folksy, gruff, acerbic, flinty, brash, affable, personable, wry, unpretentious, urbane, eloquent, earthy, easygoing, genial, laconic, taciturn, steely, forthright, avuncular, brusque, pugnacious, irascible, unassuming, unexcitable, pragmatic, unsentimental, combative, glib, likable, garrulous, gregarious, approachable, articulate, droll, sardonic, grandmotherly, lincolnesque, erudite, stoic, abrasive, forceful, thoughtful, pithy, jocular, drawling, witty, populist, unflashy, opinionated, charismatic, empathetic, owlish, loquacious, unabashed, boyish, candid, unshowy, amiable, patrician, debonair, unemotional, undemonstrative, equanimous, likeable, blunt, professorial, deadpan, schoolmarmish, cantankerous, uncompromising, diffident, uninflected, dispassionate, unvarnished, suave, brusk, charming, insouciant, unquotable, outspoken, quippy, curmudgeonly, courtly, feisty, brassy, countrified, straightlaced, praiseful, soulful, hemingwayesque, sassy, slangy, flamboyant, imperturbable, iconoclastic, grandfatherly, tenderhearted, conversational, unflappable, humorous, unapologetic, bespectacled, fact, nonsense, spoken, fearless, boastful, crabbed, flippant, offact, tactless, arrogant, bald, bombastic

detraction

direct, frank, free-spoken, point-blank, unrhetorical