David Haye Should Die in a Fire

Float like a butterfly, sting like a child molester.

Opining regarding his upcoming bout versus Audley Harrison, boxer David Haye observed coolly that it would be, "more one sided than a gang rape." In one masterful stroke, English pugilist and later day Oscar Wilde has given the world a bon mot to savor. Consider the idiosyncratic use of metaphor, the playful use of a heinous, traumatic crime to invoke a jolly good time at a sporting event...the frolicsome bonhomie, the devil may care attitude.

If you can't hear the music in his phrasing then perhaps imagine it said with one of those Cambridge educated British accents that makes everything sound a little wittier this side of the pond. Perhaps a Hugh Laurie or an Emma Thompson doing a scene from The Importance of Being Earnest:

Mr. Worthington: Lady Bracknell this tea is hotter than a Koran burning!
Lady Bracknell: Oh, Mr. Worthington, you are like domestic violence on a sunny day... best if hidden behind closed doors.
Mr. Worthington: Well the only thing worse than being gang raped.... is not being gang raped, Lady Bracknell.
Lady Bracknell: Oh, I say! Won't you stay for supper Mr. Worthington?
Mr. Worthington: I'd love to old girl, but if I don't get back to London faster than an ethnic cleansing I fear Ms. Gwendolyn will defecate down the neck of my lifeless corpse.
Lady Bracknell: An honor killing is too good for the likes of you, Mr. Worthington.
Mr. Worthington: Good day Lady Bracknell.
Lady Bracknell: Good day Mr. Worthington.

(exit Mr. Worthington)

Lady Bracknell: What a charming young man. I'd keep him hostage in a soundproof prison in my backyard for fifteen years, I say I would.

Don't you just love a good drawing room farce? We're just delighted that Mr. Haye has a career awaiting him as a man of letters. But tragically like other daring linguists before him, Mr. Haye has courted controversy and a fair bit of outrage for challenging our Victorian sense of propriety. Not everyone appreciated his interplay of classic tropes, and like his predecessors he responded to his critics with a biting retort: "If I apologised for every stupid/ignorant thing i said, I wouldn't have time for anything else during the day!" Zing! Well said Mr. Haye, well said. Would that also leave you time to die in a fire, what what?