There’s an old Monty Python sketch called
“Nudge Nudge”, in which Terry Jones plays a man just trying to have a quiet
drink while the stranger seated beside him pesters him non-stop. The
chatterbox pours out a stream of apparently innocent questions loaded with
subtext that might be overlooked if it were not for his knowing leer and
constant barrage of lines like “Know whatahmean, know whatahmean, nudge nudge,
know whatahmean, say no more?”
Eventually even the monumentally oblivious Jones
has to ask, “Look ... are you insinuating something?”
I can’t read the next few verses of Proverbs without picturing that scene. One big takeaway from it for me is
that it’s possible to make people think terrible things (in this case, the
audience) without really saying very much at all.
