TRASH TALK

An entertaining study of the taunts and insults that pervade sports and the larger culture.

Consider the dozens, “a ritualized insult game endemic to Black communities” that is both playful and (sometimes literally) deadly serious, always designed to get inside your opponent’s head. Take it up a few notches, and you have Muhammad Ali, “the veritable godfather of modern trash talk.” Though an ascended master of trash talk, Ali was no pioneer. Kohan, the author of The Arena, traces it a couple of centuries back, locating incivility in American politics as well as sports and popular culture. The author opens with modern professional wrestling and MMA competitions, where bigmouth putdowns are the currency of the realm. He effectively links this nasty (if often staged) streak to what he calls the “Trump disinhibition effect” of the present, where Ali would seem the most diffident of interlocutors against the blustering ex-president, who promulgated an ethos ranging “from general rudeness to outright dickishness, in politics and well beyond.” In this light, Kohan cites instances where insult comics backed off, recognizing that their poking fun was crossing the line into verbal abuse. The author deeply examines the psychology of trash talk, connecting it to the more positive quality of empathy—for, as primatologist Frans de Waal tells him, “In order to be cruel, you need to know what is hurtful to someone.” Kohan is also enough of a connoisseur of trash talk to distinguish the effective but relatively harmless slapdown from racist, misogynist, homophobic, or downright mean slurs—again a product of that disinhibition effect, which seems to be the current state of what should instead be a fine art of genteel character assassination.

A treat for students of language, as well as would-be Don Rickles heirs looking to hone their craft.