First, in other primary news, Bill Richardson, whose energy plan was excellent but who failed to excite anyone, at all, even a little bit, has dropped out of the Dem primary. Also, John Kerry, who didn't excite all that many people either, has endorsed Barack Obama.
The big question, according to Josh, is whom Al Gore will endorse. I've seen lots of speculation about this. My strong inclination is that Gore will not endorse anyone until the general, when he will endorse the Dem candidate. His endorsement of Dean has become something of a political joke among the chattering class, coming as it did just before Dean's implosion. He's got nothing to gain and much to lose from endorsing another losing candidate.
Right now Gore's a powerful force in civic society. He needs a good relationship with whoever's in the oval office. Why risk pissing off the winner with a primary endorsement?
Also, despite Gore's recent rise in stature and popularity, the fact is that he does not, contra some of the more fevered boosterism you see around, command all that much devoted support among Democrats. The likely effect of his endorsement would be ... very little. I can't really imagine whose mind it would change. It might give a candidate a one or two day bump in the news cycle, but that's about it. It's risk of downside with no upside for him or the candidate.
For what it's worth, it seems pretty obvious to me that he'd endorse Obama. But he has reached something of a detente with Hillary, and will need to be able to work with her should she win.
(Oh, also, uh, the two-party corporate duopoly totally sucks! Fight the Man! Vote Green! Or whatnot.)
Climate talks timeline: From 350 to Kyoto to Copenhagen and beyond
Gore on the Daily Show: extended dance remix
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odograph Posted 5:44 am
10 Jan 2008
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caniscandida Posted 7:27 pm
10 Jan 2008
"Whom" should certainly be retained by poets and stylists and others with a sensitive ear for the sound of speech. But it should not be forced on people who find writing tough enough already.
And the same and more for "whomever," one of the most misused words in the language. Countless writers make mistakes like this: "During the prize ceremony, a genetically modified pony will be awarded to whomever writes the best poem in praise of Monsanto."
Back to Al Gore and endorsements:
Can we honestly believe that John Kerry's endorsement will change a single American's vote? In principle it might have discouraged some people from supporting John Edwards, but their mutual recriminations following the 2004 defeat make that very unlikely. And on the other hand, anyone thinking of joining Obama's "movement" certainly is not going to be helped along in that direction by John Kerry.
Al Gore has not left the Democratic Party, so it can be assumed he will be supporting the Party's nominee, unless he leaps rashly now and endorses a loser, which, I agree, he is almost certainly not going to do. But does simply saying that he supports the Party's nominee amount to a full, fully activated "endorsement"?
Rather, he may try to arrange an event with the nominee-apparent, between the close of primary season and the convention, perhaps a tour of some exemplary cutting-edge green site, whether business or institutional or residential, featuring renewable energy and zero carbon footprint, with a goodly mixed-race number of cheerful working-class workers, and/or cheerful low-income beneficiaries.
And hopefully with a sanctuary for migratory birds.
And a comfortable, pleasant free range for mixed-species cheerful poultry.
And a petting zoo!
But no free ponies.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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bookerly Posted 9:27 pm
10 Jan 2008
I agree that Al Gore won't endorse anyone. By now he is wise enough to ask the question, how would doing so benefit me and my work? The answer being that it would not, he shouldn't endorse anyone.
If he wants to play internationally (and by all signs, he does), he needs to be careful who he criticizes. (I personally, rarely use whom except when discussing Hemingway, I usually teach English as a language based on usage, not rules, and whom, poor whom, whomever once praised this word, alas it has passed beyond the veil to a far better world than it once knewm..)
He does need to work with the winner. He got away with attacking George Bush because Bush is THAT unpopular, but still, it wasn't really a wise thing to do. He should have explained to George that bike riders all care about global warming, and all dig him.
That George could be the bicycling hero of the world by spending money to support biking and mass transit.
THAT would have been useful.
patrick in Beijing
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spaceshaper Posted 10:11 pm
10 Jan 2008
Example: "Grandma couldn't come to the wedding but she sent a really neat gift to Michael and I."
I hear this all the time, even among educated folk with college degrees. It's perhaps a response to some third grade teacher who rapped the speaker's knuckles (figuratively, we hope) for saying "Michael and me went fishing".
I can't cure my office manager of this practice even in business letters, which I feel reflects as badly on our business as a misspelling would. Patrick, Canis, do we accept pretentious and muddlesome usage such as this or do we rage, rage against the dying of the light?
BTW, I fully endorse the sentiments expressed above that Our Man Al should hold back until the Dems have a candidate. We've discussed it, and that seems wise to both my office manager and me.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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KathyF Posted 2:36 am
11 Jan 2008
But it also sent Dean straight to the top of the polls in Iowa and NH. And the other candidates, and the Republican Club for Growth, started running negative ads in Iowa against Dean.
That's what caused the implosion, not the endorsement but the fact that it meant Dean was the frontrunner. (Sound familiar? Hillary was proclaimed the frontrunner, and look what that did for her.)
In light of this, with Obama already considered the man to beat, I don't see how a Gore endorsement hurts him, or damages Gore's "brand", which is the reason I hear he's hesitating.
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wiscidea Posted 2:52 am
11 Jan 2008
Suppose Obama or Clinton is the nominee... Al Gore's endorsement could be the kiss of death for a candidate trying to win over a few conservatives. On the other hand, folks willing to follow Gore's suggestion, will probably be voting for a Democrat regardless. I just don't see the advantage.
I wish Kerry would stay out of this as well. He made such poor decisions during the last election. Do we really want to remind voters that he is still around and has a role in the Democratic Party?
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dmbtiger Posted 3:38 am
11 Jan 2008
Dan
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danielbell Posted 6:58 am
11 Jan 2008
Gore could really only have an influential impact if he endorsed a candidate before super tuesday. Yet this would risk acrimony if the supported candidate didn't win. If he waits for the general, the balance is not in the democrats favor: those who would listen to Gore are likely already concerned about global warming and hence would vote dem (or 3rd party) while independents may shy away from a Gore supported dem.
He would better serve the situation by simply encouraging people to vote and to check out the candidates' positions on global warming.
What kind of election will it be if both candidates in a general support action on global warming?
carbonsnumber.blogspot.com
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enki Posted 9:05 am
11 Jan 2008
Obama in '08
See how easy that was? :D
Mike Johnston
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Green Granny Posted 8:26 pm
11 Jan 2008
"I'm more than happy to let go of "whom", but do I have to put up with the growing popularity of exclusively using the nominative first person pronoun, regardless of sense, after a conjunction?"
That drives me crazy too -- and its nearly impossible to convince people that they are wrong. I tell them to remove the other person from the sentence (and the conjunction) -- i.e. 'Grama gave a gift to me'. Then 'Grama gave a gift to Michael.' To combine the two, why replace "me" with "I"? But that doesn't always work. I think those 3rd grade teachers should be throttled.
"We must be the change we wish to see in the world." -- Mahatma Ghandi
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Delay And Deny Posted 5:38 am
12 Jan 2008
Gore is perhaps the most invisible "celebrity" around today.
The question is not whom will he endorse...but where is Gore?
I guess it takes a lot of time to spend the $130 million he huckstered off The People last year.
My Log
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Greta Posted 7:01 am
12 Jan 2008
But, alas, "The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit," indulges in poetic license, too. The word "whose" used as a possessive with an inanimate object is not (technically) correct.
[Although, I, too, think of trees as people! And, they are very animate[d]...they move constantly.]
In the reverse, it rubs me when people use "that" with an animate object. Example: "Al Gore, a man that needs no political favors, should endorse Dennis Kucinich, or a green party candidate, on platform principle. Sean Penn did." Should be "Al Gore, a man who..."
Whee!
www.NoPunProductions.com ~ AmericaTheGreen.org
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Sam Wells Posted 11:21 am
12 Jan 2008
And I honestly don't care who Al Gore endorses!
digger sam
Onward through the fog
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tico89 Posted 12:49 am
13 Jan 2008
Anyway, is it just me, or did the grammatical debate, seeing as it had nothing to do with the original post, merely emphasise the pointlessness of discussing Gore's endorsement?
If I share initials with 'Global Warming', is that a sign?
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tico89 Posted 2:06 am
13 Jan 2008
I will now retire to my corner.
If I share initials with 'Global Warming', is that a sign?
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Sam Wells Posted 8:03 am
13 Jan 2008
Onward through the fog
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caniscandida Posted 10:11 am
13 Jan 2008
I.e. in pillow talk with Tipper, who has he been telling her he likes the best, and would most like to see win, from among all the candidates?
DR suggested that would be Barack Obama. I think that is possible, but I am not convinced. A number of the candidates are more learned and knowledgeable than Obama, it seems -- and I do not mean simply by experience, I mean taking the time to study issues -- , and that is a quality that Gore values highly. Certainly Clinton and Edwards are very learned people, and so are the three who have dropped out.
As for the importance that the respective candidates give to environmental and energy-related issues, why would what we know about Obama be more impressive to Gore than what we know about any of the other candidates?
The only obvious reasons for supporting Obama at this point would be
either purely political -- i.e., Obama seems to be creating a "movement," eliciting a widespread passion, especially among younger voters, and we know from Gore's endorsement of Howard Dean that he has a taste for that sort of thing -- ,
or sentimentally noble -- i.e., from the perspective of long-term history, and in the eyes of the world, it is an amazingly good thing that a black candidate for president of the US actually at last has a chance of winning.
Then there is whatever the private history is between Gore and the Clintons, which may be a big impediment to his ever endorsing Hillary. But that is far beyond what I can figure out.
So as I said, it is indeed possible that Gore is now privately for Obama, but to me at least not at all obvious.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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caniscandida Posted 10:51 am
13 Jan 2008
Says Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, s.v. who [with some adjustment of punctuation and paragraphing]:
<<
what or which person or persons -- used as an interrogative ... ; used by speakers on all educational levels and by many reputable writers, though disapproved by some grammarians, as the object of a verb or a following preposition: "Who did I see but a Spanish lady," Padraic Colum; "do not know who the message is from," G.K. Chesterton.
...
used as a function word to introduce a relataive clause; ... used by speakers on all educational levels and by many reputaable writers, though disappproved by some grammarians, as the object of a verb or a following preposition: "a character who we are meant to pity," Times Lit. Supp.
>>
And the same crew, s.v. whom:
<<
used as an interrogative or relative; used as object of a verb or a preceding preposition: "to know for whom the bell tolls," John Donne; or less frequently as the object of a following preposition: "the man whom you wrote to"; though now often considered stilted esp. as an interrogative and esp. in oral use; ...
usage: Observers of the language have been predicting the demise of whom from about 1870 down to the present day: "one of the pronoun cases is visibly disappearing -- the objective case whom," R.G. White (1870); "whom is dying out in England, where 'Whom did you see?' sounds affected," Anthony Burgess (1980).
Our evidence shows that no one -- English or not -- should expect whom to disappear momentarily; it shows every indication of persisting quite a while yet. Actual usage of who and whom -- accurately described at the entries in this dictionary -- does not appear to be markedly different from the usage of Shakespeare's time. But the 18th century grammarians, propounding rules and analogies, rejecting other rules and analogies, and usu. justifying both with appeals to Latin or Greek, have intervened between us and Shakespeare.
It seems clear that the grammarians' rules have had little effect on the traditional uses. One thing they have accomplished is to encourage hypercorrect uses of whom ("whom shall I say is calling?"). Another is that they have made some people unsure of themselves ("said he was asked to step down, although it is not known exactly who or whom asked him," Redding (Conn.) Pilot).
>>
So all you bold defenders of "whom" no matter what can call yourselves children of the Enlightenment. By the same token, though, in order to be consistent, you must never ever allow yourselves to split an infinitive. Tico89, you should be named captain of the guard.
By the way, "whom" AFTER a preposition still is right as rain: "to whom," "for whom" are jolly good, while we would never say "to who," "for who."
Greta,
"whose" was from of old the genitive-case form for both masculine and neuter genders (possibly feminine as well, but I have not yet studied Old English), so technically it is correct to use it as SpaceShaper does in his beautiful sign-off.
(By the way, in Norse mythology the first man was formed from the ash tree, Ask, and the first woman from the alder tree, Embla.)
You may have noticed that I pointedly use "who," and not "that" or "which," when the antecedent is an animal. I acknowledge that that is not standard practice, and that I am being tendentious when I do so. But what the hell.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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Greta Posted 3:14 am
14 Jan 2008
Not according to Chicago Manual of Style: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/CMS_FAQ/Usage/Usage48 ...
And, by the by, I am not knocking the sign-off (love it!), and probably would use "whose" for the same reason that you use "who" with animals (as do I) -- respect and reverence.
In informal writing, I generally capitalize the word Environment, out of reverence.
As to grammar, I agree with Chicago Manual of Style (referring to the who/whom case): "In any case, if we were all as proper as you are, proper grammar wouldn't sound wrong to anyone."
Ref: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/CMS_FAQ/Pronouns/Pron ...
Respectfully yours,
Greta
www.NoPunProductions.com ~ AmericaTheGreen.org
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caniscandida Posted 6:16 am
15 Jan 2008
And just to be clear, I never said that DR's use of "whom" in the title of his post is wrong. Not at all; we should all write as well as DR! It is just that, given that "who" is a valid alternative, the choice of "whom" sometimes has a not altogether pleasant air of grammatical pharisaism. That is all. It just a subjective matter of style.
Euphony counts, too. A stylist will take into account the fact that the second word of the sentence begins with a consonant, and may very well decide that "Who will" sounds more fluent than "Whom will." By the same token, if we ask the question in the present tense, "Whom is Gore endorsing?" may sound preferable to "Who is Gore endorsing?"; "whom" before a word beginning with a vowel does not call attention to itself so much.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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David Roberts Posted 6:25 am
15 Jan 2008
Me, I'm all about euphony, clarity, and official grammatical correctness -- in that order.
grist.org
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