The Atlantic - Latest Comments in Couple Of Killer Comments

Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

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Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

bant — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:59:12 -0000

Oh, Ta! You're so passionate! I mean, I know you don't like praise, so I hope you'll forgive your student for this transgression, but I just can't hold back. A passionate pedagogue, you are.....

Passionate and compassionate! I can only hope that one day I too might be held up by your strong, brilliant hands as an example of how you yourself, perhaps, started out as a burgeoning writer. That is, before your innate gifts kicked in and propelled you to a level of linguistic grace that, let's be honest, is more like spiritual transcendence.

Passionate and compassionate -- and riotously funny! Oh, Ta, how do you do it? "Really awesome" and "...responding to a query as to whether the phrase "powerfully connected" is grammatically corrected" That is Comic Genius, Ta! And bold as only you can be! Should any reader see that and be so impervious to subtlety as to not recognize you're making a joke -- well, that would be pretty embarrassing for you. Thankfully, we devoted disciples have studied our teacher well enough...

We are all so blessed to be your students, Ta. And of course we all strive to do you justice -- to absorb just a little bit of your brilliance through your words and to pay you the respect you deserve, even if only in our amateur comments.

Oh, Ta.... Oh, Ta....

Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

bread & roses — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:04:10 -0000

Palin's pregnancy story doesn't seem out of the normal range to me, for an Alaskan. I'm not an Alaskan, but I'm from the backwoods in the West, and we have a lot in common with Alaska, and where I'm from, plenty of women give birth in circumstances that seem out-of-normal for midwesterners or upper-middle-class people from anywhere in the US. There's a certain comfort with risk in Alaska that is much higher than in the continental US. To me, Sullivan's disbelief about Palin's pregnancy story sounds like a city dweller being shocked at the existence of barn cats. Yes, she told the story to show how tough she is. It may not be entirely true. Or it may be entirely untrue. But it's totally plausible. Sullivan read it as so foolish as to be not believable. I just think it's a cultural difference that Sullivan (and many others) are blind to. It's like Fallows' ongoing theme of how Chinese bureaucrats speaking to the world in ways that are meant to please the party heirarchy and make them sound tin-eared to the outside. The whole thing about she flew back because "you can't have a fish-picker from Texas" just sounds dead center for my very rural upbringing. She was playing to the home crowd- and since she was governor of Alaska at the time, I don't see why not.

(My mother went into labor while at the Halloween party at our elementary school. She stayed to the end of the party at 9, walked the mile home, and she and my dad got in the car and drove an hour and a half over a snowy mountain pass to a hospital in Canada, where I was born shortly thereafter. She was out of the norm in our community because I wasn't born at home. So Sara's story seems... resonant, whether it is true or not. What if I give birth on the plane? Well, we'll deal)

Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

Darth Thulhu — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:56:35 -0000

He's a conservative in the European mold, which generally doesn't focus much on conservative social tradition as a *political* point because social tradition has class/aristocracy connotations. Being "old school" in Europe usually means being elitist (in a bad way), which makes it hard to win votes. European conservatives tend to emphasize national pride as a motive force, and since the polities are so frequently ethnically homogenous, this often works to unite rather divide an electorate. (And when polities aren't homogenous, you get grinding centuries of disputation.)

Sully sometimes looks "leftist" here because 1) we fight culture wars that European conservatives don't, and 2) we as an electorate generally support projecting American power (economic and social if not military) in ways that European states tend to remember as causing multiple centuries of hell.

So a conservative voice for the rule of law as it pertains to war crimes is dime a dozen in Europe, but "lefty" here. A conservative voice to stop nanny-stating people's living arragements is rightist in Europe but (for theocratic reasons) a left-of-center position here. Conservatives in Europe want to cut back on regulatory red tape, but there they have the point that there actually is a lot of redundant red tape among dozens of governments, and no one is conceiving of "drowning government in a bathtub". Conservatives in Europe are usually pessimists about foreign adventurism, not boosters ... and it usually requires some kind of Rule of Law or national interest to get them on board (witness Gulf War I). Sully's own boosterism for Iraq was predicated on the idea that it *was* a dire Rule of Law issue with vivid National Interest implications; when that fell through, he returned to a traditional conservative skepticism of vast, utopian governmental schemes.

Sully's kind of conservatives exist in America. We used to call them Rockefeller Republicans. But the ongoing ideological purge of the Republican Party to purify it into a National Front party is forcing more such Republicans into Independence with every election cycle.

Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

Barry_D — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:06:08 -0000

" Her pregnancy decisions are not relevant to her fitness or unfitness for office. "

IIRC, the point was that her story simply didn't make sense. Either she was lying, or she did something very, very strange and dubious.

Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

Hill Rat — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:29:17 -0000

The problem is that too many people break the rules without first knowing and understanding them.

This.

I recently had a brief back and forth on Twitter with @jsmooth995 about the misuse of the phrase "beg the question."

I work hard to not be one of those cats playing language/grammar police all the time, so more often than not I let things like the use of the word "irregardless" pass without comment. Even so, when I hear someone misusing language like that I silently put that person in the category of dumbass. Not because they don't know something that I know, but because they're blithely broadcasting their ignorance. I also object to the way the misuse of language causes conversational log jams, where rather than exchanging thoughts and ideas you end up arguing over definitions and who's being a bougie-ass language snob.

Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

DougEMI — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:14:52 -0000

The biggest thing I find lacking in those who switch so radically is a lack of humility. The positions change, but the stridency remains. Former allies become enemies of humanity whether it is Huffington moving left, or David Horowitz moving right.

Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

Ta-Nehisi Coates — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:04:44 -0000

One thing I fine is that sometimes it's worth a charitable interpretation of the people you're disagreeing with. Especially when it seems like you might be on the same side. We split hairs too much. I include myself in that.

Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

Deborah — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:04:44 -0000

How about:

a) Her pregnancy decisions are not relevant to her fitness or unfitness for office. And women have had experience with the pregnancy police ("You aren't getting in a hot tub?" "How could you not find out the sex?") so it doesn't go over well, most especially because Andrew has to rely on his readers to explain the pregnancy stuff. Of all the things I dislike about Sarah Palin, and which I think render her unfit to hold office, her pregnancy and childbirth decisions are not on the list. I'm not providing my medical records of childbirth to Andrew, either. The medical records are supposed to show if you're likely to die soon or spend a lot of time on mind-altering drugs, not satisfy everyone's curiosity about which allergy treatment you chose 3 years ago.

b) Let's take the simplest bizarre-and-contradictory pregnancy stories explanation: Palin faked the pregnancy to cover up for someone close to her, likely one of her daughters. No one who now supports her will abandon that support based on her doing this; they'll admire her more. And most who don't approve of her as candidate or gadfly still won't consider that to be the one thing that showed her unfit for office.

Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

Deborah — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:51:40 -0000

When he's on her fitness for office he's usually excellent. Harping on the pregnancy stories with the greatest heat of his outrage just makes me cringe, though, and makes one take any serious issues he unearths less seriously. And on a side note, as a woman who's been pregnant I just keep noting little things that make it clear how little he knows about pregnancy, even if he is diligently researching the phenomenon. (Note: If Bristol hadn't turned up pregnant I would take it as a given that Palin had covered up her daughter's pregnancy. I just wouldn't care in terms of whether this made her unfit to hold office. Just like Sanford's affair was irrelevant to his fitness for office, but running away from the state house for a week should have cooked him.)

A thought from Larison's blog: There may be a big enough slice of the Republican base that would rather lose really big with Palin than come closer and still lose with Romney. Put like that I do worry. But I think a sustained campaign, especially the way Iowans and NH-ites expect you to answer their questions in detail, would not thrill her.

Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

Deborah — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:42:22 -0000

How can people (especially middle-aged people) change so radically in their philosophy simply because they're disillusioned by the right-wing establishment?

When one of the judges for the Supreme Court--I think it was Alito--was being confirmed there was a question about how your views might change from 35 to 55. NPR had a great piece interviewing a bunch of 55 year olds, and they had all made what were in retrospect really significant shifts between those two ages. 35 is grown up, you probably have acquired kids and a mortgage (especially if you're now in your 50s or 60s) but people had changed.

Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

Persia — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:22:11 -0000

I do the same thing.

Having said that, the Odd Lies of Sarah Palin entries never cease to amuse me. This one is particularly baffling.

Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

Kylopod — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:10:58 -0000

Andrew Sullivan was once a conservative, and he claims to still be one, but whether he admits it or not he has become a de facto voice of the left. I first became aware of him as a guest on Bill Maher's program in 2004. He was in a transitional stage at that point, still defending the invasion of Iraq but otherwise having turned against Bush. I largely missed his neocon stage which made many liberals hate him.

I've read most of Sullivan's book The Conservative Soul, and I have to say I don't understand why he still considers himself a conservative. He is neither a market fundamentalist nor a cultural traditionalist, the usual two planks of domestic conservatism. And since the publication of that book, he has swung even further to the left, being an early supporter and ardent defender of Barack Obama, including supporting a public insurance plan.

On the other hand, I've always had trouble comprehending people like Arianna Huffington and David Brock who did a complete 180 in their political orientation. How can people (especially middle-aged people) change so radically in their philosophy simply because they're disillusioned by the right-wing establishment? In that sense, I find Andrew's clinging to conservatism easier to understand.

Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

CitizenE — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:08:42 -0000

I know Dan Marino; Dan Marino is a friend of mine, and I can tell you this: no matter how many Heisman poses she takes or what kind of gloves the woman puts on, Sarah Palin is no Dan Marino.

Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

PeteL — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:06:35 -0000

For all of the Dish's influence, Sullivan's blog is still a guy daily processing his team's stream of consciousness reactions to the world. His alleged overreaction to all things Palin may in part be personal.

After all, Sarah Palin flew 12+ hours across the planet while apparently in labor with a Down Syndrome child likely to need emergency post-delivery care, and the only explanation Team Palin has ever provided is that you can't trust a Texas OB to give birth to your special needs child.

Andrew said WTF? Y'all didn't. But y'all did say that Andrew was a nutter, without pressing for clarification of the nutterific series of decisions in the public record regarding Trig's birth. So to the armchair diagnoses of Sully's delusion, OCD, etc, add this mundane possibility:

Maybe Sullivan is as frustrated with you as he is with Palin.

Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

Kylopod — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:44:25 -0000

@Polywogy

I was responding to your original statement that the important thing in language is getting your point across. What I'm saying is that many of the rules are not there to help us get our point across. Some, like the prohibition on pluralizing "sheep," may actually stand in the way of our attempts to be more precise or expressive. Others, such as the distinction between "I" and "me," between "who" and "whom," are simply historical relics with very little if any practical import today. If all English speakers abandoned the word "I" and began using the word "me" for both subject and object, it would have only the most marginal impact on our ability to communicate. After all, we already make no such distinction with the word "you." And the disappearance of "whom" (which has largely happened) would hardly be something to shed a tear over.

Yet practical or not, we're still expected to follow these rules, at least to some degree, in formal situations. That letter to the National Science Foundation is not likely to include sentences like "Me and Albert are seeking a grant," or "We sheared the sheeps in the stable," even though you might talk that way in casual conversation. The reason you gave--that we need to be more precise so that the readers won't doubt our competence--was a bit of an oversimplification, I thought, because many of the rules do not make our message more precise or expressive. We follow the rules in that situation simply because they're the rules, not because they're good or bad rules.

You stated that the rules are important to facilitate communication. This of course is true in a broad sense, for if there were no rules, communication would be impossible. But when you look at many of the specific rules, especially prescriptive schoolroom-type grammar, a lot of it is arbitrary. Some rules have no practical import at all other than their being rules--for example, saying "mice" instead of "mouses." Some rules have limited practical application, such as "I" vs. "me." And some rules actually decrease our expressiveness, such as the rule against pluralizing "sheep." In formal situations, however, we're expected to follow all of these rules regardless of their practical value.

Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

black yank — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:23:23 -0000

@polywogy,

just degrees of concern about the importance of "traditional" rules of grammar and usage.

But, just for my entertainment, can you guys please continue your exchange about the hypothetical "sheeps"? :)

Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

Darth Thulhu — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:21:01 -0000

Sigh. Howzabout I try that again: The only thing I subscribe to is xkcd.

Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

Darth Thulhu — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:11:33 -0000

Sigh. Let's try again: The only thing I subscribe to is xkcd.

Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

Darth Thulhu — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:55:05 -0000

If it helps, I have never subscribed to Sully (or Coates, or Krugman, or Silver, or Collins, or Fallows, or anything other than xkcd). I just now and again pop on to the Dish (or the NYT, or Red State, or TPM, or fivethirtyeight) and start scanning. If Mr. Andrew's gotten a little too lusty regarding Levi, I can skip on past. If I want to follow his religious musings, I'll pop in on Sunday and work through related threads. Not every mining expedition of his lands gold, but when he does strike a rich vein it is an education to watch him dig it out.

And when he gets lost in a dead shaft ... detach. Read other threads or other blogs. I don't enslave my time to a subscription that forces me to watch the futile as well as the fertile.

Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

Darth Thulhu — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:27:53 -0000

Incessantly. When Obama shows pragmatic, conservative temperament and a go-slow long-term outlook that drives liberal Democrats bonkers, Sully usually gushes. Sully caught on to Obama's prediliction for strategy over tactics early on, and unlike most media he doesn't forget that fact after three news cycles. He starts from the hard-earned premise (digging and digging and digging) of Obama's long-time-scale competence, which immediately puts his analysis several steps ahead of most other pundits.

The one exception to Sully's OCD of love and respect regarding Obama's pragmatism is when Sully feels fundamental human rights and rules of law are in play (not pursuing war crimes, not advancing equality for gays). At those points, he's as relentlessly critical of Obama's go-slow conservative performance as he is of anything. His live-blog takedown of Obama's speech to the HRC was incisive, unforgiving, and brutal -- far more scathing than his Monday live-blog of the Oprah-Palin interview. It's not hard for anyone to poke holes in Palin's statements, but very few people pointed out how Obama's oratory in that HRC speech was uncharacteristically and utterly empty of any substantive commitments whatsoever. But Sully was there, with bells on, digging and digging and digging.

Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

Byrk — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 01:01:09 -0000

He has done quite a bit of it with Obama, especially when it comes to torture and gay rights.

Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

CitizenE — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:24:34 -0000

As much as with Reagan and Maggie Thatcher, and those two have far more for which to answer.

Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

Polywogy — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:56:58 -0000

@black yank and Kylopod:

Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm not sure what we're disagreeing about. I said, "when handled with care and skill, breaking and/or bending the rules can sometimes be the best way to get your message across." Do you disagree with that?

I wasn't commenting about every form of non-standard grammar, but in response to a specific comment and the general discussion of language that TNC posted.

BTW, I'm 33, so we're the same generation, Kylopod. And my response about the sheeps assumed they were in your hypothetical magazine article. Obviously, familiar speech and/or emergencies are different contexts.

Re: Couple Of Killer Comments

DaveinHackensack — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:54:45 -0000

"Sully digs and digs and digs into the things he loves."

Has he done this with Obama?