Translating Huckabee

Doing my best impression of Barbara Billingsley in Airplane: "Oh stewardess! I speak evangelical ..."

Former White House speechwriter Michael Gerson was very skilled at peppering President George W. Bush's public statements with so-called "dog whistle" language targeting evangelical Christian voters. These passing phrases and allusions wouldn't alter or confuse Bush's message to other listeners, but they would have an additional resonance for the evangelicals listening. The actual meaning of those phrases didn't much matter, what was important was that he came across as conversant in the local idiom, the insider's jargon.

To cite a famous example, when Bush said that he believed in the "wonder-working pow'r" of the American people, the message was simply that if Bush used that phrase he must know that song, so he must've sung that song, so he must've been to church, so he must be one of us. No one was supposed to, and few did, think too hard about the bizarre meaning of that statement -- which seemed to equate the American people with "the precious blood of the lamb," suggesting that we could, by rallying around our president, "be free from the burden of sin." That (heretical, arrogant, insane) implication wasn't the point of the allusion. The point was just to reassure evangelicals that he spoke their language, and was therefore on their side, without scaring off everyone else.

Unlike Bush, Mike Huckabee really is a native speaker of the evangelical idiom. He isn't just parroting phrases spelled out phonetically for him by some Wheaton-alum speechwriter, he's talking the way he naturally talks. The effect for evangelical voters is thus the same -- they are reassured he is "one of us." But the effect for everyone else is quite different, because unlike Bush's dog whistles, everyone else can hear Huckabee's allusions too and non-native speakers have a hard time making sense of what he's saying.

To take a trivial example, Huckabee has on several occasions mentioned that he reads a chapter from Proverbs* every day and that he carries his New Testament with him for this purpose. The book of Proverbs, of course, is not in the New Testament, but evangelicals are all familiar with the Pocket Testament League's tiny volumes, the size of a deck of cards, that include not just the 27 books of the New Testament but also the Psalms and Proverbs.** These editions were designed for convenience and not with the intent of dismissing the other 37 books of the Hebrew Scriptures as unimportant, although it's worth noting that most American evangelicals wouldn't notice if the prophets suddenly disappeared from their Bibles. (Evangelical reading tends to focus on Paul's Epistles, Proverbs and pselected Psalms, which is also why Huckabee earns points for his frequent citations from Proverbs but Barack Obama gets none for quoting the book of Amos, as he did yesterday.)

More potentially confusing is Huckabee's reference to "a living God." He used this phrase in the comment we looked at earlier, in which the former Arkansas governor explicitly endorses theocracy. Here again is that comment, as reported by MSNBC:

"[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards," Huckabee said.

Over at Making Light, Avram Grumer has some fun with this juxtaposition of "living God" and talk of the Constitution. Since the idea of a "living Constitution" is often railed against by social conservatives who see it as a synonym for "anything goes," Grumer wonders if this means Huckabee believes in an anything-goes God as well:

Wait, “the living god”? Wouldn’t that be some kinda wishy-washy progressive modernist God? I figured Huck for a strict constructionist God, an eye-for-an-eye guy who meant every word of Leviticus when he spake it. “Living God” implies some kind of dynamic, changing God, probably soft on crime, the kind of warm, fuzzy God from whom Words emanate with penumbrae.

In the ensuing discussion,*** Grumer writes, "I'm just amused by the fact that the adjective 'living' seems to imply diametrically opposite things when you apply it to 'God' or 'Constitution.'"

That's astute. The same could be said of the evangelical idiom "the living Word of God" as a reference to the Bible. "Living" there certainly doesn't mean all the wanton things they take it to mean in the phrase "living Constitution." But I don't want to get bogged down in the legal and legalist lit-crit, what I'm interested in here is what this phrase "living God" means.

When a Southern Baptist preacher like Mike Huckabee speaks of "the living God," what he means is that God is active, busy, involved in the world, even that God intervenes in the lives of people and the affairs of nations. That's not in itself an unusual claim for us Christian types to make. I would probably disagree with Huckabee as to the extent and content and intent of that divine involvement, as well as over our capacity for understanding it (there's that effing ineffability again), but I wouldn't object to the use of the phrase "living God." What it means, essentially, is that he is not a Deist.

I should caution, however, that I'm not entirely confident in my ability to translate Huckabee's evangelical-speak because I'm not entirely confident that he isn't using a different kind of dog whistle -- one to which my evangelical ears are not attuned.

Bush's dog-whistle code-words were designed to appeal to evangelical Christian voters without scaring away everyone else. Huckabee isn't doing that -- he employs evangelical idioms without any apparent regard for how it sounds to those unfamiliar with it. But Huckabee may also be employing his own set of vague allusions to appeal to a particular subset of evangelical types without scaring away the rest of the people in the pews. Over at Daily Kos, dogemperor makes the case that Huckabee admires Bill Gothard. Huckabee has even proudly noted that he has been through Gothard's "Basic Seminar."

Gothard is not well-known outside of his particular fiefdom, but Huckabee's expressed admiration for him -- and Gothard's attendance at a Houston fundraiser for the candidate -- is deeply disturbing. You know how, say, Christopher Hitchens gets a case of the howling fantods any time he hears anyone from the religious right speak? That's how most evangelicals respond to Bill Gothard. At the fundamentalist Baptist, and very Republican****, church I grew up in Gothard's seminars were often criticized as a "cult."

It may simply be that, as a politician, Huckabee is willing to accept support from anyone who is willing to offer it. I haven't heard any reports that Huckabee's daughter has been ordered to remain single until age 30, after which she would be allowed to marry only with her father's permission (yes, that really is something the Gothardites I've encountered believe), or any other indications that the former governor is truly a Gothard devotee. So his praise of Gothard and the Basic Seminar might just be a politician's flattery -- just as his praise for the World's Worst Books after receiving Tim LaHaye's endorsement might not mean he's a full-blown prophecy maniac. But both of these instances give me pause. Huckabee talks like a run-of-the-mill evangelical, but if he's really a fan of both LaHaye and Gothard, then he may be something very different and far more troublesome.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* Many evangelicals seem to think that the division of Proverbs into 31 chapters was divinely inspired as a sign that we should read a chapter of this book every day. That entails skipping the final chapter five months out of the year -- nothing against Lemuel, but hey, he's no Solomon, you know? Contemporary evangelical piety might be a very different thing if the book of Ecclesiastes had also been divided into 31 chapters.

** I've kept one of these pocket-sized volumes in the glove compartment of my car ever since the day I found myself unexpectedly at a hospital bedside needing, but not having with me, the 23rd Psalm, and Psalm 139, and Romans 8, and 1 Corinthians 15. It turns out it's also a good thing to keep in one's glove compartment because troopers tend to look closely at everything you're pulling out of there when they ask to see your registration and proof of insurance.

*** And thanks for the kind words and plugs.

**** Except for Cindy's mom. But we kept an eye on her.

Comments

[cjmr]

Link for Karen--American source or British source.

I don't remember where you are.

[Karen]

Thanks, cjmr. I'm in Austin, Texas.

[Lee Ratner]

Incidentally, Jews sometimes refer to God as the "living God" but it means something very different in Judaism. In Judaism its merely regarded as an affirmation of monotheism and anti-idolatry, God is real and Zeus or Ishtar or whatever is not, they are dead.

[Tonio]

How erudite. Nepenthe is opium dissolved in fortified wine.

No, I'm talking about the river in Hades where the souls forget their memories of their lives.

[coffeedryad]

Neo-penta is the precursor to developing fast-penta, and then we'll find out what those politicians really think. (Switching fictional universes, I can't remember now if it was _Stand On Zanzibar_ or _The Sheep Look Up_ where someone smeared a highly regarded preacher's podium with a contact-absorbing truth drug / disinhibitor, with Amusing Results. Probably the former, it had more advanced drug tech.)

[Lauren]

No, I'm talking about the river in Hades where the souls forget their memories of their lives.

Lethe?

[Bugmaster]

Bah, I missed the link to Praline's book ! Where is it ?

[Jeff]

I prefer my movie characters to swear in Chinese.

It's been pointed out that although the Chinese were supposed to be one of the forces in expanding the 'verse, none of the main characters are Chinese. (I know that it sounds better to have a non-Chinese character swearing in Chinese, but still...) In thinking over the roles, I think that Wash or Kaylee would work as non-stereotypical roles; I'm not so sure about the others (definitely NOT Book!).

[Jeff]

Bug, 44 minutes above you.

[Bugmaster]

Woo ! ... Aw... It's a physical book... Guess I'll have to wait for the shipping to get there :-(

[Izzy]

My first association on hearing "the living God" is with the need to distinguish between pre-and-post-Time -of-Troubles deities. (Midnight: a living god. Mystara: not so much. At least I think so. It's been years.)

And then to go eat pizza with my friends and talk about why the popular kids don't like us. Because...yeah.

[Richard Hershberger]

Dennis: "my guess is Obama doesn't get points for Amos more because of the message in Amos and how it clashes with the beliefs of some that capitalism equals Christianity."

I enjoy pointing out to fundamentalists that the beginning of Acts is quite clear that the early Christian church was communist. Surely any modern church that is serious about following the Bible would be the same? (So far as I know, the Hutterites are the only sizeable group that actually puts this in practice.)

[Richard Hershberger]

Jeh: "I gave a Bible study at my church that heavily cited the OT minor prophets concerning social justice--but from the stares of those in the pews, I had the distinct feeling that they thought I was a raving heretic or that I had gone crazy. I guess statements like ""To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God. ... " sounds like more of that liberal nonsense to some."

I take it that these people studiously ignore anything Jesus said?

[Mad Latinist]

The name nepenthe originates from Greek myth, though. It is, for example, the potion Helen makes for Telemachus when he visits her and Menelaus in The Odyssey. It was supposed to make one forget one's cares or suffering—the name in fact means "anti-suffering" or the like. You can bet that Homer didn't envision it as opium dissolved in fortified wine, presumably it was just some unspecified magical thing, not a specific drug. (But I did too think of nepenthe when I saw neopente)

And yes, the river of forgetfulness is Lethe, as Lauren pointed out, but you're on the right track.

[Tonio]

Lauren and Mad Latinist, thanks for the information. I had misremembered the word as "Lepenthe."

[Abelardus]

Of course the mention of opium distilled in wine and the "nepenthe" to help Telemachus forget his pains makes me think of the Lotophagi, or "lotus-eaters" -- whoever ate of their lotus-fruit forgets all his troubles and doesn't want to leave. (It's covered briefly in Homer's Odyssey and beautifully described in Tennyson's Lotos-Eaters.)

The poppy? I think there was a kind of water-lily from Egypt with similar properties.

[Spalanzani]

Mad Latinist: "And yes, the river of forgetfulness is Lethe, as Lauren pointed out, but you're on the right track."

And to tie the two together, (the mythological) nepenthe is sometimes described as being water from Lethe dilluted in wine/honey/something or another. Can't remember when the name got attached to opium, though that might have been from the very beginning.

In a desperate attempt to tie this to something resembling the original topic, I have to wonder if Poe's use of the word in "The Raven" was something like a dog whistle phrase for opium users. Everyone else would be like "Oh, that crazy Poe, always using those obscure mythological references." and he'd be "Yeah...that's exactly what I was talking about..."

[damnedyankee]

The name nepenthe originates from Greek myth, though. It is, for example, the potion Helen makes for Telemachus when he visits her and Menelaus in The Odyssey. It was supposed to make one forget one's cares or suffering—the name in fact means "anti-suffering" or the like.

Oh, like the "amnesia kiss" that Clark Kent lays on Lois at the end of Superman II?

[Tonio]

Oh, like the "amnesia kiss" that Clark Kent lays on Lois at the end of Superman II?

You're playing to my weakness, pal.

Note to all future screenwriters and directors who work on superhero movies: You are under no requirement to adhere strict comic canon, which for many characters been revised several times over the decades. But your own definitions of the characters must have interior logic. Do not make up powers for the heroes as you go along. The desire for a cool special effect is no excuse, and neither is the inability to write the hero out of a tight spot.

[Chuck]

Jeff: In thinking over the roles, I think that Wash or Kaylee would work as non-stereotypical roles; I'm not so sure about the others (definitely NOT Book!).

Wait, I'm confused: How would the engineer and the pilot not be stereotypical Asian roles?

[Spalanzani]

I think it's actually well-established that Superman has the power to just make up new powers when he feels like it. At least it was in the Silver Age...

[Jesurgislac]

I think it's actually well-established that Superman has the power to just make up new powers when he feels like it.

Maybe he'd picked up a piece of bright red puckered-up Kryptonite?

[Technomad]

"pselected Psalms?"

LOL!

[damnedyankee]

You're playing to my weakness, pal.

I, also, am a student of four-color mythology.

Even at the tender age of eleven, when I saw that movie in the theater, I knew it was all over for the franchise when Superman tore the letter off of his chest and threw it at Jack O'Halloran, a la Letterman. Sadly, the existence of Supermans III and (ARRRRGH!) IV goes to show that studio execs often lack the level of insight available to an eleven-year-old.

[Praline]

Oh, everyone's after my book! I like this thread. :-) Basically, failing a link, you can get it on Amazon, where it's called Bareback in the UK and Benighted in the US (if you're laughing at this point, you can probably understand the reason for the different titles). My real name is Kit Whitfield. (Short for Katharine, not Christopher; I am not a man.) Not quite sure why I post as Praline; it seemed like a good idea at the time.

To return to the topic, does anyone else think there's something fundamentally undemocratic about dog-whistle phrases? The point of a political speech is to let the electorate know where you stand, so they know what they're voting for. If you hide your policies in obscure language, that's extremely disingenuous; it's basically pretending to stand for one policy with one set of voters and a different approach with another. You're promising different things to different people in the same darn speech, which is an outrage against logic, never mind the electoral process.

Perish the thought a politician should try to trick their way into office, of course, but there's something particularly nasty about dog-whistle phrases, or at least, particularly bare-faced.

[Technomad]

Oh, and Coffeedryad...it wasStand on Zanzibar where the preacher got himself zapped with a dose of the drug "Truth or Consequences."

Gods, that book feels dated today...

[damnedyankee]

I think it's actually well-established that Superman has the power to just make up new powers when he feels like it. At least it was in the Silver Age...

For a while in the 70's, Superman was often the victim of his own subconscious, as his "super-mind" apparently had the power to alter reality. At one point, I recall a story where Lex Luthor had implanted a post-hypnotic suggestion on Supes, convincing him that he was Superboy. The result of this was that Superman's "super-mind" actually reverted him back to adolescence!

I swear the Crisis couldn't have happened soon enough for me.

[cjmr]

Not quite sure why I post as Praline; it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Are you sweet, crunchy, and good mixed with ice cream?

[damnedyankee]

I generally associate pralines with The Good Things In Life.

Let's see... bib record... author search... place hold... voila! I use my super-librarying powers to acquire Ms. Whitfield's book!

[Tonio]

Fred and Praline, does the Nixon/Thurmond "Southern strategy" count as a dog whistle strategy?

DamnedYankee, what are your thoughts on two recent revisions, John Byrne's "Man of Steel" and Mark Waid's "Birthright"?

Are you sweet, crunchy, and good mixed with ice cream?

How about Hazelnut instead? (Homer Simpson voice) Mmmm...Nutella.

[jeh]

RH said: I take it that these people studiously ignore anything Jesus said?

You betcha. Especially the parts like the Sermon of the Mount--the Dispensationalists say ignore it, it was for Jesus' Jewish contemporaries, etc. And as to the parts about the kingdom of God not being of this world--the Dominionists would beg to differ with Jesus.

[Jeff]

How would the engineer and the pilot not be stereotypical Asian roles?

I'm not saying they couldn't be, but that it would be easier for River (the martial arts expert), Simon (the brilliant doctor), Inara (the courtesan) or Mal (the semi-amoral leader) to fall into stereotypes. It would be real hard to keep Book from being The Wise Old Asian (I think they did a good job of keeping him from beina a Magical Negro). For example, Sulu on Star Trek tended not to be a stereotype (in fact, his fantasy wasn't ninjas or anything like that, but was D'Artagnon -- that point to a different problem, though).

[Praline]

Sweet, I hope. Happy around ice cream, certainly. Crunchy? Well, I was aiming for crisp in these posts, but crunchy will do. :-)

[thirstygirl]

So that's Praline's book! I had been wondering, given the referencing. Turns out I read it pretty much as soon as it was published, due to the excellent advance-copy reviews that had been lurking on the internets. Nice work, Praline.

Now I have to go read the dogemperor thread. I was born in NZ's version of the fundamentalist, large family all dressing alike, charismatic leader cult. Apropos of nothing- not only did I wear headscarves from the age of 2, so did my toy doll. Can't have rag-dolls tempting men with their long yellow-wool hair...

[damnedyankee]

While I'll never put Byrne in the same category as Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman, writer-wise (or, for that matter, Alex Ross or Darwyn Cooke, artist-wise), I thought Man of Steel was a good fresh start for Superman, a necessary powering-down, and not a bad story overall (though I thought that Loeb and Sale did a better job covering that same time period with Superman: For All Seasons).

As for Birthright, it shames me to confess that I have not read it. It's not easy being a comics fan on a tight budget these days...

[Praline]

Thanks, Thirstygirl! :-)

[Robb]

It's been pointed out that although the Chinese were supposed to be one of the forces in expanding the 'verse, none of the main characters are Chinese.

And all of the sudden it strikes me: has then been a single Asian character in the whole Whedonverse? Granted, I don't remember Buffy too well, and I barely paid attention to Angel, but was there even a single Asian person in any Firefly episode? My guess is that they would have put one in eventually, just to make a joke about all the white people swearing in Chinese.

Oh, and Praline, I also snagged your book from the library and will read it soon. Alas, while at the library, I was chasing after my toddler, meanwhile my wife read the back & the first few pages & called dibs on it first, so I won't get a chance to read it for a few more days. My wife is very hard to please with fiction, and she loves it so far.

[Karen]

Praline, you chose my favorite candy in the entire world as a screen name. I know I'm going to enjoy the book. Aslo, Kit Whitfield is an excellent name for a British author.

Sort of a threadjack, but do you know of a writer named P. F. Chisolm? She wrote a couple books under her maiden name while at Oxford and I think five more mysteries featuring Robert Carey during the time of Elizabeth I, then disappeared just I got addicted.

[Praline]

No, I haven't heard of her, but I'll look her up. Just out of curiosity, why particularly for a British author? Thanks Robb too, everyone's being so nice! :-)

[thirstygirl]

Seconding the recommendation for PF Chisholm/Patricia Finney- excellent books- I had to hunt down the internet for copies of the Robert Carey books. Have you read The Steel Bonnets by George MacDonald Fraser? It was extensively used as source by both Chisholm and Dunnett for information on the Borderers.

/threadjack

[Jeff]

And all of the sudden it strikes me: has then been a single Asian character in the whole Whedonverse? Granted, I don't remember Buffy too well, and I barely paid attention to Angel, but was there even a single Asian person in any Firefly episode? My guess is that they would have put one in eventually, just to make a joke about all the white people swearing in Chinese.

Angel had Danial Day Kim as Gavin Park, the exec at Wolfram & Hart who was the foil to Lilah. On Buffy, one of the Potentials was Asian.

On Firefly, the right-hand man of the crime boss in "Train Robbery" was Samoan.

Other than that, imdb got nothin'.

[damnedyankee]

Just out of curiosity, why particularly for a British author?

I think, to the American ear, there's something vaguely Dickensian about the name "Kit". I could be way off, though.

[Tonio]

If I had to create a British author in a comedy story, I would probably use a hyphenated last name because that was a recurring gag in the "True Brit" comic that I mentioned. Something like Vivian Smith-Smythe-Smith or Nigel Incubator-Jones. For a drama, I would look for a name that had the same solidity as Somerset Maugham.

[Karen]

I think it's because Kit sounds like "Pip" from "Great Expectations," and it was also the name of a character from a juvenile mystery I read as a kid of about 11. I can't remember the name of the book, but it was set in an English girl's school and Kit was the main character's roomate.

I think, to the American ear, there's something vaguely Dickensian about the name "Kit". I could be way off, though.

I have never heard anyone who isn't British use 'Kit' to mean Christopher or Katherine, or anything.

Well, there was Kit off of the Thunder-Cats, but I'm sure that they were supposed to be British too.

[Toby]

Jeff: It's been pointed out that although the Chinese were supposed to be one of the forces in expanding the 'verse, none of the main characters are Chinese.

One pragmatic consideration: Past TV evidence suggests that it has been hard to find a solid actor of Chinese (or any E. Asian) descent in N. America. In particular, when it comes to the sci-fi genre, where efforts have naturally been made to represent a world where today's racial boundaries no longer count for much, it is well nigh a law of nature that there are no decent Asian actors to be found. I'm not about to trust no Garrett Wang to deliver Whedonesque banter. George Takei, maybe, but just because the man's voice has become inherently funny.

(Well, I gather things are getting better now, like on Lost or Heroes, but I don't watch TV much any more.)

Tonio: Is it possible, however unlikely, that Romney isn't aware of [Battlefield Earth]'s Scientology connection?

Nope.

[Praline]

It's actually a commoner abbreviation for Kit in Ireland than England; I have an Irish mother. It's not a very common name over here, and I get a lot of people assuming from the name that I'm a man.

I think I've met one hyphenated person in my life. It's mostly an aristocratic thing, though nowadays you might also get kids with both parents' surnames; they'd be young, though, as that's a recent thing. Non-aristocrats generally just have one name, and aristocrats are thin on the ground.

I'd say the main difference between English and American naming customs - middle-class ones, anyway - is that English parents tend to pick names out of an existing gene pool, so to speak, whereas American ones seem more likely to invent names, use a surname as a first name, give a girl a boy's name, name a child for a place or object, and generally speaking create names that to an English ear sound unexpected, not exactly like names until you're used to them. I find that the easiest way to pick character names is to go through a phone book for a surname, and then, if I'm being English, choose a first name that I know is in circulation. If I hadn't heard of Somerset Maugham, I might assume the name was American, as giving a child the name of a county seems a more American thing - though 'Maugham' sounds Anglo-Norman, and I don't think so many of those crossed the Atlantic.

[Praline]

Actually, thinking about it, if I heard somebody referred to as 'Somerset', my first thought would be that he was the Earl of Somerset, or something similar: that it was a title, and he owned land in Somerset, while his real name was Jack Montgomery of something similar. For example, the guy everyone called 'Wellington' was actually named was Arthur Wellesley, and 'Wellington' was because he was the Duke of Wellington. Place names traditionally mean you own the place, or rule it.

[Rosina]

I have never heard anyone who isn't British use 'Kit' to mean Christopher or Katherine, or anything.

Kit Carson - authentic Western legend in his own lifetime.

[Tonio]

Place names traditionally mean you own the place, or rule it.

Does that mean Nicolae Carpathia owns Transylvania?