Sometimes, you read something that reveals just how subtle and incisive a weapon the English language can be, in the right hands. This paragraph, from Oliver Kamm's blog, in which he describes debating George Galloway's antics in "Celebrity" Big Brother with John Rees, national Secretary of Galloway's "party", is the sine qua non of damning with faint praise. It combines hilarious wit with a series of gloriously precise criticisms.
I expressed sympathy for Rees for coming on the programme when his party had previously condemned Big Brother as 'sewer-dredgingly awful', and I said that Galloway's appearance had the merit of not being the least creditable thing or most egregious debasement of public office he had done. After George travelled to Damascus last July to tell the Syrian people, who had had no say in the matter, how fortunate they were to have Bashar al-Assad as their leader, there were few ways open to him to lose his dignity further, and he at least showed imagination in finding one of them.