Sharpness and abuse

What does a shock jock have in common with C.S. Lewis? | Arsenio Orteza

At one point in C.S. Lewis's novel Out of the Silent Planet, the protagonist, Dr. Ransom, finds himself a guest on the planet Malacandra. The planet has three intelligent species that interact in this comic way: "The sorns seldom got beyond irony, while the hrossa were extravagant and fantastic, and the pfifltriggi were sharp and excelled in abuse." Lewis, it turns out, liked humor in which irony, extravagance, and abuse interacted.

Like the pfifltriggi, Don Imus is sharp and excels in abuse. The banter in which he, his newsman Charles McCord, and his producer Bernard McGuirk indulge consists largely of pomposity deflating barbs aimed at everyone from their fellow media cohorts and politicians to movie stars and professional athletes-at anyone, in short, whom Imus and his crew perceive to be full of himself.