In the Senate race which Barack Obama ended up winning, the first Republican nominee was Jack Ryan (no, not the character from the Tom Clancy novels), ex-husband of Jeri Ryan (yes, 7 of 9). He dropped of the race following a sex scandal in which no sex occurred, and the sex which didn't occur, had it occurred, would have been with his wife.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0625041ryans1.html

Wolcott's got the best lurid-scandal writing style I've seen this side of Kenneth Anger. "From Bill Clinton seeking body warmth in Monica Lewinsky's pillowy embrace to Foley batting his eyelashes online," "engaging in full frontal canoodle," "an extramarital thingie," and "If the aftermath of the Currie-Major affair resembled a nasty altercation between an acetylene torch and a frozen fish stick..." are my favorites.

I remember where I was when I heard about Edwina Currie and John Major. I remember how far my jaw dropped, even before she was quoted as saying they were both "young, healthy and handsome" at the time (this was as far as she went toward a justification.)

That said, we did have Huey Long...

Griping about how Ben Franklin gets all the cool chicks?

But the Currie/Major affair came out way too late to be a scandal. A lot of jaws dropped, but it was just funny. In British politics it's only a real scandal if someone resigns.

Then Judi Tyabji, a liberal cabinet minister in British Columbia, having an affair with the leader of her party. I was on their side. It seemed kind of a daring, romantic thing, especially when Conservative members made snarky remarks about washing dirty pantyhose. The two later married, but you have to look all this up on Wikipedia for the full stories.

Any other good ones? Canadian politics can be quite fascinating once you get past the boring stuff.

Still, even though we've elected a Bush wanna-be as Prime Minister, I'm happy not to have some of the political personalities up here that lurk down in the States.

Let us not even mention the reporters with names like "Barry Didcock."

But most of our political scandals are quite unsexy.

(you can tell I'm relaxing from above work to make comments on a blog)

I don't think things are as sexy as they used to be in the Trudeau years. There is what's-his-name, Canada's only openly gay MP, (Svend Robinson) who did a Winona Ryder in a jewelry shop, and later, the leader of the Liberal party in Alberta, who quit and took up some New Age religion after a near-death experience in the dentist's chair.

That's enough. Nobody visits my very earnest sketch blog. I should turn it into "Perez Hilton" for the Canuck set, and then I'd get hits, and I could write a book.

Okay, there was that time he nearly throttled a heckler that got too close. And the time a burglar got into his official residence... But sexual hanky-panky? Nah.

What!!

[sounds of scrolling back to check, and blog-themed elevator music]

Oh.

I don't know-- I like my version better, even if the actual quote makes a little more sense.

Tell me, does Ms. Wyatt look like a really suggestive scented candle? Or is someone selling such a candle, perhaps one that would fit nicely in Ms. Ryder's purse?

I'm reminded of Bester's The Stars My Destination where many of the characters were named after British place-names for added exoticism. Has quite a different effect on the British ear to the American one, I expect.

In British politics it's only a real scandal if someone resigns.

Maybe we can get rid of Tony that way?

Then again, it was a friend of my kid brother's who got dragged away by the police when, at a Trudeau rally, he climbed up on his friend's shoulders to cry out "Maggie Fucked Mick!"

And they say Canadians are colorless.

The article you pointed to, Teresa, is pretty accurate, especially when it says Canadians only tend to care about a public figure's sexual conduct if it intersects public policy -- or if actual laws were broken. Then it's our business. Not otherwise.

Don't know if anyone here follows For Better For Worse, but there's a recent storyline that's relevant to this point: None of our business.

Very Canadian.

While on the subject of funny names, I would just point out that no one in Britain has ever been christened "Randy California".

Maybe he's a fan of Kingsley Amis, who in Jake's Thing used the phrase "inverted pyramid of piss" to describe a vague and spurious structure of belief based on some trivial point. (In the novel, a character's prejudice against India and everything connected with it is ascribed to his wife's former husband's fondness for curries.)

Though I admit that purely in terms of silly names (yes, they are just as silly to the British ear) the Old Country has the edge.

The phrase "Ugandan relations" (or "Ugandan discussions" or "Ugandan affairs"), for example, is a Private Eye euphemism for illicit sex, usually while carrying out a supposedly official duty. According to Brewer's Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable (2000) the term is a reference to an incident at a party hosted by the journalist Neal Ascherson and his first wife, at which fellow journalist Mary Kenny had a "meaningful confrontation" with a former cabinet minister in the government of Milton Obote, later explaining that they were "upstairs discussing Uganda". The poet James Fenton apparently coined the term. In 1996, 'Getting Back to Basics' was suggested as a replacement euphemism after the disastrous policy of the same name adopted by John Major's government (see Back to Basics (campaign)).

I suddently have this image of Mick getting it from Maggie Thatcher. Time for some mental mouthwash.

They have a list, a looooong list :)

As it happens, Petsy comes from stock that deserves its own chapter in the book of British politics sexual adventures. Bamber, however, is an academic, author, television presenter and personality. I can just see the wry smile on his face at being mentioned in this context.

Glad to see ajay mentioned JFK and one of his many conquests. Perhaps a cruise through Gore Vidal's accounts of founding father's peccadilloes might be instructive - as well as entertaining.

No kidding, Teresa. What perplexed Elisabeth is that Clinton's extra-marital activities could actually be used against him.

One of the topics is, in fact, how the "average" person reacts to news of a politician's extramarital affair.[*] It's kind of fun to look for variations from country to country (though since these are compiled by individuals, it's not clear how reliable they might be).

United States:

If a politican has been cheating on his wife, you would question his ability to govern.

If a politican has been cheating on his wife, that's his business.

If a politician cheats on his wife (e.g. Bob Hawke), it has no bearing whatsoever on his ability to govern. After all, your nation was founded by criminals rather than Puritans.

If a politician has not been cheating on his wife, you would question his ability to govern.

[*] It's usually phrased as "If a politician cheats on his wife ...", so more colorful things like the Profumo scandal aren't covered.

And #36, I do still read "For Better or Worse", even though it's been getting awfully dark of late. For Elizabeth's journey, I figured either the copter would crash -- marooning her with her ex-beau the pilot -- or the sexy Native Canadian policeman would be cheating on her. Choice #2 was correct. Gee, sounds more like a soap opera! But it can still be fun, and I sorta identify with the middle-aged characters.

Epacris #32: You've enver seent he Young Ones episode Bambi, their pisstake on University Challenge (Yukia's version of College Bowl) and its then host, Bamber Gascoine?

Andrew, I don't think people being called Randy has the same effect on Americans.

Or Tom Driberg? Labour MP, spectacularly gay, well-known for escapades including going cottaging in 1950s Moscow and making moves, drunkenly, on a journalist(Alan Watkins, no less) during the Labour Party Conference. He was alleged to have been threatened with blackmail by a KGB honeytrap, but was cleared by MI5 on the grounds that he didn't care if they published the photos..

In Russia, where President Boris N. Yeltsin's weakness for vodka is well-known, shrugged-off and rarely reported, there was even a tinge of admiration for the American President's alleged vigor.

"People here watch and think, well, there may be something wrong with it, but on the other hand, he is a real muzhik," said Sergei Markov, a political analyst on a television talk show, using the Russian word for "real man." He added, "They think this is the guy we need to rule the country."

His real last name was "Wolfe". "California" was a nickname given by a bandmate, one James M. Hendrix.

The more you know people involved, the less entertaining these things seem.

Meanwhile, here in Cambridge (UK) there is the prospect of an accommodation block for postgraduate students being named after the man whose fortune funded it, and ending up as "the Randy Lerner building".

I take no responsibility if this turns out to be untrue. And so that I can indulge in equal-opportunity name-calling, I feel I should mention Peregrine Worsthorne. A quick check on his Wikipedia entry leaves me none the wiser on the question of how he ended up with that surname. Can someone (maybe with Flemish) help me out?

'Randy' just doesn't carry that meaning in America. We use the word 'horny' instead. The studies of sexuality done by Karen Horney were worth a chuckle among the Beavis and Butthead set, even though she pronounced it horn-eye.

That's just chicken. It's like people who call themselves "de Ath", and all the Bottoms who pronounce it "Bott-ōm’".

The British have been having political sex scandals as long as they've had a political class. The "first Prime Minister", Robert Walpole, was famous for catching his wife in flagrante with a political ally, and ignoring the incident because he owed the guy too many favours.

I don't think it's bad storytelling, per se - it does make sense to me that she'd want to try and put it behind her and forget about it (barring the occasional dark night) - and that the trial would bring all of it back to the front of her mind again.

#52 - I'd add to the Canadian reaction, "And hers."

#57 - Elizabeth is going to end up happily married to Anthony, that much is obvious. They've had quite the series of complications, though, haven't they? Soap opera indeed, but for me, that's not an insult. Soap opera is a narrative technique, not a quality judgement.

As for #58, the impact of the near-rape... well, I think some of that's imposed by the daily-comics form, which doesn't allow for much dwelling on the past. Each strip also has to work in isolation. Readers are supposed to supply emotional context from their knowledge of past events. For instance, in the strip I linked to above, Elizabeth is devastated. Yet by today, a few days later, she's interacting with young Jesse who took her harmonica. You don't see her thinking about Paul. If you saw the earlier strip you know that under the surface she is grieving, but if you were on holidays and missed it, the episode with Jesse still makes sense.

Yeah, right.

"TÉ! TÉ! Big BooTÉ!"

(And my initial thought was "I've never had a bottom say that to me." Oops.)

Oh, I don't know; when a friend of mine was dating a Randy Chestnut, there was endless hilarity.

Not compared to, say, stealing votes while holding a rigged referendum to try to BREAK THE COUNTRY APART.

(Which happened... what, 10 years ago?)

If you're a Randy-American, or friends with one, you're plenty familiar with the double entendre. That said, it's no worse than being named Dick or Peter or Willie. If you're a decent enough person, everyone quickly forgets any naughty associations.

i also knew a japanese exchange student named mariko takeshita. but it was not pronounced anything like that.

When your friends from Britain laugh, find out what Fanny refers to in British slang.

The corner near the university where I used to work has three unfortunate business names. A woman I work with calls it the Double-Entendre Trifecta. Thing is, they are all pretty decent shops.

Beaver Sports - Sporting Goods
Bun on the Run - Bakery
Hot Licks - Ice Cream Shop

Oh, and on the other side of town:
Alaska Bush Cutters - Barbershop

I feel so juvenile. I think I need to go back to the other thread where Serge is conducting elevated conversation regarding classic films.

I think Elizabeth's putting the trauma aside has been explained well by now (see above). As for Anthony, ugh! He reminds me way too much of the cutesy-poo Christian neighbor on "The Simpsons" (in looks and single-fatherhood, and to some extent in personality as well). Better that she should run off with a wild poet, or something -- though she won't.

(I lived on Academy Street, a few blocks from Seaman and Cumming, in the 80s.)

there are two streets in Washington Heights called Seaman and Cumming, and they intersect.

that beats the intersection of gay & high, near the university in columbus.

There was a firetruck callout once in San Jose, many years ago, to an incident at the intersection of Partridge and Peartree.

She's just now becoming mature enough to appreciate this.

I don't think she'll leave teaching. That would be needless duplication; the strip already has Deanna to address the role of full-time mother to small kids. Elizabeth will become a working step-mom.

(And then there's the incipient Warren/Paul slash being written in that community. You have been warned.)

But nobody actually calls the neighborhood that. Bad enough we've got recent settlers from, I'm guessing, somewhere downtown who are trying to turn Washington Heights into something like Noho or Tribeca by referring to it as "wahi". I keep wanting to tell them "if you want your neighbors to be friendly and not conclude that you're trying to gentrify them out of town, the local shorthand is 'the Heights.'" Such people also haven't figured out that West 173rd Street isn't Inwood, even in a real estate agent's wildest dreams.

Then again, we've only been an independent nation for 106 years. We can use the excuse that we're just beginners at this whole business.

The name?

Cherry Beaver.

I am not making this up.

Not particularely mature, I know, I know.

Worst I've seen must have been a poor Girl named Semence Dedieu (Seed/semen of god).

Nicest must have been that guy whose first name was Légendaire (legendary).

I mean, just imagine the scene:

"-And you are ?
- I am Légendaire."

I should note here the following:

On a desk at the offices of the Jamaica Public Service Company in Kingston (natch) back in the early 80s, was a plaque bearing the name 'Mr N. Peck'.

Nothing can beat the late Cardinal Sin. Nothing.

Apparently, there was a head of family planning in the Philippines named Virginia Concepción.

The head of the Democratic Party in Surinam in the early 1990s was Frank Playfair.

The institution which pays my salary graduated a Latrina Hollingsworth last May.

Yes. Canon Luce. And he was, too. Total asshole.

OTOH, also in WA, they have a Coogee with a hard 'g' while the one here in Sydney, NSW has a soft one, and an Albany with "Al" instead of "All-ban-ee", as we say it here. But that's a dangerous thread to start going down, as we've experienced before in the fluorosphere. Another reason why phonetic spelling is difficult to apply in English.

Oh, and I tend to pronounce Cockburn Sound as co-burn; I have three grandparents who were born in the UK, however, so I may well be applying Pommyisms to the whole business.

My guess for the reasons has to do with the different groups of settlers on different sides of the country - the NSW colonies were penal colonies to begin with, and then accumulated free settlers, while WA started as a free colony which then imported some convicts to build infrastructure. Different linguistic mixes from different parts of Britain.

I know how it's pronounced and I've gotten used to the name now but it's still written cock-burn. So seeing it written on the street sign just reminded me of STDs

Steven Ralph, Paula and Sara Jane are much more practical. Thanks be to my mom.

But now, decades later, "Kimberly-Clarke" has a big local factory.

I wonder how something like that would feel.

Nevertheless, because of how she introduces herself, I tend to use the more formal "My/his/her name is..." rather than "I'm/she's/he's/this is..."

It's been said that this stayed in the news as long as it did because his name was such fun to say on the radio.

Oline? I'm told her eauty is eyond ompare.

Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing

One thing that's sort of astonishing is the number of people who, when told that their children might be taunted by other children for their proposed names, respond with, "Oh, children will always find ways to make fun of each other, so it doesn't matter what name we given them."

(In my defense, I've only ever seen it written down.)

This is not any of the reasons my husband and I decided not to have kids, but avoiding it (on behalf of my hypothetical kids) is a bonus.

"And if I ever have a son, I think I'm gonna name him Bill. Or George."

My parents moved to upstate New York, where I grew up. In a high school class, we got to talking about cruel and unfortunate names. One girl mentioned that her mom had a college friend named 'Ima Hogg' who had committed suicide on account of her name. I mentioned the story my mom had told, and wondered if there was any connection. Her response: "Oh, I doubt it. My mom went to college in Saskatoon".

My then wife and I came up with 'Roger'

Um...you see no double-entendre in "Roger"?

If I put on my Italian brain-overlay, "fuoco" = fire. I'm not sure that improves the images created by "Buttafuoco".

Ricky Dick. I think the first (nick)name is deliberate on his part.

Moon Unit Zappa.

My favorite historical example: Astrolabe.