Obama name controversy

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here is a little bit of Obama controversy over nothing substantive.

Swearing in: Barack Hussein Obama

By MIKE ALLEN

Politico.com

December 10, 2008

From the article:

In his first post-election newspaper interview, with reporters from the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, Obama was asked: “Do you anticipate being sworn in as Barack Obama or Barack Hussein Obama?"

He replied: “I think the tradition is that they use all three names, and I will follow the tradition, not trying to make a statement one way or the other. I'll do what everybody else does.”

In fact, all presidents have not used their middle names when taking the oath of office. Jimmy Carter famously went as “Jimmy Carter.” Ronald Wilson Reagan took the oath as simply “Ronald Reagan.”

Harry Truman, of course, didn’t have a middle name - just an initial that didn’t stand for anything — and was sworn in as “Harry S. Truman.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower and Gerald R. Ford took the oath using their middle initials.

Michael

[syrakusos]

Here is a little bit of Obama controversy over nothing substantive.

Now you are being disingenuous. Of course, it is a controversy. You are terrified of a communist muslim mole as President of the United States and you are making a big deal out of his middle name. Otherwise, you would not have bothered to post it -- and no one would understand the subtext.

So, if you were sworn in, would you be Michael Stuart Kelly? Would that be a signal to your Jacobean allies that now the House of Stuart was going to secretly roll back the Parliamentarian ascension of the Glorious Revolution? Are you plotting to move the nation's capital to Stuart, Florida? Will children have to memorize Stuart Little -- a thinly veiled allegory about the triumph of Jacobeanism -- funded by The Stuart Foundation?

Maybe you were not living the USA back then -- which is another thread to be followed later, our fine foreign friend; Star Spangled Banner as a bossa nova? -- and maybe you were not even born yet, but I remember when some Americans went "bananas" with fear that a Catholic president would be taking orders from the Pope. Patriotic Protestant ministers terrified their congregations with the dread that Catholic priests were telling their congregations to vote Democratic and told those God-fearing American parishoners to vote Republican, lest church and state be comingled.

You really need to focus on the fact that Republicans (story from March 2008!) will be joining the Cabinet (from December 2008) in this new one party government, for better or worse, remains to be seen. They might have a balancing affect, centering the Administration, or they might have some other consequence.

Edited December 10, 2008 by Michael E. Marotta

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Michael,

(Psssst... I posted that tongue-in-cheek.)

It sure is weird seeing a person take off like you just did. I feel like I am witnessing a race, but I don't know where the track is much less who is racing.

Oh... (pausing)

Were you being tongue-in-cheek, too? If you were, that was darn pretty funny. Actually it's pretty darn funny even if you weren't joking.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Sigh. He's being sarcastic. Not a bad job, either.

--Brant

[Chris Grieb]

Can't we all get a life? With thanks to Rodney King.

[syrakusos]

Can't we all get a life? With thanks to Rodney King.

My apologies to M ->S<- K, but his humor went right over my head, with all the paranoia hereabouts regarding Pres-E. Obama's qualifications.

I agree wholeheartedly that having a life of almost any kind makes some difference. Myself, I like to read history. I just wrote an article for The Celator about medieval Champagne. We measure gold and silver in "troy" ounces because of the great fairs at Troyes. (Was that measure based on a re-instantiation of Charlesmagne's "roman" pound or was it based on the northern "mark" brought down from England?) I call Champagne "the Athens of the Middle Ages" because so many streams of culture came together there: the Templars, the creation of the Arthurian legends, the very launch of the Crusades, a center of Jewish learning, the first experiments that became the great cathedrals at Chartres and Reims, free markets, fair courts, private contract law, banking at a distance, theoretical moneys of account, and the intersection of English and French politics. Eleanor of Aquitaine was the mother of Marie of Champagne and of Richard Lionheart.

For those reasons, tonight, my wife and I will be watching The Lion in Winter.

What would you do, if you were King Henry II and your wife and three sons had launched a war to unthrone you? In this movie, Henry releases Eleanor from prison to celebrate Christmas with her and the boys. Talk about a family together for the holidays...

Sort of keeps things in perspective.

Anyone else here remember the Nixon Wage and Price Freeze? I know an Objectivist who quit his job at a bank on that day, August 15, 1971. Perhaps Abraham Lincoln said it best: "The world will little note nor long remember what we do here..."

[galtgulch]

For those reasons, tonight, my wife and I will be watching The Lion in Winter.

What would you do, if you were King Henry II and your wife and three sons had launched a war to unthrone you? In this movie, Henry releases Eleanor from prison to celebrate Christmas with her and the boys. Talk about a family together for the holidays...

Sort of keeps things in perspective.

Anyone else here remember the Nixon Wage and Price Freeze? I know an Objectivist who quit his job at a bank on that day, August 15, 1971. Perhaps Abraham Lincoln said it best: "The world will little note nor long remember what we do here..."

Mike,

Lion In Winter is my wife's favorite movie, or one of them. All dialog! Katherine Hepburn has a line something like "We live in the Thirteenth Century. We are barbarians!"

On August 15, 1971 my wife and I were on our honeymoon in Switzerland.

I should have opened a bank account there.

Wm

Edited December 11, 2008 by galtgulch

[Chris Grieb]

I like Lion in Winter. I remember a line about "shall we hang the holly or each other."

[arkon]

I just got a new edition to my must see list!