The Warren vs. Sanders show
If you want to get up to speed on the tension that came up between Warren and Sanders in the Democrats’ debate Tuesday night, see this. The summary version is that Warren accused Sanders of saying that in 2020 a woman can’t be elected president, and Sanders says he never said it, and the CNN questioner then asked a question that assumed Sanders had said it, and then later Warren refused to shake Sanders’ hand, and on and on and on, and the Sanders camp is calling Warren a snake.
Let’s get this out of the way: so what if Sanders said a woman can’t win in 2020? Wouldn’t he just be describing a situation in which voters feel a certain way, rather than agreeing with that sentiment?
Ah, but no one (especially no man, especially no white man) is allowed to say anything other than that women are wonderful and can do anything. And of course, Elizabeth Warren – who may not be a Native American but who I’m virtually certain is a woman – is not above playing the woman-wronged card.
I don’t agree with any of these Democrats on most things, but some of them rub me the wrong way more than others. Warren definitely causes my flesh to crawl. (John Kerry was and still is another, and that goes way back to the very beginning of his political career.}
Who will this sort of ruckus hurt more, Warren or Sanders? I don’t know, but I think the behavior of CNN might hurt that station even more, because Sanders supporters aren’t happy with what moderator Abby Phillip did:
Consequently, when the CNN moderators gave Sanders the Trump treatment, the outraged ululations of the Left could be heard from sea to shining sea. Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi tweeted, “This is an unusually vile performance by CNN.” The Nation’s Elie Mystal raged, “Jesus Christ I hate these biased questions from the moderators. ‘How would you keep your plan from bankrupting the country?’ JUST ASK THE KOCH BROTHERS TO MODERATE NEXT TIME!” HuffPost’s Zach Carter griped about CNN’s post-debate panel discussion, “CNN’s crew is just straight bashing Sanders post-debate.” The New Republic’s Libby Watson whined, “CNN is truly a terrible influence on this country.”
CNN, biased? Say it isn’t so, Joe.
And why does CNN prefer that Warren do better than Sanders? I’m not sure. Perhaps they think she is perceived as less leftist. I happen to think they are close to even. Perhaps they think that a woman has the best chance of beating Trump. I don’t see that.
One more thing – the evening after the debate I was with two women who are both Democrats. They were discussing the debate, which they’d both watched. I have no idea whether their viewpoints are typical of the Democratic voter, but both agreed that it was a wonderful debate in which all the candidates sounded good and acquitted themselves fabulously. One of these women is a Sanders supporter and one a Warren supporter, and the subject of the feud didn’t even come up.
My guess is that it means nothing to them, and that they are typical of the non-twitter Democrat voter. All they care about in the 2020 election is beating Trump, and they will vote for any Democrat nominated. To them, it doesn’t really seem to matter who it will be.
[NOTE: One of the grammatical rules I still struggle with at times is when to use “who” and when to use “whom.” I know all the tricks, but I still make errors. Is that last sentence in the post correct? I think so, but I’m still not certain.]
I don’t think there are many swing voters. Voters may change allegiance if driven to it by events, but those who can go both ways are rare. I am a changer myself and can’t imagine voting for a Democrat even if the Republican is less than ideal. My hope is that Trump, with help from the Democrats, has created enough changers to carry him through. But I’m worried about what happens after Trump.
I think “who” sounds right.
I just did 2 Google™ searches, first for “matter who it will be” and the second for “matter whom it will be.” The first had over half a million hits, the second less than twenty thousand.
No matter who it will be. It’s the subject/object thing. Who is a subject, whom is the object. I teach a foreign language and am hampered by the fact that my students haven’t been taught English. One of them, though, came up with the very helpful “the subject does the verbing, the object is the thing being verbed”.
So, “who it will be”. It’s the same as “who will it be?”, with the verb ‘to be’ you have an appositive and both sides of the be verb are subjects.
For instance, the question is not who punched you, but whom you should punch in revenge.
Found you via AoSHQ. Nice rant.
The “victim game” doesn’t work well when you are trying to be “the man”, or in this case “the woman”. Is President Warren going to throw hissy fit when someone upsets her feminist feelings?
“Who” it, sounds right. “For whom” or “to whom” is a different identity from “it”, I think.
Oh, and bringing the sick lefties up to speed — not to truck in morbidity for morbidity’s sake — but there aren’t Koch Bros. anymore, as one of the two died last year.
In the larger scheme of things, of course it doesn’t matter which candidate it will be, as they all serve and worship at the same altar.
Ira, that disparity is a reflection of the public’s mental laziness.
Bandersnatch,
Thank you for the most useful guide I’ve yet read on what decides whether ‘who’ or ‘whom’ is appropriate.
Whom should be used to refer to the object of a verb or preposition. When in doubt, try this simple trick: If you can replace the word with “he”’ or “’she,” use who. If you can replace it with “him” or “her,” use whom.
Who should be used to refer to the subject of a sentence.
Whom should be used to refer to the object of a verb or preposition.
Is President Warren going to throw hissy fit when someone upsets her feminist feelings?
Yes…
Bernie is a Marquess of Queensberry kind of guy.
He let Hillary push him around in their debates and uttered that lame “I don’t care about your damn e-mails” line.
If he wants to get anywhere in the presidential race he’s going to have to engage in some street fighting.
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Hillary 2020, Warren’s Re-Education Camps, and Group-Marriage Counseling
Hosted by Aaron Harison, Eliana Johnson, Matthew Continetti (founding editor), Michael Goldfarb, Victorino Matus
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Honest Government Ad | We’re F**ked
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOmdkN6MOwU
Honest Government Ad | Climate Emergency & School Strikes
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🙂
But I’m worried about what happens after Trump.
Wholly reasonable concern. So much so we might do well to dig into a serious analysis of the question, just to throw the thought out there.
I mean, it seems as though a decent interval will obtain between the present and the time Pres. Trump attends the inauguration of another new Pres., but these sort of facile assumptions are of the sort to end in surprise and ass-over-teakettle.
After John Harwood and his cronies over at CNBC screwed-up one of the Republican debates in the last pres. cycle, I was permanently dissuaded from watching CNBC.
“My guess is that it means nothing to them, and that they are typical of the non-twitter Democrat voter. ” – Neo
Your perceptions is probably correct.
Just read this yesterday, on that very topic, primarily explaining how Labour misread the election because they were in the Twitter-bubble that supported them:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/01/jeremy-corbyn-labour-twitter-primary/604690/
Hmm.
Sound like any other political parties we know?
HOWEVER, if the Twitter feuds make it into enough MSM reports, then the regular voters may start to notice, but still may not really care.
And why does CNN prefer that Warren do better than Sanders?
Megan McArdle had a really interesting answer to that in her column a day ago:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/15/warren-sanders-will-also-never-shake-hands-over-how-transform-government/
Under this analysis, Warren is the obvious choice for CNN or journalists, who are square in the technocratic professionals box.
I saw a cartoon a couple of days ago where Bernie clarifies his statement by saying, “I never said a woman won’t be elected president, I said that woman won’t be elected president.” as he points towards Warren.
Liz should take a lesson from Trump because every time he gets insulted he just bounces right back, throws a bit a dirt back at them and laughs because he dominates the news.
Neo – your friends sound like they belong to a parallel but divergent reality from those that don’t suffer from TDS.
The deal with Sanders vs. Warren is the same as Sanders vs. anybody. All the other Democrats (except maybe Tulsi and Yang) are fully expected to sprint like mad back to the center after getting the nomination while the media works overtime to memory hole all the crazy leftist nonsense they embraced during the primaries.
But everybody expects Bernie to say the exact same things as the nominee which he is saying now and no one’s going to be able to do anything about it.
Mike
“Her candidacy is thus perfectly pitched to technocratic professionals and moderate suburban voters, including Republicans fleeing the Trump incursion. Sanders, on the other hand, is more likely to help the party reclaim white working-class Trump voters who are fed up with the whole system, especially its professional classes.”
Not to derail the thread entirely … but wow. What great mass of Republicans is out there who would vote for either of these far-left, bagful-of-crazy candidates? Both are so abysmal, in terms of everything from policy to personality, the only way I would vote for either is in a choice of who to vote off the island. At one time, I disliked Trump enough to register Republican (I’m usually Independent) to vote against Trump in my state’s primary – and even at the height of my anti-Trump stage, I would’ve picked Trump over either Sanders or Warren if that’s what the ticket had ended up being.
Sanders is a known, and terrifying, commodity. Warren is almost everything I hated about Hillary Clinton, embodied in an even more detestable person.
Maybe Sanders identifies as a woman. Has anyone asked them?
what are the odds that Abbe Phillips got ahead by stealing affirmative action slots from authentic African Americans ala Barrie ,Kamal and Holder
“To them, it doesn’t really seem to matter who it will be.” – Neo
First to Ira & sdferr: determining the grammatical correctness of a sentence does not matter a bit anymore on how anything sounds to most people, because incorrect grammar has such a long-entrenched and broad spread now that most people have never even heard the correct phrasing for any number of words. (see my OT rant on the China thread)
* * *
That is the usual rule*, but if you try it, the results are weird.
To them, it doesn’t really seem to matter (he/she) it will be.
To them, it doesn’t really seem to matter (him/her) it will be.
Most native English speakers haven’t been taught English either, for about the last 30 years if not longer.
Bandersnatch’s final example is correct, but his/her appeal to the appositive, I think, is not, for two reasons: “it will be” is a complete subject-verb phrase by itself (just like “it is” and “it was”, assuming there was a prior referent for the pronoun); and “who” is not an appositive noun. **
“who it will be.” IS NOT the same as “who will it be?”, but rather is equivalent to “it will be who”– which we would NOT say in English because it is incorrect and still sounds wrong.
What Neo wrote is a sequence of two clauses, the second of which is a dependent clause, as in Bandersnatch’s final sentence (although B’s is more complex and my 7th grade teacher would have made us diagram it), introduced by the word in question. ***
“who punched you” = “he punched you”
“whom you should punch” = “you should punch whom?” = “you should punch him/her”
“whom it will be” = “it will be whom?” = “it will be him/her”
Therefore, the sentence should be:
“To them, it doesn’t really seem to matter whom it will be.” – Neo
But sdferr & Ira are correct that most people don’t think that sounds right.
Change my mind.
😉
*
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/who-vs-whom-its-not-as-complicated-as-you-might-think/
**
https://englishsentences.com/appositive-phrase/
The “who” cannot be removed from Neo’s sentence and you can’t put commas around it.
***
https://www.diffen.com/difference/Who_vs_Whom
Tom Maguire had a good quip at the JustOneMinute blog. Have a feeling it will come in handy in conversations with Lefties this election year:
Warren Told Sanders After Debate, ‘I Think You Called Me a Liar on National TV’
Bernie did NOT respond with “If the moccasin fits…”, and mores the pity.
When it becomes so — in the future — who is it?
When Fauxcahontas said, on an open mic, “Did you just call me a liar on national television?” Bernie missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime to respond, “you bet your ass I did. High cheekbones, my left nut.”
I detest Bernie and everything he represents, but this was his one time to do something good for the republic.
KyndyllG on January 16, 2020 at 5:51 pm said:
…
Not to derail the thread entirely … but wow. What great mass of Republicans is out there who would vote for either of these far-left, bagful-of-crazy candidates?
* * *
RohanV was just transmitting Megan McArdle’s perception of former Democrat voters who went for Trump, and not necessarily agreeing with that viewpoint.
There is no mass of old-time ‘Pubs who will vote for any Democrat candidate, but if one of them can be re-made by the MSM to sound less insane in the general, he or she might win back some of those former-Democrat voters, assuming they don’t decide to keep backing the winning horse.
I’ve read some comments that suggest this confrontation was a set-up by Warren to provide some chatter about her. First, the conversation was not a recent one, perhaps as far back as mid 2018. So, why didn’t she bring this up earlier in the campaign?
And, anyone who has worn or has been around a microphone should know that all microphones should be considered to be active until they are taken off and shut down. So, Warren went over to Sanders to accuse him of calling her a liar knowing that the conversation would be picked up by someone. It’s interesting that Sanders tried to delay the conversation, probably very aware of the open mic situation.
Didn’t get my edit finished in time:
The “former Democrat voters” are the ones who might go for Sanders.
There are a few Republicans “fleeing the Trump incursion,” but not a “mass” of them, and McArdle is possibly correct that Warren can capture their votes, which would please the technocrati without helping them electorally all that much.
David Catron at the Spectator, in Neo’s last link, gets to the root of the problem, and it doesn’t apply just to news mongering, but to the rabid partisanship of the House, and today’s Democrats in general, as well.
https://spectator.org/sanders-supporters-shocked-to-find-bias-at-cnn/
Once the dem nominee is chosen, the MSM conspirators will indeed flush all the dem candidate’s extreme positions and statements down the memory hole. But that only matters if the GOP PACS stab Trump in the back by refusing to feature all that extremism in their political ads.
@neo:And why does CNN prefer that Warren do better than Sanders? I’m not sure.
It may not be that, it may be that they are creating drama to increase ratings and clicks.
The Warren campaign does prefer that Warren do better and is making use of CNN to help. Other news organizations, by “confirming” the Warren story (which can never be more than Warren’s word against Sanders) may be signaling a preference for Warren; it’s not immediately clear to me why they so quickly vouch for CNN’s reporting which cannot possibly be vouched for by anyone not named Warren or Sanders.
But perhaps this is all kayfabe. I’m finding the kayfabe model explains a lot lately.
To lefties obsessed with identity politics 24/7, rooting for the woman is the more moral position. That’s all. If there were two women, they’d root for the black one. And if two black women, they’d root for the lesbian.
CNN is owned by AT&T, and when analyzing some CNN behavior, the possibility should always be considered that it is motivated by AT&T corporate interests.
As Jagger and Richards famously opined, “A choice of cancer or polio.”
Geoffrey Britain on January 16, 2020 at 6:52 pm said:
Once the dem nominee is chosen, the MSM conspirators will indeed flush all the dem candidate’s extreme positions and statements down the memory hole. But that only matters if the GOP PACS stab Trump in the back by refusing to feature all that extremism in their political ads.
* * *
Even if they made ads featuring all that extremism, FaceBook, Twitter, and the MSM would try to find some way to not run them.
@neo:”And why does CNN prefer that Warren do better than Sanders? I’m not sure.”
There was a very recent labor ruling for CNN union employees that Sanders applauded. That probably earned him their ire.
Bernie called Warren a liar. Even a stopped clock…
Warren and Sanders are two dozers, figuratively and literally, who will clear the path for the self-funded Blooomberg, doing his best to buy the nomination, who looks good only by comparison to the rest of the rodent pack.
Saints preserve us.
Circling back to the grammar thing, AesopFan wrote “Most native English speakers haven’t been taught English either, for about the last 30 years if not longer.”
This is what I’m facing. I teach a foreign language to native English speakers. I’m an old, this is a late in life career change and the idea of teaching target language as an analog to English just failed.
Someone at parent teacher night clued me in. “Oh, that subject/verb stuff went out of fashion a while ago and they stopped teaching it”. So I have eighth graders who literally don’t know what a noun is.
AesopFan:
Here’s my attempt to change your mind.
You write:
But the way I looked at it, the sentence “It will be him/her” could be wrong, and therefore “whom” could be wrong. Here’s the reason. I learned that you are actually supposed to say “It is I” and “it is he” rather than “It is me” or “It is him.” So which is correct, “It will be him” or “It will be he”? See this – basically, the answer is by no means clear.
Neo
You ask “And why does CNN prefer that Warren do better than Sanders?”
I think that their are several layers to this answer. Some of them have been mentioned. I agree with Megan McArdle’s position that many think Warren is more of a team player for the establishment. Expanding on that I believe there are many serious party Democrats that are rankled by the fact that Bernie is one in name only. He is basically an independent until it comes time to run for President. He may agree with them 99% of the time. But to them he is an opportunist and grifter. So he will always get the shaft from the insiders.
Also I believe they need to remove him to get Warren solidly in the top 2. So much of their platform is identity politics. They NEED her in that spot to play this card. Its something I have already encountered when I have had discussions with several very left people. They are happy to throw out the Republicans are racist, sexist card. But do not have a real answer when you point out that COMBINED all the minority candidates polled totaled 8% at the end of December(NY times poll). And they really only have one female candidate with any shot at all.
Online my question to them was this. “If we were allowed to assume that 92% of Democrat voters were racist and misogynistic as well ?” I never received an answer from any of them. It was basically a thread ender. Which to me means they have no answer at all.
If they are able to successfully maneuver her into the top two. I predict that they will subtly resurrect her claims to be American Indian. With her claims being “disputed” by the right. And other such nonsense. So their claims of racism will have greater weight to their followers
And of course there is the Babylon Bee’s take on it
https://babylonbee.com/news/warren-rejects-peace-pipe-offered-by-sanders
cited in Powerlinelog.com
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/01/the-dem-debates-biggest-loser-cnn.php#comment-4760222985
“And why does CNN prefer that Warren do better than Sanders?”
Not too difficult, actually:
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/472090-obama-privately-said-he-would-speak-up-to-stop-sanders-report
…and CNN is THE official organ (or doing its best to get to the top of that steaming pile, since there are many vying for that particular honor….)
What is most surprisingly about this whole kerfluffle is that it appears that Warren apparently DOES know what a lie is. (For quite a while there, it wasn’t at all certain that this was so….)
I recognize the same pattern.
Yes.
Identity politics is atom bomb, not a laser-guided hellfire missile.
It lacks precision. You can’t drop the old, straight, white man bomb on the Republican old, straight, white man without a incurring a substantial risk of also taking out the Democrat old, straight, white man. What to do, what to do…
Oh! I know: run all women and POC candidates so you can keep dropping those woke atom bombs with abandon.
Should be remembered that Sanders (and his nutty supporters) helped to deep-six Clinton (with generous assistance from Clinton herself, to be sure).
(For this—JUST FOR THIS—Sanders, no matter how much of a goofball he might be, no matter how irritatingly adolescent his worldview, no matter how essentially dishonest he is, deserves the heart-felt gratitude of decent people everywhere….)
Likewise, FOR THIS, the Democratic Party elites (such as they are) along with much of the rank and file, loathe him—truly, madly, deeply—and desperately fearing he might well do it again in 2020 they will from here on in adamantly refuse him any quarter, any leeway, any opportunity. They know they can’t do so outright but neither will they be subtle about it.
Let the games, um, continue…seeing as they’ve already begun….
As Warren’s chances fade she will suck up more and more to Mr. Dementia (she’s angling for that Secretary of the Treasury gig) and stick the shiv to her “friend” Bernie.
When I was a kid, I used to go down to Union Square and watch elderly gents (looking remarkably like Bernie) who would harangue whoever would listen about “the proletariat” and the “blood-sucking capitalists” etc. Bernie is the contemporary version of those fellows. As Pocahontas and the MSM continue to bash him, he will continue to take it while waving his finger in the air.
Here is a piece from Frontpage on Warren:
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/warren-asked-obama-exonerate-ethel-rosenberg-matthew-vadum/
I definitely want to vote for this scum. Put Bernie on top of her, and they will sink to the bottom of the ocean, taking all that plastic was with them.
exonerate Ethel Rosenberg
Robert Meeropol, who got his request to Warren, is the Rosenbergs’ son. One of their sons; the other is Michael. It is sad to see they have also spent their lives working on leftwing causes. Wikipedia says Michael Meeropol is currently a commentator for an NPR radio station in Albany. I imagined they might have come to a sense of shame for their parents’ crimes. Obviously not.
“…suck…”
Well, since it’s politics we’re talking about (where “all’s fair” (but if not exactly fair, then certainly possible), one oughtn’t be surprised to see, ultimately, a Warren-Sanders ticket (or vice-versa)…or some sort of rapprochement that at the very least should prompt typically insightful commentary from America’s current newspaper of record:
https://babylonbee.com/news/warren-sanders-bury-hatchet-in-each-others-thigh
More Video Confirmation That Sanders Campaign Wants You in a Gulag
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=P3PWDNkLliE&feature=emb_logo
Do note that the favoring of prisoners and those committing crimes is favoring the brutal class as they did in the past, so that these become the keepers of the rule… or did you think they turned nice people into the thugs needed to do that? of course most do and wonder how so, but the truth is that they opened the prisons, and replaced the good people with thugs they gave permission to enjoy their work…
neo on January 17, 2020 at 12:14 am said:
AesopFan:
Here’s my attempt to change your mind.
* * *
Grammar in the Grunge Age: pronouns generally are the minefield of grammar, and who/whom are the bunker-busters.
I’m working on an answer, but it will take awhile to write it out properly.
Stay tuned.
PS The penchant for judging grammatical correctness by the simple rule of “it sounds right / wrong to me” reminds me of the Hampster Story.
https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/millennial-writer-cries-for-mother-at-work-when-editor-corrects-her-spelling/
Or is it “who/whom is the bunker-buster”?
For Who the Bell Tolls…,
AesopFan, how to put this?
“The penchant for judging grammatical correctness by the simple rule of “it sounds right / wrong to me”: reminds me that language is (everywhere and always?) a matter of us apes making noises/signs. The “rules” thus appear to be ex post facto, everywhichway we turn. These critters aren’t static.
I imagined they might have come to a sense of shame for their parents’ crimes. Obviously not.
The request concerned his mother, who was given a draconian sentence. Our best guess is that Ethel Rosenberg knew what her husband was up to in a general way, but did not contribute to any discrete crime (or may have been an accessory, producing some typescripts).
For some odd reason, neither the Rosenberg nor the Greenglass family took custody of the boys, even though they had living grandparents, aunts, and uncles. By some accounts, both families were mortified when charges were lodged against their members. The Meeropol brothers have published a memoir which includes a section on life as they lived it after their parents arrest. IIRC, they had brief stints with family members, then another with their parents’ bachelor lawyer, Emmanuel Bloch. I think they then put in time with a couple of families in the red haze social nexus, of which one was the Meeropols, who adopted them. It seems to me these families in which they were placed put a certain amount of sweat equity into campaigns for the parents’ release. IOW, they were placed into political families which had very eccentric politics. Aside from their own quite natural partisanship, aside from the social matrix here, there, and the next place on college campuses after 1960, they had a peculiar upbringing.
They were, of course, emotionally invested in the idea of their parents’ innocence. That was an unsustainable position, and even a pair of semi-fanatics like Walter and Miriam Schneir were compelled to abandon it. The fallback was one suggested by Sol Stern, Ronald Radosh, and Joyce Milton more than a generation ago: that their mother was either framed by the FBI or only peripherally involved. That appears to be the truth.
I’d cut these guys some slack. Had they grown up with their cousins in an ordinary family and not instructed in unconventional politics, things might have gone differently.
Neo, you wrote:
Focus on the clauses at issue:
“…who may not be a Native American but who I’m virtually certain is a woman….”
Break the clauses up:
1. “who may not be a Native American”: “who” is the subject; “may + be” is the verb, modified by the adjective “not”; “a Native American” is a descriptive term that is introduced by the verb “to be.”
One could equally correctly write, “she may not be a Native American” using “she” instead of “who,” and stylistically it would be (to my ear anyway) a bit clunkier when placed in situ, but it would still be correct and would still convey the meaning.
2. The second clause, which is really the one at issue, consists of one clause within another:
a. “who … is a woman”
b. “I’m virtually certain”
This breakdown tells the whole story: “who” is correct.
When we run into such constructions (usually who vs. whom or whoever vs. whomever), we can arrive at the correct conclusion by inserting commas, mentally, around the inner clause:
who I’m virtually certain is a woman”
–>who, I’m virtually certain, is a woman”
“I’m virtually certain” is an aside to the entire sentence and certainly to the segment at issue. The point is that she’s a woman for sure. (You could have written, “…who may not be a Native American, though she’s a woman for sure….”
Or, “the man, who I’m sure was wearing a brown suit,” would be fine. So is “I disapprove of him who is wearing a brown suit” [not my actual feeling unless there’s a specific “him” at issue, say Saddam H., if I sighted him, but no one else, wearing a brown suit.
OTOH, “I will follow whomever seems to have the best idea.” This is in the form of “I will follow him,” where “follow” is a transitive verb which takes a direct object, and “will follow” is a transitive-verb phrase which also takes a direct object: “him”; or, restoring the original pronoun,
” I will follow whomever.”
This is a foreshortening of a type of phraseology used, for instance, in such back numbers as the KJV:
” I will follow him who seems to have the best idea.”
We wouldn’t say, “I will follow who seems to have it,” just as we wouldn’t say “I will follow who,” let alone “I will follow he.”
I do not know the party name for dependent clauses of the type (italicized) “I will follow whomever seems to have the best idea,” whereas in “I will follow him who seems to have the best idea,” the italicized part is clearly a descriptive (adjectival) clause modifying the preceding “him.”
. . .
And a short rant of my own. Imagine the radioactive glow emanating from my ears as well as from the other holes in my head:
“Now she won’t even speak to me. It’s like her and I were never friends.”
First, no matter what Merriam-Webster hopes, like is NOT a conjunction, although paraphrasing Woody Allen’s dictum, “Make the same mistake often enough and they’ll think it’s okay,” at this rate it will soon be received even in the parlors of those who actually speak English. (That’s sdferrs’ point, m-o-l.)
[NOTE. “Flyover people” seem to write English at least as good as those with fancy college degrees. Often better, you ask me. :twisted:]
And “her and I” is a mess no matter where it goes in a sentence.
I am now out of time, so any proofreading will be done on the fly, probably with results even worse than usual. :>((
I wasn’t finished proofreading and now Edit’s gone away and there are mistakes in there that I don’t have time to correct. And I don’t have time for a Mulligan. Apologies.
Too, in our own time many of us have lurking (irritatingly) in the nastier recesses of our memories the crudity in cruel error of V. I. Lenin’s Who Whom.
Blech, ptooie, etc., to have to drag that out into the daylight (is this as though performing a kind of secular self-exorcism?).
I’d cut these guys some slack. Had they grown up with their cousins in an ordinary family and not instructed in unconventional politics, things might have gone differently.
You’ve been in a forgiving mood recently, Art Deco. Meghan and Harry, on whose rhetorical behalf you did yeoman logical service here; the crazed Bernie staffer via Veritas; and now the Meeropol men. Interesting.
The Meeropols had both genetic and environmental inputs to the extreme, as you say. I can’t argue the original case, but I recall that Ethel’s involvement was not as directly dirty as the others. Still, she assisted Julius, she recruited her brother and sister-in-law, the Greenglasses. The only excuse is that she was partly being a good wife — while also being a good communist and helping to betray the nation. The materials that went out were major-league, not just trivial junk. Again, as I understand the evidence that has come out over the years since.
Looking at the boys’ Wiki bios led me to my conclusion. Had they been ashamed of their parents’ doings, I would think they would have gone in a very different direction, self-consciously. They’ve had plenty of adulthood outside of the red-diaper world to consider things. I don’t see any indication of a different direction. I do see that it was a shock to Michael M when it finally became incontrovertible that Julius had done the crimes. Yes, their lives were overshadowed, perhaps overwhelmed, by their parents’ doings. But the people around them, whatever they told them, were liars and I cannot believe that at some point that didn’t become clear to each of them.
Therefore, the sentence should be:
“To them, it doesn’t really seem to matter whom it will be.” – Neo
No. When the verb is “be” you always use who, he, she, etc. Technically “It is she,” or “It is I” is correct, though it comes off as pretentious. But “whom” is both incorrect in this case and sounds wrong. But “be” doesn’t take a direct object.
“Whom” is doubly wrong here because even if it were a different verb, it’s not the object, it’s the subject. So “To them, it doesn’t really seem to matter who said it” would be correct. You could rewrite it as “Who said it doesn’t really seem to matter to them.”
I think “who” is the subject of the clause “who it will be” and is correctly used. The sentence could be re-written, “Who it will be doesn’t really seem to matter to them.” Sticking the clause at the end doesn’t change its grammatical construction.
I find the subject/object distinction sufficient for choosing between who/whom. I’m old enough that I was taught to diagram sentences plus two years of high school Latin to clinch the deal. (Not cinch the deal btw.)
However, in informal communication I will slide by with “who” if it sounds more natural.
I once read advice that to say, “To whom am I speaking?” was grammatically correct; however, more importantly, it announced that one was a pedant.
Meghan and Harry, on whose rhetorical behalf you did yeoman logical service here;
They haven’t done anything as yet but (1) indicate they wanted to forego the Civil List / Sovereign Grant, (2) live some of the time in North America, and (3) allocate their time differently. Republicans and crypto-republicans in Britain bitch and moan about in-kind benefits to the Royal Family, about cash transfers to a selection of them, and about Princess Beatrice’s travel schedule; now a member of the Royal Family indicates he’d like to end the cash transfers paid to him and to his wife and be less of a public figure and Americans in the discussion fora I frequent are slamming him for that. It makes no sense, except that there are people who flash their middle fingers just for kicks.
the crazed Bernie staffer via Veritas;
He’s a kook. There are a certain number of them out there. The Sanders crew needs to cut him loose, and not just for appearances sake. In the space between your ears, me saying I wouldn’t make to much of this as a phenomenon is defending him.
and now the Meeropol men. Interesting.
It doesn’t surprise me that Robert Meeropol assesses his mother differently than you do. It shouldn’t surprise you either. The point is not that obscure.
Again, as I understand the evidence that has come out over the years since.
What’s come out in the last 25 years demonstrated conclusively what anyone this side of the Schneir’s and Victor Navasky acknowledged: that Julius Rosenberg ran a Communist spy ring which included David Greenglass, Harry Gold, Morton Sobell, Alfred Sarant, and Joel Barr. The question at hand in regard to his wife has always been what precisely she did do and did not do. A Russian national who identified himself as Rosenberg’s handler gave an interview to the Washington Post 24 years ago. He was emphatic that Rosenberg produced quite valuable intelligence about radar technology, which he was working on at the time. (He was an electrical engineer employed by a military contractor). He was also emphatic that Rosenberg took more risks than he the handler thought he should and that Rosenberg was careful to protect his wife by telling her as little as possible. Just one bit of information, of course. (No clue how the WaPo verified this man’s identity). There are controversies about when during his interrogations David Greenglass provided the bit about his sister producing typescripts, &c. All too granular for me.
I read the Warren-Sanders brouhaha (ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!) as Warren reaching for a broken bottle to cut Sanders down.
Sanders is blocking Warren in the left lane. CNN favors Warren because she is a modern SJW candidate, not to mention female, and therefore more electable. Also, because Warren’s allegiance is to the Democrats, not Sanders’ brand of socialism.
Sanders is an old-school leftie. I half-expect him to start gibbering about the Stakhanovite movement in his interviews. (Maybe he has.) Sanders is not a Democrat. If he wins the nomination, much less the presidency, the Democratic Party will not be able to control him.
Furthermore, the Sanders movement nurtures an understandable hatred of the Democratic Party apparatus, which intentionally rigged the 2016 nomination against Sanders.
Sanders is not just out to subvert the United States. He is starting with the Democratic Party. I’m not sure conservatives get this rift.
Art Deco; Kai Akker:
I’m with Art Deco on the subject of the Rosenberg sons as well as the relative guilt of Ethel. It seems to me there’s enough doubt about the depth of her guilt that she should at least have been spared execution, which would also have spared the children the extremity of their own trauma, which involved the execution of both their parents when the boys were around 10 and 6. See this for what happened to the children; you can ignore the politics and simply look at the depth of the trauma for such young children.
See this for
…. how Robert Meeropol will try to plead his own case a little while also comparing his personal tragedy to the cases of illegals at the border. Totally separate phenomena but the standard-issue leftist’s phony equivalency for political gain. I’ll stick to my original conclusion, Neo.
Kai Akker:
You’re talking apples and oranges.
The fact that Meeropol is a standard guy of the left and uses the arguments and false analogies of the left is an entirely separate issue to the point I’m making, which is that (a) there is serious doubt about the depth of Ethel Rosenberg’s guilt; and (b) the children were subjected to extreme trauma at very early ages.
He was also emphatic that Rosenberg took more risks than he the handler thought he should and that Rosenberg was careful to protect his wife by telling her as little as possible.
He protected her? He protected her by keeping her in the dark about what he was involving her in, so she had no choice and no real awareness of the matter?
I’m just going on the logic as stated by the WaPo source. I think Ethel was a little bit more involved, rather than less, but no one knows any more. Those Meeropols — no, let me put it this way. If I were Julius’s son, I would hate my father with every ounce of my being. And there is no way I could pursue leftist agendas of any sort, given that I would be in some way sharing with that man’s legacy.
He protected her by keeping her in the dark about what he was involving her in, so she had no choice and no real awareness of the matter?
No, he protected her by keeping her away from incriminating activity.
If I were Julius’s son, I would hate my father with every ounce of my being.
Julius’ sons are Julius’ sons. There’s no indication they hate their father retrospectively.
People who loathe their fathers aren’t very common and have typically been the recipients of some mix of abuse / neglect, though every once in a while you come across a daddy-hater who was and is just a rotten kid. No clue what the disciplinary situation was in the Rosenberg household. The people who walked away from the Meeropol brothers were their grandparents, aunts, and uncles. (No clue why).
No, he protected her by keeping her away from incriminating activity.
How’d that work out?
Julius took too many risks, per the handler, and one of them was the predicament he left his wife in. How’d it work out for her?
I think there are plenty of people who loathe their fathers. My cousin hated his father for the father’s adultery, breaking up the family (divorce) and semi-impoverishing my cousin’s mother. I doubt that that is uncommon.
If I felt that my father had been a spy who betrayed our country, and was also responsible for getting my innocent mother killed, I would think hatred would be my reaction. That case is rare, so you are correct in saying it isn’t very common on those specifics.
Of course, the communists around the Rosenbergs undoubtedly filled the children with the usual poison of how the state did this, that and the other with the sole purpose of killing their parents, who were only trying to be great humanitarians. My point is that at some point, those two adult men should have seen the truth a little more clearly, IMO.
Michael M supposedly told one of Morton Sobell’s wives that his life would have been very different had he known long before what Sobell confessed in 2008 about Julius. He did know before that about his father’s guilt, but hearing it directly from one of the participants must have struck a special blow. All those years of lies — including the original lies from both his father and his mother.
How’d that work out?
Decision-making is prospective.
Julius took too many risks, per the handler, and one of them was the predicament he left his wife in. How’d it work out for her?
The handler was referring to the mechanics of espionage, not his dealings with his wife. Worked out OK for Ruth Greenglass.
the usual poison of how the state did this,
Judge Kaufmann gave her a draconian sentence and had irregular ex parte communications with the prosecution. The FBI had reason to believe that the testimony which convicted her was fabricated given (1) the evolving content of David Greenglass’ accounts and (2) that she was referred to in the Venona decrypts without a code name. Note, the FBI persuaded Pres. Eisenhower that Ethel was ‘the leader of the two’. So, yes, the state did this. Ronald Radosh, who has been an inveterate critic of the red haze view of the case for 40 years will tell you the state did this. Abel Meeropol had no need to be deceptive with the Rosenberg brothers on that point.
I think there are plenty of people who loathe their fathers.
I think there are people who have all kinds of issues with their fathers, some legitimate beefs and some not. ‘Loathe’? No, that’s pretty unusual, especially among socially functional people past the age of 70, which both Meeropol brothers are. Their father wasn’t a violent drunk.
My point is that at some point, those two adult men should have seen the truth a little more clearly, IMO.
Neither Meeropol brother has ever belonged to the Communist Party. They’re familiar red-haze types of the succeeding generation.
Michael M supposedly told one of Morton Sobell’s wives that his life would have been very different had he known long before what Sobell confessed in 2008 about Julius.
‘Supposedly’. It wouldn’t surprise me. The Meeropol brothers put some effort into defending their parents in public fora. The truth wasn’t unavoidable until they were about 50 years old.
Michael Meeropol hasn’t had a bad life. He earned a research degree, had a satisfactory academic post, was married to the same woman for 54 years (until her recent death), and has two children. His brother took his time settling on a career, but has practiced law since he was just shy of 40. He’s been married to the same woman for decades and also has two children.
Children will love and stick up fiercely for their parents, even in the face of abuse. That may change when they become teenagers.
The Rosenberg children lost their parents quite young, so I wouldn’t expect them to turn against their parents. In fact I would expect them to idealize their parents and blame America instead, which seems to be what they did.
Furthermore, their foster father was a communist and wrote the famous song “Strange Fruit” about black lynchings. So the Rosenberg boys were raised deep in a red diaper world. I wouldn’t expect them to disavow the left either and they didn’t.
neo sometimes brings up the strong emotional bonds of the leftist experience. Quite right. I’m not sure conservatives understand that as well as they might.
I can’t think of many hard leftists, who turned away from that world.
David Horowitz is often mentioned in that regard, But geez, it took the trauma of recommending a woman he knew to be a secretary for the Black Panthers, then discovering later the Panthers had murdered her.
Art Deco; Kai Akker; huxley:
The Rosenberg sons were 3 and 7 when their parents were arrested, and 10 and 6 when they were executed. Up until the moment they were arrested, to the sons it was a normal family and by their account a happy and loving one. That’s a powerful thing, and the sons were placed in a terrible, stressful, and deeply traumatic situation. Their allegiance was to their parents, in bonds formed through love for the formative years of their lives.
And as I’ve said earlier, the evidence for their mother’s guilt is poor, so it’s no mystery why they have kept defending her. With their father it’s different. It actually is pretty amazing that the sons, who spent many decades of their lives proclaiming the innocence of both parents, did come around to agreeing their father had been guilty, although not completely guilty of everything the state said he was.
Let me just say that from my observations of people, I believe that it would be extremely rare that with that sort of history of a loving family in childhood, and then that sort of extreme and early trauma at the hands of the legal system, and then that many years of defending the parents’ innocence, for a person to ever come round to admitting a parent’s guilt at all. It seems quite extraordinary to me that the two Rosenberg sons did so. I doubt that most people, had they been put in that position, would ever have gotten even that far.
See this for a statement by the brothers in 2008. I don’t pretend to know how guilty their father was (I believe their mother was less guilty, but of course I don’t know). But their position seems quite reasonable to me. It seems especially reasonable in light of what we know about the willingness of the FBI to twist evidence.
And here are some interesting statements made by the sons [emphasis mine]:
Such an ability to admit one is wrong on a subject of such deep importance is quite unusual. Plus, the sons still don’t think it was atomic secrets that their father handed over, so that mitigates their idea of his crime somewhat. They believe him guilty, but not of the crime for which he was executed.
And Art Deco, this can probably shed at least some light on why the Meeropols rather than a family member adopted them [emphasis mine]:
The Meeropols took them in after the execution, and there was a legal battle later which the Meeropols won.
More here:
There is a clue here as to why they were adopted by the Meeropols. The couple had had two stillborn children prior to the adoption. The grandmothers were probably too old to really care for them, the rest of the family was probably in terrible turmoil (partly because of the involvement of the Greenglasses in implicating the Rosenbergs), the Meeropols really wanted them and were a younger couple, and the name change was probably thought to be a good idea as well. I believe the idea was that the Meeropols could give them a more normal life.
And just after I wrote that I found this, which indicates that was indeed part of the reason:
The brothers’ anger seems to be directed at their uncle, and if you read this you can understand why:
The brothers believe the FBI fabricated the evidence against their mother, hoping that with the threat of death she would inform on others. She never did, and was executed. But I have to say that at this point it’s not difficult to believe the FBI presented fake evidence against her. We know how unscrupulous they can be.
I haven’t read this whole string but on the who/whom thing, technically it would be “whom.” (I do this by substituting “him” for “whom” — you’d say “It will be him,” not “It will be he.”) But that sounds stilted and pretentious, doesn’t it? while, with “who,” the sentence sounds natural and you don’t stumble over the “who.”
Here’s a thread on a very similar sentence: https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/whom-who.3302258/
The older I get, the less stuck I become on technical correctness in spoken language or informal written language like a blog post. (I write about law for a living, in a formal context, and I am very, VERY careful about technical correctness at work.) Language changes and evolves all the time, and it should. I’m old enough to remember when “Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should” was considered shocking because it was grammatically incorrect, not because it was carcinogenic. When was the last time you heard a construction anything like “Winston tastes good as a cigarette should”? Or encountered anybody under, say, 35 who knows the difference between “lie” and “lay”?
So even though I know it’s “wrong,” I vote for who.
Neo at 12:14 said
But the way I looked at it, the sentence “It will be him/her” could be wrong, and therefore “whom” could be wrong. Here’s the reason. I learned that you are actually supposed to say “It is I” and “it is he” rather than “It is me” or “It is him.” So which is correct, “It will be him” or “It will be he”? See this – basically, the answer is by no means clear.
Yes, it is I is correct, even if a bit pedantic.
And it is he or it will be he are both also correct.
It’s been almost 60 years since I learned that stuff, So I’m a little hazy on the details, but I think it’s called a predicate nominative, where the verb links to the same thing for both sides of the action. Is, are, be are examples of linkage verbs in a predicate nominative. That includes past and future tenses, so will be who is normally correct.
I’ll write it is I, but I’ll say it’s me. That’s English for you.
Missed a whole sentence after both sides of the action.
As one might guess from the name predicate nominative, both sides require the nominative case, now usually called the subjective case e.g. I, he, she, they.
The paternal-side uncle and two of the three paternal-side aunts were married. The paternal-side aunts’ married names were ‘Cohen’ and ‘Goldberg’, which would have been satisfactory camouflage. The paternal-side uncle was a pharmacist. (One paternal-side aunt appears to have been damaged and spent time in an asylum). There was a pair of maternal-side uncles, one apparently married, the other recently widowed. That’s five blood relations and four in-laws crapping out. The optics are terrible.
“Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?”
– Clarence Darrow
https://www.thoughtco.com/pronoun-definition-1691685
Good Grief Grammar: just clipped this from a Fox news “interlinear link” at the post on Starr & Dershowitz.
“TRUMP’S IMPEACHMENT TRIAL TEAM: WHO ARE THEY LAWYER’S DEFENDING THE PRESIDENT?”
I can’t even.
Who versus Whom:
“To them it doesn’t really seem to matter whom it will be.”
That sentence is something with which I will not put.
Hat tip to Winston (Churchill).
Agreed.
Also, FREE LEONARD PELTIER:
https://freeleonard.org/case/
We have Ms Warren, Ms Harris, Ms Clinton, Ms Omar, and Mrs Pelosi out and about showing “leadership” and “service.” All of them grifters and frauds at best.
Yet the real thing is not well known
“THE LEGEND OF CHIEF SHANNON KENT”
https://coffeeordie.com/shannon-kent/
I’m surprised Artfldgr missed a trick by not mentioning Lenin’s famous “Who, whom?” formulation vis-a-vis socialism and capitalism.
The whole question is—who will overtake whom?
–V.I. Lenin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who,_whom%3F
It’s another way to think about subject vs. object.
Sorry, I meant “That sentence is something *up* with which I will not put”.
Whoopsie.
Art Deco:
Since you didn’t provide a link to that list of relatives, I’ll just take your word for it that they were all as listed. However, one would have to know a lot more about them: rich or poor, how large their families were, what their relationships with the Rosenbergs had been both prior to their arrests and after, how traumatized they were by what had occurred in the family, and – perhaps most importantly – what their relationships with the Rosenberg children were prior to the arrest and after the arrest and executions as well as what the Rosenberg children thought of them. The boys were not babies, and they no doubt had preferences as well.
Since we don’t know any of that information, I think without it you are out of line saying the relatives “crapped out” by not adopting the traumatized children of people who were utterly notorious at the time, particularly since anyone who might have adopted them would be likely to have been the subject of hatred (in fact, one of the articles I read – I can’t remember which one at the moment – said that this had actually happened to some of the relatives when they took the children temporarily.).
Meanwhile, the Meeropols were not relatives, that couple very much wanted the children because they had lost two of their own, and because the Meeropols were NOT Rosenberg or Greenglass relatives at all, they afforded the possibility of complete anonymity for the children. And that’s actually what happened. If the children had been adopted by family members such anonymity almost certainly could not have been obtained, even with different last names, because the relatives were known to be relatives.
In addition, Ethel and Julius essentially made the choice, by appointing their lawyer the children’s legal guardian, and he chose the Meeropols:
Also:
In addition (again, I don’t have time to find the source once again, but I read it earlier today), Block chose the Meeropols and introduced the children to them, and the children liked them. I am relatively sure this was a big factor in the decision to have the Meeropols adopt them. The decision also enabled the boys to hide their identities until they were grown and decided to reveal themselves when in their 20s. I very much doubt such hidden identities would have been possible had they lived with relatives of their parents. That’s why the boys said the Meeropols saved their lives – they not only provided love and stability, but they allowed them to grow up without being identified as the Rosenbergs’ children.
AesopFan: Just noticed your earlier mention of “Who, whom?” in the Scruton topic!
Missed each other by 23 minutes. It’s the morphogenetic field or something.
neo: Yes, the Meeropols were a near-ideal solution for the Rosenberg boys. I’m glad they found that happier ending. Thanks for the research.
huxley – sometimes commenting on Neo’s posts is like reading a Marvel story-line distributed among 20 titles – it’s hard to keep up.
Why Warren appeals to the Democrats – they are caviar communists, but Sanders is the real deal (well, he probably likes caviar too, but he can fake authenticity better than Warren does).
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/01/17/president-trump-notes-dnc-establishment-targeting-bernie-again/#comment-7756210
huxley & Oliver T – the entanglement field is spreading.
Chris in texas, I’m not certain but think the predicate-nominative also got called a “copula” for a time too. I have some vague memory of Kant declaring “is” as “being” can’t be a predicate . . . well, so what is it then, the “is”? A copula! Oh, well then, la-dee-da, Herr Professor Kant.
Such an ability to admit one is wrong on a subject of such deep importance is quite unusual.
Neo, I am not as sure of that assessment. How else can you live your life? This isn’t just someone saying your dad was a loser; everything in the world is at stake on this one (slight exaggeration, perhaps, but from the pov of children maturing). I think many intelligent people would reach the same conclusion regarding truth that the sons did. Michael’s reported statement to Sobell wife (“very different life if”) suggests bitterness and mixed feelings, if not a negative resolution of those mixed feelings.
Plus, the sons still don’t think it was atomic secrets that their father handed over, so that mitigates their idea of his crime somewhat. They believe him guilty, but not of the crime for which he was executed.
He was an assiduous spy. I think the nature of what his spy ring delivered to the USSR was released in the wake of USSR’s dissolution, and I’ve read it was worse than originally believed. But I have no further evidence to show that; it may be verifiable somewhere, for someone else who really cares; not me.
What I wonder about — two things. Is there an atonement theme in their lives? They couldn’t have lived in denial until 2008, there was the USSR evidence 10 years earlier. And, as they said, they wondered and were not sure what the truth was. I think a need to atone might have been present and maybe their lives did include that aspect; no way to tell from the outside.
Second, how can they expect the mother to be “exonerated” after she was convicted in a trial? Just on the Greenglass say-so decades later? This is understandable, emotionally, but still seems unrealistic to me.
OK, three things. Robert M is passing on his Foundation to his daughter. Is this a mission, or is it a financial sinecure? Could be both, but foundations are such a nice way to raise money, skip taxes, and pay yourself a nice, virtuous salary. Would prefer you do not shoot me for expressing the thought.
Since you didn’t provide a link to that list of relatives, I’ll just take your word for it that they were all as listed.
The maternal uncles were Samuel Greenglass (1909-83) and Bernard Greenglass (1917-75). Samuel Greenglass had been 18 years married at the time his sister and brother were arrested, his brother about 8 years married. Both men had children at the time. Mrs. Bernard Greenglass died in Sept. 1950. They’d had ordinary clerical jobs when young; no clue how they were earning a living in 1950. Samuel Greenglass was earning enough in 1932 to be able to get married, which not everyone could manage. His brother left high school at age 16 but would have had some claim on GI Bill benefits after the war.
The paternal uncle was David Rosenberg (1909-86). He was a pharmacist, six years married at the time of his brother’s arrest. One paternal aunt was Ethel Goldberg (1914-94), 14 years married at the time of her brother’s arrest and the mother of at least one child. Another was Lena Cohen (1911-87), 21 years married at the time of her brother’s arrest, and the mother of at least one child. Both of their husbands had quite ordinary jobs in their younger years. No clue what they were doing in 1950. All five resided around New York City.
Since we don’t know any of that information, I think without it you are out of line saying the relatives “crapped out” by not adopting the traumatized children of people who were utterly notorious at the time,
No, I’m not. There were five proximate relatives living locally and none of them took one of these boys. They actually had a tour in an orphanage. The given names and surnames their paternal-side relatives had were common enough at the time in metropolitan New York that you have to be careful in paging through digitized census returns to be sure you’ve got the right person, so it’s odd to say they needed the name ‘Meeropol’ as camouflage.
It wouldn’t surprise me to discover that Julius Rosenberg was estranged from his siblings; he was a fanatic, and there’s no indication that his siblings were anything like that. The conduct of David Greenglass indicates he simply did not have the investment in the cause his sister did.
It wouldn’t surprise me to discover that Julius Rosenberg was estranged from his siblings; he was a fanatic,
Ditto. That does back up Neo’s point that the relatives may not have felt any loyalty to him or his children; may have been quite the opposite. I would say, cut the relatives some slack, Art Deco.
Maybe orphanages, in many cases smallish group homes, should make a comeback; separate point.
Alas this late horse it truly well beaten.
Art Deco:
The technique of the truncated quote is not your friend.
What I actually wrote was this:
So, the words “since you don’t know THAT INFORMATION” quite obviously refers not to the names and ages and married status of the relatives, but the other things I listed. And you still do not know that information. Had they gotten along with the Rosenbergs? With the children? Did the children like them? Were they equipped to raise children who had been deeply traumatized? Was there a better place for the children to be?
Also, whatever the names of the relatives were, they were known and many had already been harassed. The children’s chances of anonymity for growing up were far better with the Meerepols, as the articles (and common sense) make clear. The standard is the best interests of the child.
I also offered a lot more about how the actual adoptive parents (the Meerepols) were chosen and why. For some reason you’d rather criticize the relatives as if you know enough about those things I listed to give an informed opinion. You don’t.
Kai Akker:
People have a remarkable ability to refuse to admit wrongdoing or errors, even to themselves. In my experience it is rare to be able to do so, and the bigger the error the more difficult and rare it is.
In fact, that’s a theme I discuss over and over on this blog.
In addition these were boys of 3 and 7 whose parents were torn from them, parents they loved, and then the parents were executed when the boys were 6 and 10. The boys’ descriptions of what they themselves went through is heartbreaking. Their psychological survival depended, at that young age, on keeping faith with their parents’ innocence (their parents had assured them, to the end, that they were innocent). In addition, lots of people reinforced the idea that the parents were innocent, including their adoptive parents the Meeropols. It was an article of great faith and tremendous importance to them, and breaking with it at all was very difficult and in my opinion unusual under the circumstances.
As for Ethel, even Ron Radosh, who wrote a book about their guilt, came to believe that she was guilty of helping but that she was not guilty of anything close to what she was convicted of. The sons see their parents as not having given atomic secrets, although the father gave other military secrets. There is some support for that point of view as well.
Lastly, having read quite a bit about the sons, I don’t get the impression that the sons are Marxists or Communists, although they are leftists. You might say that there isn’t that much of a distinction, but there certainly is in their minds. Their interviews are very interesting, psychologically.
OK, as you see it, Neo. But for me, having a father convicted of giving our toughest enemy keys to nuclear weapons, significantly damaging our nation’s defense standing and changing the global political balance would be such a huge and unique category of notoriety that I would need to reach my own determination on it. Just as the Meeropols did — eventually.
So the semi-current news peg here was that Robert gave the clear-Ethel campaign his best shot, using Warren. If ever it were going to succeed, Obama would seem to fit the bill for it — a communist-sympathizer with no qualms about giving nuclear weapons to our enemies. But even he apparently said no.
Kai Akker:
An important part to remember is that although the sons believe their father was guilty of giving military information to the Soviets, they do not believe the evidence points to his giving them nuclear information, and there is some support for that. It is certainly possible to be convicted of a more serious crime and only be guilty of a somewhat lesser crime.
Obama did what he did because of politics, IMHO. I think he thought it would open him to a lot of criticism if he were to accede to their wishes, so he ignored them. It has nothing to do with whether the sons were correct or not about Ethel, but again, there is evidentiary support for their position, whether you agree with it or not.
OK, as you see it, Neo. But for me, having a father convicted of giving our toughest enemy keys to nuclear weapons, significantly damaging our nation’s defense standing and changing the global political balance would be such a huge and unique category of notoriety that I would need to reach my own determination on it.
Klaus Fuchs did that. The work of the Rosenberg circle corroborated Fuchs account. Again, per his handler, Rosenberg’s important work was delivering radar technology. He said he was stunned one day when Rosenberg smuggled out a jagged piece of equipment under his overcoat.
Aside from their familial biases, you have to remember the bias of the political subculture they’ve occupied all their lives (which is, as we speak, a respected if not modal viewpoint in the Organization of American Historians, which put Ellen Schrecker in the President’s chair for a term). People like Victor Navasky may never have been members of the Communist Party, but they did favor the other side in the Cold War. Navasky was so respected that Columbia University ca. 2000 appointed him to chair the board supervising their J-School, even though he’d never worked as a reporter in his life. (He was a failed lawyer who ran a humor magazine, then was employed as a book reviewer, then employed to edit an opinion magazine). See Paul Hollandar’s Political Pilgrims about these types. The subject is touched on in Thos. Sowell’s Vision of the Anointed as well.
For a discrete example, see the controversies which erupted in 1979 and 1983 over the work of Joyce Milton, Ronald Radosh, and Sol Stern. The Meeropols were figures in the opposing camp, which included David Dellinger, Victor Navasky, and the Schneir’s. For portside public intellectuals, the Schneir view was the default setting prior to 1979, though it’s doubtful most liberal intellectuals had much investment in the question. (Arthur Schlesinger thought the Rosenbergs guilty guilty guilty).
there is evidentiary support for their position, whether you agree with it or not.
It would have been appropriate for Eisenhower to have commuted Ethel’s sentence to time served when they didn’t blink. A retrospective commutation is a nonsense act. A retrospective pardon is not. Do you really wish, however to extend a retrospective pardon (which is a statement without practical effect) when someone was not guilty because they failed to hit a statutory tripwire (but were in support of a given course of action) or when they received a guilty verdict rather than a Scottish verdict? Again, both Rosenbergs were active in the Communist Party, then dropped out abruptly in 1943. People who knew them in and among that political subculture did surmise what was up. Radosh explains that the party was not an espionage organization and that people left its auspices to work under Soviet handlers. (Robert Nozick remarked that the party wasn’t quite like the Auto Club, which may have also had members who spied).
Obama has the soul of a deputy dean of students and counts Bernadine Dohrn and Wm. Ayers among his circle of friends. He’s young enough that he couldn’t be as emotionally invested in these controversies as someone Ayers’ age or Navasky’s age. Still, the political discourse of The New York Times and The New York Review of Books ca. 1979 is Obama’s default setting. Its doubtful he’s antagonistic to the idea of pardoning Ethel Rosenberg. It just wasn’t worth the controversy.
It is certainly possible to be convicted of a more serious crime and only be guilty of a somewhat lesser crime.
Let me say this another way, Neo — this distinction that you and Art Deco keep making on what specifically Julius passed to the Soviets is meaningless in the context of a son’s fears and need to know.
Was my father, a man not only convicted but executed, a major-league spy for the USSR? Is that the truth of his life? Is he, or isn’t he — was he, or wasn’t he? Because I am his son and I am carrying some of whatever the bottom-line truth of his nature is. I have to know in order to live my life.
And he told me he wasn’t. And my mother told me he wasn’t. And all our friends told me he wasn’t.
Thanks loads.
Kai Akker:
You write:
It think it is clear from what I’ve already written that I believe that is indeed the attitude of the Rosenberg sons and what they have tried to do. I have read many interviews with them, and I see them as having taken on that quest. That they come to a different conclusion than you do doesn’t mean you are right and they are wrong, nor does it mean that they have not made it a large part of their lifework to find the truth.
I fail to understand the relevance of what seems like your mockery of their position as well as my point about what they had been told as children who had been completely traumatized by events for which they bore zero guilt or responsibility:
They were children who had loved and believed in their parents. They were surrounded by people – adults who loved and raised them subsequent to their parents’ deaths, as well as all those people’s friends and acquaintances – who reinforced that belief in their parents’ innocence. Beliefs like that become very deep, formed in childhood by repetition as well as deep psychological and emotional need. However, despite all that, once they became adults, their attitude changed, and they attempted a quest for the truth. They evaluated the evidence and the files. They changed their belief to a large extent about their father’s innocence and came to believe him guilty, although not of passing atomic secrets, and they came to believe their mother offered him some help but had very little knowledge of what was going on and did not knowingly conspire to pass on nuclear secrets. They may incorrect about that, or they may not be. But I think they really have tried to get at the truth and to accept it, in a situation that makes it hard if not impossible for them to be objective. And I think that is 100% understandable, and that considering what they’ve gone through, the fact that they’ve come as far as they have in admitting their father’s guilt is commendable as well as unusual.
Was my father, a man not only convicted but executed, a major-league spy for the USSR? Is that the truth of his life?
You keep not getting it. Their father wasn’t reducible to that for them, nor was their mother. He was a half-dozen other things as well. And they’ve lived their lives in a social matrix wherein passing secrets to the Soviet Union is less viscerally repellent than grassing up someone for Communist affiliations.
https://www.amazon.com/Naming-Names-Victor-S-Navasky/dp/0809001837
After 1947, the Communist Party was rapidly stripped of it’s influence and turned into a pariah organization in circles where it had been formerly welcome. The most consequential vector in these disputes has always concerned that process. At one time, that argument was carried on with claims that the FBI and the HCUA hounded innocent people. That’s no longer a sustainable argument. Now, tarted up in academic language, people like Ellen Schrecker are peddling Lillian Hellman’s defense: we didn’t do our country any harm, and they did.
In re the Meeropols, their motives and interests are multi-form and not reducible to the intellectual / civic / historiographical project of Schrecker et al (to which they may not subscribe in an unqualified way).
Art Deco
It would have been appropriate for Eisenhower to have commuted Ethel’s sentence to time served when they didn’t blink.
Had Eisenhower done so, she would have probably have spent the rest of her life on the propaganda trail, shouting to the heavens that she and her husband were innocent. (Would that have changed what Kruschchev wrote about the Rosenbergs in his memoir, where he stated the Rosenbergs were very helpful?)This is cold-blooded, but I wonder if Eisenhower considered this in not stopping her execution. I suspect that a live Ethel was of more propaganda value to the Commies than a dead Ethel.
The effect of propaganda was certainly a consideration in the on-the-spot execution of Che Guevara- instead of at least a trial. Consider how Fidel Castro and Hitler gained propaganda effects from their trials. BTW, both Castro and Hitler said at their trials that history would absolve them. Not an accident- as Pravda would say.
Eisenhower considered this in not stopping her execution.
Eisenhower was persuaded that Ethel was the ‘leader of the two’
I suspect that a live Ethel was of more propaganda value to the Commies than a dead Ethel.
Wm. O. Douglas reflecting on the strategies Emmanuel Bloch was employing supposedly said, “It was the Communist consensus of the day that the Rosenberg’s pay the extreme price”. So, your thesis had some critics.
Has anyone much cared about Morton Sobell or Harry Gold all these years? You know the Rosenbergs’ names because they were executed. AFAIK, the people in this country executed for espionage in the years since the Civil War number just two. I think Alger Hiss may have cadged some speaking fees, but he was a prominent public official before Whittaker Chambers exposed him. Has Jonathan Jay Pollard (who was treated far more severely than any Soviet spy from the early Cold War other than the Rosenbergs) been on the speaking circuit?
Okay, I think we ought to all be able to agree that this sentence needs a whom.
The story was droll; I had no idea that Rand Paul had a sense of humor.
https://www.redstate.com/nick-arama/2020/01/17/rand-paul-trolls-adam-schiff-with-mock-note-this-was-found-in%e2%80%99-your-%e2%80%98hotel-room%e2%80%99/
Nick Arama clearly does not know for whom the phone rings.
PS The reaction of the Left makes you wonder if this isn’t another Babylon Bee piece.
They are going to have to close up shop soon, because the truth is becoming stranger than the parodies.
https://www.redstate.com/bonchie/2020/01/18/nbc-news-it-may-be-illegal-to-vote-for-trump/
I fail to understand the relevance of what seems like your mockery of their position. [Neo]
Mockery of their position? No.
One of the points I was trying to make was that I disagree with your assessment that their recognition of the truth was something unusual. I have been trying to show how absolutely compelling a necessity knowing that truth would be to most intelligent people. Do I think the Meeropols came to it late? Yes, at least publicly. Do I think they failed to recognize how much lying was being done to them? Yes, absolutely. But I concur that they wanted to know the truth; I differ from you in that I believe that most people confronted with this monumental a case regarding their parents would also want, and need, to know the truth.
Art Deco, I don’t agree with some of your assessments but I am cognizant of this one:
And they’ve lived their lives in a social matrix wherein passing secrets to the Soviet Union is less viscerally repellent than grassing up someone for Communist affiliations.
Kai Akker:
The mockery I’m talking about is very specifically the quote from you I reproduced and will reproduce again:
Perhaps I just don’t understand what you meant, but it sounds there as though you’re mocking what you’re characterizing as a fairly simple process of relying on what a person has been told rather than seeking the truth.
And I also think you are somewhat naive – or perhaps a better word would be idealistic – about what percentage of people would seek the truth wherever it leads. That is not my experience of the vast majority of people. One only has to look at politics to see it. And there we’re not talking about something deeply emotional, such as faith in a parent whom one has loved and who was killed in one’s youth, after you were suddenly taken from that parent.
I maintain that most people would keep protesting their parents’ innocence, and would use confirmation bias indefinitely to defend them. This would not necessarily be true, however, if prior to the separation and the death the relationship with the parent was poor. But the Rosenthal children had had good relationships with their parents. In addition, it was BOTH parents, father and mother. Very very traumatic.
Art Deco; Kai Akker:
Art wrote, and Kai agreed, with this:
I would say that the matrix in which they lived contained many people who found passing secrets to the USSR not only not repellent, but laudable.
However, that would not be the position of the Rosenberg sons, whose anger at David Greenglass – who “gassed up” the Rosenbergs and in particular Ethel, in order to save himself and his wife, and may have lied and exaggerated the extent of Ethel’s involvement – can be understood as anger at someone they believe gave false testimony in order to sacrifice their mother to protect himself.
For example:
By the way, Greenglass and his wife lived out their lives under assumed names.
Related (and a closure of a sort for this most nauseating chapter—one of far too many—demonstrating how abstract idealism and base betrayal are often two sides of the same coin):
https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/history-ideas/2019/06/the-death-of-morton-sobell-and-the-end-of-the-rosenberg-affair/
The mockery I’m talking about is…. [Neo]
Funny in a sad way; glad I checked back in. That quote of mine you highlighted is so far from mockery of the Meeropols it is in another galaxy. I am sympathetic to the Michael M anecdote, that he said, effectively — If only I had known. If only he (Sobell confessed in 2008) had told me this a long time ago, my life would have been very different.
That moment must have been so bitter. These two Rosenberg sons were lied to forever. They were born into a world of lies and liars. The father did what he did, involved his wife enough that we know what her fate was, and the sons were on their own. Did they defend their father, as I am sure they wanted to? (Neo — I know the answer to that is yes.) I’m not going to go Dostoevsky through the litany of psychological issues Julius set up for them; it is obvious that he stole a huge piece of each of their lives, too.
And it never stopped, at least not until 2008. Everyone lied to those sons, some with good intentions, some not; and I’m sure they would list the government as lying also. But it began with Julius spying, deceiving, lying. Because he thought he was more right than God. And the consequences of his fanaticism went for decades, damaging things. It is nearly miraculous that the two Meeropols have enjoyed long marriages and productive lives.
I only wish they had carried their logical inquiry one step further and been able to renounce the leftist worldview. Which brings us back to where we began this aspect of the discussion.
And I think that anecdote also shows that Michael, at the least, knew. He was ready to hear that Sobell confession because he had been thinking it, maybe fearing it, maybe not, for many years. And that’s why he was able to summarize and articulate his regrets so clearly. The Russian files were opened in the ’90s, so it was already public knowledge. And I suspect he knew, or deeply suspected, well before that, too. Didn’t he see the nature of the people with whom the parents were involved? I think he must have.
And, in fact, there IS that Michael M anecdote in the article on Sobell that Barry linked. Michael is further described there as “furious” at Sobell. As well he should have been, but it wasn’t just with Morton Sobell that he could have been furious.
And after this—brief, if fascinating—interlude of Spy vs. Spy, baaaack to….the main feature of this evening’s entertainment: Goofball vs. Shnook (Chinook?)…
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/355280/
Everyone lied to those sons,
The people who actually knew something 1st hand were Harry Gold, Morton Sobell, Alfred Sarant, Joel Barr, David Greenglass, Ruth Greenglass, and James Weinstein. The people who received confidential admissions from one of these are a fuzzier batch, but included the lawyers for the accused. Emmanual Bloch died in 1954; Marshall Perlin lived another 40-odd years, but he was inhibited in what he could tell them because his client (Sobell) was still alive (and the same stricture applied to Harry Gold’s lawyers). Harry Gold died in 1972; I’d wager neither of the Meeropol brothers crossed paths with him after 1951, if they ever met him at all. Alfred Sarant and Joel Barr lived the rest of their days in Soviet Russia; I’d wager neither brother ever met either man. The brothers quite self-consciously rejected what the Greenglasses had to say. Weinstein, a quondam Communist who was later editor of In These Times wasn’t involved in the conspiracy but was a witness to certain things, told what he knew to Radosh and Milton, told what he knew in public fora (e.g. the Townhall debate between Milton / Radosh / Stern and the Schneirs), and gave an interpretation of what he knew; he didn’t lie to them. You’re really talking about Sobell, here.
Then that would explain why Michael was “furious” at Sobell. I don’t doubt your listing, above, Art Deco, but you know that many people the boys would have trusted (or hoped to trust) would have been offering assurances and reassurances, and basing them on whatever spurious authority they could muster. Believing they were doing the boys a favor; helping them cope. And believing that, even if what they told them were not true in fact, it was “true in spirit.”
Btw, what does your verb “grassing up” mean as you used it? I took it for harassing. Neo switched it to gassing.
Btw, what does your verb “grassing up” mean as you used it?
Tell the authorities.
but you know that many people the boys would have trusted (or hoped to trust) would have been offering assurances and reassurances,
Cue George Costanza. “It isn’t a lie, Jerry, if you believe it”. The Schneirs likely knew more minutiae about the case than any other party bar Milton / Radosh / Stern. They defended the Rosenbergs for 30+ years until that was simply unsustainable even for them. (Robert Nozick, having observed Walter Schneir at a public debate, adjudged the man a fanatic). It’s a reasonable inference that some of the red haze types the Meeropols interacted with were rather like that prominent figure that Richard John Neuhaus wrote about some years back, the man who told Fr. Neuhaus ca. 1975 that of course Alger Hiss was guilty but we couldn’t hand ‘them’ a victory by acknowledging it explicitly. However, others undoubtedly were perfectly sincere. To some extent, that’s the human condition and to some extent that’s how the portside is about everything (because they are overly invested in political disputes).
Kai Akker:
“Gassed up” was a typo on my part. The correct expression is “grassed up.”
By the way, one of the biggest elements (in the psychological sense) for the sons is that apparently, according to their own description, they were taken to say goodbye to their parents on the day before or the day of the execution. The boys were 6 and 10. That already is trauma beyond imagining, for most people – for children to be in that position.
On top of it, the parents reassured the boys, in that final meeting, that the parents were completely innocent.
I believe that scene had a huge effect on what the sons did after, in terms of believing their parents’ innocence.
…grassed up…
I’ve watched enough British mob films to be familiar with it as a term for snitching. I assumed it was from “snake in the grass” but there is a more complicated rhyming slang route from copper -> grasshopper -> grass shopper -> grass.
https://www.tripsavvy.com/meaning-of-grass-in-british-slang-1661909
The truth may never be known.