America’s most beloved entertainer a century ago had pungent views on politics. (Photo by Dave Diamond)

There’s an art to the put-down, but it seems to be vanishing. You know, if you say someone’s brain is the size of a pea, you get the point across quickly, but it’s not as memorable as, say, the approach taken by Will Rogers, who once said of a politician that if his brain was gunpowder, he wouldn’t have enough to blow the wax out of his own ears. That’s rhetorical art, folks.

Nowadays people mostly grab for the unimaginative shortcut of hyperbole — Donald Trump calling the news media “the enemy of the people,” for example, or Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the impressively irresponsible Georgia Republican, claiming that Nancy Pelosi was guilty of treason. In 21st century American politics, reckless overstatement has become the coin of the realm.

Maybe that’s what was going on when our current president — who, sadly, lacks the rhetorical skills of some of his clever predecessors — describ…