After Tuesday's split decisions in Indiana and North Carolina, Clinton, the Yankee Clipperette, can, and hence eventually will, creatively argue that she is really ahead of Barack Obama, or at any rate she is sort of tied, mathematically or morally or something, in popular votes, or delegates, or some combination of the two, as determined by Fermat's Last Theorem, or something, in states whose names begin with vowels, or maybe consonants, or perhaps some mixture of the two as determined by listening to a recording of the Beach Boys' "Help Me, Rhonda" played backward, or whatever other formula is most helpful to her, and counting the votes she received in Michigan, where hers was the only contending name on the ballot (her chief rivals, quaintly obeying their party's rules, boycotted the state, which had violated the party's rules for scheduling primaries), and counting the votes she received in Florida, which, like Michigan, was a scofflaw and where no one campaigned, and dividing Obama's delegate advantage in caucus states by pi multiplied by the square root of Yankee Stadium's ZIP code.Or perhaps she wins if Obama's popular vote total is, well, adjusted, by counting each African-American vote as only three-fifths of a vote. There is precedent, of sorts, for that arithmetic (see the Constitution, Article I, Section 2, before the 14th Amendment).
"We," says Geoff Garin, a Clinton strategist who possesses the audacity of hopelessness required in that role, "don't think this is just going to be about some numerical metric." Mere numbers? Heaven forefend. That is how people speak when numerical metrics -- numbers of popular votes and delegates -- are inconvenient.
Which makes me think, with apologies to Monty Python...:
A Democratic primary voter enters Clinton for President headquarters.Voter: Hello, I wish to register a complaint.
(The man behind the counter does not respond.)
Voter: Hello, Miss?
Geoff Garin: What do you mean "miss"?
Voter: I'm sorry, I have a cold. I wish to make a complaint!
Garin: We're closin' for lunch.
Voter: Never mind that, my boy. I wish to complain about this candidate what I voted for not two days ago.
GG : Oh yes, the, uh, the Hillary Clinton ...What's,uh...What's wrong with her?
Voter: I'll tell you what's wrong with her, my lad. Her campaign is dead, that's what's wrong with her!
GG: No, no, she's, uh,...she's resting.
Voter: Look, matey, I know a dead candidate when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
GG: No no she's not dead, she's, she's restin'! Remarkable bird, Hillary Clinton, idn't she? Beautiful plumage!
Voter: The plumage don't enter into it. Her presidential campaign is stone dead.
GG: Nononono, no, no! She's resting!
Voter (pointing to delegate-math statistics on CNN): Now that's what I call a dead candidate.
GG: No, no.....No, she's stunned!
Voter: STUNNED?!?
GG: Yeah! The voters stunned her, just as she was wakin' up! Hillary stuns easy, major.
Voter: Um...now look...now look, mate, I've definitely had enough of this. That campaign is definitely deceased, and when I voted for Mrs. Clinton not two days ago, you assured me that her total lack of movement was due to her bein' tired and shagged out following a prolonged squawk.
GG: Well, she's...she's, ah...probably pining for Yankee Stadium. She's a big Yanks fan, you know.
Voter: PININ' for YANKEE STADIUM?!?!?!? What kind of talk is that?, look, why did she fall flat on her back on Tuesday night?
GG: Hillary Clinton prefers keepin' on her back! She's a fighter, an underdog. Remarkable bird, id'nt she, squire? Lovely plumage!
Voter: She's not pinin'! She's passed on! Her campaign is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If Hillary Clinton hadn't nailed herself to the Democratic Party perch she'd be pushing up the daisies! This campaign's metabolic processes are now history! She's off the twig! She's kicked the bucket, she's shuffled off her mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE!!
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Yeah, it's definitely an Ontario thing. You hear it quite often around here from tourists (NW PA/Western New York) and I've often heard it when traveling to Ontario. It's no myth, it's just a myth that it's universally Canadian. It's kind of like the way Britcoms used to portray all Americans as sounding like South Dakotans with rubber bands in their mouths.
I'm really stunned no certified Pythonite has weighed in with the one scene that is to me truly canonic here; I refer, of course, to the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, who, chopped serially to a torso by King Arthur, cannot admit defeat no matter how far less he is than half the man he used to be:
youtube.com/watch?v=2eMkth8FWno
BLACK KNIGHT:
Come here!
ARTHUR:
What are you going to do, bleed on me?
BLACK KNIGHT:
I'm invincible!
ARTHUR:
You're a looney.
BLACK KNIGHT:
The Black Knight always triumphs! Have at you! Come on, then.
[whop]
[ARTHUR chops the BLACK KNIGHT's last leg off]
BLACK KNIGHT:
Oh? All right, we'll call it a draw.
ARTHUR:
Come, Patsy.
BLACK KNIGHT:
Oh. Oh, I see. Running away, eh? You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you. I'll bite your legs off!
Dale,
"I've heard it ["about" pronounced "aboot"] in Ontario. It stems from the heavy Scots influence."
Hmm, I've lived in Ontario all my life, and my husband is of Scottish origin and yet I have never ever heard it pronounced that way from any one in any region where I've lived (from SouthWest Ontario through to Ottawa, with stops in Toronto, Hamilton and Kitchener-Waterloo), nor from anyone in my husband's family.
As pentamom said, "You hear it quite often around here from tourists (NW PA/Western New York)", but NOT from actual Canadians.
And finally to Mr. Dreher, who typed, "Nobody around here writes regularly in ALL CAPS and sticks in five exclamation points but you. Quit whining."
If you can find one post that I have ever written that has been in all caps and with 5 exclamation points, I will eat my words. Occasionally I will type a word or two (or even several - to make a point) in all caps, and I cannot remember ever using 5 exclamation points, 3 is my usual number, and again to make a point).
You even resort to the use of all caps yourself when you type "ALL CAPS". Pray tell, is it perhaps to make or to emphasize a point? Well, that's what I use 'em for.
As for "Nobody" else but me doing it, sorry pal, but you are sadly mistaken as a casual glance at almost any of your threads would quickly disprove. (Note jesterfyl's May 8, 2008 11:27 AM post above (to whit, "EXTRAORDINARY!!!"), or RJohnson's use of the triple exclamation point in the May 8, 2008 10:20 AM post - and that's just on this one thread alone.
"I only cut-and-pasted from a transcript I found online"
Who knew? You certainly never gave any credit for using someone else's material. To whit, (from your post) "Which makes me [emphasis mine] think, with apologies to Monty Python...:". Sorry, but I simply thought it was something you typed. so now I can only wait for you to disparage the original writer and his/her use of "ALL CAPS" and "excessive punctuation". (Or did you find that those things actually "captured" the essence of the spoken word better than mere plain text?)
Rod, I know you don't like me, but could you at least stick to telling the truth? It adds to your 'believability'. Your constant disparaging remarks to and about (note, not aboot) me come across as not much more than you "whining".
r-ex-P:
All I can say is I've heard it. I live in southeastern lower Michigan and get over to Windsor every so often with my wife for a day trip. I stayed with a Canadian family on a band trip in high school back in the mid-80s. They used it. I've heard Harry Neale on Hockey Night In Canada slip into it.
As I said, I think it's fading under the relentless American media bombardment. My wife and I went on a vacation to Toronto in April 2001 and I don't recall hearing it then. Then again, Toronto is about as cosmopolitan as it gets, so that might not be representative.
So now Dana Milbank is using this premise, first suggested by David Corn. Remember Nitpicker's newspaper rule: It's not plagiarism if you steal from bloggers.
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