Re: Oath

1

Damn. I always wondered what happened to Tracy Flick. I hope Mr. McAllister saw this exchange and smiled just a little.


Posted by: NCProsecutor | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 7:36 AM
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Isn't it stunning? She accepts the correction as if it were a meaningless verbal difference, rather than anything substantive.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 8:11 AM
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KEHLIGER SCHREI DER MAENNLICHEN AUFREGUNG!


Posted by: OPINIONATED GRANDMA | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 8:22 AM
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For people living in hierarchical organizations, the meaning of a sentence depends entirely on the speaker. Listening only to your superiors and ignoring others is a perfectly viable strategy, with possible outcomes described by Kafka or Zamyatin. The apathy of the electorate (may it be temporary, Insh'allah) has made the press less relevant, so she cares less about the camera. Is it possible that the outrage is not at the revealed belief, but at the casualness of the public indiscretion? It is a very nice clip to watch.
It never ceases to amaze me how many of the wild fantasies as well as bureaucratic styles of Soviet social planners have become capitalist reality. When physical elimination of poiltical enemies becomes possible, we in the US will be in real trouble.


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 8:29 AM
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re: 4

Ooh, Zamyatin. I've been reading We at the moment. It's surprisingly prescient.

Even in the technology. The bit where he talks about Fraunhofer encoding and automatic music players [in 1920!] is quite striking.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 8:35 AM
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What a horrible person. Why do people think it's more admirable to be loyal to a person (in other words, to be part of a cult of personality) than to be loyal to a principle?


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 8:41 AM
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A lot of people have a lot of admiration for the Mafia code of omerta.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 8:46 AM
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Meh, I have some admiration for omerta, and I'd probably be loyal to a friend over, say, my oath in a courtroom, but in a job like this, which one willingly seeks out, and an oath which one willingly takes, one ought to remember where one's real obligations are.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 8:49 AM
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The idea that people would feel more loyalty to an individual than a principle seems entirely reasonable. It applies at all levels. Soldiers fighting for their mates, sports-people playing for their team, members of a political party ultimately being loyal to the group of which they are a member than the principles which they espouse, and so on.

However, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't expect our public officials to behave that way.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 8:50 AM
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Should expect, etc.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 8:51 AM
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Also, what ogged said in 8.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 8:51 AM
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Another roughly coeval writer is Yuri Olesha, who had a lot to say about the social effects of the loss of a family kitchen in the apartment blocks built by the Soviets. Read him in a mcdonalds for special sauce piquancy.
Zoshchenko is good for petty apparatchiks-- actually, so is Havel, come to think of it. H gets the nuances of "what was I supposed to do?" from the midlevel nonbelieving apparatchik down, and the perniciousness of inevitably sympathising with such persons. Hard to tell, for me at least, what is beneath the surface with the "sympathetic" face in the clip. Does she believe, or is she going along to get along?


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 8:53 AM
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re: 12

re: the social effects of the loss of a family kitchen in the apartment blocks built by the Soviets

That type of living isn't completely gone, either. Up until about 2 years ago my sister-in-law still lived in a semi-communal apartment in the Soviet style [in Prague]. No shared kitchen but still quite weird when house-sitting to know that the people in the other half of the flat were wandering in and out at night to use 'our' bathroom, etc.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 8:58 AM
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Where in Prague? I'm from Dejvice originally.


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 8:59 AM
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I like the fact that she looks like she's going to cry. My liking is tempered a little bit by the spectacle of an old man scolding a younger, but clearly adult woman into crying, but my worry about that is then tempered by the thought that this crying bullshit is probably at least partly an effect of her playing the girly card and the suspicion that she'd deserve the scolding even if she were a man.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:01 AM
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re: 14

On Pštrossova.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:05 AM
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Oh, that was awesome. When comes the time when the entire executive branch and all their shadowy subsidiaries gets a good eighth-grade review on what the American government is supposed to be doing?


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:06 AM
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I guess that Godwin fucker would have a problem with my recollecting that Hitler replaced the standary loyalty oath with a personal oath to the Fuehrer.


Posted by: Anderson | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:07 AM
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re: 14

Over about 3 years (while my wife was still in Prague) I spent time all over the city. Flats in Rajska Zahrada, Letnany, Holešovice, one up near Šárka, etc. Never Dejvice, though.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:10 AM
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That's not the same, Anderson. That oath would have been just as good for any Fuehrer. This is Bush-specific.

(note: this comment is somewhat serious)


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:10 AM
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Omerta-type loyalty has immediate and direct appeal and is very "natural", but so do lots of ugly things, such as revenge killing, possessive jealousy, nepotism, etc. A lot of the political progress of the last few centuries comes from minimizing and squashing these kinds of natural, personalized behavior.

Since the formal structure has been somewhat discredited over the last few decades, institutional cynicism is pretty dominant, and it's been replaced by personal loyalties and religious fanaticism.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:13 AM
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21 is right, too.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:15 AM
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15: I think that the Bush team deliberately uses women and non-white persons as their point people, just to get a little sliver of that kind of hesitation from potential attackers. Right now it's pretty clear that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rove (and their immediate aides) are the whole administration, but Gonzales, Rice, Powell, et al are often the front people.

Devout young Christian ladies are good tools because they are not only true believers, but also to naive to realize that they're being used by a criminal organization. On the other hand, they're not the kind of people who easily get used to the idea that a year or two in jail might be required by their job.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:19 AM
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I hereby retract my 1. Tracy Flick would never swear an oath of loyalty to anyone but herself.


Posted by: NCProsecutor | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:21 AM
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20: My clumsy effort at syntactical style has misled you; the oath was to "Adolf Hitler." Of course, it would have applied equally to anyone else named Adolf Hitler.

The public-servant version (god, Wikipedia amazes me sometimes):

"I swear: I will be faithful and obedient to Adolf Hitler, Führer of the German Reich and people, to observe the law, and to conscientiously fulfil my official duties, so help me God."

N.b. that "observe the law" was not contradictory, since Hitler's will (express or inferred) was the highest law.


Posted by: Anderson | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:25 AM
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24 Yes she would! She was highly idealistic, along with her ambition. She fervently believed in the letter of the law.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:26 AM
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God, I keep watching it over and over. Her little "Mm hm" at the end is making me crazy. It's like she has NO IDEA that the words he's saying are different from the words she said.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:30 AM
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Devout young Christian ladies are good tools because they are not only true believers, but also to naive to realize that they're being used by a criminal organization.

Oh please. These people aren't tricked into anything. They're true believers. We're not going to rip the cover off the Administration and see them say, "Oh, I was so wrong. Let me vote like an American this time." They got caught and it looks bad for now. So now's the time for them to rebuild for the next effort.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:30 AM
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The pearls are a nice touch.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:35 AM
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Awesome indeed.

8+9 have me sort of intrigued and uncomfortable feeling, though. We want the people in our government to put these abstract concepts ahead of their personal lives and desires, but we have trouble doing it ourselves? Where are all these government people going to come from, then?


Posted by: oztk | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:35 AM
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Awesome indeed.

8+9 have me sort of intrigued and uncomfortable feeling, though. We want the people in our government to put these abstract concepts ahead of their personal lives and desires, but we have trouble doing it ourselves? Where are all these government people going to come from, then?


Posted by: oztk | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:35 AM
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It's like she has NO IDEA that the words he's saying are different from the words she said.

Me, I hear here thinking "yeah, Constitution, whatever," like Leahy had said she actually swore an oath to Mom and apple pie. The idea that it's more than just a word does not occur to her.


Posted by: Anderson | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:35 AM
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Clearly, I am meant to remain a lurker.


Posted by: oztk | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:36 AM
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I think 23 is correct. Tricked or no, I think that devout Christian ladies of a certain type are way more likely to have daddy complexes of the "he for god, she for god in him" type. Of *course* her oath wasn't to the Constitution *directly*--that would require her to be a fully autonomous human being. Which is clearly impossible, as she has a vagina.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:40 AM
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This is essentially my mother's theory about Catholic schools (which she attended) particularly -- training grounds for enthusiatically, devoutly, obedient women. She tends to bring up Rose Marie Woods, the secretary who 'accidentally' erased the 18 minutes of the Nixon tapes.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:42 AM
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"This is essentially my mother's theory about Catholic schools (which she attended) particularly -- training grounds for enthusiatically, devoutly, obedient women."

Is it any wonder that Catholic school girls are so often a porn device?

Someone should link to the convent scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.


Posted by: will | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:46 AM
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Huh. Watching the clip, I didn't get a sense of "yeah, Constitution, whatever" from her. As much as I'm cheering Leahy on, I find myself having sympathy for her, the same sympathy I'd have for anyone getting a (well-deserved) public ass-kicking. She looks scared.


Posted by: mrh | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:46 AM
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Bullshit. Libby fell on his sword, and, AFAIK, he was never a Christian lady. Taylor was, apparently, a big muckety muck in the College Republicans. She's been training in evil since she was eighteen. One assumes she's been committed to evil before that.

The best explanation of her offending behavior is that she's an ambitious Republican. Religion or gender--why are they necessary here?


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:48 AM
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I believe that the Christian ladies do not actually understand that they are participating in illegal activities, much less that they are subject to jail time.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:48 AM
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39: One obvious way to clarify that for them.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:49 AM
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My point, Tim, is that the Christian ladies might not fall on their swords the way Libby did (or Liddy before him). Goodling testified after getting immunity and Taylor tried to split the difference.

Either one of them still could go to jail. They just aren't good criminals when the chips are down.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:52 AM
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41: Let's see what we get from them before we decide whether or not they're good criminals.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 9:54 AM
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I'm not convinced that this is a stand-by-your-man situation. Any woman who is involved in government at this level has to be pretty damn ambitious. Besides, I think all the administration's cronies are trying to play the stand-by-your-man card, though it seems to me they're all very cynical about government and think, well, at least this guy will have my back if I have to take a fall.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 10:00 AM
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As much as I'm cheering Leahy on, I find myself having sympathy for her, the same sympathy I'd have for anyone getting a (well-deserved) public ass-kicking. She looks scared.

Bear in mind, Ms. Taylor was not just any ol' White House Aide, she was Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Political Affairs at the White House. If you can't take the heat . . .


Posted by: My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 10:02 AM
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4, 12: Zinoviev's The Yawning Heights comes to mind. The specifically Soviet absurdity and fathomless cynicism of his fictional society (Ibansk, or roughly, Fuckburg) seem less specifically Soviet these days than when the book came out.


Posted by: Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 10:04 AM
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AWB is right; this is no innocent girl. That said, it doesn't meant that she's not going to play the innocent girl, or that everyone in the administration isn't aware that looking like an innocent girl is an advantage. Dahlia Lithwick had a fantastic piece about this when Goodling was testifying.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 10:06 AM
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If you can't take the heat . . .

Oh, definitely, but from the other clips I've seen, she's clearly way out of her depth. I just watched the first minute of Whitehouse's questioning, and she does not seem prepared, confident, or particularly intelligent.


Posted by: mrh | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 10:08 AM
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38:

Tim gets it right in 38. She has spent a lot of time sharpening her evil skills.


Posted by: will | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 10:11 AM
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I'm shocked that Unfogged has still not posted about Minnesota's Bible-throwing state legislator and his furniture-assaulting wife:

Heidi Olson, who is 5-foot-10 and 200 pounds, said her husband, who is 5-foot-9 and 180 pounds, physically assaulted her three times before the November incident, once bruising her arms by repeatedly throwing two Bibles at her in a rage. The jury was shown pictures of her arm bruises.

Olson, a registered nurse, said she once got so mad at her husband that she used his filet knife to stab his favorite old dresser in their bedroom.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 10:12 AM
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http://www.startribune.com/587/story/1297676.html


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 10:13 AM
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John made a link!


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 10:13 AM
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She's not innocent in the sense of "good" or "nice" or "decent" or "kind". My point is that she does not realize that she might be a criminal susceptible to jail time.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 10:15 AM
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repeatedly throwing two Bibles at her in a rage

So awesome. Perfect, really.


Posted by: Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 10:19 AM
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she does not seem prepared, confident, or particularly intelligent.

Isn't this more playing of the "I'm a dumbass" card? Gonzales did the same thing, preferring to sound brain-damaged than to implicate himself or anyone else. It's a brilliant ruse, up to a point, because it asks the public, "Aren't you a little brain-damaged? Don't you forget stuff, too? Aren't we hard on our public officials, expecting them to remember things and know what government does?"

At what point did or does the public realize that we should have people who are far *smarter* than us working in government, when the lowliest office drone among us would be fired for being this stupid?


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 10:21 AM
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she's clearly way out of her depth. . . she does not seem prepared, confident, or particularly intelligent

Precisely. I mean, what kind of idiots would elevate a person like that to a position of such power and responsibility within our . . .

Oh. Those idiots. Never mind.


Posted by: My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 10:22 AM
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My point is that she does not realize that she might be a criminal susceptible to jail time.

And this distinguishes her from Scooter Libby how? Or, gawd, every member of the DC community that wrote in to support leniency for him?


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 10:25 AM
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Lackeys, flunkies, or tools. Smart enough to do the job, not smart enough to know what's involved.

Someone should send those ladies some women-in-prison movies with their faces photoshopped in.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 10:26 AM
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Yes, it does differentiate them from Scooter. He was old enough to remember that quite a few of the Nixon people did time.

Neither Monica nor Sara were good soldiers. They tried to protect themselves while protecting their bosses too. Libby didn't give an inch; he lied repeatedly.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 10:28 AM
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Yes, it does differentiate them from Scooter. He was old enough to remember that quite a few of the Nixon people did time.

Probably old enough--hell, probably involved in--Iran-Contra, too.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 10:29 AM
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The movie Saved! had a bit where two of the leads have the following exchange:

Hilary Faye: [throws a Bible at Mary] I am FILLED with Christ's love! You are just jealous of my success in the Lord.
Mary: [Mary holds up the Bible] This is not a weapon! You idiot.

Hilary Faye threw the Bible at Mary's turned back. It was funny.


Posted by: TJ | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 10:30 AM
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"Probably old enough--hell, probably involved in--Iran-Contra, too."

Even worse, Libby was involved in the Ritch pardon!!! scandal!


Posted by: will | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 10:32 AM
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"Rich," anti-semite.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 10:37 AM
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Nope, I think that Libby and all the rest of 'em don't think they're going to do jail time. Because, guess what! Libby didn't!

Suckers.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 10:56 AM
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Emerson, I don't think it's that these women are too dumb to know that they're engaging in criminal acts; I think it's that they believe so strongly in the rightness of what they're doing that they don't believe they can or should be prosecuted. After all, indictments are for criminals, and you can't be a criminal if you're doing the right thing, right?

31: Just because it may be difficult for many people to overcome one's own tendency towards personal loyalty over loyalty to principle doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. And it absolutely means we shouldn't have people in government who don't even consider that there's a principle side of the equation.

29: This is precisely why I despise strands of white pearls and will never wear them.


Posted by: Magpie | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 11:46 AM
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s/done/attempted/


Posted by: Magpie | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 11:47 AM
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Olson, a registered nurse, said she once got so mad at her husband that she used his filet knife to stab his favorite old dresser in their bedroom.

This somehow really got to me in its sadness and futility.


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 11:54 AM
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It's always the dresser that suffers most in these situations.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 12:50 PM
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OK, just rewatched. The amazing moment is at 0:30 from the end, when Leahy sharply tells her "No! You took an oath..." and she looks up in shock that her pro forma correction wasn't going to be adequate. Which does support the idea that the Original Sin of this entire movement is the idea that they are on the side of Righteousness, and are therefore always Right. She can't believe that she's getting scolded for something as meaningless as misunderstanding the entire premise of her job (not to mention the premise of the nation).

This is just as clear in Bush's bizarre, hectoring style of oratory - how dare people even think thoughts that are not the same as his? The gall!


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 12:56 PM
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It's not that they think they're on the side of righteousness, that's not quite the issue. It's the conflation of the executive presidency with the government as a whole, so that to serve the country is to serve the President. That is a path to dictatorship, as the founders clearly saw. The groundwork for this was laid from the beginning of the Cold War. It can be seen in the increasing number of references to the President as the nation's "Commander in Chief". How many times do you hear a civilian commentator saying that the President is "my Commander in Chief"? Which is completely false, and in fact comes close to calling him a dictator.

She is looking up in surprise because she is not in the habit of making any distinction between the Executive Branch and the Constitution's framework for government.


Posted by: marcus | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 1:21 PM
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29: This is precisely why I despise strands of white pearls and will never wear them.

What about black pearls? Black pearls are pretty hot.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 1:22 PM
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It's like she has NO IDEA that the words he's saying are different from the words she said.

Please forgive me if this has been said.

It seems to me that Leahy's articulating a basic principle of (not only) liberal government, to wit, service is to the office, not to the office-holder.

While this distinction is *very fucking basic* to many of us, it strikes me that it may well not be to any number of civil servants. It may seem like, you know, philosophizing. Mincing words.

Unfortunately, the context of the posted clip isn't clear to me; I'm not clear just who that woman is, what her political training might have been, and so on. Her apparent cluelessness about what Leahy's saying is either spin or, well, cluelessness. If the latter, I'd begin to ask, yeah, about personnel review, nepotism, and so on.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 1:23 PM
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FWIW, I think she's closer to the truth about govt. service in political offices than most people on this thread. The loyalty is mostly to the person, and has always been mostly to the person (or more likely, group). She just made the mistake of admitting it openly.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 1:35 PM
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This is precisely why I despise strands of white pearls and will never wear them.

Magpie, whatever will you clutch in moments of shocked opprobium without pearls?


Posted by: Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 1:37 PM
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Taylor: O hai. I takes oath srius.
Leahy: What U take oath 2?
Taylor: Preznit Bush duh.
Leahy: OH NOES U DON'T. ITZ 2 CONSTUSHUN RITE? U took nother oath?
Taylor: Um no whatevs.
Leahy: This pikcher of Bush. That pikcher of Constushun. U can C see diffrence?
Taylor: Where's mah bukkit?


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 1:41 PM
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A pearl necklace can be fun, however.


Posted by: Anderson | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 1:41 PM
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AWB creates the lolbush genre, shortly before her mysterious disappearance.


Posted by: Anderson | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 1:43 PM
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What's up with the complaint about the pearls? They're silly, of course, though I have some which I have never worn, but they're de rigeur (sp! fuck!) for political women, aren't they? All these political women dress terribly in the first place.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 1:45 PM
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(I'm actually writing furiously on a deadline for a thing due, like, for money, on Saturday. I'm officially not here.)


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 1:46 PM
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Guantana-beara,
Guajira Guantana-beara
Guantan-beaaarr-a
Guajira Guantana-bear-a


Posted by: DaveL | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 1:46 PM
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I'm ashamed to be saying this, but in the interesting of pedantry (xposted from Crooked Timber):

I'm obviously not going to ask Ms. Taylor for a review article of The Morality of Freedom or anything, but it's really not that hard to give her position a philosophically respectable formulation. She believes the constitution to lay down authoritative directives. But sometimes these directives are unclear. So she also believes federal courts have either legal authority to command obedience to directives even if contrary to her understanding of the constitutional norms [within limits, no doubt] or epistemic authority over the proper articulation of those norms [again within limits], or some combination of both. But, crucially, she does not believe this of the Senate. Or, if she does, she believes it to be trumped by the authority of the president. Now, it would be hard to sustain a claim of presidential legal authority to go against clear constitutional directives, even in a limited sense, as one might allow to courts, but it's not all that hard to imagine accepting Presidential epistemic authority in interpreting ambiguous norms, at least over certain 'political question' areas.

So, Taylor-prime says "my oath is to the constitution, but that constitution seem to confer an executive privilege that nullifies your legal right to my testimony in these matters. It's plausible enough that I feel I must defer to the president's epistemic/interpretive authority about his constitutional powers, until this matter comes before a federal court, whose judgment I will then accept without question." [And her lawyer has explicitly committed her to the latter part already.]

I think even this Taylor-prime would be wrong, but she would hardly be guilty of straightforwardly misunderstanding legal authority. Would any of us be articulate on a witness stand in front of Congress?

On the other, she's obviously pure evil, so, yay Leahy!


Posted by: X. Trapnel | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 1:47 PM
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(Yo soy un oso sincero...)


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 1:47 PM
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Would any of us be articulate on a witness stand in front of Congress?

About my job, and the purpose of doing it? Yes.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 1:49 PM
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(And of course that she talked about loyalty to the president in that way at all makes it pretty clear that she really is on the Illiberalism Express. So, yeah, evil.)


Posted by: X. Trapnel | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 1:49 PM
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71: She is someone who has no business being as clueless as she seems (or pretends?) to be.


Posted by: My Alter Ego | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 1:57 PM
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74:

i thought the genre was pretty tapped out, but that is a very funny revival of it. good work, awb!
(now back to what you're supposed to be doing).

incidentally, does anyone else feel deep cognitive dissonance with the lolcats genre, from the simple fact that cats are being portrayed as stupid and illiterate?

my anthropomorphizing caricature of cats has typically been that they would be hyper-articulate, droll, and acerbic. not only would they spell correctly, they would stare at you in contempt if you misused "who" and "whom".

there has been that image of cats, no? i'm not saying it's the only one, but it has been fairly well-distributed? cats as imperious, urbane, sophisticated and snobbish?

so the typical lolcat caption has always struck me as the sort of line i would attribute to a caricature dog--a bit thick, a bit dopey, motivated primarily by hunger, etc.

i guess what i'm saying is: were lolcats invented by a team of internet dogs, atypically clever ones, engaged in interspecies on-line defamation?


Posted by: kid bitzer | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 2:06 PM
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85: Wait -- are lolcats supposed to be stupid and illiterate? I thought they were speaking hackerese! You know, like:

I'M N UR CRIB, P00PIN N UR SHUZ!


Posted by: NCProsecutor | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 2:21 PM
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Hmm. Now that I read that, I guess that's not really something a hacker would say. I'm now hopelessly confused.


Posted by: NCProsecutor | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 2:23 PM
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86:
some of the misspellings are presumably l33t; some i had thought were meant to be reflections of illiteracy.

as to stupidity: e.g. the trope of claiming to be serious while looking foolish. i have always read this as a poor reflection on the intelligence of the cat so depicted (i.e., this cat claims to be very serious, but its own self-understanding is impaired in a discreditable way).

as to hunger and other simple motives: e.g. the request for a cheeseburger.

sure, any depiction of someone/something as stupid can be read as ironical ("the cat is claiming to be very serious, but *it knows* that it looks very silly, and is slyly poking fun at its own apparent lack of dignity!").

but, yeah, i at least read them as stupid and illiterate. even allowing for the l33t/ im style of spelling.


Posted by: kid bitzer | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 2:27 PM
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87:

in fairness to your reading, there have certainly been recorded instances of hackers pooping in their own and others' shoes.


Posted by: kid bitzer | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 2:27 PM
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There's also the fact that the canonical lolcat is a lolkitten, an age at which goofiness and poor spelling predominates over hauteur in most felines.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 2:33 PM
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90:
so is this how i should reconcile the genre of lolcats with what i take to be the more entrenched caricature of cats?

i.e., adult cats = hauteur
kittens = goofiness and illiteracy?

dunno--i still have trouble making it fit. but i would like to hear more about when kittens are properly tutored in orthography.


Posted by: kid bitzer | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 2:38 PM
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kid, everyone knows that mere orthography isn't the feline way. The great confidence of the adult feline comes from exhaustive study of the trivium.


Posted by: TJ | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 2:41 PM
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The hauter concept of cattitude demonstrates that the person involved is fooled by the hype. Cats act like that as a defense mechanism, but secretly they're not above flopping on their backs and squirming around so you'll rub their tummies.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 2:42 PM
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93:

sure, sure--but they accept personal services as a token of devotion, no? i mean, it's not that they're "not above" it, any more than louis quatorze was "not above" letting his attendants wipe his butt for him.

agreed, tj--logic, rhetoric, and dietetics.


Posted by: kid bitzer | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 2:45 PM
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Yeah, I think that's what makes lolcats funny, in as much as they are. They display the pretensions to hauteur as well as revealing the inner dumbitude. Cats fall off stuff, look dumb, etc., but then try to cover it up by saying o hai i is srious.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 2:45 PM
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95:

well, even that is a mark of evolution in the caricature. i mean, no reason why the caricature shouldn't flow with the decades, but when i was a kid, cats were not really supposed to have the inner dumbitude part, and the hauteur was no mere pretension.

okay, not entirely right--catnip related activities were always a clear embarrassment to the species. still, they were viewed as temporary lapses from exquisite discretion, noel coward getting a bit tipsy, rather than as an accurate revelation of essential thickness.


Posted by: kid bitzer | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 2:51 PM
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To paraphrase:

Catnip: the pleasure is momentary, the positions ridiculous, and the indignity damnable.


Posted by: TJ | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 3:02 PM
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70: I'm not sure I've actually seen black pearls. It's really the white strands, with their reek of Christian Republican sorority girl, that are problematic.

73: The nearest pair of testicles, as befits my man-hatin', witchcraft-practicing feminist ways.


Posted by: Magpie | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 3:02 PM
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85: Lolsprache really has nothing to do with cats per se. See: HAI2U, /b/, etc.


Posted by: Lunar Rockette | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 3:26 PM
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Cats are haughty, elegant, and stupid.


Posted by: Anderson | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 3:49 PM
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100:
sure, there are certainly personalities that combine hauteur, elegance, and stupidity, but that profile goes with a different diction from the lolcats one. (e.g. ornate malapropisms).

and I grant to LR that lolsprache is based on l33t and im shorthand. but the captions include other elements that emphasize stupidity.


Posted by: kid bitzer | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 3:52 PM
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Nah, that's not what I'm talking about. There's an atittude that's the source of most of the humor in /b, which basically boils down to: lol, it is funny not to take anything seriously.

For example: http://macrochan.org/get.py?sha1=CEW73RYONQHEH7JILSXBA6AJ64UUAO46

No cats, no leetspeak, humor comes from the same place.


Posted by: Lunar Rockette | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 4:17 PM
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Meowchat.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 4:18 PM
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From the link in 103:

Part of the MeowChat world is MeowChat itself -- the language used by the cats. While there are cats who converse in conventional English, most of them use a language comprised of equal parts phonetic spelling, puns and baby talk. A classic example is the story of the first Thanksgiving, as told by the MeowChat Village Hisstorian:

"we know dat da pillbugs camed here frum da old comfy, but we not know why and how, aftpurr dey landed at plywood rock, did dey get to meowchatvillage?"

The answer to that question involves a long sea voyage to escape a major flea infestation and eventual settlement in a magical land known as MeowChat Village, where all the animals live in peace. Or, actually, "peas."

Many cat owners object to having the cats use anything other than perfect English, reasoning that felines are highly refined, intelligent creatures. According to Kathy Gittel's MeowChat FAQ (ostensibly written by the cats themselves):

"We are highly intelligent. Some of us have difficulty spelling because our paws don't fit the human keyboard or because we telepathically send our posts to our humans, who type them for us, and something gets lost in the translation."

MeowChat's distinctive approach to spelling and syntax has been the source of much feuding between those who love and those who deplore the practice. People who join online discussions simply to discuss pet behavior or pet health issues are often annoyed at being addressed in the MeowChat language. As a consequence, many communities have developed conventions such as requiring that posts be tagged "Meow," or some have banned MeowChat altogether.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 4:25 PM
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103, 104

very useful.

i have to say, meowchat is unpleasantly redolent of ebonics, or caricatures thereof (i've lost track; is ebonics the word for a real phenomenon, or for a pejorative exaggeration of it?) in any case--meowchat sounds too much like white people ridiculing black inner city accents. 'dat'? 'dey'? i think it is gunther schuller in one of his books on jazz who talks about louis armstrong singing with a white backing group. despite the fact that louis himself always enunciates the phrase as "that rhythm", the other singers insist on singing "dat riddem". must have irritated him.


Posted by: kid bitzer | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 6:13 PM
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The idea that English as spoken by many African Americans has rules that make it a dialect distinct from standard American English, rather than just "ungrammatical" or "incorrect," is real. The idea that it's an actual separate language is mostly just considered credible among Oakland school board members.


Posted by: Magpie | Link to this comment | 07-12-07 6:34 PM
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