I have never actually seen the word ‘dastardly’ used in any sort of serious context until now.
A couple three weeks ago I wrote a letter to Senator Ted Stevens (where ‘wrote’ is equal to ‘clicked the button provided for me by the ACLU’, but anyway) encouraging him to help stomp the Patriot Act into the dust.
I just got a letter back. The letter says:
After the dastardly attacks of September 11, 2001….
I’ve never seen anybody use that word seriously before! That’s so cool! And so silly! DASTARDLY! *DASTARDLY*!
Stevens, incidentally, supports reviewing the bill at this point in time, and notes that “many of the bill’s sections” (I don’t know how many) expire by 2005. I hadn’t known that. It’s good to know, actually.
He also signed it himself, or at least, someone actually signed it, with a real pen, instead of a stamp. That’s more than the other Congressmen do.
The most famous “dastardly” is probably from FDR’s address to Congress on the day after Pearl Harbor: “I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.”
So, can something other than an attack be dastardly? Who are these dastards and how did they get this replutation, anyway?