Dick Cavett on Petraeus and Crocker

It’s too bad Dick Cavett still doesn’t have a talk show of his own, with this takedown of the speaking style and more of Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker. But, his regular blog on the Times website is a good substitute.

It’s hard to imagine where you could find another pair of such sleep-inducing performers. …

As speakers, both Petraeus and Crocker are guilty of unbearable sesquipedalianism. …

If Crocker’s collection of these broken shards of verbal crockery were eliminated from his testimony, everyone there would get home at least an hour earlier.

Petraeus commits a different assault on the listener. And on the language. In addition to his own pedantic delivery, there is his turgid vocabulary. It reminds you of Copspeak, a language spoken nowhere on earth except by cops and firemen when talking to “Eyewitness News.”

Read on for much more hilarity.