Yes, I think a connection can be powerful. I'd say the electrical connection between generator and appliance is more powerful than a string that follows the same route.
Other than that, you're moving into realms of poetic license and prescriptive versus descriptive grammar, etc. Which, to me, comes down to context and the aim of communication. Take the split infinitive: For generations we've been told that that's an abomination (prescriptive grammar) but if you look at the actual usage in literary works, some great writers have always done it (descriptive grammar). But to me, more important is the impact. "To boldly go" versus "to go boldly" -- the former is far more bold-feeling than the latter. It may (or may not) be incorrect English, but I would argue it is the more correct communication. In any case, if you want to open your SciFi show with an exciting promise of adventure, there's no comparison, right?
When you write a poem (or a New Yorker article) part of the point is the words, to grab your attention and move you out of reading for information into savoring the words and images. In that case, use all the arresting and dislocating words you can -- while still conveying the ideas you want to convey.
On the other hand, when I write a proposal to the National Science Foundation, the last thing I want them to do is stumble over the words, to get them out of the flow of logic, or give them any reason to doubt my competence or communication skills. In that instance, I want the language to be as quite as possible, if you know what I mean.
My philosophy is that the important part is communication -- getting the idea, image or feeling from one person to another. Rules of language are important facilitators to that -- if we didn't have guidelines, nothing would get through. But when handled with care and skill, breaking and/or bending the rules can sometimes be the best way to get your message across, and I think that's far more important than splitting an infinitive occasionally.
And, for those who didn't see, here's Darth Thulhu on Andrew and Sarah Palin:
Sully's mildly OCD about his fixations, but the advantage of OCD is that one becomes very very well-informed about every detail of one's compulsion. One retains the whole timeline, and all the details; and before slotting in new data, that data is relentlessly compared to each piece of existing data.
Palin had the misfortune of being someone Sully could project his Thatcher OCD onto. His first posts about her , when little was known, glowed with hope and optimistic spin that she might be a common sense live-and-let-live fiscal conservative and social liberal. His early love obviously wasn't starburst-related, it was hope that she was Young Alaskan Maggie. Unfortunately for Palin, Sully digs and digs and digs into the things he loves. Her hype was never built on solid foundations, and he checked under the floorboards quickly, and stared into the first of many dank flooded subbasements of horror.
And now he's hooked. What could have been an OCD of love and respect tempered with stark disagreements and challenges (q.v. Obama) is now a Cassandran compulsion to examine what others looking only at the surface don't see, a mad prophet's need to make others listen before it's too late, and an old school journalist's certainty that now they can't accept anything from Palin without getting three pieces of independent confirmation.
Keep it up guys. Rachel Maddow is watching you!
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
The Andrew-is-a-beagle analogy is dead on.
Poor guy just discovered that the interview with Oprah is a puff piece about her new book and not a hardhitting journalistic expose. I don't know what to say.
He has been saying it would be a puff piece for a while now. What you are reading as naive realization, I think is meant to be sarcastic vindication. Although I don't know who he thinks did not believe him that the Oprah thing would be a puff piece.
(Note his comment about Oprah having accepted limitations on the interview is one he made a week ago when that clip leaked (or possibly was promoted by Oprah). And yet Sullivan here writes like it just occurred to him for the first time.
Although I don't know who he thinks did not believe him that the Oprah thing would be a puff piece.
That's my point. Hearing "Oprah will be interviewing X, who has a new book/movie/album out" I just assume puff piece. This is not a diss of Oprah but a recognition of what she does professionally. Even if Andrew doesn't normally watch Oprah--I've never seen the show--I don't see who would expect her to do anything else.
I gather that split infinitive thing is something that EB White made up out of nowhere in revising the style and grammar guide "The Elements of Style." In Latin it is impossible to split infinitives because they are single words. But in English there is no tradition of not splitting them, or at least wasn't until White claimed there was. (Which of course just supports Polwogy's disdain for them).
The "rule" been around since the 19th century. Strunk & White merely perpetuated it, and not very strongly either (they said the split infinitive was something to be avoided, not something absolutely prohibited).
*blush* Thanks for the high praise. As someone who tends to devour everything I like (hence the Thulhu), it's a joy to watch Mr. Andrew make a successful trait of it. Even his excesses are adorable, with detachment.
I'll second the *blush*.
Full disclosure: my grandmother was an English professor, and one family legend says that she used to stop reading student papers at the first split infinitive, and grade it as if the rest of the paper didn't exist. In almost every way, I'm proud she's my grandmother, but -- oh the shame! ;)
This is not necessary (because I don't think anyone's seeking recognition) but it's very generous for TNC to feature commenter posts once in a while. In some way, it's like a teacher using a student's work as a model. It's just a very decent thing to do, and in my view, a sign of gratitude.
The split infinitive rule is sort of a straw-man in the grammar debate, because it's something even most prescriptivists have abandoned by now. Virtually no one today claims it's a grammatical error.
I do lean heavily toward the descriptivist school, but the prescriptivist viewpoint is not as easily dismissed as the commenter above makes it out to be. Good communication can't be our only criterion (or is that criteria?). If you were editing a magazine article, would you really allow the writer to include a sentence like, "The sheeps escaped"? It's perfectly understandable, and even enhances comprehension (because "The sheep escaped" makes the number of sheep ambiguous without seeing the larger context). But it is appropriate to expect people to follow the rules in formal situations, just like we expect people not to attend a banquet wearing jeans and a T-shirt.
The problem with prescriptivists is that they are intolerant of less adherence to the rules in casual situations, and they lack an appreciation for the evolving nature of language.
I don't think it's a straw-man, it's an example. It may be from a battle already (mostly) won, but it is a real example. Especially since my breakage example is from 1967. My point is not to argue specifically against that rule, but to talk about how breaking rules (e.g. in Star Trek's opening monologue) can better communicate an idea or feeling.
Other than that, I pretty much agree. I think I said pretty much the same thing in my last two paragraphs. As to "sheeps," I don't think it enhances comprehension (as long as context is clear); and unskillful or inappropriate breaking of expectations could be distracting to no purpose, and therefore impede communication. But again, context and intention might change that balance. If I was editing a poetry magazine, for instance, I wouldn't change it to "sheep" without consulting with the writer.
@polywogy,
The problem is that too many people break the rules without first knowing and understanding them. When one attempts to communicate, one must understand the audience and its expectations. For example, someone who doesn't understand the style and lingo of message boards, blogs and chatrooms will unintentionally cause some people to tune out by, say, typing in all caps, not realising that doing so implies shouting. In the same manner, unintentional errors in grammar and spelling distract or confuse.
I think that it's wonderful the way the language of the internet evolves so rapidly, establishing and revising its norms and vocabulary at breakneck speed. It makes the medium such an adaptive communication tool -- not to mention a goldmine for anyone studying the evolution of language.
The problem is that too many people don't understand that when they step offline and start writing for other media, the rules are different. Maintaining those different standards may seem old-fashioned or burdensome to many but I think the act is essential if we are to retain a cohesive language that is capable of meaningful nuance.
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.
It's generational. I'm 32 years old and was never taught it as a grammatical rule, though my parents (who grew up in the '50s and '60s) were. Nowadays, defenders don't call it a "rule," just a guideline, something to avoid for stylistic reasons. The only debate is over whether it has any merit at all or is just a silly superstition.
To make my point about "sheeps" clearer, imagine you live on a farm and you wake up one day hearing someone in the family cry, "Help! The sheep escaped!" You rush to grab your robe and your slippers, but until you step out the front door you have no idea if you'll be facing a single lone sheep or an entire herd.
Your family member could prevent this situation if she said "All of the sheep escaped!" or "One of the sheep escaped!" or whatever number describes what happened. The problem is that she might not take that into consideration when she's rushing to get your attention. We always can avoid ambiguity by choosing our words more precisely, but being human, we sometimes forget. A lot of grammatical rules, such as the pluralization of nouns, are redundant except in those occasional circumstances when they prevent ambiguity. Likewise, when the language prohibits pluralization, violating that rule may occasionally get your point across better even though it sounds awkward and wrong.
In other words, the twin goals of getting your point across and speaking properly do not always coincide. Following grammar is often more about the latter than the former. Just as it's proper to dress a certain way for formal occasions, it's also proper to dress up your grammar in some situations even when it doesn't get your point across any better. You can argue that both goals help further communication, but they are still different goals, and can potentially conflict with each other.
"Help! The sheep escaped!" You rush to grab your robe and your slippers, but until you step out the front door you have no idea if you'll be facing a single lone sheep or an entire herd.
The sheep means that it's plural and a sheep means that it's singular. The only way the sheep means singular would be if you only have one sheep. Either way, you'd understand the context based on how many sheep are on the farm.
I frequently say things like "The cat jumped up on the table" even though we have more than one cat, because when I say "The cat," I'm thinking "The cat in front of me." People aren't always precise in what they say.
@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.
@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"? :)
@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.
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.
Also, William Gibson. Do you think he and Rachel IM each other while they read the blog?
This comes at an interesting time, because I unsubscribed from Andrew's blog yesterday after reading it for years, since it was posted in white font on blue. Not sure if my break is temporary or permanent, but it's been a breath of fresh air so far.
I can't stand Palin, but good lord, enough is enough. Once he found out that she was as unhealthily obsessed with the Dish as he is with her, his monomaniacal streak reached a point of sheer ridiculousness. When he wrote that Palin is a person "whose self-awareness is close to nil" I remembered what my momma always told me: you spot it you got it.
And his demagoguery of the book industry is seriously tiresome. What's the alternative to someone (be it HarperCollins or someone else) publishing Palin's memoir? Censorship? Is he proposing that we should start banning books from publication just because Andrew Sullivan doesn't personally agree with their choice of publication?
Andrew's biggest fault is his conflation of the personal and the objective. With Palin and HarperCollins (excuse me, it's the schoolyard WhorperCollins now) it's personal and way beyond anything close to objective, and he's taken it to the point that it's unbearable to watch. He's like that friend who's a great drinking buddy until he reaches shot #10 and then starts destroying the bar.
More power to you, but I see it a bit differently. I think he's kind of post-objective, which to me, is a compliment to readers. This means that he gets that we get that objectivity is relative, dig? Once it's out in the open that objectivity isn't the end-game, we can move on to honesty. It's a new forum, and when it's your blog, you get to play if you want to play.
I think.
I see your point, and he does air dissent and counter the people who disagree with him with facts, which is far more than anyone could say about someone like Palin. He's mostly up front with his biases, which is a more European journalism style of objectivity.
At the same time, when he gets obsessed with something he takes it way too far, and he goes from being objective and fair-minded and often extremely right and prescient, to very very wrong. He did this from 2002-2004, when he went after anyone who didn't "get" that we were in some neverending massive apocalyptic war with radical Islam, and it led him to all sorts of ideological excesses. He's doing it again with the publishing industry. And with Palin, he's off his rocker about both the relevance and the salience of the pregnancy conspiracy.
So, I take your point, but to me objectivity isn't just about telling everyone your biases - it's also about weighing the facts and being level-headed and thinking clearly. From time to time he fails spectacularly in that regard, and when he does I find him extremely difficult/bothersome to read.
yep, more ego-centric than ocd.
Gotcha. And you have a much longer view than I. And the following makes me stop and think: "and he's doing it again with the publishing industry."
I have realized this: the longer I hang around these parts, the more I should stay conscious of what I'm taking in. On the whole, though, it's all in good fun. And it's definitely an advantage of this (TNC's) page, because multiple voices lead to multiple perspectives. This is one of the reasons I enjoy bouncing back and forth between the two spaces.
For the time being, enjoy your time away. (you would've lost your marbles today!)
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.
Sigh. Let's try again: The only thing I subscribe to is xkcd.
Sigh. Howzabout I try that again: The only thing I subscribe to is xkcd.
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.
No offense to TNC, but Andrew Sullivan is the reason I began reading the Atlantic blogs. He's one of the most interesting political commentators to emerge in recent times, and what's fascinating is watching the evolution of his views. He 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.
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.
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.
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.
A great thing, too, about those comments is that each one engendered a really interesting conversation nested below it. Oh, the productivity losses!
Look, Andrew is the only one in the MSM doing a good job covering Palin. It's not hysterical left-winger talk to say that she's a huge threat to this country. I mean, imagine what happened to us while Bush was in office. And Palin is Bush on steroids. More oily faith based wars, more out of control entitlement spending combined with tax cuts. There's no way our economy or our infrastructure could survive her delusional world view. What's going to happen to this country if she gets in the White House?
Is going after her with conspiracy theories the way to do that though? I think his series on her lies is devastating when he sticks to the facts and just lets her lunacy shine through. But I don't think he's going to convince anyone on the fence by coming at her in a fashion that's as petty, obsessive, and conspiracy-minded as she is.
I agree he should stick to the facts. I think a lot of his frustration with the Right over their demonization of gay people tends to boil over onto Palin; can't say I blame him though. I have zero sympathy for pols like Palin who make a career out of playing on people's fears and resentments. And it's not like she's even tried to refute a lot of Andrew's charges. She knows if she had brought a libel suit against him, a lot of things might have to become public that she would rather not.
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.
I was watching last night's Pats/Colts game with a friend who is a longtime Dolphin fan and supporter of Marino's status in the "Greatest QBs" pantheon. Because of Manning v. Brady, we were discussing said pantheon, and my friend was reminding me of the case for Marino (no good running backs, not much defense, no great receivers other than the Marks, quick release, stats, etc). I countered the way everyone does: never won the big one.
Which pretty much shut my friend up. Other QBs (Favre) may have rings for which they are not primarily responsible (Desmond Howard), and perhaps Marino is not primarily responsible for his own lack of a ring. But no one defends him against the "no championships" charge because they fear what such a defense says about the defender: I'm for losers.
That's where we're at. We've long stopped caring about public figures based on their merits or flaws, everything is judged by reference to what the judgment says about us. In this regard Sullivan's opposition to Palin is almost quaint, since just about everything he argues is 100% accurate, but its like so much tilting at windmills: no one cares. We either love her because she's a MILF or refreshing or evangelical or a MILF or whatever, or we hate her because we are liberal or elitist or proud of ourselves for having read a book in the last decade.
Palin's true nature has nothing to do with it. Everything we say about Palin is ultimately a comment about ourselves. Strange, isn't it?
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.
"Sully digs and digs and digs into the things he loves."
Has he done this with Obama?
He has done quite a bit of it with Obama, especially when it comes to torture and gay rights.
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.
As much as with Reagan and Maggie Thatcher, and those two have far more for which to answer.
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.
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.
" 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.
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)
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....