A mere pup, a novice, a tenderfoot, a tyro…
These Yankees do have some fanciful notions about time. First, there was their confusing insistence that “dinner” was to be eaten at suppertime. (Thanks to Yankee control of mass media, we’ve all been conditioned to accept that now, but I can remember finding it confusing as a child.)
And now this…
Over the weekend, The Washington Post had a story about our own Lindsey Graham warning that Donald Trump poses a serious threat to the Republican Party, as long as he is in any way associated with the brand (once, we would have said “the name,” as in family name, but Don Draper and the rest of those mercantilists from up North now have us all saying “brand.”)
A fine story, and worth reading (he says of Trump that the point has passed “where his behavior becomes about us, not just him”), but you’ll do a double-take when you read this part:
Graham, a long-serving senator from South Carolina, was relegated to the undercard debate on Thursday because of his poor standing in national polls….
Did that jar you as much as it did me? I assumed it was a typo. In what universe does there exist a South Carolina in which Lindsey Graham would be regarded as “a long-serving senator?”
The boy just finished his sophomore term! He’s a novice, a mere pup, a tenderfoot, a tyro!
Just to state the painfully obvious: His predecessor in that seat held it for 47 years. (Fritz Hollings only served 38 years — which is why, until the very end, he was our junior senator.)
Only three senators held Graham’s seat between Ben Tillman (1895-1918 — but give him a break; he would have served longer had he not died in office) and Strom Thurmond, as long as you don’t count three or four fellas who were placeholders, just keeping the seat warm for a few months each here and there.
Anyway, I thought that was an odd choice of words, given the state that Graham represents.
Is it time for dinner yet? I’m hungry…
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Did you forget Jim Demint? I try to forget him and had to think a minute for his name, but he was there after Hollings.
I agree, though, that a senator in his second term hasn’t attained the designation of long serving even if he is the senior senator. I would like to note, though, that Graham has had a high enough profile that he seems long serving.
I did! I did! That boy just didn’t stick around long enough — thank goodness! I’ll go in and fix that.
(My only excuse is that, after meticulously checking the history of the Graham seat, I added Scott as an afterthought…)
In some spheres ,Lindsey is known as having , ‘gay face . Good pic.
“too long serving” in my book.
Jimmy Fallon did several jokes about Lindsey the other night, so I guess he’s serving his purpose as the token Southern caricature. The common theme of the jokes is Lindsey’s tough guy talk presented with a Blanche Dubois flair.
That’s been done to death by Jon Stewart.
Looks like the RBF has been replaced by the SEG in the photo.
It may only be 12 years at this point, but it certainly feels like an eternity.
Really? Compared to when Strom was in office, or for that matter, Jim DeMint?
What makes it seem so long to you? It doesn’t seem long to me at all…
Thurmond wasn’t on Meet the Press every week, for starters. And really, after the early 90’s – say the Clarence Thomas hearings, he played little if any direct role in governing.
Graham lives in and is active in a hyper media culture, which means though he has been around for less actual time, he is always present.
Thurmond was really active in the Senate from the 50’s to the early 70’s, peaked up again when the GOP had a majority early in Reagan’s years, and had his final national viewing in the Bush years. His last ten years in office he was honestly a place holder and became an institution.
Darling, dinner is eaten in the evening at Downton Abbey. It is not purely a Yank thing. It is a rural thing, true also in the Midwest, that dinner is the break the farmhands take midday.
Actually, I think dinner in Britain had migrated to that time, having once been closer to midday. I’d like to find a source for that. All I can cite is fiction. Patrick O’Brian’s hero Jack Aubrey dines at 3 rather than at the recently fashionable, later hour. And there’s an implication that when Jack was younger the time was earlier than 3.
Since O’Brian is well regarded for his grounding in historical fact, I assume there’s some basis for that…
Here’s an article that mentions the original dinner time in Britain…
By the way, there’s a fun post I need to do some time about the notions I had as a child (a Yankee would say, “as a kid”) of Yankee culture, or lack thereof.
In general, I placed the label “Yankee” on anything that had to do with the wider consumer and media culture I saw on TV. I drew some interesting conclusions from this. For instance, you know those little single-serving boxes of cereal you see in diners and convenience stores, which you could buy in grocery stores in Variety Packs? Since those were advertised on television by announcers without Southern accents, and produced in factories in such places as Battle Creek, Mich., I saw them as a window into Yankee ways. And what I concluded about Yankees was that they ate like birds, because those packages contained about half what I regarded as a serving of cereal….