Re: What's Wrong With America? The West Wing.

1

"Hit 'em again?"

Which makes me think that this is relevant, just in the opposite political direction.

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We shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that politics in real life is like politics in the West Wing world, but there's nothing wrong with having an idealized vision of government. I also don't think the show is an example of naive faith; it was more about acknowledging that the actual government we have is far from ideal, and showing a nice alternative. You could see this in the episodes dealing with Bartlet's reelection--they were denouncing (in a rather thinly veiled manner) the sorts of narrow-minded, unreflective politicians and their appeals to simple-mindedness, etc. And the Republicans on the show were not infrequently shown to be vindictive and sinister.

You can say that their version of what is ideal was flawed, which is a perfectly valid position, but they weren't naive.

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2: Disagree, I think. To the extent that the show positioned itself as criticism of the real world political process, it was naive. Just as someone who used the last line of every fairy tale ("they lived happily ever after") as a criticism of real world relationships would be naive. It was a fairy tale. But it was (originally) well-written, and it brought fun and interest to policy (I loved the episode with the cartographers). Which is no small thing.

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The end of The West Wing, yes. Fifth season with Republicans taking over the White House because of Zoey's kidnapping and they don't exploit it for political advantage at all. Happy easy solutions. (I really liked Alan Alda and I wish they'd still let him win because Vinick was the only character worth watching last season and it would have been better to see how all of our staffers dealt with losing.)

But the first four seasons, not so much. Most of it was 20/20 hindsight here's what we wish our government would be doing if they weren't arguing or weren't bound by convention. Bartlet, the crazy liberal, ordered the asassination of a terrorist member of the royal family of the Saudi-stand-in ally. A liberal tough guy! And it all blew up in his face; the first few seasons were better about things sometimes not working out.

Anyhow, it's a nice tie-in, and I know the West Wing is supposed to be liberal porn, but my conservative friends were just as nuts about it because it was like candy: the big Promise could really work.

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Oh, I loved the show, it was clever and fun and reassuring and happy. But that feeling that it's unseemly to talk publicly about the possibility that one's opponents have bad motives -- that wishing for a high-minded political discourse can make it so -- Ezra's right. That needs to stay gone.

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West Wing is to politics as 24 is to terrorism. C'mon, porn politics fans, it's ok to fess up here.

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Deliberately avoided watching it, ever. I have enough problems with reality and just-so.

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I have watched both the West Wing and 24. 24's fourth season sucked, but it was better this season.

LB, I don't know. We all recognized that WW was fantasy. That's part of what made it fun -- it was this alternate world where not only are lambs lying down with lions but Republicans and Democrats are doing exactly what we want them to do in the sort of 'if I were running this place we'd solve this damn problem cuz I'd knock some heads'. Republicans are telling the ideologues to fuck off. Democrats aren't lead by a guy likely to get into a sex scandal (season 1 works well as a criticism of some Clinton-era stuff), which for my Republican friends was the reason they liked Bartlet -- he was Clinton, but not a sleaze.

But I don't think that works as fantasy if we don't recognize it as fantasy. If the Democrats need an excuse for their lack of balls these past few years, I'm pretty sure that a TV show with a Nobel laureate Latin speaking President is among the weakest.

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I always thought that the problem the article discusses was why The West Wing often didn't make, despite its many virtues, a very good show. It had great actors, great visuals, a lot of sharp dialogue, and a novel setting for an ensemble drama instead of the usual hospital or police station. What it rarely had was real drama or conflict. It got a little of the former by exploiting the fast pace of contemporary politics, as well as the formal occasions (SotU, White House events) it offers. But rarely any real or believable conflict. Admittedly I stopped watching much in the final two seasons, but I can only think of one episode where one White House staffer plotted against another (Toby undermining an effort of Sam's, I forget what exactly.) Where was the episode in which a character leaked documents about a colleague and bad-mouthed the same to the President, all to steal coveted, high-status office space near the Oval Office? That would have been worth watching. As bad as a show like ER is, its makers at least understand that the audience needs characters it can dislike, at least at times. Conflict: it makes for better tv.

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the audience needs characters it can dislike, at least at times.

I thought this was Toby's gig. Did anyone like Toby?

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The very few episodes of 24 I've seen made me cranky.

("The Russian terrorist dudes released nerve gas into LA because they were mad they got burnt? That's a ridiculous reason for mass terrorism!")

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Did anyone like Toby

Me. Lots.

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The first season of 24 was awesome, and I've watched the remaining ones sort of out of loyalty and also because it's fun to see how many things Jack Bauer can pull out of his man-handbag. Need to disable a security system? Oh, I have this here little device. Need to spy? Oh, here's another one.

I liked Toby, especially how he could go from quietly simmering to YELLING IN THAT VERY TOBY WAY in about half a second. But it's not too surprising, maybe, that everyone was on the same side. We were dealing with about seven people, and three of them were second-in-command assistants to the other three. C.J. used to get pissed off about three times a season for being kept out of the loop.

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Bridgeplate, you (speculatively) self-hating Jew, everyone likes Toby.

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I'm with SB, on this. Toby's enjoyable in small doses, but his schtick became irritating very quickly. Of course, that was true for most of them. But it was particularly true for Toby.

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10: Toby was a curmudgeon, not a villian (aside from the one instance I mentioned.) He mostly served the role of wish fulfillment for the egghead slice of the liberal demographic. Oh, and Toby also featured in one of the shows most spectacular attempts among many to undermine the audience's suspension of disbelief: the episode when his father visited the White House--and turned out to be a member of the mob. Somehow, despite the White House job, no one else knew. That's truly worthy of a show with a Nobel prize winner as President.

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everyone likes Toby

I'm with everyone.

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I think that what we're talking about here is the wish that politics be less adversarial. This is a wish felt only by nice, hapless Democrats and centrists. The actual Republicans are trying to destroy the Democratic Party, though of course there areways nice virtual Republicans floated around as distracting chaff.

Non-adversarial periods in politics are dominated by fixers, old-boy networks, and insider deals. The public never really knows what's happening.

There's a down side to partisanship, but there's a down side to everything. Our system really needs it to work, and a partisan politician doesn't have to be either completely ruthless or completely unprincipled. He just has to fight hard (though yes, he will have to compromise his principles and play dirty now and then).

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Me. Lots.
I liked Toby, …

OK, but please tell me you liked him despite the Richard Schiff lip quiver, not because of.

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Bridgeplate, you (speculatively) self-hating Jew, everyone likes Toby.

So, ogged, I see you're starting to understand the appeal of your blog thingy here.

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despite the Richard Schiff lip quiver

Yes, okay. But the shouting was awesome.

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I just liked Toby because he was cranky and it meant that we had a break from Josh & Donna's schtick.

When they introduced Will I didn't like him but he grew on me just because he never quite gelled with the rest of the snappy dialogue.

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Toby was always my favorite. So fucking self-righteous! And I always had a sneaking suspicion that he was based on Joe Trippi, since Pat Caddell was one of the creators, and he's one of Trippi's best friends.

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Incidentally, what I said in 2 only applies to the first 4 seasons. I haven't seen much of anything after that.

And I don't think they just said "and they lived happily ever after". They showed the process of getting there, which wasn't always particularly smooth, and they didn't always succeed. It was the way they went about things that was the ideal, not the particular outcomes (at least for me).

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So fucking self-righteous!

But plagued by guilt, probably both free-floating and specific.

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Self-righteous is a compliment, in my universe.

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I wasn't making a value judgment, just fleshing out the character description.

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25: How much work are you willing to do to justify your strange Toby-love? At least admit that if you knew him in real life, you have to fight yourself every day to keep from strangling him.

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I'd like to take this opportunity to post my favorite snippet of West Wing dialogue (they're talking about the butter sculptures at the Iowa state fair, which are totally real):

C.J.
I don’t get it. How can you not want to see the butter cow?

TOBY
I’m that way.

C.J.
There’s also a butter Elvis and a butter Last Supper, which has, I swear to God, Toby...

TOBY
Butter on the table?

C.J.
It’s got butter on the table right there between butter James and butter Peter. An almost mind-blowing vortex of art and material that dares the viewers to recall Marcel Duchamp.

TOBY
How do they keep it from melting?

C.J.
How, indeed.

NANCY
Toby, you have a phone call in the staff cabin.

TOBY
Thank you.

C.J.
Butter, butter, butter, butter, butter, butter, butter.

MAN
[on the phone] Mr. Ziegler, this is Signal Operator Number 41. I have a call from Mr. Seaborn in the White House.

TOBY
Thank you.

C.J.
Duchamp is the father of Dadaism.

TOBY
I know.

C.J.
The dada of Dada.

TOBY
It’s like there’s nothing you can do about that joke. It’s coming, and you just have to stand there.

C.J.
The cow made of butter? That’s how I like my irony served, my friend.

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At least admit that if you knew him in real life, you have to fight yourself every day to keep from strangling him.

I occasionally worry that this is how my loved ones feel about me.

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30: In cyber life, you don't come off that way at all; almost exactly the opposite.

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Did anyone like Toby?

Toby was my favorite character, incidentally.

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29: fuck, that's good.

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Of course, I totally identify with CJ there.

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Toby is pretty great. Reading Television Without Pity, it seems the people there love> Toby.

I've read Ezra's piece, and I'm not sure about this: Is the problem that the main characters didn't sufficiently dislike all three of: Republicans in principle, many Republican policies, and many individual Republicans? Because I think if one were to watch the shows specifically looking for those things, they'd be very much present. On the other hand, if it's just that the characters didn't go around saying that the other side was arguing in bad faith, I think it would be hard to come up with many instances of that.

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I think that what we're talking about here is the wish that politics be less adversarial.

You're right. That's a sucker's game. I want some DC Democrats who will automatically swing for the nuts every time a Republican is standing in front of them, since that is clearly the name of the game now. Bipartisanship is just a transparent ploy used to further McCain's political ambitions.

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If I knew Toby in real life I would hide his little pink bouncy ball.

There's a few episodes where Josh has to work with the Republicans and the dialogue goes like this:

Probably annoying Donna: X is in the Mural room.
Josh: Oh.. he hates me.
Probably annoying Donna: Y and Z are there, too.
Josh: They hate me, too.

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Toby was my favorite character, incidentally.
Toby is pretty great.

You're all out of your respective gourds.

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39

I think the problem is that in the universe of the show, the other side never was arguing in bad faith. When it came down to it, everyone was genuinely concerned with what was best for America; all conflicts were policy conflicts, not just political conflicts. In real life, that's nonsense. Some politicians (on both sides of the aisle) are working toward the best policy outcomes they can get to. More (again on both sides of the aisle) are interested in getting and keeping power for it's own sake. That's just how things work, and there's nothing wrong or unseemly in admitting it -- refusing to acknowledge that an awful lot of political conflict is purely about power isn't going to do a thing toward making better policies happen.

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on both sides of the isle

Wait, are we talking about West Wing or Lost?

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41

39 seems exactly right.

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Oh, but you're quick with the edit.

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Dammit, I edited. But not fast enough. I have a Yglesias-class homophone problem.

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Butter, butter, butter, butter, butter, butter, butter.

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Kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty.

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mmm, gourds. And butter.

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43 -- it is the height of arrogance to compare your homophone problem to Sausagely's, with which it is not even in the same league.

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48

CJ was my favorite character, followed by Leo, and then probably Josh. But they were all relatively likeable, even Toby. Sam was likeable, and he was probably the worst of the lot.

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Probably annoying Donna: X is in the Mural room.
Josh: Oh.. he hates me.
Probably annoying Donna: Y and Z are there, too.
Josh: They hate me, too.

Ah---but not, "I hate them." Which is the point, isn't it? Our heroes are not haters. But we want them to be, don't we?

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41: To pull the rug of bipartisan comity out from under you, while I said 'both sides of the aisle', I don't think the situation is totally parallel. For one thing, the "If we just treat our political opponents with respect, then it'll all be true! All disagreements will really be good faith arguments about policy," is much more a liberal/Democratic fantasy than a Republican one; liberals need to walk away from it, Republicans were never there.

Second, there's a difference between motivated by power but pursuing policies you believe in nonetheless, as a path to power, and motivated by power and entirely indifferent to the quality of the policy you're bringing about. Here, I don't expect you to agree at all, but there's a lot more absolute indifference to policy among Republicans in power these days. (Clinton's idiotic advocacy of the flag-burning nonsense is remarkable; the apparently non-personally-anti-gay Bush's position on preventing gay marriage is much less so.)

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your homophone problem

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So, now that the West Wing is going off the air, and now that 24 is finally winding down, what'll the next big political show look like?

I'm voting for a situational comedy among the lower-level staff at the UN.

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Republicans were never there.

I remember when they were. That breed has mostly retired from Congress now, though.

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All disagreements will really be good faith arguments about policy," is much more a liberal/Democratic fantasy than a Republican one

This has not been a Democratic fantasy since I identified as a Democrat. Obviously we disagree, but I would describe the assumption of their opponents' bad faith as a hallmark of the post-Watergate Democratic party.

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the next big political show

Everybody Loves Condoleezza
Who Wants to Be an Ambassador?
Filibuster Factor

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54: Maybe at ground level (me and my ilk), but in terms of public discourse cominf from serious journalists and elected officials, I think you're wrong. Reagan got insane amounts of deference and respect for his decency and good intentions, even when the facts would suggest otherwise, and it goes on from there.

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coming

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Everybody Loves Condoleezza
Who Wants to Be an Ambassador?
Filibuster Factor

Rumsfield

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re: 57

Gee, you really enjoy these arguments, don't you!

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s/b rumsfeld

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Reagan got insane amounts of deference and respect for his decency and good intentions, even when the facts would suggest otherwise

He may be respected now, but this can hardly be described as the case during his presidency.

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Dawson's Caucus
Ney's Anatomy
I Dream of Jeanne Shaheen

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Reagan got insane amounts of deference and respect for his decency and good intentions, even when the facts would suggest otherwise, and it goes on from there.

Part of the problem is that Reagan probably was decent, and did have good intentions. He was just pretty clueless, and he was run by some pretty bad people. Same goes for GWB. I wish Dems would focus on tarring GWB as the natural outgrowth of today's Republican Party, rather than on GWB as a uniquely bad person. (Do I contradict myself? Yadda, yadda.)

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The Shady Bunch

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57 -- do we really need to know that?

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Aw never mind, IdeaList got there before me.

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57, meet 58

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68

I wish Dems would focus on tarring GWB as the natural outgrowth of today's Republican Party, rather than on GWB as a uniquely bad person.

I got into an irritating little spat with Farber about this a while back -- I was talking about what 'the Administration' knew and did, and he pointed out that an abstraction can't know or do anything. What having an explicitly clueless figurehead does for them is makes it very hard to attribute intentionality to anything that happens; you can't blame it on the cossacks, because they don't make the ultimate decisions, but you can't blame it on the czar, because he'd be doing the right thing if he only knew. Feh. I say blame them all.

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argh, I meant "67, meet 59."

Didn't even come close.

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Star Trek: The Next Administration
Neywatch
Mork & Mikulski

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Ah, what's the name for being Weiner-pwnd while pointing out a Weiner-pwning?

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Reagan probably was decent

Tell it to all the dead Central Americans.

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He may be respected now, but this can hardly be described as the case during his presidency.

It seemed that the excessive deference coincided with the Alzheimer's diagnosis becoming public knowledge.

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71: A cow made of butter?

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73: Yes, as if it was the rest of the country with the memory problems.

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68, 72: I think we're in agreement. My real complaint is that when, prior to the '04 election, Dems went after Bush as a loathsome person, it wasn't very effective, because most people think he means well or doesn't mean at all. Better to say that he's a useful idiot for fairly dark forces. Same with Reagan.

Maybe that's wrong. I still can't really believe we lost.

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72, see 68.

And I want to shift ground or something on what I've been saying about the liberal fantasy of good faith. It's not that people didn't say bad things about the motivations of the participants in Iran Contra, or of Bush this time around -- it's that saying those bad things makes you unserious. Serious Republicans could stand up and call Clinton a drug-dealing rapist selling us out to the Chinese, and not lose credibility among other Republicans. Serious Democrats have much more had to pay lip service to respecting their political opponents, or risk being marginalized by Democrats as well as Republicans.

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"The Shady Brunch" is good--we could have a mixed Dem/Rep family, and Mom and Dad could be a politician and a journalist, and all the kids could then become professional operatives. Sort of like the Sopranos: evil people you can identify with.

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And the West Wing was a fantasy about serious government -- that if we liberals were serious enough, then bad faith would go away as a problem. This is wrong, and pernicious.

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I should read the ruling before I say so, but: Fuck![fixed. LB] That's mostly not just a reaction to it being DeLay, or Republicans in general.

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He may be respected now, but this can hardly be described as the case during his presidency

I am sure that then as now this depends on where you lived and what you read.

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It's not that people didn't say bad things about the motivations of the participants in Iran Contra, or of Bush this time around -- it's that saying those bad things makes you unserious.

Again, I think this is a function of the useful idiot quality of Reagan and GWB. You could, even at the time (I think), accuse Tricky Dick Nixon of just about anything and still be a serious person. Or at least I think that's true if we adjust backward for public charge inflation.

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80: I've got to read the opinions --it sounds as if it's all over the place.

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He may be respected now, but this can hardly be described as the case during his presidency

I am sure that then as now this depends on where you lived and what you read.

See, for example, here.

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After the 2000 election I read Newsweek "inside story" of the campaigns, and I remember being struck that Bush's main quality seemed to be the ability to make the press corps like him personally.

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86

I cant' take WW seriously as a fantasy substitute for a government, even an ideal one. It just functioned so much like a soap opera. I couldn't stomach the constant expressions of sincerity and goodness. So much like a religious service. My husband loved the show. But he also watched JAG. Go figure. From the little I saw of each show, they were very similar.

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86: Except that the storytelling and use of language is much better on WW than JAG.

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My wife and I, who had just started seeing each other at the time of the Reagan/Carter debate, almost fell out over Reagan, after I said that while I differed strongly with and opposed him, I could feel/understand his appeal Not a good thing to have said.

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I think I saw JAG once. I would list the similarities as: Both are hour (44 min.) long television dramas featuring characters who work for some facet of the U.S. government. The show's stories involve the interpersonal relationships between the main characters.

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89: Well, Y's right that they're both Mary Sue stories writ large.

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Reagan had a powerful charisma, in person. I voted for Gus Hall in 1980 (so what? I was young) and most of my crowd at that time liked John Anderson. Our (shared) living room had a poster of Reagan as a fighter jet, with fighter planes in the sky around him. Anyone remember that one?

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As a fighter jet or in one?

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Reagan's face was morphed into the front of a fighter jet.

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Was the intent (heavy-handedly) satirical or admiring?

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Those fears were real at the time; WWIII, nuclear anihilation, massive colonialism. I don't know where they all originated. They certainly didn't materialize. Strange that Bush II didn't generate those same fears. At least not on the same scale. And here we are.

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91, 92: I'm imagining Reagan-as-fighter-jet being rendered in Thomas the Tank Engine style.

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massive colonialism

Depends on your definition of massive, I suppose. We did a lot of messing about with Latin America.

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The intent was satirical, IDP. Reagan as a warmonger.

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I only visit, not live here, so I come in and out of conversation fecklessly

but 68 by LB was just so fine.

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Kobe!

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The intent was satirical, IDP. Reagan as a warmonger.

No, Reagan as a transformer!

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101: Transformer, my ass. Reagan was a Go-Bot at best.

What pissed me off about the West Wing was its sheer, unbridled enthusiasm for the power and ceremony of the office of the presidency. At least once a season it seemed there would be some big melodramatic moment where some non-regular would refer to Bartlet as "Bartlet" and one of the staffers would suddenly get all flustered with righteous indignation and say, "You call him Mr. President here!" And I'd think, what the fuck? I don't call Ted Kennedy "Mr. Senator." I don't call my mailman "Mr. Mailman." I realize that the idea that the president actually works for us instead of vice versa is rather quaint at this point, but that's precisely why I don't like a nominally liberal show reveling in the pomp and glory of the executive branch.

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It bothered me that Leo couldn't call Jed "Jed". It also bothered me that Jed couldn't call Abby "Rizzo", but for different reasons.

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Who's to say what they did in private?

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I heart Abbey.

It bothered me that Jed was a nickname for Josiah. It doesn't seem like the right long name for that nickname.

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Somebody, eventually.

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107

106 to 104.

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108

What pissed me off about the West Wing was its sheer, unbridled enthusiasm for the power and ceremony of the office of the presidency.

Have I given my speech here about how the problem with America is that the head of government and the head of state are the same person? If I haven't, maybe I'll turn it into a post.

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108: I have, and (utterly unsurprisingly) Gary has. But I'd be interested in your version of it. NB: At that link, when I said "constitutional monarchy" I meant either "constitutional democracy" or "democratic republic." Seriously.

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Got a link to Gary's take?

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It's in a comment a few up from the linked one.

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Here.

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Thanks.

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108: I rant on this all the time, but would be delighted to hear it from you.

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On TWW, there was an episode -- I think the one where there's a potential stay-of-execution -- where Bartlet explains to his childhood priest (?) that he prefers to be called 'Mr. President' not out of ego, but because sometimes the office demands that he do things which he'd prefer not to think of himself doing.

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LB, I would be very interested in hearing you rant about that.

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109, 114, 116: Ack, now it's pressure. Maybe I'll do it as a special July fourth post, with extra patriotism.

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115: Yeah, see, that's kind of worse. If Bartlet was just a pompous ass who wanted to fully enjoy the perks of the office by having everyone address him by his title, then that would be an implicit criticism of the massive ceremonial significance we attach to the presidency. But Sorkin portrays him as a man who simply realizes that The Presidency is just so Vast and Grand that it demands the kind of pomp that comes with a head of state, no matter how much he finds it distateful - a thoroughly paternalistic view of the executive.

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119

It doesn't come across that way in the episode, though. Isn't it usually Sam that goes off on the President Bartlet thing? And Sam's a tool.

The pomp is just because it's fun for C.J. and Donna to wear pretty dresses.

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Can we just crown Oprah and let our presidents be efficient little gray men and women?

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And Sam's a tool.

But very pretty. I'm a sucker for that black-hair blue-eyes coloring.

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But Sorkin portrays him as a man who simply realizes that The Presidency is just so Vast and Grand that it demands the kind of pomp that comes with a head of state

I think Bartlet's point is this: Sometimes a president is forced (by politics, other voices, etc) to do things he, personally, finds morally reprehensible, and in those times he would prefer not to think of himself personally.

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I'm a sucker for that black-hair blue-eyes coloring.

Isn't everyone? My favorite breakfast place had a little punk waiter with that coloring. Made breakfast so much more enjoyable.

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119: It's not just Sam, I don't think. Toby does it at least once, and there's a scene during the whole MS/reelection arc where everyone becomes simultaneously heartbroken when they realize they've been calling him "Bartlet." And they all get off on the pomp because Sorkin gets off on the pomp. How many episodes end with a buildup to some obscure yet grandiose presidential ceremony?

I should note that I did actually like the show, at least up until Sam left. Sam was awesome - Josh was always the tool. The whole thing with him and Donna was creepy with a capital CREE.

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123: Did he think you were one of the cool adults, B?

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creepy with a capital CREE

and that rhymes with T, and that stands for Tool!

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I should note that I did actually like the show, at least up until Sam left.

Sam left at roughly the same time Sorkin and Schlamme left, so post hoc and all that, perhaps.

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128

M/tch wins.

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129

Careful, next you'll be drinking beer from the bottle.

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130

128: Again? Man, this is getting tiring . . .

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125: He thought I was a good tipper.

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132

Josh at least had the decency to be rumply and plain whilst being a tool. One of the only redeeming things about season 5 is when C.J. tells Donna that Josh is holding her back and she needs to get over it.

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131: But in reality, he was just really bad at math?

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134

No, in fact I am a good tipper.

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135

I have a fairly complex legal question which I probably should just keep researching rather than aksing about in comments, but I'm not going to let that stop me. Let's say you have litigation x, which is currently at an early stage, and litigation y, currently at an even earlier stage. There's good reason to think that a very key issue in y will be issue precluded by the outcome of x. Can we get a stay of y and where would I find authority for that?

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134: Hurray for you, and all good tippers!
(I didn't really doubt you were a good tipper)

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I don't know offhand, but it sounds like a good shot. Mess around on Westlaw with terms like "stay" "issue preclusion" "collateral estoppel" and "related litigation". This kind of thing I'd be particularly careful that you're researching in the applicable jurisdiction -- it's not going to be a broadly applicable rule of law, it's going to be the procedure of your jurisdiction.

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Thanks.

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All legal advice on the blog guaranteed worth what you paid for it. Unless you gave a lot on the server drive, in which case don't count on it.

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Yes, also I'm asking that question totally for fun and it has nothing to do with my trying to avoid doing the job I've been asked to.

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Scary partner just called me on the phone and told me I need to "close out" my time more frequently.

Nevermind the fact that he hasn't ever given so much as a hello to me.

I find it strange that the scariest and meanest of the partners we have is the gay one.

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Seriously? Not so much asking on the blog, but a highly underrated research technique is rambling on about what you're researching with co-workers; they're very likely to have seen a similar problem sometime. Going straight to hammering away on Westlaw may involve losing a fair amount of time figuring out how to frame the issue that you could have figured out faster with some help.

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141: What does that mean?

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Enter her time sheets into the computer. (Which I'm terrible about; I'm always on the edge of being in trouble.)

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I am so in trouble.

I really need to stop hanging out at this blog.

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Dude, just as soon as this slow patch I've been in passes, I'm either disappearing or getting fired.

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143 - I was just going to ask that. I'm well versed in corporate-tool-speak but haven't heard that one before.

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Don't get Dooced!

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I so need a job that doesn't bore me to tears, or at least to be staffed on some cases where it has some consequences if the work doesn't get done. I swear every goddam assignment I've had this year has been some sort of think-piece research for stuff which co-counsel is writing the briefs on. I get it done, eh, no one reads it; I don't get it done, eh, no one notices. The partner I'm working for is driving me bats.

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but a highly underrated research technique is rambling on about what you're researching with co-workers; they're very likely to have seen a similar problem sometime

Very true and worthwhile and I second the recommendation. However, this is hard to do when you are a junior associate in a big law firm. Find someone slightly more senior who likes to talk and who does not give you that irritated "hey, asshole, I already was going to be here until 11 PM, and now I won't get out of here until midnight because you are gabbing" look.

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Was that what that look was?

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I've never seen the show, but:

It bothered me that Jed was a nickname for Josiah. It doesn't seem like the right long name for that nickname.

WTF? His name is Josiah but they call him "Jed"? I agree with Cala.

(See, everything's back to normal now.)

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WTF? His name is Josiah but they call him "Jed"?

Because "Josiah", in turn, is short for "Jedediah".

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I googled it -- apparently the character's middle name is Edward and the nickname is from J. Ed. Which, you know, annoying but authentically WASPy.

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'Cause it always sounded like he was trying to be a hick. I'm folksy. I'm Jed. But from New Hampshire.

I figured they put him in New Hampshire because putting him in Massachusettes might make Bartlet a caricature, but really. Since when is New Hampshire a liberal Catholic stronghold?

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WASPs really do shit like that? Damn. I mean, I knew about J.E.B. and all, but I figured that was just a southern thing.

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Wait, so he's a liberal Catholic politician but he acts like a hick? Makes no sense to me.

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WASPs rule dopey nicknames. It comes from having too many men in the family with the same name: John Sr. is John, John Jr. is Jack, but by the time you get down to little Johnny Three-Sticks he gets called Myrtle or something.

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If I ever have a son, I'm going to have to physically restrain myself from naming him Jedediah.

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And the seniors and juniors change when a new generation arrives, right?

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159: Um, wow. Just wow.

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Can you be a WASP and Catholic?

teo: He's a liberal Catholic WASP but I thought his name was hickish and out of character. LB corrects me with her superior knowledge of East Coast WASPs.

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Can you be a WASP and Catholic?

I would think the answer is no, by definition.

He's a liberal Catholic WASP but I thought his name was hickish and out of character. LB corrects me with her superior knowledge of East Coast WASPs.

Okay, that makes more sense.

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Right, but the nicknames last forever. There are ancient evil WASPs in Connecticut who are now Ezekiel Sr. because their ancestors are all dead, but who nonetheless are still known to all as Bunny, because back in the 1930's Ezekiel was Grandpa and Zeke was Dad.

(WASP here means Yankee old-money, not just any white guy, of course. And Bartlet is written as a WASP even though he's Catholic.)

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(Yeah, but how many Catholics were on the goddamn Mayflower?)

Also, three daughters and a wife and not a Catherine among them? I question his Notre Dame cred.

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Oh, wait. An episode, indeed the very one we had been discussing, makes it clear the Catholicism married in.

Hurray!

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Further to 161: Why do you like that name so much, JM? And why do you feel the need to restrain yourself from using it?

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the problem with America

... is the equal representation of states in the Senate, the only unamendable part of the Constitution. Seriously, that's a hands-down win over any silly "imperial presidency" theory you're contemplating.

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Middle name for Jedidiah: Obediah

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167: Oh, probably because the very aspects that make it a ridiculous cruelty to inflict upon a child sort of endear it to me. Hickish, timeless, and yet not one of those Old Testament that's become normalized, like Noah or Jacob.

I also like Jeremiah and Isaiah. Really, though, I've sworn up and down for a couple of years that my son was just going to have to learn to deal with being named Immanuel.

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Immanuel wouldn't even be bad, though -- Manny is a perfectly normal name.

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Who would name her son Immanuel has a twisted sense of Hume.

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JM, could you e-mail me?

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by the time you get down to little Johnny Three-Sticks he gets called Myrtle or something

I was recently told that "Trip" is popular.

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174: or "Trey."

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A bunch of my friends were sitting together recently brainstorming ideas for baby names--one woman was planning to get pregnant soonish, so we were kicking around male and female names.

One of the things that struck me as very bizarre was this presumption I thought I perceived that the obvious nicknames would be inevitable.

I just don't think that's true: if your family always calls you by your full name, and you are okay with your full name, then whatever nicknames your classmates come up with won't really stick unless you like them better.

So, if my extremely hypothetical son likes "Manny" better, that's fine, but I doubt it's the inevitable result of being named "Immanuel."

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The only way your kid gets called "Immanuel" by the broader public is if he's gigantic, and can force his will upon his other classmates. Otherwise, he'll have a nickname. And "Manny" is not a good nickname, no matter what LB says.

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Oh, I wasn't thinking of 'Manny' as an inevitable result; more as an available safe harbor if 'Immanuel' was too weird.

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177: 'Manny' isn't good? I suppose, come to think of it, the only Manny I ever knew was a horrible, horrible little dweeb.

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Is that more true for boys than for girls? I have something of a longish name, not very common for my area, and the various attempts to foist a nickname on me failed, quickly, and I don't think I ever had to threaten violence.

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180: I think nicknames are a pretty common part of a boy's (or even a man's) life, especially if your name is long or strange. You just pray that you don't get one that sucks and sticks. And come to think of it, I think I do the same thing to female friends, too.

That's just my experience, and I'm not sure you should generalize from that.

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It's kind of humbling when you're pregnant, and you start discussing baby names with other people, and you find out that the names you thought were unique and clever are, in fact, just the expression of your generational zeitgeist. Seriously. It's uncanny.

That said, PK's name is one that most people say "wow, I love it" (generational zeitgeist) "but I/my husband/my sister/my friends talked me out of it" (apparent mockability to our generation, but the cultural motif is not really going to resonate with PK's).

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173: Teo's real name is Jedidiah.

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183 gets it exactly wrong.

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you find out that the names you thought were unique and clever are, in fact, just the expression of your generational zeitgeist. Seriously. It's uncanny.

Isn't it weird? I went, both times, for names that were pleasantly standard but, I thought, out of date enough to be reasonably unusual. Both were in the middle of a hard comeback -- maybe not top 10, but top 20.

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185: Are you telling me that other people actually named their son "Mander"? That's unbelievable.

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Newt. Not Mander.

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182: That happened with my sister's name. My mom had always loved the name and thought of it as very distinctive and unusual, but apparently a lot of other parents thought the same thing at the same time and there were multiple people of the same name in several of her elementary school classes. She goes by her middle name now.

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185: In fact, I have to say that Mr. B. and I have seriously talked about naming a kid "Salamander." We have dibs, therefore, and if any of you use it, I'm suing.

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It's a good thing I don't have three kids -- I'd feel terrible about sticking the youngest with the online pseud 'Eft'.

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My theory: what everyone thinks of as popular names is set by around age 18. So Kristens, Jessica, Caitlins, etc, for people in my area around my age. Once we're out of school we stop paying attention.

So, then we hear a name on TV. Oh, Lily, that's different. Oh, Emma, that's charming. You don't see a lot of Noahs these days. And every other woman your age is thinking the same damn thing.

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166 gets it exactly right. It's not a non-denominational prayer.

I'm sure I explained at some point that WASP means people who care about the social register or their local version thereof non-ironically.

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Yeah, I can't believe I forgot: "You're Catholic because your mother is Catholic."

Still, an Angela or Catherine wouldn't have killed them.

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This sort of second-guessing is what led one of my sisters to name her son "John." She said he could make his own identity with a name like that.

(Also: it was my grandad's name, and he was touched, in his rare lucid moments before he died.)

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I think 191 is part of it, for sure. But it doesn't quite explain the specific combination of "pleasantly standard but, I thought, out of date enough to be reasonably unusual," which is precisely what our generation wants--old fashioned, but just slightly unconventional. We're veering away from totally unique or bizarre names (Salamander is safe!), and yet we're not embracing certain kinds of old-fashioned names that were either truly common (George, John) or that for some reason sound "old" in a bad way (Edith, Martha) rather than cool and retro (Sophia, Chloe).

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194: No, you should totally give you kids cool names. I'm partial to adrogenous names, myself. If it gets bad for the kids, I figure you can always shoot them full of steroids until they're large enough to make it all better.

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Did I mention when discussing my 6'4" boxer cousin that his name is Feargal?

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I'm not much for androgynous names because they seem like they'll age badly.

B, I just put that down to the current taste of the age, like all the Laurens and Jennifers. The evangelical thingy probably has to do with the rise of little Josiahs and Ezras. I'm not sure why there are a million Ellie/Ellas running around, though. Emma took off after Friends.

(Ignoring use/mention.)

I'm not sure if I have strong tastes except that I don't want a name that says 'born in year X.' I have no really good family names, though we do have a Santo on one side and a Cornelius on the other.

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Cool.

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My mom had decided on my name 10 or 15 years in advance, before the glut of Matts that popped up in the early 80's. She thought it was pretty unusual (it was in her generation), but 18 years later, there were three Matts in my 8-man crew shell.

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OMG, Cornelius! Awesome. I floated that and it got shot down, I think.

I don't think the evangelicals are the ones who use old-testament names; ime it's mostly pretty secular folks who like the old fashioned + kinda weird combination, isn't it?

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Also Jews.

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I dunno, I'm surrounded by Ellas.

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This guy, for instance.

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My non-evangelical but very red-state in the cultural sense of the word in-laws were pushing 'Caleb' hard for Newt.

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LB, how did you come up with your kids' pseuds?

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202: Of the observant or secular variety? B/c most of my more secular Jewish friends have given their kids the same kinds of names as the rest of our generation. Maybe it's that "Jewish" old-testamenty names now appeal to non-Jews?

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The natural history of it all is a little confused, but what looks like a Lizard? A Sallymander or a Newt.

There's no real reason for it, it's not as if using their real names would de-anonymize me, but now I'm used to it.

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Regarding names, I'm sure everybody has seen this before where you type in a name and see when it was most popular: (http://babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html).

My name peaked in the 1940s.


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208: I always assumed that they were maybe family nicknames? I considered using PK's family nickname ("Mr. Grunty") but it would be way too identifiable to the in-laws.

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That thing is a lot of fun, and it can help you avoid names (like, say, Ellen, Ella, Gabrielle, Gabriella, Eleanor, Elinor) which are suddenly taking off in popularity.

Olivia and Sophia have been very popular around here, too.

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198-200: You think it's cool to name a kid after that "dirty ape"?

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My parents, before I was born, were set on naming me Ophelia. That seems like a rather strange selection.

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Indeed not. The Cornelius in the family tree went by his middle name.

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"Mr. Grunty" would have added a whole new level to the "Mama, come wipe my butt!" saga.

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208: I always assumed that they were maybe family nicknames?

Nope, they're Internet only. (One of these days I should tell the kids about the blog. I have to say that I find the prospect of explaining it somewhat intimidating. "Yes, Mommy spends hours and hours every day making cock-jokes on the Internet with people she mostly hasn't met. Why? When you grow up and have an alienating job, you'll understand.")

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212 is, I think, the argument that was used against the name. In a confession that I realize will haunt me forever, I have to explain that I had a crush on that character as a child.

211: Alas, Eleanor was my late beloved grandmother's name (although, ironically, she hated it) so I may end up using it despite its trendiness, should I have a second kid and should it be a girl.

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160 - The seniors and juniors do not change when the next generation arrives. At least not in my family.

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215: There have been many times when his nickname would have improved a story. Alas.

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Not when the next generation arrives, when the last one dies, isn't it?

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I've noticed a lot more people using "mama" and "papa" lately instead of "mom" and "dad". Any ideas? B, you want to weigh in since you use them?

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If I have kids, I should take care not to give them overly nerdy names. Genetically, the kid is going to end up nearsighted with impossible hair and probably a precociously geeky child like his mother, so it's not like I can name him Percy 'cause he'll be big and a football star and it won't matter.

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Even my middle name, which would make a good first, is in the top 75. What do you guys think about Arch?

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222: c'est à moi.

223: Short for what? Archibald?

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I think the name "Ezra" is wizard cocksucker.

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221: I think that's probably the same thing as the retro kids' names. "Mom" ("maaaahm") just sounds ugly to me (plus it reminds me of my own mother), and "mommy" demeaning. Basically, the culture has dubbed moms asexual nags. "Mama" sounds kinda cool and retains a sort of hipness (hence hipmama) and independence.

Mr. B. wanted to be called "father," as his father was, but I talked him out of it because it's so off-puttingly formal.

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220 - I dunno. In my family, we have Sr. (my grandfather), Jr. (my dad), and then nothing (my little brother).

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221 - it does seem like alot of people use papa instead of dad or daddy lately; but in our family, papa is reserved for grandfathers. That is, our kids always say "papa firstname" instead of "grandpa lastname". Yet, ironically, mama is used for mom or mommy by our kids, although, not as often (and I'm just dad or daddy)

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227: Your brother is not nothing!!!! Everyone has value, missy.

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Also, the baby name wizard is cocksucker.

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"Wizard" would be a cool name. Guaranteed popularity in the elementary crowd, at least until Harry Potter becomes old news.

Someone (else) totally has to just bite the bullet and name their kid "Cocksucker."

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One of my sisters uses 'Mother', but only when she's annoyed.

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I should say, Arch has nothing to do with any name I have, which should be obvious since it drops off the charts in the 1920s. Many other things about me can be found out online, no reason to include my middle name in an easily findable way. Arch is from a ***spoiler*** in a western film everyone should have seen, and I think it's a good name.

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205--"Caleb" invokes instantly for me "Caleb Williams," the protagonist of William Godwin's republican gothic novel. That's what I rather like about the old names: no single ideological strand.

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158, 170 -- my grandma is named Myrtle; my nephew is named Isaiah.

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232--Yeah, an awesome thing about "mama" is that when he's pissed off at me, PK calls me "bad mama," which has totally different connotations than "bad mom" or "bad mother."

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Isaiah! Good taste in your nephew's namers.

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In this country, "Jewish" names are not old-testamenty but stereotypically "American" names like "Norman" and "Harry." Extremely observant Jews, of course, have always used Hebrew/Yiddish names, but more secular/moderately observant Jews were eager to assimilate. These days, a lot of secular Jews are going back to (Anglicized) Old Testament names, perhaps because they're trendy, but also as a way of reconnecting with Jewish traditions.

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Funny, Harry is my (quite Catholic) dad's name.

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That's the point.

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One of my grandmothers was named Dera, which I think is a beautiful name.

On the other hand, Dera's father was named Eber (ee-bur) which by all acounts was simply manufactured by his parents.

Personally, I think Cornelius is an awesome name.

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Both my grandfather and my great-grandfather had brothers named Harry.

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p.s. for those looking at the baby name wizard thingy I linked, you can just type in HAR, for example, to see how Harold compares to Harry.

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I suggest you check out Genesis 10:21, Pants.

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Mr. B. wanted to be called "father,"

My dad used to call me "child".

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Cornelius appears to have made a modest return in the 1980s but has since fell out of favor again.

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"Dera" is a great name. "Cornelius" is not.

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I call my parents "Mama" and "Dada."

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Well, I'll be damned! Thank you! Now I get to correct some familial lore.

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Now you've got me thinking. My dad's father's name was Levin. Maybe I should pay some attention to the geneological stuff my dad keeps nattering on about.

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249 to 244, btw.

Wait - re-reading it, it describes Shem as the father of all the children of Eber. Was Eber a woman? Wow. Cross-gender naming in my family? I can't wait to bring this up at Thanksgiving. Mwuhaha.

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Eber's a place, I think.

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Well, dang.

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Look at 10:24-25.

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My grandfathers were rather distinctly "Grandpa" and "Grandad." My parents were "mom" and "dad," usually.

I like "Cornelius." But then, remember what other names I think acceptable.

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Oh, well, a little Googling turned up this.

Google, is there anything you can't tell us?

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That is, "father" is used metaphorically there for the ancestor of the sons of Eber, i.e., the Hebrews.

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In other words, McManly's great-grandfather was, more or less, simply named "Jew."

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Wouldn't that work out literally to mean something like 'progenitor of all the red dust people'? Or am I remembering my made-up CCD etymology incorrectly?

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255: Is your real name Iphigenia?

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I like Cornelius too, but I'd stick it in the middle. Again, going to be a nerdy child with a short temper. Going to get teased for plenty of other things.

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260--Okay, you found me. Please, call me "Iphie," since that's what the stronger boarding-school girls decided I should be called by.

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The etymology of "Hebrew" is unclear; it may have something to do with "west" or "across the river." The connection to Eber, of course, is totally made up.

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Not by me, that is, but by whoever wrote that part of Genesis.

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262: "Iffy" sounds about right.

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Sally and Newt call me 'mama', but I think it's the Spanish language influence -- it's nothing I planned on.

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258: I so wish. That would be awesome. (Seriously!)

In my family my parents are 'mother' and 'daddy,' as they chose to adopt the gender-associated titles from their own families. And yes, Daddy is the easy-going one.

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You don't see a lot of Noahs these days.

Yeah, I thought that, but it turns out Noah was the #23 most popular boys' name last year, when he was born. Keegan still languishes down at 261, so he's safer. My name, on the other hand, just barely cracked the top 400.

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I tend to think all kids start out saying "ma-ma" and "da-da" or "ba-ba" and parents shape that according to what they prefer to be called. If they don't do anything, as my parents didn't, they end up as Mama and Dada/Papa.

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I have a cousin named Noah.

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262: Come clean. You're VulvaMae, aren't you?

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Dude, some of those Utah links are fucking hilarious. Some of that shit is seriously fucking Utah.

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269 - I was Dee-Dee for many years, thanks to my brothers.

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260: OMG, AND I have an idea for a retelling of Iphigenia at Aulis set in the Iraq war. Iphigenia would be a young peace activist human shield guarding a building, Agamemnon the general who must give the orders for the building to be bombed, Achilles the guilt ridden studly liberal who got Iphy into activism, the media the chorus, Clytemnestra the freaked out mom on her cell phone back home.

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Due to the effects of globalization, most modern Japanese families use "Mama" and "Papa". Since I want to give my kids some American identity, my wife and I are Mommy and Daddy, but will be Mom and Dad when the kids get older. The interesting effect of this is that since I'm the only "Daddy" in the neighborhood, that's how all the neighborhood kids refer to me. I get home in the evenings to as many as ten kids yelling "Daddy!"

We had a hell of a time coming up with names that were easily pronounced by both Americans and Japanese and yet weren't sterotypical (half of the Japanese/American boys I know are some variant of "Ken".)

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Wow, that's a really good idea, Tia.

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Wish we had a writer of musical theater around here somewhere...

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I think there should be a Creative Commons license on comments around here. (I also thought my UN sitcom idea was good--pure Gold! I tell ya!--and that Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Immanuel were unabjectible names for male children. So much for my judgment,)

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"unabjectible" s/b "unobjectionable" or something correct near it.

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O come O come Immanuel,
And ransom captive—your pants! HA HA

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278: There's nothing wrong with your judgment, JM. I like your UN sitcom idea too.

(P.S. Did you get my reply?)

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I think Jedediah is a great name. I'm also a big fan of Ezekiel (Zeke!). Those two and Raymond are definitely in the running for kid #2, assuming it's a boy.

If it's a girl, I'm totally resuming my campaign for Georgeanna (Georgie!).

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I think there should be a Creative Commons license on comments around here.

You mean like the one right below the archive links?

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feckless thug.

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284 at 280. Admire my restraint as I made it a whole 24 hours before shoehorning 'feckless thug' at SB.

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I've a story I told at the meetup.

When people at work found that we'd named our son Nathaniel, a coworker who was Nat King Cole's nephew, said he'd wanted to name his own son after his famous uncle, but his wife prevailed on him to make it "Nathan" because nobody gives the name Nathaniel anymore.

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Emmanuel is actually a pretty popular name in Spanish-speaking countries, I think. It just sounds unusual to Americans. Unless, of course, they're Jewish.

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gaude, gaude; Emmanuel nascetur pro te, Israel.

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I think you mean Manuel. And Emanu El sounds fine for a synagogue; for a person, not so much. At least, not so common.

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289 to 287

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I've always liked Emmanuel, and agree it's mostly Hispanic and Jewish, but for me it seems very Christian because of the beautiful Advent hymn O Come, O Come Emmanuel from my childhood.

A name much more common in Canada than in the US is "Wifred" We had Wilfs in my family, and you'll still see a service station or diner up there named "Wilfs"

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I generally think of Emmanuel as Christian, actually, since it's messianic and Jews aren't as into that stuff.

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Admire my restraint as I made it a whole 24 hours before shoehorning 'feckless thug' at SB.

Consider it admired. With this, Cala, have we restored comity, and avoided calamity?

(Admire my restraint as I made it a whole 24 hours …)

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calamity

Standpipe is the hero.

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Immanuel is a different referent entirely, of course.

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It is?

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They're both cognate with Amanuensis, short for Amanuenceslaus.

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Thanks, silvana. It's butter of you to say so.

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What about ???? ???

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SB is the master.

Thesis: Christmas carols are more fun in Latin.

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Dude, sometimes I want to start going to church again so I can sing more Latin Christmas carols.

I think that's the idea behind them.

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Benedicimus fucking te, the whole thing's more fun sung in Latin.

Yes, it's me, Mel Gibson. Please direct fan mail to studlymel@aramaic-weenies.com.

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My mom sometimes sings Latin Christmas carols. Which is weird, because she's Jewish.

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Cum meow meow hic, undique meow meow.

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It's more than Latin has better vowels for singing.

o
o
o
o
Gloooooooooo oooooria!

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Oh, it stole my cascading o's.

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That bit is fun to sing, isn't it.

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If you want some complicated naming practices, you should look into what a lot of Chinese do.

273: My sister calls me Dede. It means little brother. But I call her not the equivalent word for big sister, but by part of her Chinese middle name. In school we'd always have to remember to use our English names when talking about each other or no one would know who we were talking about. Our parents call us by part of our Chinese names, as do all my relatives on my mom's side. My sister and I call all of our aunts and uncles on my mom's side by Chinese names related to their birth order and family relationships (eldest aunt, third aunt, youngest uncle, etc.); my mom calls them by different names since they're her brothers and sisters. I called my Taiwanese grandparents by the Chinese words for grandpa and grandma.

I call my parents Mom and Dad.

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Oh, screw it. I mail this to LizardBreath a bit ago, and then succumbed and skimmed comments, anyway.


LB, I don't want to plunge into 308 comments, but this is nuts: "...a world where all the arguments were over what policies were genuinely the best for America, and everyone's intentions, regardless of their politics, were good."

Must be some other show. The one I saw featured Republicans plotting impeachment over multiple sclerosis, unscrupulous Republicans conducting witch-hunts into alleged (and non-existent) drug use in the White House, effectively trying to blackmail the WH Chief of Staff over his (relatively long ago) past alcoholism, a government where AA meetings of officials had to be top secret, a world where WH aides are blown up and killed, a world in which China and Russia were on the verge of war over oil, politics where top Republican political aides advised blackmailing the Democratic Presidential nominee over a stolen/lost briefcase and (apparently unfounded) allegations of an illegitimate child, a Congress that ran on trying to eliminate the "death tax," a Democratic leadership that preferred to elminate liberal Republicans from Congress rather that work together to pass good environmental laws, a place where Republican operatives sneered at the WH staff as traitors (specifically to one exceptional Republican, who was disavowed by all her visible friends), a land where right-wing talk radio hosts babbled hatred of gays and liberals, a... well, I could go on and on, but what the fuck show was it Ezra has in mind, anyway, I don't know, because it clearly wasn't The West Wing, where people like Toby argued furiously for more partisanship all the time.

"The show is peppered with moments like this, moments when the Republicans are good and those few who aren’t, like Gibson, are swiftly dispatched."

This is flat wrong; the Republicans mostly won, and on bad issues and bad faith.

What a complete load of crap. I really hate it when people who should know better (like Ezra, here) write total crap.

Also, again with the people who know squat about comics writing about them. Again! See here, for instance. Sample reaction from comics commentators: "Joining with a handful of other titles that have ultimately received more attention outside of comics than inside, Liberality For All is either a satire of Liberalism, a parody of Conservativism, or just a mad joke, and Mackey is laughing at everyone. Which makes Mackey either a genius or a lunatic - and he freely admits, the Liberality For All audience may still be split on the final verdict."

People really shouldn't write about stuff when they don't have a clue what they're talking about. It doesn't make them look good.

"Mackey admitted, while the press coverage from the mainstream was far more than he ever would’ve hoped for, aside from an odd mention her and there, as well as orders from retailers, Liberality was met with silence from the comics market."

This is a comic no one who reads comics is reading. It's all manufactured Limbaugh/Hannity, etc., hype.

Good job feeding that, Ezra!

But I don't want to have to read 308 comments to say this, LB. Sorry.

best,
gf

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Other comments.

"So, now that the West Wing is going off the air, "

West Wing's last broadcast was May 14th; it's been off the air for more than six weeks. It started "going off the air" last year, when it was cancelled.

JAG, meanwhile, was cancelled about two years ago, and the final episode was broadcast April 29, 2005 (I checked here).

I've always far preferred to desire that I'm far more like other West Wing characters, but without doubt I'm far more like Toby in various ways than any of the others. Not least of which in finding typos or being really annoying about correcting people on broadcast dates. Or just being really annoying (yet loveable in my curmudgeonliness!).

"Where was the episode in which a character leaked documents about a colleague and bad-mouthed the same to the President, all to steal coveted, high-status office space near the Oval Office?"

Well, there was the episode in which two staffers were really nasty to a newcomer, and played various dirty tricks on her, and she was given an office in a steam-pipe distribution room. And an entire season that played out on a character leaking a major secret and being indicted for it, and sentenced to jail.

"TOBY
How do they keep it from melting?

C.J.
How, indeed."

It's all in refrigerated display areas, of course; everyone knows that.

"On the other hand, if it's just that the characters didn't go around saying that the other side was arguing in bad faith, I think it would be hard to come up with many instances of that."

What number of chapter and verse would you like? How many dozens of examples?

"And the West Wing was a fantasy about serious government -- that if we liberals were serious enough, then bad faith would go away as a problem. This is wrong, and pernicious."

It's certainly wrong, since it's certainly not what West Wing was remotely about. I'll play matching citations on this, if necessary.

"What having an explicitly clueless figurehead does for them is makes it very hard to attribute intentionality to anything that happens; you can't blame it on the cossacks, because they don't make the ultimate decisions, but you can't blame it on the czar, because he'd be doing the right thing if he only knew."

I don't agree; the czar bears the ultimate responsibility, and the people he lets decide bear the remaining responsibility. Blame away. Preferrably, though, by name where known.

"strasmangelo jones"

I spy you with with little eye.

155: "'Cause it always sounded like he was trying to be a hick."

If you recall the flashbacks to his father, and his college years, well, again, there is absolutely no support for this in the text of the show.

"Since when is New Hampshire a liberal Catholic stronghold."

Again, no support for this assertion from the show. He's personally a Catholic; I'm assuming you're not claiming that a Catholic couldn't be elected governor in NH, but there was never any such claim about it being a "stronghold" of either liberals or Catholics.

"In this country, "Jewish" names are not old-testamenty but stereotypically "American" names like "Norman" and "Harry.""

But in the generation of my 3-out-4 dead-before-I-was-born grandparents, they were Izzy and Gussie and Ida and Irving and the like.

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Oh, my cut and paste lost the Newsarama link on "Liberality For All."

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Actually, if the current administration is any judge, the most unrealistic bit on the West Wing is that C.J.'s job survived all the scandals.

Gary, 162 better states my intent in 155. Also, no, the show never claims that New Hampshire is a liberal Catholic stronghold. But New Hampshire struck me as a slightly strange, as Bartlet in many ways is a perfect Massachusetts candidate. It's like they took Kennedy or Kerry, smartened him up, excised the Irishness, and dropped him into New Hampshire because Massachusetts would be too obvious.

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Speaking of the Democrats, I take back my earlier impassioned defense of the virtues of Barack Obama.

Sigh.

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Funy, silvana, in context those comments of Obama's did not seem that offensive to me. I find his discussion of his personal come to Jesus moment distasteful, but that's more because it violated my easthetic preferences. I'm much more offended by some of his votes.

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easthetic preferences

Shared by all who come from East Hetic.

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309, 310: I'll cop to 'all the arguments' being a wild overstatement, and I'll specify that everything I know about the show is the first 4 seasons -- I got bored and stopped watching very quickly. Ezra's still not wrong in substance, even if he's overstating: high-minded policy disagreements were presented as the norm, and pure power-struggles were an aberration. A recurrent theme was an apparent empty struggle over power that got resolved by both parties walking away from their petty concerns, and working together on the best policy.

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315: Well, that was a real typo, but I suppose that it works as a kind of Freudian slip.

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The thing about the West Wing (and all Sorkin shows, really) is that they're simple self-esteem porn for people like us; the point of the show is really that the world would be much better if it was run by the well-educated and hyper-verbal. That's not the worst thing in the world, but it's a pretty unrealistic view of the world, and, to the extent that people are looking at it as a utopian model, it's of a piece with the new NYT tendency to assume that everyone is in the top five percent of household incomes.

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313, 314: I'm parroting some blog, I can't remember who, but the problem with speeches like that is that they concede that 'the problem' is Democratic hostility to religion. This is absolute crap -- I'm the core urban secularist who should be the problem on this, and I don't have any difficulty with or distaste for religious people. Most Democrats are religious because most Americans are religious. I, and many Democrats, are nervous about the Religious Right as an organized political movement, but that's because it's an organized political movement that disagrees with me on politics, not because the people in it believe in God.

The problem with conceding the existence of a non-existent problem is that if the problem isn't real, it can't be fixed. We ran into this not long ago talking about Kerry's 'condescension toward the South', which, after a little discussion, turned into 'Southerners think guys like Kerry are assholes.' If the problem is 'you're condescending' you can fix that by being less condescending. If the problem is 'Southerners don't like you' but you think it's that you're being condescending, all of your attempts to be less condescending are useless and just make you look ineffectual.

We can't fix a problem, of generalized Democratic disdain for or hostility toward religion, if we don't have that problem. And if we assume we have it when we don't, then we're stuck with an apparently unfixable problem.

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Is it right that it's a non-existent problem? The majority of the Democratic party, like the country, is Christian, sure. The very outspoken bit? Google gets me a lot of hits for 'Jeebus', and I'm pretty sure that isn't used as a sign of respect for the person's beliefs while disagreeing piously with their political agenda.

That said, I would like the Democratic line when asked about the party and Christianity to be more of a 'fuck you, last I checked half the country voted for us, bet that includes Christians' rather than tiptoeing around it. But I don't think it's entirely a manufactured problem.

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It's manufactured that it's about disdain for religion rather than hostility to the political movement of the Religious Right. To take an example, Dr. B. has, I am absolutely sure, said stuff like "Jeebus" here. She's Catholic, and seems to take it seriously if not orthodoxly. What's going on with her really, really isn't 'hostility to religion' -- it's 'hostility to a particular group of politically engaged religious people.' Now, that sort of hostility may be a political problem for us -- we may need to figure out how to be kinder to conservative God-botherers -- but if we frame it as 'hostility to religion' we can't possibly fix it because that isn't the problem.

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What amazes me about Gary is how he can stand to know so much about what obviously repels and disgusts him. As I said somewhere way upthread, I knew this show wasn't for me, even at what I quickly realized would be some level of social isolation.

I feel somewhat the same way about all the liberals I know who can't seem to get enough of Law and Order and 24. Eschewing dark night thoughts about "compensation" and "wish-fulfillment," it's obvious that these shows meet some need, for story, for situation, for engagement, that I either don't share or can't stomach the cost of. I'm not talking about our discussions here, where every thread is blessedly take-it-or-leave-it, but in my real life, the popularity of such shows is profoundly alienating to me.

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"A recurrent theme was an apparent empty struggle over power that got resolved by both parties walking away from their petty concerns, and working together on the best policy."

No, it really wasn't. Can you name some specific such policies and episodes, please? (My nickel says that I can name two such that demonstrate the opposite for each you might be able to name.)

I'm very strong in my opinion that you, and Ezra have picked up a faux impression.

"This is absolute crap -- I'm the core urban secularist who should be the problem on this, and I don't have any difficulty with or distaste for religious people."

Do you know my friend P.Z. Meyers?

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I've been communicating my misgivings about Obama to lamposts and fire hydrants ever since his "Awesome God" reference two years ago. That loathsome phrase, by the way, was expertly contextualized by A White Bear a while back. I recommend everyone go and look it up.

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How well does that distinction play, though?

"I really think your views are backward-minded and sooo outmoded, but as long as your deeply-held personal beliefs don't come anywhere near your political beliefs (presumably unlike everyone else, who has unobjectionable personal beliefs), we can be friends."

"I find your gay lifestyle disgusting and an abomination unto God, but as long as your sexual orientation isn't public or foisted upon us by gay marriage (unlike everyone else who has unobjectionable sexual preferences), we can be friends."

I don't think the fine distinction flies on either side of the aisle.

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Google gets me a lot of hits for 'Jeebus', and I'm pretty sure that isn't used as a sign of respect for the person's beliefs while disagreeing piously with their political agenda.

I wouldn't be too sure in my interpretation, were I you. I use "Jeebus" all of the time, and it's a perhaps silly attempt not to take the Lord's name in vain. I use "Gawd" for the same reason. If He's actually keeping score up there, though, I'm probably still screwed.

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The second half of 320 and all of 325 get it right.

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There is a deep connection between fundamentalist, evangelical christianity and the radical right. If the democratic party is not hostile to that religion, it ought to be.

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(My nickel says that I can name two such that demonstrate the opposite for each you might be able to name.)

Gary, I'm not so sure this would hold up. All of the conflicts you mentioned are absolutely in the show, and there are plenty of episodes where there are conflicts. But they're represented as aberrations and Our Heroes come in to save the day.

Let's take Ainsley, since you mentioned her. She's a Republican, and people are very mean to her. They put her in the steam pipe room and send her dead flowers. Mean and partisan.

Except that Sam goes over and fires the mean people. And then the Senior Staff decorate her office with posters and sing Gilbert & Sullivan tunes.

Same thing with the Leo saga. They're mean to Leo, but one of the Republican guys has a change of heart.

And a lot of the policy conflicts on the show go something like this:

Josh: Listen as I spout Democratic party line.
Donna: But here are the Republican talking points, Josh, and I don't see why they're not good ideas, too.
Josh: Quip. Thank you for the exposition.

It's not that they don't mention the conflicts, it's that they're usually presented as both sides having nothing but good intentions. And when they have bad intentions, someone will out them and overrule them.

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And also, Obama's point that it's tone deaf to show up at an African-American church 2 days before an election and clap along to a gospel hymn with no sense of rhythym is dead-on. (Pun not intended.)

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If you recall the flashbacks to his father, and his college years, well, again, there is absolutely no support for this in the text of the show.

There are flashbacks to his years at Notre Dame? I remember the flashback to unnamed Prep School, of course, since it's in Two Cathedrals and I've been talking about that episode for three days now, but I don't remember college. And, of course, there's the time that Toby tells the President that he acts less intelligent than he is for the electorate because his father use to hit him. And then the President goes to see Arkin's shrink character.

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Bartlet is never shown on the Notre Dame campus, unless it happens in season six (the one I've missed.)

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"As I said somewhere way upthread, I knew this show wasn't for me, even at what I quickly realized would be some level of social isolation."

You never said why, though.

I've written plenty of posts about things I've liked about West Wing, myself. Primarily I'm a sucker for good dialogue.

"I feel somewhat the same way about all the liberals I know who can't seem to get enough of Law and Order and 24."

I've never been a particular fan of and incarnation of L&O, though I've occasionally watched one as background noise when in the mood. 24 I used to enjoy, though not as a huge fan, but couldn't follow it any more after the local Fox station stopped being reachable by my antenna some two years or so ago now (I think they moved their antenna).

What I mildly liked about 24 tended to be pacing (funny, that -- and, yes, quite impossible as it is; it's fantasy), some interesting casting (David Palmer, Chloe, Edgar). But by the time Jack's daughter ran into the cougar, my eyes were rolling at near maximum spin. My enjoyment, overall, as I indicated, was distinctly of the mild sort.

But I've always had the reaction that anyone reacting to the show as if it had political relevance, or should be taken seriously, was that they didn't particularly get fantasy (as many people do not). Not that there's any reason people have to get fantasy, of course, or aren't completely entitled to their own, valid, emotional reactions to any piece of fiction, or aspect of a given piece of fiction. But I'd emphasize that being clear on the distinctions between fiction and reality is useful. (And since you mention it, I don't detect any signs of my mild enjoyment of 24 having had any aspects of "wish fulfillment" involved on any level, that although I understand your implied problem with, I'm guessing, say, people perhaps liking 24 because, gosh, they wish to see "terrorists" tortured violently, and dealt with without rule of law, and such, that aside from that sort of thing, and even sometimes as regards that sort of thing, "wish fulfillment" isn't necessarily at all bad, again so long as people don't confuse fiction with reality [if people are actually getting off on 24 because they wish it was reality, I'd tend to share any such botherment you might have].)

What tends to bother me is dumb tv, but that's cuz I'm something of an elitist snob about intelligence (not so much because I think I have it, as that I appreciate it, and good writing).

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Hey, I just heard I'm about to become an aunt again!

If it's a boy, my sister wants to name him "Charles Darwin [last name]." I think that's a great idea (she's a biologist), but we'll see how far that goes.

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"There is a deep connection between fundamentalist, evangelical christianity and the radical right. If the democratic party is not hostile to that religion, it ought to be."

That worked for those who hated John Brown just fine.

"They're mean to Leo, but one of the Republican guys has a change of heart."

Key word there being "one." He was portrayed as completely an exception to the creeps that largely made up the Republican Party and its leadership.

Really. As I said, I'll throw as many dozens of cites for this assertion as need be.

Ditto Ainsley shown to be the only decent Republican in her circle, and then at the White House, and again, she was only around for a smattering of episodes in a couple of seasons.

And, as I said, Josh and Toby and Leo and CJ were all hard-core partisan, and each of the three but Leo were frequently -- Toby constantly -- arguing furiously on the need to be more partisan, fight harder, and play harder hardball. And the number of times you'll be able to, in fact, cite them arguing the opposite, is about zilch.

Pretty much the only exception to this was on occasion Sam, who ended up not being around for the majority of the show's existence, and who also could be heard arguing for strongly partisan Democratic fighting more frequently by far than not.

"And a lot of the policy conflicts on the show go something like this:

Josh: Listen as I spout Democratic party line.
Donna: But here are the Republican talking points, Josh, and I don't see why they're not good ideas, too.
Josh: Quip. Thank you for the exposition."

A) That dynamic was only present for a couple of years; b) 90% of the time Josh proved her to be completely wrong and a fool. Yeah, that dynamic existed a) so the Republican arguments could be knocked down 90% of the time; and b) because conflict is necessary in drama.

"It's not that they don't mention the conflicts, it's that they're usually presented as both sides having nothing but good intentions."

Ok. Name two episodes each from each season that demonstrate this. It's simply factually wrong. In point of fact, the Republicans were overwhelming presented as having horrible intentions, and acting in bad faith. The good guys (our credited characters) had good intentions and good faith, but that's a completely different thing. Their enemies were largely pond scum. I can just throw hundreds of quotes at you on this.

"I remember the flashback to unnamed Prep School, of course, since it's in Two Cathedrals and I've been talking about that episode for three days now, but I don't remember college. "

Thanks for the correction on that.

"And then the President goes to see Arkin's shrink character."

And goes on and on about the dumbness of the Republican Governor of Florida Presidential nominee he defeats in his re-election bid, particularly by demonstrating how dumb the guy was at the debate.

"Boy, crime, I just don't know,"

Incidentally, here is a different perspective.

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334: Congratulations!

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Gary, I think you've put your finger on it. My tolerance for fantasy as such appears to be unusually low, although I am an avid reader of fiction and poetry, have a prestigious degree in it, and can't get it out of my mind.

And, as I say, this cuts me off in certain ways from the very people, possessing the apparently much more common tendency among the literary to have an almost limitless appetite for story, who should be my soul-mates.

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My paternal grandparents were Eunice and Olen. They had these great big stockings that they hung up at Christmas with their names on them. Actually my dad's mom was named Edna, but she died while he was in his teens, and Olen married again before I was born, so Eunice was the only one I ever knew. Olen's brother was named Jasper, which I really really like as a name.

I had a great uncle named Iley D, and the 'D' didn't stand for anything, and a couple of other great uncles name I D and J T, where the letters weren't initials but the whole name itself. Apparently it was a trend or something up in North Texas / Southern Oklahoma / Indian Territory at the time.

Supposedly, when I D entered the military around WWII, on the entrance form he filled out his name as "I (only) D (only) R/ainy". Forever after his name in the service was "Ionly Donly R/ainy".

I also have maternal great aunts named Lorene, Ruby, Phoebe, and Vestel, and on my father's side there were great aunts Cassatine ("Cassie") and Thomasina ("Tommie"), and some other cool names I can't remember right at the moment. Apparently my grandmother wanted to name my mother "Jeannie Sue", but her sisters talked her into the more sensible "Wanda Jean".

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319: Yeah. My objection to it was that he was framing Democratic attitudes poorly and incorrectly. It's like setting up a straw man. For example, he said that Democrats want people to leave their religion at the door when they enter the public square. What does that even mean? Do democrats ask that people never act on/display their religious beliefs in public? No. Do we ask that they not vote for laws that legislate morality? Yes.

He mentions school prayer and the pledge of allegiance, but are these the ways in which Democrats and Republicans are parting ways? I hate this dialogue because it reframes the divide as though the Dems and Reps are just disagreeing on religion, which is not the case.

Posting this comment two hours after I started writing it...

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My sister told me that giving children Old Testamenty names was hideously faddish in Mormon yuppie circles.

I guess I'm still trending with my original demographic. (Or, in other words: God, that's annoying.)

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325: But it's still not about a distaste for religion -- Kotsko, for example, is religious (I think? In divinity school anyway) and his religion (I think again) informs those political beliefs of his I most agree with. It's about a distaste for a particular set of religious and political beliefs. I'm not trying to say that Democrats don't have a problem in the area you're talking about, I'm saying that framing it as a distaste for religion generally is going to mislead us. (It's like the Kerry example I gave above -- saying that his problem wasn't being condescending or hostile to the South doesn't mean he doesn't have a problem getting Southern votes. He does, and it may be an unfixable problem. But you can't address if you don't define it properly.)

323: Do you know my friend P.Z. Meyers?

I'll give you PZ, who I generally worship from afar. But he's nowhere near typical of Democrats, or of any demographic group, in his attitude toward religion.

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(My nickel says that I can name two such that demonstrate the opposite for each you might be able to name.)

Howzabout the episode where Toby fixes Social Security -- he's blocked and blocked and blocked, and then in the end he and the leading Republican Congressman?/Senator? sit down and hammer it out by agreeing that Toby, or maybe both of them, won't get any public credit.

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Do you know my friend P.Z. Meyers?

No, but I've heard of a dude called PZ Myers.

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343: Come on, P and Z are his initials, aren't they?

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I thought it was spelled "Mheijers".

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Come on, P and Z are his initials, aren't they?

Yes, they are: but focus your attention elsewhere, LB. Say, on the number of letters in his surname.

I wouldn't have mentioned it except
a. Myers mentions it all the time and
b. Isn't this the typographical nitpicking blog?

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True, and fair enough on the "Myers" point.

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Oh and on the unusual vs. common name thing, my name was always unusual when I was growing up. In fact I think I only met another M/tchell once I got to highschool. My brother, on the other hand, is named M/chael and goes by M/ke.

He specifically wanted to give his kids common names because he thought that uncommon names tended to result in getting picked on or teased. This is true, at least when your name rhymes with b/tch.

I, on the other hand, prefer uncommon names because I think it made me feel unique, and you just get used to the teasing. And having the same name as four other boys in your class is lame, or at least confusing or inconvenient. Of course, maybe it's harder to have your kid brother teased about his name than it is to actually be the one teased?

But anyway it may be one of those things where you just learn to be happy with what you've got. A casual survey of friends with common or uncommon names seems to reveal a general preference for one or the other based on their own name's status as common or uncommon.

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I'm as common as it gets (not just in terms of name frequency), and I wanted mildly unusual but missed.

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A casual survey of friends with common or uncommon names seems to reveal a general preference for one or the other based on their own name's status as common or uncommon.

Yes, but they can't all be right.

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I mean, the "uncommon" v. "common" thing all depends on what kind of "uncommon" name you have. I have a pretty uncommon name, at least for the countries where I've lived (as I understand, it's a relatively normal, though not extremely common, name in Italy), and the teasing goes away, and you get used to the pronunciation problems, and then it's just cool. I get a lot of "wow, that's an awesome name," and that's pretty sweet.

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I'm sorry to harp on this, but this:

Do democrats ask that people never act on/display their religious beliefs in public? No. Do we ask that they not vote for laws that legislate morality? Yes.

just seems to miss the boat. The two questions overlap! Religious beliefs inform political positions. Now we're saying that the Democratic position is you may have your religion, but only in the parlor trick way, because if it's actually important to you and you let that influence your position, it's unacceptable. Wear your cross, but leave it out of the voting booth.

It's about as believable as Republicans arguing that they like gay people, they just wish they wouldn't be gay when they were voting.

Moreover, there's a whole lot of religious beliefs that fit quite nicely with the Democratic agenda. Not starting wars 'cause you're bored. Social justice! Family leave. Programs that seek to end abortion rather than criminalize it. If you don't think that some of those beliefs come out of religious beliefs, you got another think coming.

If I don't vote on laws that legislate morality, that pretty much leaves me with speed limits as political issues.

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I think it helps to me named for somebody, to know your name is an expression of love and reverence. I have one of the most common names of all, and never knew my namesake. But it matters to me that I had one, not merely a whim.

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be/i> named for somebody...

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LB--apparently, my brother-in-law is irrationally fixated on naming a girl your real name. My sister is almost hoping for a boy so that they don't have to fight about it; she likes the name but isn't very excited about it.

My older sisters have very common names; I got a fairly unusual one. I think we're all okay with what we got.

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be named for somebody...

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Do we ask that they not vote for laws that legislate morality? Yes.

"Legislate morality" is a bad way of putting it -- laws agains murder are moral, laws against fraud are moral, labor laws are moral. (That is, to the extent that I'm arguing against confusion, the source of that confusion isn't all malice -- some of it is the rhetoric we're using and we should work on that.) Rather than 'legislate morality', how about saying that we object to the passage of laws for which the only strong arguments are religious ones? There just isn't a non-religious argument for anti-sodomy laws that has any force, or for laws that interfere with the teaching of evolution. That's what's objectionable.

If you don't think that some of those beliefs come out of religious beliefs, you got another think coming.

Yay Cala! One more for our side in the "thin(k/g)" wars!

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355: How weird -- it's an inoffensive name, but it's so common that I can't picture anyone having strong feelings in its favor.

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"But he's nowhere near typical of Democrats, or of any demographic group, in his attitude toward religion."

I would agree that P.Z.'s militant atheism isn't typical of Democrats, but it's not highly unusual, either. I wouldn't try to pull a number out of my ass as to how many Democrats are such militant atheists, or at least hostile to evangelical Christianity regardless of whether it's tied to political conservatism, but I think "not highly unusual" is quite defensible.

And I'd agree that you, or me, for that matter, are not whom Obama was talking about. But I think you're wrong to think that you or me disproves the existence of a notable (as in being rather loud, if not huge) minority amongst Democrats.

"Howzabout the episode where Toby fixes Social Security -- he's blocked and blocked and blocked, and then in the end he and the leading Republican Congressman?/Senator? sit down and hammer it out by agreeing that Toby, or maybe both of them, won't get any public credit."

I already gave a relevant link, so I'll just point to that for starters; that was nine examples, so you'll need to give three more to match and four to get ahead.

But it's a silly game; it will just wear you out finding the exceptions -- which of course exist -- while I come back with twice as many, proving over and over that examples of non-partisanship in the show were exceptional and few. However, since I'm dead sure I'm correct, based on considerable familiarity with the show, I'm ready to play as necessary to demonstrate that you and Ezra and others are perpetuating a popular fallacy not supported by the facts. (I've observed the dynamic by which such popular fallacies about popular culture, particularly serial fiction, particular tv series, build up, many times; part of it is that people get an impression based on an exception, decided they don't like the fiction/show based on said exception, and cut back on sampling it, thus reducing the accuracy of their perceptions of the fiction/show, but continuing to note such exceptions far more vividly than the tropes normal to the fiction/show -- because people naturally pay far more attention to what bothers and annoys them, and it's far more memorable -- which makes them sample the fiction even less, which continues a positive feedback loop into an ever-deepeningly unreal view of the fiction/show).

Incidentally, for the record, my enthusiasm for WW lessened distinctly when Sorkin was fired, and in particular when John Wells started leaning the show in later seasons in a far more melodrama and soap-opera-ish, and we wound up with characters being blown up and hospitalized and killed, and alarms about crashing asteroids, and trapped space shuttles, and similarly gimmicky events, and far less smart dialogue about policy.

But I think the last season went much more back towards the original direction of the show, and I'm really sorry we didn't get to see how President Santos' term worked out, or preferably, how President Vinick's liberal Republican President would have done things differently (making for a different sort of idealistic fantasy).

And I repeat that without doubt the show was idealistic fantasy: but that's 90% in portraying the credited characters as noble and brilliant, not in not portraying their enemies as, some 90% of the time (a number I am pulling out of my ass, I admit; it's just a rough approximation), pond scum. The fact of the former doesn't change the latter, and that's where the confusion clearly lies.

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be named for somebody...

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be named for somebody...

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be named for somebody...

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Yes, but they can't all be right.

Huh? I don't get it.

But it matters to me that I had one, not merely a whim.

I got mine because my mom liked alliteration (both with my last name and with my older brother's first name), and I guess Matthew didn't make the cut or something. So basically a whim, but that doesn't matter to me at all, and I like my name.

Similarly, the fact that my middle name is a derivative of my father's doesn't really matter to me, although I have the profoundest love and admiration and respect for both my parents.

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"In fact I think I only met another M/tchell once I got to highschool."

I've never met one, or seen one before, myself.

I've known a number of guys named "Mitch" or "Mitchell," though.

"Do democrats ask that people never act on/display their religious beliefs in public? No. Do we ask that they not vote for laws that legislate morality? Yes."

I'm assuming "Democrats," not "democrats."

But, again, the abolitionist movement, and to a large degree the civil rights movement. Similarly, I'm unclear we wish to campaign against religiously-motivated conservationists, religiously-motivated anti-death-penalty activists, religiously-motivated anti-genocide activists, religiously-motivated anti-poverty activists, and so on.

Arguing that religious motivations are politically invalid is arguing that religious motivations are inherently bad, and that's making Obama's case for him.

Better to, I think, argue against policies we think are bad, than to argue against religious motives. To put it mildly.

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When the ex was pregnant with Keegan, we got a big book of names to help select his. The entry for Russell (I go by Russ, and was a Rusty as a kid), after explaining the etymology, added that it was very popular in the 60s, possibly in reference to Bertrand Russell, but "like many things from that era, has now fallen out of fashion." Story of my life.

I only met one or two others with the name as a kid, though in three of my last five jobs, my manager was also named Russ, which is just awfully strange.

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355/358: In fact, it is my favorite girls' name, ever. So there.

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my mom liked alliteration, and I guess Matthew didn't make the cut or something.

Shoulda gone with Milo.

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my mom liked alliteration, and I guess Matthew didn't make the cut or something.?

Shoulda gone with Milo.

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But it's a silly game; it will just wear you out finding the exceptions -- which of course exist -- while I come back with twice as many, proving over and over that examples of non-partisanship in the show were exceptional and few.

Who said non-partisanship? There was certainly a consistent theme that on the policy disagreements 'we' were right and 'they' were wrong, and that victories for the Bartlet administration were victories for all that is good and true and noble in the universe. Absolutely.

But there was also a consistent theme that, when push came to shove, and bad people were engaged in empty powergrabbing, that decent serious grownups would stop them and bring the conflict back to the policy level where it belonged. The show I mentioned, the one where they let Leo off the hook for being a drunk, the way the Republican veep acts when Bartlet steps down -- I don't have the detailed memory of the show to come up with more, but none of those struck me as exceptions while I was watching it.

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364, see 357.

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Yes, but they can't all be right.

Huh? I don't get it.

I was pretending to argue that either unusual names or common ones have to be objectively better, regardless of the fact that their owners will tend to prefer the category they fall into.

Milo was the alternate PK boy's name. I still totally love it, but probably can't use it b/c it sounds too similar to the name he has, and people will think we're doing some kind of cutesy I-wish-they-were-twins thing.

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it sounds too similar to the name he has

I can't believe you named your kid Limo.

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No, Ovaltine.

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A friend of mine named his boy Milo and I'm pretty sure it was a conscious Catch-22 reference. Which is a little odd but yes, it is a very pretty name.

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352: you may have your religion, but only in the parlor trick way, because if it's actually important to you and you let that influence your position, it's unacceptable. Wear your cross, but leave it out of the voting booth.

Stephen Carter makes this point in his book "The Culture of Disbelief", that religion can't be seen as a hobby to be set aside when inconvenient. This isn't really the issue with church/state concerns, though. Politicians are free to use whatever methods they want to come to decisions, so long as what they're deciding isn't religious in nature.

I read the establishment clause as meaning essentially "no proselytizing". So, coerced prayer (or prayer-like activities) or official governmental expressions of piety are no-go. Banning abortion? Fine, at least from an establishment perspective, because abortion in and of itself doesn't have anything to do with religion.

Basically, everything the government does needs to be secular, but this doesn't preclude them from using religious reasoning to come to a decision on a secular matter.

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I've got it! I'll claim to have identified and diagnosed Serial Drama Aversion Disorder, and that it's ruining my life by cutting me off from all meaningful human contact.

Then I can write a chatty, tendentious book about it with really short chapters and lots of white space, full of un-footnoted anecdotes involving pseudonymous friends — not like our pseudonyms, I mean like "Jim" and "Kevin" and "Nancy" — and go on the road selling it.

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376--Hey, I have that too! You can call me "Susie" in your book.

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Or Betty. And Betty, when you call him, you can call him Al.

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However, since I'm dead sure I'm correct, based on considerable familiarity with the show, I'm ready to play as necessary to demonstrate that you and Ezra and others are perpetuating a popular fallacy not supported by the facts.

I think it's incorrect to assume that everyone who disagrees with you just didn't watch the show carefully enough. We're not talking about obscure trivia here from the late 1960s.

Especially since Ezra wasn't arguing that the WW praised non-partisanship, but that it deluded Democrats into thinking that at the end of the day, after the bitter partisan struggles, everyone had the country's best interests at heart. I think Ezra's wrong about the delusion, but I don't think he's wrong on the general shape of the show.

It's not just that the bad guys aren't exceptions. It's that when the good guys cleverly defeat them through superior verbal power, they stay defeated. The Dr. Laura lookalike sits down after being called out and that's that. When Bartlet tells the religious right to fuck off, off they fuck. And he doesn't have to go back a couple weeks later to secure their vote. When they need to put two people on the Supreme Court and they tap Ginsburg and Scalia, everyone plays fair.

There are bad guys, but they're just misguided and can be vanquished by walking quickly in the hallway.

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Another thing my sister told me was that one of her's son's play-friends was a GIRL NAMED PALMER.

That is so, so wrong.

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Ok. Name two episodes each from each season that demonstrate this. It's simply factually wrong. In point of fact, the Republicans were overwhelming presented as having horrible intentions, and acting in bad faith.

I think I could do this, and might give it a try this weekend, for every season but S7, which doesn't I think focus enough on the current administration trying to pass or oppose legislation for this to be possible. Obviosuly, 7 and parts of 6 are chock full of instances of Vinick acting in good faith, but those really aren't relevant.

Just to make sure we're on the same page, I consider e.g. the episode in which Josh has a long conversation with a gay Republican congressman, before telling Bartlet to pocket veto their world's analogue of DOMA, to be an instance of the Republican's acting in good faith. Every Republican mentioned in the episode either sincerely believes in federalism principles and thinks the bill protects them or sincerely hates gay people and therefore doesn't want them married. That fits good faith, but not good intentions + good faith.

Also, if I were to do the name 2 per season project, it wouldn't be because I think those instances out-number the instances of Republicans being portrayed badly, just to prove they exist.

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Now we're saying that the Democratic position is you may have your religion, but only in the parlor trick way, because if it's actually important to you and you let that influence your position, it's unacceptable.

I know what you're reaching for, but I don't think you're framing the issue quite as I would. I'm gonna go originalis' on you, here:

The basis for the Constitution's position on religion is essentially the Madisonian one---that religion is a matter of opinion beyond the cognizance of the state, which may not legislate with respect to it. This position takes textual form in the first amendment, of course, but also in the actual body of the Constitution, in Article VI: "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States".

This doesn't mean that you can't carry your religious beliefs with you into the political arena. Inasmuch as you want to legislate for public order, you are licensed to do so on the basis of religious conviction; e.g., the revision of Virginia's laws of which Madison's and Jefferson's Bill of Religious Freedom was part also included a law punishing breakers of the Sabbath.

Religion can be the basis of your anti-abortionism, your opposition to capital punishment, your pacifism. "Religion" here is a substitute for "morality".

The Constitution provides only a few defenses against a misuse of legislative morality. Some are textual, as in certain elements of the Bill of Rights, and some can be interpreted out of the Bill of Rights---as in your right to privacy.

But the most important are probably mechanical---i.e., the Constitution's various devices to prevent the emergence of a majority faction. When pressed to list the causes of faction, Madison's number one was "zeal for different opinions concerning religion". And Madison also said, you couldn't expect to prevent the emergence of faction if you wanted to preserve liberty.

Your problem today---all right, our problem today---is that the historic fissures within Christianity are vanishing, partly for extrinsic reasons, but partly because political leaders are busy suppressing them. Once people identify as "Christian" or even "Judeo-Christian" or "Judeo-Christian-Muslim" or "religious", you got your majority faction.

So. The Democratic position, inasmuch as we can hope for the Democrats to have a position and for it to be a good one, should be more sectarianism, please! I.e., to emphasize that what's essential here is respect for individual conscience, and that individual conscience leads us to many different denominations (or none) and that we will, so far as law goes, be sure to respect and tolerate them all (but our respect and toleration will end at the tips of our own noses).

Sorry for lecturing.

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On the subject of sectarianism, and a vivid Christianity that speaks out against current fundamentalists and their idolatrous "awesome god," don't miss Marilynne Robinson, author of Housekeeping and Gilead, writing fully in the current American Scholar but excerpted in the current Harper's and here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/sitbv3/reader/102-6636991-2571310?%5Fencoding=UTF8&p=S00D&asin=0807077216

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Five of these nine examples are of liberals expressing liberal policy positions without saying anything about their opposition. Two more say bad things about one or two individual Republicans without suggesting that all Republicans are like that, or really even most. Those last two include Al Caldwell, the "good" evangelical, who also appears to be the most popular. And Bartlet dressing down their Dr. Laura, and mocking the view that because a verse of the Bible says that homosexuality is an abomination, it directly follows that it is and should be treated and such, and mocking her character for holding that view.

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"Who said non-partisanship?"

Alternatively, that the Republicans were largely willing to compromise, and basically decent.

Or that, as you put it, that "in the universe of the show, the other side never was arguing in bad faith."

Or even that the other side was arguing in good faith the majority of the time. Or even that the other (Republican) side was arguing in good faith 40% or 35%, or 30%, of the time.

That's what I'm saying is flat, numerically, measurably, factually, wrong.

375: "I read the establishment clause as meaning essentially 'no proselytizing'. "

I find it important to always state "endorsed by government," or some such variant, because the demagogues on this always lie either directly or by implication that somehow people who respect our Constitutional government (or who are Democrats) simply are hostile to religion (back to the starting point) or are seeking to expunge religion from the "public" sphere, rather than to keep it out of the hands of government.

376: "Then I can write a chatty, tendentious book about it with really short chapters and lots of white space, full of un-footnoted anecdotes involving pseudonymous friends — not like our pseudonyms, I mean like "Jim" and "Kevin" and "Nancy" — and go on the road selling it."

It could work. I bet some talk shows would book you if you speak well. Though being a thin, young, blonde, would help a lot.

"It's that when the good guys cleverly defeat them through superior verbal power, they stay defeated. The Dr. Laura lookalike sits down after being called out and that's that. When Bartlet tells the religious right to fuck off, off they fuck."

Sometimes, for that episode; that's simply the nature of traditional episodic tv; of course, sometimes, fairly often, actually, the good guys lost, or didn't win more than a rhetorical battle. The Republicans stayed in the majority in Congress, after all, for all of the remaining Bartlett term.

"There are bad guys, but they're just misguided and can be vanquished by walking quickly in the hallway."

No, that's just wrong.

"Also, if I were to do the name 2 per season project, it wouldn't be because I think those instances out-number the instances of Republicans being portrayed badly, just to prove they exist."

But that wouldn't prove anything; I'd just come back, as I said, with double the number that prove the opposite.

I'm claiming that I can find, minimum, two examples of Republicans on WW acting in bad faith for every example of them, en masse, acting in good faith. (I could make a stronger case, but I'll settle for that as proving the initial contrary thesis, as stated by Ezra, incorrect.)

"...the historic fissures within Christianity are vanishing, partly for extrinsic reasons, but partly because political leaders are busy suppressing them."

I'm fairly skeptical of this claim. I see leaders of particular sectarian, generally somewhat fundamentalist, segments of Christianity attempting to ignore and deny the legitimacy of other, more liberal, sects, but that's quite different.

"Once people identify as [...] "Judeo-Christian" or "Judeo-Christian-Muslim" or "religious", you got your majority faction."

Yeah, but I don't buy that many people actually do that. I'm also biased by believing, like many Jews, that "Judeo-Christian" is meaningless contradictory hogwash, a con job, a false claim to a belief system that doesn't exist (save perhaps for a tiny handful of oddball outliers).

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Digressing, I'll let the philosophy pros express themselves on whether this works as philosophy humor, or not.

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I'm fairly skeptical of this claim.

You can be skeptical all you like, and you can do it fairly or unfairly. But there are movements like this and data findings like this.

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Me: Also, if I were to do the name 2 per season project, it wouldn't be because I think those instances out-number the instances of Republicans being portrayed badly, just to prove they exist.</Me>

Gary Farber: But that wouldn't prove anything; I'd just come back, as I said, with double the number that prove the opposite.</Gary>

When I offered to do that project, it wasn't because of my strong support for the correctness of Ezra's article. Such support (by me) is marginal at best and only shallowly-felt. I was offering to do it because you appeared to have laid it down as a free-standing challenge.

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"But there are [...] data findings like this."

I'm sorry, but I'm not following: how do all sorts of findings that show great disagreements on tenets of faith demonstrate that "fissures are vanishing"?

"The poll provides evidence of a "very considerable diversity within the Christian community regarding core beliefs," according to the Barna Research Group of Ventura, Ca. But what alarms Hinlicky is the "erosion of the church's foundations this study seems to expose."

For example, a mere 21 percent of America's Lutherans, 20 percent of the Episcopalians, 18 percent of Methodists, and 22 percent of Presbyterians affirm the basic Protestant tenet that by good works man does not earn his way to heaven.

Yet the doctrine that man is justified before God alone by grace through faith in Christ's saving work (and that good works are simply the fruits of faith) is the very foundation of the 16th century Reformation. It is a theological principle the Vatican, too, has accepted in its 1999 accord with the Lutheran World Federation.

But the Barna poll discloses that only 9 percent of the Catholics in the United States agree with this theological concept that Martin Luther had culled from chapter 3 of the apostle Paul's epistle to the Romans.

"If this figure holds up it signals a complete breakdown of catechetical practice," said Hinlicky who teaches religion and philosophy at Roanoke College in Salem, Va.

[...]

Only 33 percent of the American Catholics, Lutherans and Methodists, and 28 percent of the Episcopalians agreed with the statement that Christ was without sin."

This is a demonstration of differences disappearing?

The next story there is headlined "Religious Beliefs Vary Widely By Denomination"

This demonstates that "fissures are vanishing"?

As I said, I'm afraid I don't follow.

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Are Catholics and Protestants still fighting with each other (as opposed to with advocates of church and state separation) about religious content in the public schools? Would voting for Al Smith still be caricatured as voting for the Pope?

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"I was offering to do it because you appeared to have laid it down as a free-standing challenge."

I hope I've clarified.

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What eb said, Gary. There is a long-running trend of diminishing theological differences between Protestant sects and between various flavors of Christianity attested to in the scholarship and evident in political discourse. You can read Ann Douglas or your Noah Feldman. You can think about the position taken by Dwight Eisenhower: "Our government makes no sense, unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith--and I don't care what it is."

Or not. But I think your skepticism is a wee small minority position. I concede this doesn't in itself make it wrong, but eventually we have to put the weight of an awful lot of informed opinion in the balance against Gary Farber and see which way the scales tip.

Anyway, I don't want to have an argument about the rightness of Gary Farber. I did want to have an argument about the place of religion in politics. But nobody except Gary is playing anymore.

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There should have been a "your" before Ann Douglas.

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I'd be arguing, but I'm having trouble mustering any disagreement with your 382. Say something wrong and I'll argue.

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Our law school parody show this year was devoted, in large part, to making fun of Noah Feldman's ego (both scholarly and aesthetically). Having only read his Sunday Times articles, without taking a class of his or reading his books, I don't have much of an opinion on him. The articles tend to be fine, I guess.

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Say something wrong and I'll argue.

You should post more about who's hot / pretty.

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Me at 18? There's a picture in the Drafty thread.

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"I did want to have an argument about the place of religion in politics."

Either right or left or center field, but it probably shouldn't pitch?

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Sorry, slolernr, I had things to do.

Gary's half wrong on this. The religious differences -- the doctrinal differences -- are still there. If you listened to Pat Robertson's radio show, you'd still hear him arguing that because of the doctrine of justification and works, Catholics are not really saved, not really Christians, and damned like everyone else.

The politicaldifferences, however, and in the context of a political discussion, are the salient ones, are eroding. Opposition to birth control used to be more a Catholic thing; Protestants are getting all over it now. Opposition to abortion unites the groups now, and the right to life crowds have merged. The social justice part of both groups seems to have disappeared. More importantly, Catholics used to vote Democratic reliably. They don't now, and they weren't even tempted by a Catholic candidate last election. The more a person identifies with being Catholic, the more likely they are to vote Republican.

Check voting patterns. This stuff was all over the last election.

Judeo-Christian is a nonsense term that should be translated as 'Protestants who support Israel!11!!!'

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I thought the term Judeo-Christian got started with Western Civ.

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Slol: I just picked up Ann Douglas' mentor, Perry Miller's study of Jonathan Edwards. Have you got that book?

Robinson, whom I linked to above, is good on the protestant tradition's possibilities for this moment. And don't forget Christopher Lasch's best book, The True and Only Heaven

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What do Jews & Christians agree on, seriously? Most of Western Civ the two groups haven't gotten along when not actively committing genocide.

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Have you got that book?

I did have, but I've moved around a lot and shed a lot of things that didn't bear directly on my own work. That was one.

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I meant the term came about when Western Civ courses started to be taught widely ("Judeo-Christian heritage"). I'm not claiming it's accurate. But now I'm thinking Judeo-Christian used to mean not godless communist.

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Feldman, with whose prescriptions I disagree, but whose history is mostly ok afaict, has a section called "The Invention of the Judeo-Christian," in Divided by God. Yes, it's a made-up concept, but one promoted for specific, political reasons in the 1950s---as Feldman says, "To speak of a Judeo-Christian heritage was to engage in a creative misreading of the American past with the aim of retrospectively including Jews in the American national project." He talks about Will Herberg.

The word occurs a long way back in reference to the common elements of Judaism and Christianity---you know, what the goyim call the Old Testament. But I think Feldman's more or less right that in the Amurrican political sense it gained currency after the Holocaust and during the Cold War. That is, in the Eisenhower sense I mentioned above.

If what you're saying is, the idea of "Judeo-Christian" makes no theological sense then I basically agree with you. But if what you're saying is, Americans do not give any credence to the idea of "Judeo-Christian values" as opposed to those of e.g. "godless Communism" then I disagree with you.

Where's Kotsko when we need him? And anyway, this has little or nothing to do with American Constitutionalism.

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also in the actual body of the Constitution, in Article VI: "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States".

This doesn't mean that you can't carry your religious beliefs with you into the political arena.

That reminds me, Robert Novak is an idiot, or, alternatively, a liar.

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Robert Novak is an idiot, or, alternatively, a liar.

Why exercise such exclusivity?

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Since the Renaissance the practice and beliefs of actually existing Judaism, not merdly the Old Testament, have had an appeal for certain Christian thinkers. Mendlesohn created a sensation in the 18th century, embodying this idea.

I agree that Herberg's influence and formulation is the immediate source. But it's not a new way of thinking, nor particularly heretical either.

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"Judeo-Christian is a nonsense term that should be translated as 'Protestants who support Israel!11!!!'"

Or "Christians who don't want to think of themselves as bigots." Obviously there's nothing wrong with that as a motive, but it colors over the fact that on a vast number of crucial theological issues, there simply can't be bridges, at least from the Jewish side. And a "Judeo-Christianity" that is supported essentially only by Christians, well, that should speak for itself. And that's pretty much the reality, save for a tiny smattering of Jewish bridge-builders or political manipulators.

For instance, Jews aren't, for the most part, going to accept the claim that people who believe in a Holy Trinity, or a Son of God, are monotheists. Stuff that basic.

405: "To speak of a Judeo-Christian heritage was to engage in a creative misreading of the American past with the aim of retrospectively including Jews in the American national project."

I agree. Again, that can be a fine motive, but it's also historically of limited accuracy, as well. But the fact that while many Christians may accept Jews as theological relatives, few Jews reciprocate, pretty much kills the notion, I, and many, think. (Reminder for those unaware: I'm a complete secular, atheistic, Jew, and always have been.)

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I'm not saying it's new; remember, Douglas dates it back to the early c19 at least.

The point of mentioning it in the first place was this: the more sects, the more factions among religious people. So you can get, as eb suggested, arguments between Catholics and Protestants over what gets taught in the public schools, or wars on the Mormons. As sectarian intensity diminishes, the previously factious religious merge into a single faction of the religious. As that happens, you get a majority faction around certain policies: wars justified in religious terms, anti-abortion laws, etc.

A majority faction is big trouble. Madison hoped that by expanding the republic and incorporating so many different kinds of people, you'd avoid having one emerge.

The Constitution is equipped to deal with majority factions, but its safeguards can be thwarted if the majority faction can gain control of all three branches.

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What do Jews & Christians agree on, seriously?

You and I seem to agree on a lot of stuff.

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Yet another (not uncommon) contemporary view of evangelical Christians and politics.

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Actually, I think the "Judeo-Christian" thing means that the holy texts of Jews and Christians overlap quite a bit. And that we don't include Muslims because they're all terrorists.

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"Actually, I think the "Judeo-Christian" thing means that the holy texts of Jews and Christians overlap quite a bit."

Again, only for Christians. Jews do not, in fact, see overlap with Christian texts. Christians, meanwhile, regard the dictates of the Old Testament as largely irrelevant and stuff that they've been released from. (Save for tiny sects that hold to the 613 commandments; if most Christian dogma followed those, there might be something to "Judeo-Christians.")

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The holy texts overlap, but the interpretations of them are really quite different in important ways.

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415: Well, yeah.

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Christians, meanwhile, regard the dictates of the Old Testament as largely irrelevant and stuff that they've been released from.

Except, of course, for those that support contemporary social practices that are under threat.

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415: Well, yeah.

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Goddamn "in order to curb malicious commenters" page.

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Goddamn "in order to curb malicious commenters" page.

Seriously. It should say, "in order to curb commenters whose congeniality is lacking."

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Here is a conventional Jewish view of "Judeo-Christian."

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"Except, of course, for those that support contemporary social practices that are under threat."

Indeed, the contemporary conservative fundamentalist Christian passionate campaign against wearing combined fibers, wool and linen together" (Deuteronomy 22:11) has always been quite impressive. Mustn't allow abominations, after all.

And what good Christian doesn't make a battlement for their roof?

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But you knew what I meant, of course.

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"But you knew what I meant, of course."

That I shouldn't use smilies?

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Something like that.

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Judeo Christian is, by and large, a political term. It's not a desriptive term of religious beliefs, ie, whether modern-day Christians keep all the commandments of the OT or whether Jews believe in the Holy Trinity. It's meant to describe a tradition of culture and beliefs that formed western cultural and political thought. As such it's correct with some abstraction. In the way that humans evolved from fish, say, instead of human-ape ancestors.

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Pope John Paul had a major impact on the ecumenical movement between the Catholics and Protestants. He spoke of a personal God in the way that Protestants love so much. The spiritualist movement in the Protestant churches, the prominence of the Holy Spirit, has also overtaken a much of the American Catholic Church and has become an ecumenical driver. It's that movement that has pulled both Protestants and Catholics away from tradition, especially w.r.t. social and educational issues.

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