Hmmm. I agree with Reihan that if you want to defeat McCain/Palin it's a bad idea to mock the names of her kids. For obvious reasons, I always thought the worst part of Bill Cosby's diatribe was his attack on "black names." As a quick aside, I didn't realize there was a such thing as a "black name" until I went to college. I knew way more Keishas than Ambers. But I think if you're going to bust on liberals for snideness, you'll need more than a joke site. I'm sure that there will be plenty of latte-sipping, dinner party-attending, wine track lefties snapping on old girl. But somehow I don't think those people will be introducing Barack Obama at a campaign rally.
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I'm only doing this because you told me to! I find your writing nothing short of riveting and have added this blog to my "refresh obsessively" list.
The comma is superfluous. "Your" should be "you're." The hyphen should go after party, before attending.I'd suggest "thing" for "think" in the third sentence of the post. I offer this in a spirit of humble goodwill and love of the English language, as well as the glorious Ta-Nehisi!
I'm sure that there will be plenty of latte-sipping, dinner-party attending
The hyphen should go after party, before attending.
Really?
Yessir. You want to link the participle to the noun. Some might put hyphens in both places, but I think "dinner party" is a single item despite its being two words and so a hyphen linking them isn't necessary.
Standard disclaimer: As always, I could well be full of crap. :)
Y'all are hella elitist, what with your grammar and whatnot.
The only comments I saw on her children's names were from correspondents to Andrew Sullivan's blog, where the possibility was raised that she named one of them after Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and was therefore stealthily in favor of gay rights.
I agree, but I do think the Dems need to start taking her down immediately and I don't think belittling her resume is out of line and if it can be turned into a punchline, so much the better.
I also think that Team Obama, and particularly female surrogates, need to make sure that female voters especially see this selection for what it is - pure political calculation and a shameless, transparent effort to pander to female voters.
I want to see John McCain be forced to look into the camera everyday and tell American voters with a straight face that Sarah Palin is the best person qualified to be a heartbeat from the presidency. I want see him forced to explain that her selection was not purely a political one.
John McCain likes accuse Barack of putting politics before the national interest. Well that argument needs to be turned back on John McCain because he did not select Sarah Palin to serve in the second highest office in the land because she is the best qualified person to step in and deal with Iraq, Russia, Iran or because she is prepared to manage an extremely fragile economy that is losing ground to India and China every day. He did it out of pure political calculation.
I don't think that dinner party usually has a hyphen. That said, you don't need a hyphen to link the participle to a direct object, which it governs in virtue of its verbal aspect. If there was ambiguity about what the structure meant i.e. you had to draw a distinction between "dinner party-attending" and "dinner-party attending" you would use a hyphen as appropriate *s*. In context, it isn't necessary here, and not in the case of "latte sipping" either. If you decide to follow the Star Wars script writer path, you would probably link all three items into one hideous (or glorious, depending on your taste) compound, i.e. "dinner-party-attending".
I really don't think you mean "dinner party-attending". "Dinner party attending" or "dinner-party attending", yes, but absolutely not the "party-attending" current version. If there is a compound here, it would be "dinner-party", which as morzer says, isn't the usual form. Better without hyphens.
On the point about Palin's children, it might be pointed out that they are somewhat strange names, but I don't see any electoral gain in pointing out that the former Mayor of Wasilla is a Buffy fan. I would question her taste, but it hardly means she can't handle foreign or domestic policy, and overall it comes off as a desperate negative attack, suggesting that you have nothing more serious to say.
I think there's an 80% chance Biden says something stupid. Already, Obama's made this condescending remark - "obviously, she's-- a fine-- mother and-- a up-and-coming public servant." That's over on Politico.
Guys,
I am thankful for the corrections, and have duly made them. But respect the rest of the readers and don't thread-jack please.
I'm not making fun of names like Track and Trig. All I'm saying is, I knew guys with names like that in college, and they all wore hockey jersies with their frat nicknames printed on the back.
Anyway, most of the criticism I've seen of Palin isn't really directed at her, it's been at McCain for choosing her not as a stateswoman, but as a young person with a vagina. They're all pretty much interchangeable for McCain, anyhow.
The thing is, there are several different sets of conventions for weird names in use in the US. Old-money WASPs, high-status blacks, low-status blacks, new-agey/alternative whites (and others), low-status whites (several regional variants, I think), Mormons, and young trendy educated moms all give their kids recognizeably different classes of names, which are often pretty unusual, and which are quite distinct from the "Joes" and "Michelles" out there.
If I tell you there are five people waiting for you outside, and their names are Yates, Neisha, Orson, Junior, and Rowan, you start out with some guesses about their origins. (And you can easily add more--Isaac, Luke, and Maria also give you some hints.)
Palin's kids' names seem to follow some alternative convention, though maybe it's close to the Mormon one. (I'm not as familiar with that one, and suspect there are probably several different variants.)