I Have Until January 20!

My post about the election received a lot of traffic and I want to thank everyone who linked it hither and yon. It got mentioned at Daily Kos, and “inspired” an 80-comment thread at Crooked Timber. (Oh, and now Metafilter too.) Note scare quotes–some ad hominem attacks aside, the bulk of the discussion there had maybe not so much to do with what I wrote. Which is fine; grateful as I am to Kieran Healy for the post at CT, I think one effect of abridging my post by taking out all the jokes was to make it even more treacly and earnest than I’d intended. The most brutally effective abridging of my piece (and you will hear no argument from me that it didn’t need abridging) was Moacir at Daily Kos, who saw that you could cut out everything except the opening Simpsons quote and still make exactly the same point.

Anyway, I’ve said enough on this subject at this point. Here’s a collage of things I read this past week that made me nod my head and say “yes,” or at least “I hope so.” You may notice that some of these contradict things I wrote last week, and/or each other. What of it? Don’t make me quote Walt Whitman at you again. If nothing else, these are data points for me later on how it felt and what I was thinking the week of November 4, 2008.

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Cross-posted from Old is the New New. Comments welcome.