The Art of the Insult

How the Obamas Were Able to Hit Low from the Higher Ground

For years now, it seems Donald Trump took the heart out of Michelle Obama’s line, “When they go low, we go high.”

For years now, Trump has assailed the path of the Higher Ground with the small stones of silly nicknames and the sharp sticks of inaccuracies, intentional falsifications, and lies making the crossing along that path unappealing at best and unbearable at worst. To cross the path was inadvisable because what lay on the other side was no longer Hope and Promise, but a sort of anticlimactic celebration for all the injuries suffered along the way, like an office birthday party composed of one sad candle shoved into this expired yogurt because it’s the only thing we could find in the fridge, here you go.

And from there, things got worse and worse. And the path along the Higher Ground overgrew with rough blotches of grass, with snarls of branches. The stones and sticks seemed to feed the overgrowth, until the entrance was nearly impossible to see.

We came to celebrate stupidity.

The aspirational became something to which we did not aspire.

Like the alcoholic trying to cure his disease with another round, we increasingly found strength only in the lazy comforts of recriminations and excuses.

More recently, and perhaps relatably, I slipped into a malaise of “well let’s see what happens.”

Until.

Yesterday, on Day 2 of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the blazers of that path reopened the entrance. With their stone-sharpened speeches, Michelle and Barack Obama hacked away at the overgrowth, clearing the entrance and lighting the way once again to safe passage. But — what was remarkable about that feat of forestry was not that they were able to hack it; the remarkable nature of their accomplishment was that they managed to take the path of the Higher Ground with shots that aimed accurately and devastatingly low.

And what made these low-blows possible from the architects of the path along which one is traditionally expected to suffer slings and arrows with nary a response was that the blows were delivered wrapped in beautiful rhetoric and elevated cleverness — that and they were actually funny.

This was not J.B. Pritzger jabbing with, “Take it from a real billionaire.”

This was Michelle Obama slicing with, “Who’s going to tell [Trump] that the job he is currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?”

This was her husband cutting with, “We do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos; we have seen that movie before, and we all know that the sequel is usually worse.”

Or his more nuanced attack au fer that can only accurately be construed with video:

…that look down at his hands…

Ultimately, what might have been the most sharply accurate (although not the most celebrated) line of the night came from the former first lady:

“We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth.”

The sentiment is far from new. Many times have Trumps opponents mocked his life starting on third base, vituperations that fell on deaf ears, overwhelmed by the noise of the ready reply, Well, wouldn’t you use the advantages you’d been given too? There’s nothing criminal about being born into money.

Which is exactly why Mrs. Obama’s line was so well written. It exposed Trump’s advantage for what it truly is – his use of something he claims is a weakness. Like Sammy Sosa mocking Mark McGwire. Make no mistake, privilege by birth is identical to assistance by decree.

This morning, as Mrs. Obama said, Hope rings again. Faintly. But it rings. And not because of an elevated path or a cheek that’s turned. It rings because two of America’s most decent leaders found a clever pathway to a low attack with insults that were as artful as they were humiliating.