh, interesting, gosh, we didn't say that about Douglas, did he?
Speaker 3: He did?
Speaker 1: There you go in.
Speaker 2: The famed debates.
Speaker 1: It was in the debates. I actually researched for this episode.
Speaker 1: I researched the whole Oops Rick Perry thing. Oh, I
Speaker 1: watched it over and over again.
Speaker 2: I love Oops. Yeah. Debate moments are great. The thing
Speaker 2: about Lincoln Douglas debates is they lasted like eight hours
Speaker 2: and they took like a dinner break because there was
Speaker 2: no other entertainment back then. So people, can you imagine
Speaker 2: sitting through eight hours of those two guys? It was
Speaker 2: a senatorial debate.
Speaker 1: Well, what I also don't understand is where in the microphone? Like,
Speaker 1: how can you even hear what they're saying?
Speaker 2: I know people are sitting at home trying to watch
Speaker 2: and they couldn't. They couldn't it.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you, Andy, you did very well with the hints,
Speaker 1: but you still did very well.
Speaker 2: I needed some answer.
Speaker 1: Where can people get more of Andy Borwitz?
Speaker 2: Well, they can read the Borrowitz support or they can
Speaker 2: go to profiles in ignorance dot com and learn more
Speaker 2: about the book, which is full of insults. Hi, some
Speaker 2: of them politicians saying things that are insulting to themselves
Speaker 2: or the intelligence of their listeners because they're said.
Speaker 1: Dumb perfect check it out, And as always we have
Speaker 1: extra credit for the puzzlers at home who said this
Speaker 1: quote and about whom the general doesn't know any more
Speaker 1: about politics than a pig knows about Sunday, which I
Speaker 1: guess makes sense. There you go, let us know what
Speaker 1: you think, and don't forget to subscribe to the Puzzler
Speaker 1: podcast and we'll meet you here tomorrow for more puzzling
Speaker 1: puzzles that we'll puzzle you puzzlingly.
Speaker 3: Hello puzzlers. Greg Plisk here with the extra credit answer
Speaker 3: from our previous show. On that show, we played a
Speaker 3: snake spear puzzle. He's the guy who changes one letter
Speaker 3: in something to make it a new thing, and we
Speaker 3: were playing with Andy Borowitz and we gave you this
Speaker 3: extra credit clue. Remember the answer is a Shakespeare play
Speaker 3: with one letter changed. Although we had great success as
Speaker 3: the architect of the victories of King George Bush, the
Speaker 3: second of Navarre, this political adviser's work is all for
Speaker 3: naught when King Trump comes to power years later. And
Speaker 3: the answer to this one is the Shakespeare play is
Speaker 3: Love's Labor's Lost, which takes place in Navarre, and you
Speaker 3: change one letter in the first word to get Rove's
Speaker 3: Labor's Lost. Carl Rove, who was the architect of the
Speaker 3: George Bush political campaign. All his work is for naught
Speaker 3: Roves Labor's Lost. Enjoyed playing the puzzles with you, and
Speaker 3: we'll play some more soon. Thanks for playing along with
Speaker 3: the team here at The Puzzler. I'm Greg Pliska, your
Speaker 3: chief puzzle Officer. Our executive producers are Neelie Lohman and
Speaker 3: Adam Neuhouse of New House Ideas and Lindsay Hoffman of
Speaker 3: iHeart Podcasts. The show is produced by Jody Abergan and
Speaker 3: Brittany Brown of Roulette Productions. Our associate producer is Andrea Schoenberg.
Speaker 3: The Puzzler with AJ Jacobs is a co production with
Speaker 3: New House Ideas and is distributed by Sportiest Datcha No Sorry,
Speaker 3: I meant to rearrange the letters. Distributed by iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 3: If you want to know more about puzzling puzzles, please
Speaker 3: check out the book The Puzzler by Aj Jacob. There's
Speaker 3: a history of puzzles that The New York Times called
Speaker 3: fun and funny. It features an original puzzle hunt by
Speaker 3: yours truly, and is available wherever you get your books
Speaker 3: and puzzlers. For all your puzzling needs, go visit the
Speaker 3: puzzler dot com.
Speaker 2: See you there,