31 responses to
“Abe v. George.”

1. Vince said on January 29th, 2008 at 10:26 am

   Ah @!%#&ing in the news­room. My first 3 news­rooms were full of pro­fan­ity.
   Imag­ine my shock when I arrived in Dal­las and found a news­room free of pro­fan­ity. Seri­ously. The News Director’s admin­is­tra­tive assis­tant made it clear pro­fan­ity offended her. She sin­gle hand­edly altered the cul­ture of the entire news­room for years to come even after man­age­ment changed and she had gone.

   8 years later it was still a rel­a­tively pro­fan­ity free place — until the first new News Direc­tor not pro­moted from within arrived. He dropped f-bombs constantly.

   It only lasted a week.

   A cou­ple of peo­ple qui­etly went to him and said, ‘This isn’t how we do things here.“
   Sur­pris­ingly, he made a con­scious effort to clean up his mouth.

   F — ing admirable, I’d say!

2. Sue said on January 29th, 2008 at 10:53 am

   I don’t watch SOTU addresses because they’re usu­ally use­less love­fests or some vari­a­tion on a dys­func­tional fam­ily reunion theme. Here’s why my hus­band doesn’t watch them: when my son was a wee lit­tle boy, he would often “help” me with the dishes, splash­ing along and hav­ing a good time. One evening, as he was help­ing me, he began to talk to him­self. What he said was “F*****g A**hole, F*****g A**hole, F*****g A**hole” in a sweet lit­tle singsong voice. My hus­band was in the kitchen, and I just turned and looked at him. “Sorry,” he said. “Rea­gan was giv­ing his State of the Union last night.”

3. 4dbirds said on January 29th, 2008 at 10:59 am

   LOL Sue, the same words were being repeated in our house­hold when­ever Rea­gan showed up on TV.

4. Julie Robinson said on January 29th, 2008 at 11:01 am

   I’m not allowed to watch Bush either, some­thing about my blood pres­sure becom­ing ele­vated. Same for Rea­gan. George I was amus­ing, though, since I could only see Dana Car­vey, not the actual man. “Wouldn’t be pru­dent!” How I miss that, and the Church Lady.

5. del said on January 29th, 2008 at 11:05 am

   Isn’t that special?

6. Peter said on January 29th, 2008 at 12:04 pm

   Julie, I fully agree.

   Slightly off topic, but I can’t lis­ten to any Blue Oys­ter Cult song with­out think­ing about Will Fer­rell bang­ing on the cowbell.

7. Jen said on January 29th, 2008 at 12:47 pm

   Our news­room is almost com­pletely profanity-free; the edi­tor is extremely calm and in the year I’ve been here I think I’ve heard him swear, mildly, once or twice. When he’s not in the room, we’ll swear a lit­tle bit more, but noth­ing major. I usu­ally end up swear­ing under my breath some­times, though. It’s com­pletely dif­fer­ent from the TV sta­tion where I interned, where every­body swore all the time.

   Peter, I can­not hear “Don’t Fear the Reaper” with­out think­ing of Will Fer­rell. Will Fer­rell is a lit­tle bit hit and miss for me (mostly hit, with the occa­sional miss), but that sketch is really funny.

8. Jeff said on January 29th, 2008 at 4:02 pm

   Speak­ing of pos­si­ble future deliver-ers of the State of the Onion addresses, any reac­tions to this set of notes from Gene Weingarten’s Tues­day WaPo chat? (Apolo­gies for the length, but it didn’t show any seams that lent them­selves to cutting!)

   Gene Wein­garten: Many women have writ­ten in to explain their feel­ings about Hillary, often a faint or extreme dis­like. The best of these just came in from my friend Caitlin Gib­son. Here it is, in response to the orig­i­nal poster’s question —

   Dis­like of Hillary: My hus­band asked me a few days ago why, as a lib­eral woman, I dis­like Hillary and would not vote for her. After think­ing for a few min­utes I answered that it had to do with how she dealt with Bill after the whole infi­delity issue, but not for the nor­mal rea­sons of being mad he cheated. I under­stand get­ting over an infi­delity. What I do not under­stand is how she could stay with him after he lied to her and let her go on national tele­vi­sion to talk about the Repub­li­can con­spir­acy against Bill, how the whole thing was a lie. He made such a fool out of her on a national stage, and was so incred­i­bly dis­re­spect­ful to her. This to me is a much larger betrayal, and the fact that she stayed with him after that is ridicu­lous to me. He deserves no respect from her.

   Gene Wein­garten: Indeed. I think this is closer to the vis­ceral reaction.

   … you know, this touches on it, but I’d take it one step fur­ther. It’s not just that she stayed with him, but the fact that there is no doubt but that she stayed with him because it was ben­e­fi­cial to her career; I don’t think any­one believes for a minute that she would ever really “for­give” him or give him another chance after what hap­pened. I think the real­ity is that most women see Hillary’s mar­riage for exactly what it is — a polit­i­cal alliance, a strate­gic move she made to fur­ther her­self, with likely lit­tle or no emo­tional or roman­tic involve­ment what­so­ever. I think that the very con­cept of that, and the con­cept of a woman who would look past the depth of the betrayal and sac­ri­fice her own hap­pi­ness and ful­fill­ment in a mar­riage sim­ply to gain polit­i­cal power, is unset­tling, threat­en­ing, or just gen­er­ally very dis­turb­ing to women. Women would want a woman they could relate to. Her per­sonal life, or at least her mar­riage, is basi­cally a care­fully plot­ted, stone-cold pro­duc­tion, and I think that costs her dearly among women vot­ers. Look how many peo­ple seemed moved only when she had that moment of wist­ful­ness. It’s because in that instant, she seemed human, soft, real; oth­er­wise, I think she’s become scary, espe­cially to women. In my opinion.

9. nancy said on January 29th, 2008 at 4:23 pm

   I’d like to know how stay­ing with her hus­band was “ben­e­fi­cial to her career,” Jeff. Are you say­ing that if she’d divorced him and moved to New York on her own, she never would have been elected senator?

   Also, I don’t see how the “vast right-wing con­spir­acy” state­ment made her look like a fool. In fact, the VRWC was gun­ning for Clin­ton from Day One, and never stopped try­ing to prove both the pres­i­dent and his wife were, oh, let’s see if I can recall them all:

   1) Involved in the Arkansas drug trade;
   2) Guilty of mur­der­ing Vince Fos­ter;
   3) Guilty of mur­der­ing a bunch of other peo­ple;
   4) Mean to some state trooper, and made him go buy san­i­tary nap­kins or some­thing;
   5) A big ol’ dyke who didn’t care who her hus­band stuck his dick into, as long as she could be free to enjoy hot les­bian love with Donna Sha­lala or who­ever;
   6) etc.

   I don’t under­stand why Hillary Clin­ton is guilty of trad­ing on fam­ily con­nec­tions to get ahead in the world, and George Bush isn’t. Or Mitt Rom­ney. Or any num­ber of other well-born Repub­li­cans, who woke up on third base and saw the out­field­ers asleep and the rest of the team beck­on­ing them to home plate. Off the top of my head: Christo­pher Buck­ley (although, being largely non-political, he gets a pass, even though HE sired a child with a lover out of wed­lock and was for­given for it by HIS wife), Bill Kris­tol, Jonah Gold­berg, etc.

   Finally, here’s a les­son I learned a while back. I have to relearn it every so often, and some­times I for­get it, but it’s still true: The only peo­ple qual­i­fied to judge the qual­ity of a mar­riage are the peo­ple in it. Doesn’t any­one think it’s pos­si­ble that their mar­riage, whether it’s a sham or a lie or a rat’s nest of two ambition-monsters, suits them? Maybe they sleep in sep­a­rate bed­rooms; so do a lot of peo­ple. Not my part to judge.

   You know, I’m not a big fan of Hillary. She rubs me the wrong way, too, but not for any of the rea­sons you men­tion. (Frankly, she just reminds me of any num­ber of tigh­tass women bosses I’ve had over the years.) But I will vote for her if she’s the nom­i­nee, and I will be pleased if she’s elected the first woman pres­i­dent. And I would look for­ward to see­ing Bill back in the White House, if only because I think it would be respon­si­ble for any num­ber of burst blood ves­sels in con­ser­v­a­tive cra­ni­ums on Novem­ber 5.

10. Jeff said on January 29th, 2008 at 4:37 pm

    Actu­ally, i think i agree with about 92% of what you said; espe­cially the “ben­e­fi­cial to her career” thing — she wouldn’t have been able to move her polit­i­cal life for­ward with­out Bill? But i work with pretty much entirely more lib­eral folk than i am, and they all are much more both­ered by Hillary than moi, and my spouse sez the same (and she works in Higher Ed).

    So when i saw this come up over at Gene’s, i had to throw it out — but it ain’t my POV a’tall. I’m just try­ing to fig­ure out why i run into it so often. (Now, argu­ing that John Kerry mar­ried strate­gi­cally, that would be a humdinger of an argu­ment.) Yes, i’m still offi­cially a McCain sup­porter, but we’ll see what hap­pens when we’re down to two. I could eas­ily imag­ine vot­ing D for pres­i­dent this go-round; Rom­ney may be a great guy, but if he wasn’t rich, and rich off of dad’s con­tacts more than even Bush was, he would be utterly out of this race by now. He’s run 10x the tv ads of McCain in Flor­dia, and started six months back, and still is within the MOE in all surveys.

    I just hope if Rom­ney loses to McCain tonight he drops out on his own, but he and Edwards have enough of their own scratch to keep the bleed­ing going on right to the sum­mer. Which is part of why i like McCain, who is about the only can­di­date likely to take a mjor whack at cam­paign finance reform. But his veep choice could sour me even on him.

    Any­how, wanted to clar­ify that my post wasn’t my opin­ion, but one i wanted to hear D-side reax to. Thanx.

11. nancy said on January 29th, 2008 at 4:42 pm

    Thanks for the clar­i­fi­ca­tion. Now that I can see the source mate­r­ial, I’m-a gonna edit your com­ment so it’s clear who’s speaking.

12. sue said on January 29th, 2008 at 4:54 pm

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: All you need to know about Hillary is that she was a life­long Cubs fan who turned Yan­kee. Why can’t the rest of the coun­try under­stand how really, really, really bad this is?

13. Cosmo Panzini said on January 29th, 2008 at 4:55 pm

    Amen to that shit, Nancy. Does any­one in this benighted coun­try rec­og­nize the sim­i­lar­i­ties between today’s right-wing assaults on Hillary and those directed against Eleanor Roo­sevelt about 70 or so years ago from the same types of reac­tionary bozos? I’m not a huge Hillary sup­porter either, but after Bush II, I would vote Demo­c­ra­tic if all they did was pick a name at ran­dom from the phone book. And what the fuck is all this bull­shit about not swear­ing at work? Has the whole god­dam coun­try turned into Ned Flanders?

14. Jeff said on January 29th, 2008 at 4:59 pm

    Nance, at least you didn’t call me Danny …

15. brian stouder said on January 29th, 2008 at 5:31 pm

    Y’all can call me Dorothy, anytime!

    Leav­ing aside the VRWC (which was no vaster than the VLWC that believes that George Bush attacked the WTC/in order to have the Iraq war/which he and he alone is respon­si­ble for/and that if his lips are mov­ing he’s lying), when Nance says (about Lincoln)

    the more I learn about him, the more inter­est­ing he becomes, par­tic­u­larly his oratory

    I absolutely agree. Lin­coln is a gen­uine rar­ity – a famous fig­ure that becomes more and more admirable (instead of less and less), the more you learn about him. Lerone Ben­nett wrote an inter­est­ing, icon­o­clas­tic book about Lin­coln called Forced Into Glory, in which he argues that Lin­coln was an oppor­tunis­tic polit­i­cal ‘trim­mer’, and only reluc­tantly became an eman­ci­pa­tor. Dr P seems to have enjoyed the chal­lenge that that book posed as much as I did  — he expresses respect for Bennett’s research and his argu­ment – if not his con­clu­sions. Indeed – Bennett’s argu­ment is as much with the gen­er­a­tions of white male cre­den­tialed his­to­ri­ans who (seem­ingly) orches­trated Lincoln’s apoth­e­o­sis, as it is with what­ever sort of man Lin­coln ‘really’ was. In all, his crit­i­cal book is very like look­ing at the Statue of Lib­erty from 5 feet away – close enough to see the cor­ro­sion and imper­fec­tions, while still remain­ing impressed with the tow­er­ing fig­ure before you.

    And when Nance says The only peo­ple qual­i­fied to judge the qual­ity of a mar­riage are the peo­ple in it I can­not agree more! If you read only one book about Mary Lin­coln, snap up Jean Baker’s biog­ra­phy of her. She has no patience with the sort of white male cre­den­tialed elite (includ­ing Billy Hern­don, way back in the day – if you for­get about “elite”!) that spent the past few gen­er­a­tions sav­aging her. As Dr P says in his book, one tends to view the Lin­coln mar­riage through the prism of their own. It is worth remem­ber­ing that Mary chose Abe way early on – when he was one notch up from nobody at all, and when she could have had the already suc­cess­ful Stephen Dou­glas (aka The Lit­tle Giant). She saw some­thing in him then, and he saw in her an intel­li­gent, witty, polit­i­cally astute, and beau­ti­ful woman – a woman who was a large step up for him in the world.

    Anway – one last thing – all y’all writ­ers ought to read Dou­glas Wilson’s fas­ci­nat­ing book — Lincoln’s Sword, about how Lin­coln wrote and revised and molded and shaped….and uti­lized lan­guage and writ­ing. The author looked at notes and (lit­er­ally) pasted-over revi­sions, and fin­ished copies, and gives one the sense of look­ing over Lincoln’s shoul­der as he cre­ates some of the great­est prose – let alone polit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion – ever. And not for noth­ing, Lincoln’s sec­ond Mes­sage to Con­gress – the 1860’s ver­sion of the SOTU – is quite often over­looked, although it has some of the most pow­er­fully beau­ti­ful exam­ples of Lincoln’s writing.

    http://​www​.pres​i​dency​.ucsb​.edu/​w​s​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​p​h​p​?​p​i​d​=29503

    Check out the clos­ing para­graph, as he wraps up his argu­ment to Con­gress that they should pay slave hold­ers for their slaves, if it will end the fight­ing and bloodshed -

    Is it doubted, then, that the plan I pro­pose, if adopted, would shorten the war, and thus lessen its expen­di­ture of money and of blood? Is it doubted that it would restore the national author­ity and national pros­per­ity and per­pet­u­ate both indef­i­nitely? Is it doubted that we here – Con­gress and Exec­u­tive can secure its adop­tion? Will not the good peo­ple respond to a united and earnest appeal from us? Can we, can they, by any other means so cer­tainly or so speed­ily assure these vital objects? We can suc­ceed only by con­cert. It is not “Can any of us imag­ine bet­ter?” but “Can we all do bet­ter?” Object what­so­ever is pos­si­ble, still the ques­tion recurs, “Can we do bet­ter?” The dog­mas of the quiet past are inad­e­quate to the stormy present. The occa­sion is piled high with dif­fi­culty, and we must rise with the occa­sion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must dis­en­thrall our­selves, and then we shall save our coun­try.
    Fellow-citizens, we can not escape his­tory. We of this Con­gress and this Admin­is­tra­tion will be remem­bered in spite of our­selves. No per­sonal sig­nif­i­cance or insignif­i­cance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dis­honor to the lat­est gen­er­a­tion. We say we are for the Union. The world will not for­get that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the respon­si­bil­ity. In giv­ing free­dom to the slave we assure free­dom to the free – hon­or­able alike in what we give and what we pre­serve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth. Other means may suc­ceed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peace­ful, gen­er­ous, just – a way which if fol­lowed the world will for­ever applaud and God must for­ever bless.

16. del said on January 29th, 2008 at 5:35 pm

    Nice thread. Hillary isn’t warm and engag­ing. But my, the slings and arrows she’s endured. Remem­ber Hillary Rod­ham? Had to quit her name. And her hair bracket (help me out here, what do they call those things)? Had to quit that — made her look like a soror­ity girl. And when she told 60 Min­utes dur­ing the Gen­nifer Flow­ers con­tro­versy that she was no Tammy Wynette stand by your man kind of woman, the Right railed against her, railed against her. Fem­i­nazi they called her. And now, after she did stand by her man, she is attacked for being ambi­tious and self serv­ing. I don’t know about her mar­riage — that’s their busi­ness, but that woman is as tough as they come. But hey, I’m a Yan­kees fan.

17. Kirk said on January 29th, 2008 at 6:14 pm

    The Clinton-haters club is far huger than the cadre that thinks Bush hit the World Trade Center.

18. john c said on January 29th, 2008 at 6:45 pm

    So you really think that if Hillary threw Bill under the bus she could have moved to New York and become a sen­a­tor? Maybe. But I think you are under­es­ti­mat­ing the Bill Clin­ton polit­i­cal machine. A large part of her suc­cess comes from her asso­ci­a­tion with his admin­is­tra­tion, which would be sort of hard for her to trum­pet on the cam­paign trail if she’d dumped the lying SOB.
    That being said, Nancy, you couldn’t be more right about judg­ing peo­ples’ mar­riages. But that doesn’t make it easy.

    Here’s what I don’t want to see but know that we will see if she loses the nom­i­na­tion: The coun­try is not ready for a woman president.

19. nancy said on January 29th, 2008 at 8:09 pm

    I think if she’d qui­etly jet­ti­soned Bill after the sec­ond term — and there’s sim­ply no way she would have done it while he was in office, because she knows as well as every­one else that this attack was aimed at her as much as her hus­band — I think she could have pulled it out. I think she had a high enough pro­file at that point, and was a hard enough cam­paigner, to get elected on her own. Against Rick Lazio? Hell, yes. That was Rudi’s chance to get to Wash­ing­ton, and fate wasn’t in his favor.

20. Danny said on January 29th, 2008 at 8:11 pm

    OK. I’ve been away all day on impo’tant bid­ness and you all have had way too much fun for me to read it all right now. Some­thing about you’re all lib­eral and either love Hillary or don’t. Oh, and Bush is Hitler not well liked. I think that’s the cliff notes ver­sion, right?

    And why is Jeff happy because he did not get mis­taken for me? I thought every­one loved me.

21. nancy said on January 29th, 2008 at 8:17 pm

    Wha-? Hitler? No, we said Hitler was a Cow­boys fan. Although if GWB is, too, I guess that’s a coin­ci­dence just a lit­tle too convenient for com­fort, eh?

22. del said on January 29th, 2008 at 8:37 pm

    John c, you say the country’s not ready for a woman pres­i­dent; that’s a vari­a­tion of the hottest polit­i­cal debate of the sea­son; can Hillary win? My next door neigh­bor bet her son that Hillary would lose if nom­i­nated. Oth­ers I know swear the same. We may soon find out. How about another ques­tion; can Barack Obama win the gen­eral elec­tion? This seems to be the ele­phant in the room that no pun­dit or can­di­date will touch. (I don’t see any 47 year old African Amer­i­can Demo­c­rat win­ning any such nation­wide con­test given the cur­rent red-state blue-state divide.) Any thoughts?

23. brian stouder said on January 29th, 2008 at 9:08 pm

    This seems to be the ele­phant in the room that no pun­dit or can­di­date will touch

    Pres­i­dent Clin­ton sure as hell has been ‘touch­ing’ it (so to speak!). The most obscene thing ever said about Bill Clin­ton was that he was America’s “first black pres­i­dent”. (if any white man has any such claim — and none do — it sure as hell ain’t WJC) After Iowa, when WJC decided enough was enough, he said that he (WJC) was the best politi­cian in the coun­try in 1988, but it wasn’t his turn yet, and so he waited; and Obama was being impa­tient and (in essence) jump­ing in line and going out of turn.

    Now to me, that sounded like he was call­ing him “uppity” — which is ridicu­lous on its face, and espe­cially com­ing from a white south­erner from Arkansas…and then refer­ring to the Obama “fairy tale”, and then the Jessie Jack­son remark — all point to the vaunted Clin­ton Attack Machine being set to full “per­sonal destruc­tion” mode.

    But what­ever. I agree with Obama that it will be lots eas­ier for him to win over a much larger share of for­mer sup­port­ers of HRC (if he wins the nom­i­na­tion), than it will be for HRC to win over (or keep ener­gized) a large share of for­mer Obama supporters.

    Barack Obama’s cam­paign mes­sage reaches right out and touches old Repub­li­cans like me, and young folks (who tra­di­tion­ally tend not to show up on elec­tion day), and women (he fre­quently bests or blunts any edge HRC has with women vot­ers in the pri­maries), and now estab­lish­ment Democ­rats like the Kennedys (will this mean some help from Ahnold Schwarzeneg­ger — the Kennedy in-law — out in Cal­i­for­nia next week?) and Sen­a­tor Kerry.

    Hon­estly, I think who­ever the Democ­rats nom­i­nate will win the pres­i­dency in Novem­ber. I think if Obama (or HRC) picks a white-bread run­ning mate like Sen­a­tor Bayh…or Sen­a­tor Kerry.…or Sen­a­tor Edwards.…they win.

    I think McCain might pick some­one mildly excit­ing, like Sec­State Rice.…but he looks like Bob Dole 1996 — aka too old; espe­cially ver­sus such an ener­getic, can-do, all-inclusive sunny opti­mist like Obama.

    The only pos­si­ble joker in the deck, in my opin­ion, is Sammy bin Laden (et al), and his lunatic min­ions of for-the-hell-of-it anar­chists. If they — for exam­ple — destroy two or three NYC sub­way trains in Octo­ber (ala Spain and the UK) — that might pro­pel an old war­rior — who has “seen the ele­phant” like McCain into the White House. More would be the pity

24. alex said on January 29th, 2008 at 9:20 pm

    Here’s some anec­do­tal evi­dence in favor of Obama. Not sci­en­tific, mind you.

    I hear old Repub­li­cans say­ing they could sup­port him and it’s about fuck­ing time and maybe he’ll heal the nation.

25. Danny said on January 29th, 2008 at 9:21 pm

    John c, you say the country’s not ready for a woman president

    Del, John did not say what you think he said. He said he did not want to see what is sure to be one ways in which the story of Hillary’s loss would be cov­ered. I agree. It would be a total mis­read of the sit­u­a­tion to ascribe a Hillary loss of the nom­i­na­tion to the nation not being ready for a woman president.

    Hey, I’m a con­ser­v­a­tive and I’ve always been ready for a woman pres­i­dent and a black pres­i­dent. I’d like to nom­i­nate Con­delezza Rice.

26. Danny said on January 29th, 2008 at 9:23 pm

    I hear old Repub­li­cans say­ing they could sup­port him and it’s about fuck­ing time and maybe he’ll heal the nation.

    You know, I’m not an old Repub­li­can, but I’ve thought the same. I like Obama. I just wish he was conservative.

    Edit: The one thought that scares me about an Obama pres­i­dency is the chance that some crazy SOB would try to assas­si­nate him. That could tear this nation apart.

27. del said on January 29th, 2008 at 10:53 pm

    Danny, you’re right. I mis­read mis­read John c.
    Brian, very much agreed about a ter­ror­ist attack chang­ing every­thing. I don’t think that the Obama race thing has been pub­licly vet­ted dur­ing the pri­mary cam­paign and the WJC “fairy tale” remark had to do with Obama’s Iraq war stance.

28. john c said on January 30th, 2008 at 6:38 am

    For the record, I did not say the coun­try is not ready for a woman pres­i­dent. I said oth­ers will say it. I think the coun­try is very ready, just not for Hillary.

    And Nancy, you may be cor­rect about Hillary’s chances if she’d “qui­etly dumped him in the sec­ond term.” But by putting the dis­cus­sion in terms of her react­ing to “the attacks” you are miss­ing the point, as are most Hillary sup­port­ers. I agree with you that the attacks against Bill were nutty and shame­less and aimed at her. That has noth­ing to do with Bill and what he did.

29. John said on January 30th, 2008 at 7:50 am

    re:First black president

    The rea­son why Obama can be elected if nom­i­nated (which is dicey at best), is that we have already had a black pres­i­dent and it wasn’t that pasty-assed white boy from Hope! It was Pres­i­dent David Palmer!

30. Danny said on January 30th, 2008 at 10:37 am

    Good point, John! David Palmer was our favorite pres­i­dent too.

31. Peris said on February 2nd, 2008 at 12:00 am

    Gee, I feel so lonely here being a moderate/independent. Does that make me a pussy, or just a pariah? I don’t care, since this year it appears I may have TWO good options, rather than the usual zero.