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Who Would “Obsess” Over A Comma, Right?

As he heads out on the campaign trail, haunted by an unpopular war, President Bush has begun reassuring audiences that this traumatic period in Iraq will be seen as “just a comma” in the history books. By that, aides say, he means to reinforce his message of resolve in the long struggle for Iraqi democracy. […]

As he heads out on the campaign trail, haunted by an unpopular war, President Bush has begun reassuring audiences that this traumatic period in Iraq will be seen as “just a comma” in the history books. By that, aides say, he means to reinforce his message of resolve in the long struggle for Iraqi democracy. ~The Washington Post

Via Doug Bandow

Now it begins to make sense.  When Trent Lott said the other day that the President and Senate Republicans don’t “obsess” about the war in Iraq (unlike those crazy journalists), he sounded like a fool.  But now we understand: the war is just a comma.  Why obsess over a comma?  Go about your business, folks, just a comma in the grand scheme of things.  Trust us–did we mention that Condi is a “student of history”?  She sees the Big Picture, and in the Big Picture this is nothing to get too worked up about.  Maybe this explains the dilatory nature of post-war planning.  You might very well prepare for the aftermath of a war, but would you organise Phase IV for a subordinate clause?  Not likely.  So give these people some credit.  Unbeknownst to us (or anyone else), we find that Mr. Bush is actually a master grammarian!

In fact, once you look more closely at what Mr. Bush said, it would seem that he was referring to the Iraqi elections being “just a comma” in the grand march of Iraqi democracy.  From the Post again:

He noted the bloodshed shown on television but hailed the resiliency of the Iraqi people and cited the election last December in which 12 million came to the polls despite the violence.

“Admittedly, it seems like a decade ago,” Bush went on. “I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is — my point is, there’s a strong will for democracy.” The president used a similar line at a campaign event last week in Alabama and again on Tuesday in Stockton, Calif.

So far worse than being dismissive remark that minimises the horror of the war, it seems to have been a delusional statement that the December Iraqi elections will be seen as “just a comma” in the grand scheme of Iraq’s future democratic success as seen from the perspective of “the final history” (note to Bush: there never is a “final history,” because history doesn’t have an end–never place a period on the sentence of history, right, George?). 

As for the idea that this is some sort of sneaky evangelical code, well, that is almost as ridiculous as the comma remark itself.  But here is the claim:

And a lively Internet debate has broken out about the origins of the phrase, with some speculating that Bush means it as a coded message to religious supporters, evoking the aphorism “Never put a period where God has put a comma.”

I saw Sullivan link to something like this the other day and thought, “That’s just about the stupidest thing I’ve ever read.  No wonder so few churchgoers take people on the left seriously in this country.”  For someone to think that George the supposed born-again evangelical, who attends a Methodist church, would be using this slogan (attributed to Gracie Allen), which is now regularly associated with the United Church of Christ (I know because I walk past one of their churches in Hyde Park practically every day and almost every day I laugh at this unintentionally hilarious slogan), he would have to know absolutely nothing about contemporary American Christianity.  As the Post story notes, the UCC is not all together the kind of church filled with Bush supporters.  The UCC’s use of the slogan is to intentionally make the most anti-fundamentalist, anti-traditionalist claim, which they explain with the phrase, “God is still speaking.”  You see, God is still speaking, so He just might let us know that those old-timey prohibitions and commandments could be outdated.  Evangelicals don’t react well to the UCC slogan, as detailed here by Editor & Publisher:

An article in the St. Petersburg Times in November 2005, described a new TV commercial by the UCC — not a conservative, but a progressive church — which featured a large comma. “Weighing in on the commercial,” the article concluded, “evangelist Pat Robertson is said to have remarked, ‘Never place a comma where God has placed a period. God has spoken!'”
 

So it is likely that the kinds of people Bush would be trying to reach via this “code” wouldn’t like the code when they heard it.  The quote above calls the UCC a progressive church.  How progressive, you ask?  From the UCC website, here is part of their self-description:

We are a “just peace” church committed to overcoming violence and oppression. We are a “multi-racial, multi-cultural church” yearning for the day when our congregations more fully reflect the vision of Pentecost. We are an “open and affirming” church where no one’s baptismal identity can be denied because of his or her sexual identity. We are an “accessible” church cherishing the gifts of all regardless of physical or mental abilities. More recently we have been thinking about what it means to call ourselves “the church of the still speaking God,” a church that believes God has yet more light and truth to break forth from the Word. 

Presumably most of my readers will not be terribly enthusiastic for this kind of church, at least when expressed in this sort of language (the Church is, of course, open to all, but She also requires repentance), but the point here is not so much to get on the UCC’s case for their “progressive Christianity” as to show definitively that these are not your average likely Bush voters waiting for a signal from the Leader.  Now it is true that God is “still speaking” in a sense, because God continues to act and work in history, and there is possibly an Orthodox way that you could understand this phrase that refers to God’s dynamic cooperation with humanity on the path to salvation and deification, but the way in which this idea and that particularly slogan are used today is more likely a “code” for progressive Christians than it would be for the conservative Christians to whom Mr. Bush would supposedly be appealing.  The irony of the slogan is that, in spite of its being uttered by a professional comedienne, it could be used to make a sort of absolute Biblical literalist argument, but it would be almost a parody of Biblical literalism.

There are two things that are not encouraging about all of this.  One is that we have fallen under such an autocracy that we analyse and parse every sentence the President utters in vain attempts to understand his often inscrutable purposes.  The other is that our High Poobah takes his cues on history from a 20th century comedian, which is hardly something to laugh about.

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