{"id":44982,"date":"2015-05-31T23:42:47","date_gmt":"2015-05-31T23:42:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=44982"},"modified":"2015-05-31T23:42:47","modified_gmt":"2015-05-31T23:42:47","slug":"an-amazing-parallelogram-of-a-paragraph","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=44982","title":{"rendered":"An amazing parallelogram of a paragraph"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> — or if not, a single sentence paragraph about politics that Levi-Strauss would have loved to diagram, plus Yikes ]
\n.<\/p>\n

Orin Kerr<\/strong>, writing in WaPo today for the Volokh Conspiracy, in a piece titled If I understand the history correctly\u2026<\/a> wrote: <\/p>\n

If I understand the history correctly, in the late 1990s, the President was impeached<\/a> for lying about a sexual affair by a House of Representatives led by a man who was also then hiding a sexual affair<\/a>, who was supposed to be replaced by another Congressman who stepped down<\/a> when forced to reveal that he too was having a sexual affair, which led to the election of a new Speaker of the House who now has been indicted<\/a> for lying about payments covering up his sexual contact with a boy<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Yikes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

** <\/p>\n

I’ve provided the full text of the piece so you’ll get the links Prof. Kerr included.<\/p>\n

What interests me here, though, is the elegant concision of the piece, with its four parallels and various antitheses or oppositions. <\/p>\n

Consider:<\/p>\n

It begins with a frame:<\/p>\n

If I understand the history correctly,<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It then offers its prime example of an errant politician: <\/p>\n

in the late 1990s, the President was impeached for lying about a sexual affair<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

followed by its reversal, as the antagonist takes on the protagonist’s role: <\/p>\n

by a House of Representatives led by a man who was also then hiding a sexual affair<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

followed by a third exemplar of political purity, his ascent to power aborted under parallel circumstances: <\/p>\n

who was supposed to be replaced by another Congressman who stepped down when forced to reveal that he too was having a sexual affair,<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and a fourth, parallel both by succession and similarity of (alleged) conduct:<\/p>\n

which led to the election of a new Speaker of the House who now has been indicted for lying about payments covering up his sexual contact with a boy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

— with the frame closing on the one-word paragraph:<\/p>\n

Yikes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

**<\/p>\n

Between the careful formality of “If I understand the history correctly” and the squeal of “Yikes” we see the distance this recital of, yes, historical events has taken our good professor: from mind to emotion, observation to morality, head to heart.<\/p>\n

Bravo!<\/p>\n

And the (non-partisan) moral of this story is? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron — or if not, a single sentence paragraph about politics that Levi-Strauss would have loved to diagram, plus Yikes ] . Orin Kerr, writing in WaPo today for the Volokh Conspiracy, in a piece titled If I understand the history correctly\u2026 wrote: If I understand the history correctly, in the late […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[526,859,644,187,1,1054,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-charles-cameron","category-form","category-graphical-thinking","category-politics","category-uncategorized","category-washington","category-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44982"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44985,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44982\/revisions\/44985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}