Adventures in ellipsis
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150 years ago today, the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. America is forever indebted. pic.twitter.com/vhIE1k20e7
— Senate Republicans (@Senate_GOPs) April 15, 2015
More discussion here.
BlueLoom said,
April 16, 2015 @ 6:39 am
OMG.
Eric said,
April 16, 2015 @ 7:56 am
Oops.
David L said,
April 16, 2015 @ 8:49 am
What they mean is, thank heavens we don't have Republicans like that any more.
Jerry Friedman said,
April 16, 2015 @ 9:28 am
I can't add anything about the caption, but the iconography of the statue is interesting too. Sort of like The Composer Cherubini and the Muse of Lyric Poetry—reaching out, or holding down?
Ken said,
April 16, 2015 @ 11:19 am
The use of, commas, is notable in, a different way.
Jeremy Wheeler said,
April 16, 2015 @ 5:42 pm
This is of the "Here lies Captain Ernest Bloomfield Accidentally shot by his Orderly, March 2nd, 1789 Well done, thou good and faithful servant" school of memorial…
Michael Watts said,
April 16, 2015 @ 11:19 pm
Ken:
But you've put in a bunch of commas where they shouldn't be. The problem in the tweet is that they're missing a comma:
D.O. said,
April 17, 2015 @ 12:33 am
BTW, it seems to me that everybody who follows American politics knows that Obama is 44th president (and 43rd person who happens to be the president, but it is less well known), but somehow Republicans and Democrats do not count presidents from their sides separately. Why? Just if you are curious Obama is 16th Democratic president (counting from Jackson or 20th counting from Jefferson, Cleveland is counted twice because tradition) and Bush-43 was 19th Republican president.
Rubrick said,
April 17, 2015 @ 2:07 am
I am embarrassed to admit that I fixated so quickly on the missing comma after "Lincoln" — which to my mind is clearly wrong but in this instance doesn't produce any especially interesting ambiguity — that it took several reads to notice what the real problem was.
ohwilleke said,
April 17, 2015 @ 1:26 pm
The really notable part of the goof is that it comes across as a Freudian slip, because while Lincoln was the first Republican President, in the intervening century and a half, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party have completely traded ideological stances and democratic bases.
You would have been laughed out of the room in 1865 if you told people that in 2015, the core base of the Republican Party would be white Southern men who were opposed to greater legal protections for African-Americans. And yet, here we are.
Grover Jones said,
April 18, 2015 @ 1:20 pm
@ohwilleke
Uh, no we're not. You want to show me where the GOP base is opposed to greater legal protections for African-Americans?
I don't want to turn this into Politics Log, but good grief don't throw that garbage around, expecting it to go unchallenged.
Paul Wagoner said,
April 19, 2015 @ 12:39 am
The statue looks like one in Boston, near Park Square, that has an inscription reading (approximately), "A race set free, and a nation at peace, Lincoln rests from his labors."
Ron said,
April 19, 2015 @ 5:22 pm
From what I've read, they weren't all that sorry to see him go in 1865, either.
Nathan Myers said,
April 20, 2015 @ 6:50 pm
@Grojo: This isn't a politics blog, but if you are a USer you are assumed to know the referent of the expressions "Southern Strategy" and "dog whistle" and what they imply. Denials are part of the Strategy. The rest of us didn't choose the Strategy.
beth said,
April 21, 2015 @ 1:11 pm
i was so derailed by the implication that we're indebted to the assassination that the missing comma was lost on me for the first half-dozen reads.