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Dear Carly, Dear Scott?
About an hour ago, I received a personal e-mail from Carly Fiorina, brightly addressed to “Claire,” and sent to an e-mail address I don’t usually share, seeing as I try to keep at least one of them spam-free:
I wrote back:
Carly,
While I welcome your entry into the GOP contest and am looking forward to hearing more from you, I’d like to hear more about your thoughts on national security before committing to your campaign. Since you’re the only candidate who has thus far found this e-mail address and contacted me, I suspect you’d have an interesting perspective, in particular, on cyber-security.
Perhaps I could interview you and chat with you about this. I’m an editor of Ricochet.com, the most cordial website for cordial conservative conversation on the Internet. Our members would be delighted to have you join us and discuss your campaign. We’d be pleased, in fact, to offer you an introductory month of free membership.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Claire Berlinski
Senior Fellow for Turkey, American Foreign Policy Institute,
Author of There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters,
Ricochet.com
PS: Generally, I would address you as Ms. Fiorina. I’m old-fashioned. But since we’re already on a first name basis, I’ll follow your lead.
I thought no more of it, until the next one showed up, ten minutes later:
It came to the same e-mail address. That’s strange, I thought. We’re on a first name basis? I can’t call him “Scott,” can I? That would just be inappropriate. After fretting a bit about it, I wrote back.
Dear Governor Walker,
While I welcome your entry into the GOP contest and am looking forward to hearing more from you, I’d like to hear more about your thoughts on foreign policy and national security before committing to your campaign.
Perhaps I could chat with you about this. I’m an editor of Ricochet.com, the most cordial website for cordial conservative conversation on the Internet. Our members would be delighted to have you join us and discuss this issue. We’d be pleased, in fact, to offer you an introductory month of free membership.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Claire Berlinski
Senior Fellow for Turkey, American Foreign Policy Institute,
Author of There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters,
Ricochet.com
Then I realized I’d forgotten to give them the coupon code for their free first month. It’s JOIN. I don’t want to bother them; I’m sure they’re busy, so I’ll just add this here, in case they stop by.
If you haven’t joined yet, of course, now’s your chance: same deal I offered Carly and … Scott.
Anyway, I hope they’ll join us. Please extend a warm Ricochet welcome to them both in case they do.
Published in Elections, General
Keep ’em comin’, Frank.
-E
I got a note earlier in the week, and already suggested to the email (since I knew it was a staffer reading the response) that they would do well to visit Ricochet, and find some friends among us.
It would be cool to have them write a post on a topic, and solicit comments. Would Editors and Moderators need to be on high alert?
Or a podcast…
Not sure why they haven’t already.
and then there’s always Dear Marco,
here is a link, not sure if it is public, but I was able to register my priorities on three issues: HRC emails, Cuba, Iran.
https://marcorubio.com/news/trending-topics-this-week/
Seems a smart way to gather information and open his net.
Of course, they do ask you to share your email, and make a donation.
Maybe I’m missing something, or is there a lower barrier for addressing a former CEO by their first name than a sitting governor? Just curious.
(After all, Tom Barrett thought it was OK to call the governor by his first name. In a televised debate. It was kind of weird.)
I unsubscribed from the RNC mailing list a while back. It actually worked. I still get some since then — I think via NRO — but it’s settled down to a quite acceptable level. (“Acceptable” means you send me less junk mail than my bank.)
Carly probably doesn’t have a lot to gain by coming here. We’re all already well-disposed to her anyway.
I don’t know either. I found it strange that they thought it appropriate to refer to me by my first name: Have we entered an age in which no one expects otherwise? (Don’t forget, I’m living in a country where my neighbors and I address each other as Madame and Monsieur. It would be considered quite rude if we failed to address each other that way. An e-mail from a politician addressing a citizen by first name would be inconceivable.)
I would never call a governor anything but “Governor X.” “Former CEO” isn’t a title. It would be weird to write, “Dear Former CEO Fiorina.” I was a bit stumped on the etiquette, frankly.
Maybe. All the businesses that send me junk mail (my internet provider, etc.) use my first name, with a very similar format to those two. I can’t think of a single exception. I’m quite sure the politicians didn’t come up with it first — and wouldn’t do it if any meaningful percentage whatever found it offensive.
Face to face, it really varies by the business, and maybe by the region — but not consistently. In Virginia, I’ve been addressed by the person at the counter as “Ms. ____.” Or by my first name. Or “Baby.” (Literally, with no offense intended. That’s Southern.)
In my profession, it’s still expected that we use last names. Except for a few progressive pockets, where not just parents but children are expected to call the teacher by his or her first name…
And you will indeed occasionally hear people address elected officials by their first name. I wouldn’t. But I think some encourage it — helps with the “man of the people” image.
I’m still on Paul Ryan’s mailing list, and he signs his fundraising emails “Paul.”
Man, the worst part of political season are the advertisements. And to have them intrude where you thought you had some privacy has to be annoying. I would be annoyed. I don’t ever recall making a decision from a political advertisement.
Whats the problem? Chose not to vaccinate your child as an exercise of your parental rights. BUT don’t expect the rest of us to expose OUR kids to your decision not to vaccinate. I would agree to a voucher you can take to use for education in a school that takes non vaccinated children, or to defray your home schooling.
interesting…if this were true, there could be mass exodus from vaccination, just to get the voucher…
risky, but some would say desperate times call for desperate measures.
Uh, sounds pretty straight forward, and correct to me. It’s a bad deal from a group thats led us badly and damaged our security since election. But thanks, reading that, I’m off to donate to Walker.
Pretty common in the US. And yeah, it’s one of those things that drive Europeans nuts when they come here. Americans are just a lot more informal, for good and bad.
I would love to see EVERY parent get a voucher and have real school choice.
Speaking of intruding where you thought you had some privacy: If two presidential CANDIDATES are able to reach Claire through an e-mail address she hasn’t given them, just imagine what elected and appointed government officials will be able to do with your so-called “private” health care information once Obamacare becomes more established.
In their reckless pursuit of whatever? It’s not tough language; it’s not calm language. It’s pansy language. It’s mother’s browbeating. Who in the audience will start shouting, No! Not reckless pursuit! That can’t be! Quick, the wallet, the wallet, I tell you, it’s the only way to stop this reckless pursuit!
I like my anger unadulterated & I hope Americans like their come on, baby, won’t you pay up act done smooth, not rough…
Anyway, conservatives should just do this if they’re gonna do that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kCzVzDcPuk
The problem is, don’t say this is a parent’s choice. Do people really believe this in America? That public health is next to meaningless when it comes to kids & schools? I’m not sure about your laws–you are a strange race–but if kids start dropping dead like flies in any place in America because of lack of vaccinations, would the nation say, well, it’s their choice, & that’s alright? This kind of political talk is losing-your-mind individualism, & full of it.
Many do. Yes. 47 states have an exemption form vaccination for reasons of religion or concience
Thats a misinterpretation. We do have laws requiring LOTS of vaccinations. But see above. Vast majority are vaccinated, so herd immunity has worked to protect those not.
If we have an epidemic we have laws in place that apply to vaccination quarantine and treatment.
You have a lot to learn about America. Better losing your mind individualism then losing your freedom collectivism.
Not an epidemic. I mean, half-a-dozen kids. & you’re not just misreading, you’re also not answering the point. I am talking about public sentiment here, not about what laws you have.
This is the single worst thing about right-wing people: It’s either the one or the other. This is not only an unbearable ignorance about politics, it is also damning. By this kind of thinking, the Pilgrims were collectivists of the worst kind. Go back in time–every ancient city people think might have been civilized actually was collectivism of the worst kind.
Hell, don’t stop there, start talking about totalitarian or authoritarian statism or stuff like that. From the Pilgrims all the way back to Moses, they were it. Let’s then admit that by this kind of thinking, if thinking it is, conservatism is not about conserving anything great in America’s past or even civilization.
Americans now are so informal–was this the same in the 50s? Or is this a fact of the social revolution that followed?
I wasn’t alive in the ’50s. I was born in 1968. I would call any American I met in any casual social situation by his or her first name, but would not usually address a letter to someone I hadn’t met that way. I’d write “Dear Mr.” or “Dear Ms.” or “Dear Title, as appropriate.” (Dear President X, Dear Chief Justice Y, etc.) If the context was obviously casual, I might write “Dear Carly, if I may.”
It’s polite, in my view, to call people whatever they prefer to be called; if I don’t know, I ask.
The French always default to formality, which confuses Americans greatly, but no longer confuses me; I’m so used to it that I would find it rude to be called anything other than Madame. (If a man calls a woman my age “Mademoiselle,” it is, depending on the context, rude or politely flirtatious.) First names require friendship; you don’t call the baker or the bus driver by their first names, and you don’t call them “tu.” Just rude. But I get used to these things wherever I live; I got used to being called “sister” and “auntie” in Turkey.
The hospice nurse who helped to care for my mother when she was dying called her “Miss Toby,” which I thought was a lovely solution to the problem — not of her terminal illness, obviously, but of how to refer to an older, dying woman in a way that was both respectful and reassuringly warm.
Titus, the point of that position is to acknowledge that the parent has the right to make the choice — but if that choice threatens public health, we have to limit that threat as much as possible. Requiring vaccinations for school enrollment ensures that parents take that decision seriously, because it will cost them.
Still, for a presidential candidate, the right answer to the vaccine question is “it’s a state issue.”
If a few dozen people in Alabama don’t want to vaccinate their children, that does little to no harm. That’s not enough to threaten herd immunity — which means that those few will be fine, along with everyone else.
If thousands of people in California refuse to vaccinate, herd immunity begins to break down. That poses a public health threat. That means Alabama and California are likely to approach the problem differently. Now if California did nothing, that public health threat is going to affect the rest of the country — but California isn’t going to do nothing.
What the anti-vaxxers should understand is this: the more you persuade others, the more likely your own rights are to be limited. We’re rightly very uncomfortable with taking that decision out of the hands of the parents. But if the anti-vaccination movement begins to pose a significant threat to the lives of others, that will happen. Right or wrong, it will happen.
I’m not sure that’s entirely the right way of putting it, because Americans have their own ways of signalling respect and different levels of social and professional intimacy. But certainly many aspects of American speech and body language seem rude to people who’ve been raised with different customs. That Americans casually put their feet on the table is really shocking in many parts of the world. That photo of Dick Cheney watching smoke billow out of the World Trade Center with his feet on the desk even shocked me, a bit — I don’t know whether that’s because I’ve spent so much time in places where that just isn’t done, or whether other Americans of my age would also view that as too informal given the circumstances.
But you’ve been living in the Gulf, so you know how these things can come to seem strange. It’s taken me quite some time to readjust, after living in Turkey, to France, where people simply walk into my apartment with their shoes on, and don’t even offer to take them off. I really became used to the idea that not only is this incredibly rude, it really is disgusting. I mean, those shoes have, indeed, been walking over every filthy thing in the street.
And don’t get me started on eating with your left hand. I don’t think I’ll ever fully re-adjust to the sight of people doing that.
I just pulled up the latest regular report from my congressman — the one where he tells me what he’s voting for (well, at least the votes he wants me to know about), where he’s been in the district, and other feel-good stuff. It refers to him quite inconsistently as “Scott” or as “Congressman” throughout. Go figure.
And in turn — as you already know — Americans are thrown off by the different view of personal space and by very different attitudes towards time. Especially time. We crowd our lives down to the minute…
Dear Chief Justice seems like a Gilbert & Sullivan song.
But you have to rework the rest. The flirtatious bit is good.
Now, the American view is not at all compatible with titles, as much as Americans might obsess about them, whether it’s for celebrity or career. Americans invade each other’s privacy with abandon & at the same time have no compunctions about calling any number of people president, meaning American president–I have heard the people of the press do this live with governors, too, for example in Florida in 2014…
This is indeed an age of vulgarity. The deference you prefer is incompatible with an age when everyone wants to be called something or other. Dear Chief Justice & all that…
I’m misreading? You use “dropping like flies”, and I’m supposed to devine that as “a half dozen”? As to sentiment, how do you think 47 states ended up with those exemptions, Obama diktats? As to the Statism, “It’s for the Children” is the great rallying cry of the Left.
We feel the same about about our personal space and things like respecting queue’s. I’ve certainly felt it here.
Well being left handed, I would stab myself if I tried eating right handed.
Ok, this is a little silly. I think it would be helpful to talk about vaccinations– if we must– on an individual level. Vaccines aren’t all the same. Diseases aren’t all the same. Children’s bodies aren’t all the same. My child is not going to “drop like a fly” because she isn’t immunized against sexually transmitted diseases and minor childhood illnesses. Polio and whooping cough? Yes. Those can be scary. Chicken pox? Please.
I’m always nervous about mandating a One Size Fits All Government-Approved Program, especially for children, whether it’s regarding education or medical treatments.
There’s a common idea that chicken pox in kids isn’t a big deal, which is true — and why my mom sent me to school anyway when I came down with it. The horrified school nurse called my mother and said, “Pick up your child immediately.” (I remember this well because for some reason I was terribly ashamed and embarrassed by it.) The nurse was right: It isn’t a big deal when kids get it. When the elderly, pregnant women, or immunocompromised people get it, it can be a very big deal. Before the vaccine was licensed in the US, there were deaths from it every year — not in numbers that would really make us blink; probably more people died every year being struck by lightning, but I’m sure those who died from it and their relatives felt otherwise.
The case for mandatory chicken-pox vaccination is weak if we’re judging only by the disease’s lethality, but the case for quarantining kids who come down with it (as I was) is strong.
You’re completely right–I went back to what I wrote & it was not at all what I thought I wrote. Thanks & let me throw in my apologies, too.
Here’s the Carly Scenario: Some folks in some small town say, no vaccines here, because of religious objections; or they believe the anti-vaccine insanities. I think it’s insanity, but who am I to say? Am I a doctor? No! If some doctor says yea, but another nay, then what? So then somehow half-a-dozen kids die for the parents’ principled foolishness. Or make it an even score. Or what number of kids have to die in America for people to pay attention? Anyway, that number dies, of a sudden, no one saw it coming, bang, it hits the town, the state, the nation!
What is the conservative position or answer? What do you expect or desire Mrs. Fiorina to say? Is it something like: That’s why we have freedom, folks! Different strokes for different folks? & if you disagree you’re a terrible collectivist?