O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou being dragged into a dispute between National Review and Max Boot?
Yesterday I started reading this National Review piece by Charles C. W. Cooke criticizing Max Boot’s recent fault-finding with National Review. I thought it might be subject matter for a post, but I didn’t have much interest in it after all.
But then towards the end I came across this salvo from Cooke [emphasis mine]:
In and of itself, Boot’s techniques are both tiresome and reprehensible. But when coupled with the ersatz I-take-no-pleasure-in-this lamentations that have become his hallmark in the Trump era, the affectation becomes too much to bear. Boot seems to fancy himself as Mark Antony, here to bury a Caesar he once loved, when in reality he is more like Romeo Montague: a callow, selfish, monomaniacal, self-pitying featherweight, who is constitutionally unable to prevent the escalation of petty infractions.
Say what?
To begin with, Romeo is usually identified, like Garbo, by first name only. What other Romeo is there (I know; I know—there are a few)? But at any rate, Cooke’s use of both names is not my main beef. My problem’s with the rest of what he wrote about Romeo:
“Callow” as in immature, inexperienced, naive. I suppose so, but what do you expect from a teenager? I hardly would hold that against lovestruck star-crossed Romeo Montague. Although his age is never specified with exactness in the play, he’s probably 16 or 17 or thereabouts, 18 or 19 at most.
“Selfish”? Well, I guess his parents might call him that. But I certainly never thought of him that way. Headstrong, impulsive, and yes, callow. But he is willing to sacrifice his entire life for Juliet.
“Monomaniacal”? An interesting way to look at Romeo, as a sort of Captain Ahab with Juliet as his Moby Dick. Hmmm. But isn’t everyone newly in love, particularly teenagers, somewhat narrowly focused on the object of adoration? Romeo does find time, however, for joking around with his friends. He also earlier developed a closeness and trust with Friar Lawrence, so he even has cordial relationships with older authority figures.
“Self-pitying”: not until he runs into a bunch of extraordinarily bad luck (some of it a consequence of his own actions). He’s in pretty dire straits when he succumbs to self-pity. And then his self-pity is rather easily assuaged when he is informed of Friar Lawrence’s plan.
“Featherweight”? Romeo can certainly hold his own in a fight. Is it the tights that upset Cooke so?
“Who is constitutionally unable to prevent the escalation of petty infractions”? This may just be the most puzzling accusation of all from Cooke. For starters, it’s Romeo who decides to try to de-escalate the fighting, as a result of his love for Juliet. Romeo’s attempt at pacifism not only convinces none of his friends, who cannot understand it and think he might be joking, but it also has dire consequences. As Romeo’s cousin and best friend Mercutio observes after being mortally wounded by Juliet’s cousin Tybalt, in one of the saddest moments of this tragic play:
After Mercutio dies, Romeo is maddened by grief and anger and goes for Tybalt, killing him. This makes his already bad situation much worse. It’s many things, but one thing it is not is an escalation in response to a “petty infraction.”
Unless you think your best friend and cousin’s murder is a “petty infraction.”
And Cooke never mentions Romeo’s most salient characteristic: how beautifully he speaks. I suppose Cooke gives credit for that to Shakespeare. Romeo just don’t get no respect from Cooke.
I have a theory. Perhaps Cooke’s original name was “Capulet.” That would explain his animus against Romeo Montague.
[NOTE: I guess this is as good a time as any to say that many people misunderstand the meaning of “wherefore art thou” in the original quote, “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” The word “wherefore” means “why,” not “where.” Juliet isn’t looking for Romeo. She is wondering why the person with whom she’s just fallen in love has to be a member of the family feuding with her own family. Perhaps she should follow Cooke’s lead and say “Wherefore art thou Romeo Montague?”]
I saw that, and was similarly puzzled.
Sorry. Some of us just aren’t romantics. And St. Denis and Shawn bore us. Romeo was a tool.
Every great once in awhile I read something and when I come to the end of it, I wonder why I read it. Such is the case
Thank you, Neo, for using “wherefore” correctly. Hearing it taken as “where” makes me grit my teeth.
Mac:
You’re welcome.
It’s long been a pet peeve of mine, as well. Not that most people care.
John Dough:
Are you referring to Cooke’s piece, or mine?
Boot is a fraud and Cooke culturally ignorant.
Once more reading Neo I learn something new. I have know the lines from ‘Romeo and Juliet’ since high school and today I learn the real meaning of “wherefore”. Thank you because now it makes more sense.
“… real meaning of “wherefore”.”
wherefore? … why? (for what cause/reason?)
therefore! … because! (for this cause/reason?)
whereby … by which
thereby … by which means; as a result of which
whereas … in contrast or comparison with the fact that
thereas …(obsolete) where; in the place where
There may be other such pairs
I will have to credit my erudite HS language arts teachers with teaching us the correct meaning of “wherefore” at the time the Zeffirelli film was shown at our school in the late sixties (I think Neo ran a post on the movie earlier this year).
If anything, Max Boot is more like the character of Iago from Shakespeare’s play “Othello.” He is a nasty and vindictive person, and yet while Iago can reveal his true nature in his soliloquies, Max Boot seems to lack any such self-awareness.
All of his tweets variously involve criticism of Donald Trump, with the intention to destroy him utterly, with no thought of what that would do to the country, and no understanding at all of what Trump’s political enemies have done. He is also an advocate of the open borders style of immigration, and of America getting involved in every foreign conflict or dispute, regardless of the cost or the overall utility.
Ironically, Max Boot wasn’t even born here, but came to this country as a young child in 1976 (his parents were Russian Jews), and yet he claims that the policies he advocates are more American than that of his opponents. Send him back!
Ah yes…. Max Boot… Born in once place… didn’t feel quite at home there… Trotted off elsewhere and did very nicely out of the change of scene. Now turns out he don’t like that neither and he’s hard at it biting the hands that fed him.
I’m sure this kind of behaviour pattern has been described and taxonomised up the wazoo somewhere, sometime… just it presently slips my mind. Oh well… never mind… Oh…look over there! Ponies!
Here’s an idea, Max Boot: Try Mainland China next!
That’s interesting about the “wherefore”, now how should the word “sigh” in the last stanza of “The Road Not Taken” be interpreted?
poetry noob:
Try this.
Yankee:
I was actually thinking “Iago” myself.
ParanoidAndroid:
Boot’s decision to come to this country wasn’t his decision. He was 7 years old when his parents emigrated to the US.
ParanoidAndroid
The only “trotting” Boot did back then was trotting along at the side of his parents.
Ironically, Max Boot wasn’t even born here, but came to this country as a young child in 1976 (his parents were Russian Jews), and yet he claims that the policies he advocates are more American than that of his opponents. Send him back!
Guy has issues with his father, who lives in London and is an advocate of a completely incompatible set of social and political stances.
Just out of puerile curiosity, I’d be interested in knowing the influence his wife has had on his thinking. She’s a BigLaw partner who specializes in assembling M & A deals and it’s a reasonable wager she brings in > 80% of the family income. She’s built this career while raising three children. (If the mechanistic conceptions of manosphere writers were as reliable and valid as they insist, Max Boot would have been put out on the curb a decade ago). She’s clearly the main brain in that household.
About 30-odd years ago, John Cardinal O’Connor was invited to a luncheon with the editorial board of The New York Times. It was shortly after his investiture. He gets a finger-wagging lecture (from Max Frankel, I believe) to the effect that ‘do you Catholics really understand how we do business here’. The sort of effrontery you see from Boot and Bret Stephens isn’t entirely novel.
Boot’s decision to come to this country wasn’t his decision. He was 7 years old when his parents emigrated to the US.
No, but playing obnoxious status games is his decision.
Was working with a Nepali immigrant in high school. He had to read R&J. Tough vocab and historical references even for a native English speaker these days. Or at least a teen ager.
The first part of the play where the guys are ramping for a fight….Kid got it. Some things are universal.
Max Boot has irritated the heck out of me for the past two years. He has been an outspoken opponent of Trump from the outset, and it feels to me as if that is largely due to Trump’s boorishness. I get this regularly from my circle of friends, and I remind them just as regularly that the choice was Trump or Hillary. Given a choice between those two, aren’t we as a nation better off with boorishness? That argument does not convince them.
Could it be that Boot is so outspoken against Trump because he recognizes the importance of the Hillary/Trump choice, agrees the nation made the better choice, but is angry that Trump will still go his own way on many decisions? Kind of like, “as smart as I am, and he doesn’t listen to me”! Yeah, right. And I keep asking myself, “just how smart are you, Max Boot?”
Could it be that Boot is so outspoken against Trump because
Neo’s the lapsed head-shrinker.
NeverTrump has very little in the way of a popular constituency. It’s found among opinion journalists. When Trump put forward passable policy initiatives and appointments, most of them folded their tents. (And were further persuaded when the abuse of process by the Department of Justice and the Democratic caucus on the Senate Judiciary committee grew egregious). The residue are highly pig-headed people who cannot admit they were mistaken conjoined to those who are paid by liberal media outlets to provide emotional validation for the employees of such outlets. There are others who are devoted to what one wag calls ‘Ellis Island schmaltz’ and others who are open-borders ideologues, but their public advocacy hasn’t changed much in the Trump era.
Agree that Cooke was off the mark with saying Boot is like Romeo. He may have meant he is juvenile in several ways. I guess you’ll have to hear from Cooke…
I’ll opine that Boot is more like Brutus –– offended in all things Trump & doing his part in a conspiracy to remove him from office in any way possible. In my book, Brutus & Boot both qualify as scum-beings…
}}} Although his age is never specified with exactness in the play, he’s probably 16 or 17 or thereabouts, 18 or 19 at most.
Actually, you’re way off. This is one of the biggest flaws with almost every modern staging and casting of the play.
In that era, Romeo would have been 13 or 14, Juliet 12 or 13.
And once you grasp this, the behavior, and attitude, of them make ever so much more sense. That sense of NOW NOW NOW, the impatience to let things work out, are all hallmarks of early teenage years.
The mercurial emotionalism makes far more sense, too.
Romeo’s instant infatuation with Juliet (when he’d snuck into the party trying to get a look at an entirely different girl!!) is also typical of that age.
Yet, despite these ages, note that there was discussion of Juliet being paired up with suitable males lest she be an “old maid”, and Romeo was out in the streets fighting and defending his family’s honor (basically, a post-medaeval version of an inner city gang rumble).
Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo+Juliet was closer than many, depicting them as mid-teens (though Danes was 17 and DiCaprio 22 — still old) as was Franco Zeffirelli’s (Hussey was 16, Whiting 18), they were much much better than the hilariously old fart Leslie Howard (@43) and Norma Shearer(@34) from the 1936 version. DON’T get me wrong, I love Leslie Howard… He just had no business playing a character 30y younger than he was.
P.S., it’s almost entirely a digression, but, the one poem I like that I think compares to Frost’s “Road Not Taken” for its subtlety and brilliance is Shelley’s Ozymandias:
Ozymandias — By Percy Bysshe Shelley
———————————————————-
I met a traveler from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
I’m not much on poetry, myself. I do like Emily Dickinson. And then there’s this little bit of almost doggerel from Punch magazine:
WHO is in charge of the Clattering Train?
The axles creak, and the coupling’s strain,
And the pace is hot, and the points are near,
for Sleep has deadened the driver’s ear,
And the signals flash through the night in vain,
For Death is in charge of the Clattering Train.
That one always sends chills up my spine, even though I’ve known it for almost 40 years.
There’s a longer version of it, but that one is direct and still subtle, like Ozymandias. Both allow you to take them one way, then, you go… “Hey, WAAAAIT a minute!” as you get the hook.
OBloodyHell:
I did not make up Romeo’s purported age, nor is it my opinion. Everyone knows—because it’s right there in the text—that Juliet is just about to turn fourteen. Romeo’s age is unspecified, as I already said, but most scholars believe he is the ages I stated in the post.
You can look it up.
They don’t know, of course. No one knows.
I happen to disagree with you that he shows anything like the characteristics of a much younger teen. Most boys tend to be fairly immature up till their early twenties, compared to girls who mature faster.
Most boys tend to be fairly immature up till their early twenties, compared to girls who mature faster.
LOL
Art Deco:
And some people remain immature well into old age.
Anyone who observes many teenagers is quite aware that what I wrote about teenage girls vs. boys is true. That does NOT mean it’s true in all cases. It merely means it’s true more often than not.
What’s more, it does not mean that teenaged girls or teenaged boys are what one might call “mature.”
Anyone who observes many teenagers is quite aware that what I wrote about teenage girls vs. boys is true.
Anyone who has observed people making such remarks is reminded that some people are quite resistant to holding young women accountable for much of anything. I’ll give young girls one advantage: they tell more complicated lies.
Art Deco:
Anyone who reads this blog is aware that I hold people, women and men, young and old, accountable for what they do. Saying teen girls tend to be more mature, on average, than teen boys of the same age has nothing to do with not holding people accountable for what they do. In fact, however, if you were being logical, it would mean that if there was any disparity between how much I hold teen boys and teen girls accountable for what they do, it would follow that I would hold the girls more accountable at younger ages since I am saying that they are the ones who tend on average to be more mature than the boys. With maturity comes more responsibility, not less.
So in addition to gratuitous insults that don’t even fit me or what I write, you’re not making sense on the face of it.
On the subject of poetry (triggered by OBloodyHell on August 19, 2019 at 8:09 pm ), Neo’s headline only needs a little tweaking to be a pretty decent satirical couplet, and not even that if you don’t mind poems that fail to scan properly.
Of course, a truly modern poem wouldn’t rhyme either, but then you don’t have a poem at all, in my opinion, just prose with carriage returns in odd places.
AesopFan:
Nice!
Saying teen girls tend to be more mature, on average, than teen boys of the same age has nothing to do with not holding people accountable for what they do.
Oh, yes it does. It’s a function of the floating standard, otherwise known as the girl’s discount.
Someone once put the question to Kay Hymowitz as to why playing video games is deemed pathologically juvenile but recreational shopping is not. He’ll be waiting for an answer for a while.
If you want an objective measure of the capacity to handle everyday life, look at employment levels. Women have a slight advantage among 18 and 19 year olds, but not among 16 and 17 year olds or any older age group. Also, if you look at the sort of desultory wage employments young people tend to have, the categories where women tend to dominate consist of indoor work which is less physically disagreeable. The exceptions would be food service and employment in bakeries and laundries.
New husbands and new fathers tend to be 2-3 years older than new wives and new mothers, but it rather steals a base to attribute this to men’s deficit of ‘maturity’.
Art Deco:
You’re smarter than that.
I made a statement of fact, one that on average is physiologically true. Just because some person or some movement may use that fact in a way that seems wrong to you (and to me, I might add) does not change the fact. And of course, it does not mean that I used the fact that way. I absolutely did not, and you are quite aware of that—or you should be if you read what I wrote.
I am not responsible for how people use a certain fact. I am responsible for how I use that fact.
In addition, the fact itself argues for greater responsibility for girls as opposed to boys, at the same age. I did not use it that way because my statements had nothing to do with assigning responsibility, but logic would dictate that the maturity differential would give greater responsibility to girls rather than less. If I chose to write about maturity, girls vs. boys, and responsibility (which I did not), I would have said it that way.