Rejoinders welcome

I may be the last living person in the world to have seen Sarah Palin’s comment during the presidential campaign in which she talked about “real America”, which by implication relegated some regions of the northern part of the western hemisphere below the 49th parallel to . . . well I don’t know what. In any case, a rejoinder was called for. I don’t know what it should have been (feel free to make suggestions), but the episode put me in mind of some of my all time favorites – responses that lay waste to the original offending comment while surpassing it in both wit and style. To begin with the obvious:

• See vice presidential candidate Dan Quayle cite John F. Kennedy’s youth and inexperience in an attempt to allay concerns about his own, only to be countered by Senator Lloyd Bentsen’s, “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.” Given the circumstances – a nationally televised debate during a presidential campaign -- this may be the most devastating rejoinder ever uttered (a surmise well-supported by Dan Quayle’s subsequent political fortunes).


• A much lighter, but no less pointed rejoinder came when baseball slugger Reggie Jackson assessed his own importance thusly, “I’m so big, they named a candy bar after me!” The rejoinder, from an old sportswriter evidently worn down by such brash pomposity, “Fathers named their sons after Stan Musial.”


• And I think the funniest rejoinder ever, was described years ago in Sports Illustrated. The boxer, Muhammad Ali, was on a commercial airliner about to take off when the flight attendant asked him to buckle his seatbelt. Ali replied, “Superman don’t need no seatbelt.” The flight attendant, “Superman don’t need no airplane.”