I make way too many mistakes to play “gotcha” journalism. Yet the first paragraph in this Huffington Post blog entry did arrest my attention:
Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate marks the first time in American history that no Protestant will appear on a major-party ticket for president. Ryan is Roman Catholic, and Romney, of course, is Mormon.
Biden is also a Roman Catholic. And Obama is a Protestant. (I am so not going there.) So my conclusion is that Professor Balmer (or his editor) does not think that the Democrats are a major party. Wasn’t it Will Rogers who said, “I’m not a member of any organized party – I’m a Democrat!”
August 23rd, 2012 | 4:17 pm
I make way too many mistakes to play “gotcha” journalism.
I think you have made a mistake here, unless I am missing something.
Romney is a Mormon (not a Protestant) and Ryan is a Catholic (not a Protestant). This is a ticket for a major party without a Protestant.
Obama is a Protestant and Biden is a Catholic, so this is a ticket for a major party with a Protestant.
August 23rd, 2012 | 4:37 pm
Reading comprehension fail. Or sentence construction fail, if you prefer. Reread that as “the first time one of the major parties will run a presidential ticket without a Protestant on it.”
August 23rd, 2012 | 5:07 pm
Yeah. Well, I didn’t intend to exemplify my first sentence quite so nicely. Nonetheless, I would have written it as, being the first time that “no Protestant will appear on a major party’s ticket for president” rather than none appearing on “a major-party ticket.”
August 23rd, 2012 | 6:13 pm
It’s a poorly constructed sentence. It doesn’t mean what it seems to say.
August 23rd, 2012 | 6:23 pm
That doesn’t really help things, Mr. Rogers. It should have been written as Fitzgerald suggests, where “no Protestant” is not the subject of the sentence. Once you have that as the subject it’s pretty hard to disambiguate and still be writing English.
August 23rd, 2012 | 8:08 pm
The sentence is ambiguous. We know how to read it correctly, because we know the facts, but if we didn’t, interpretations would probably fly in both directions.
August 23rd, 2012 | 9:19 pm
Well, there was the 1928 Democrat ticket. After all, Joseph T. Robinson’s religious affiliation is unknown in the land of Wikipedia after a rogue group of atheist scholars revised entry after entry to eliminate any reference to religion, even in cases where it might be relevant (such as if a Protestant public figure denounced anti-Catholic bigotry). Like the Taliban blowing up Buddhist heritage sites and American atheists removing steeples from depictions of city landscapes or the rewriting of 18th century Deism into one of an agnosticism unconcerned by natural law, such historical facts are a nuisance and should be targeted for elimination less they interfere with your progressive reeducation.
August 23rd, 2012 | 9:35 pm
“Well, I didn’t intend to exemplify my first sentence quite so nicely”
I have no idea what even this sentence means. How does one “exemplify one’s first sentence”?
August 24th, 2012 | 8:34 am
Dear Michael: He just means that he made an error, and his first sentence admits that he makes errors. So the error in interpretation exemplifies the admission in his first sentence.
Nonetheless, I agree with the others: The Huffington Post entry was poorly written.
August 24th, 2012 | 8:44 am
@Michael,
He’s saying he made a mistake. And maybe being a bit satirical doing it.
I agree with some above. The quoted sentence is poorly constructed. Worse, why does it matter? It’s true this used to be a Protestant majority country with many Episcopalians in the lead. But the Episcopalians changed that themselves by attempting to pull themselves up by their bootstraps only to find their shoes were tied. Protestants remain a majority by count but no longer by power. Contrary to those who think there were 95 theocrats on the door at Wittenburg, religion has become less important in national politics.
All of which is my roundabout way of saying it’s about time we stop talking about meaningless “milestones”.
August 24th, 2012 | 11:07 am
“It’s true this used to be a Protestant majority country with many Episcopalians in the lead”.
And the Episcopal church was said to be “the Republican Party at prayer”. How things do change. It reminds me of a line in the movie “White Christmas”, to the effect that it would be “impossible to find a Democrat in Vermont”.
August 24th, 2012 | 11:50 am
I’m with Maximilian. A construction that ambiguous is an error because of the ambiguity, even though the right meaning can be extracted from it with sufficient effort and context.
But I’m also with Mike Melendez. Probably the person who wrote the sentence doesn’t really think it “matters” all that much, but finding markers and milestones is sort of a journalistic hobby, I think — it’s a way of making something to write about.
August 25th, 2012 | 11:37 am
Craig,
“So the error in interpretation exemplifies the admission in his first sentence”
Exactly. You put it well. Rogers’ statement that “I didn’t intend to exemplify my first sentence quite so nicely” makes no sense because a person can’t exemplify a sentence. Your version makes sense because an error can exemplify an admission.
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