Hillary v. Obama

I had one more thought I really want to put out here.

I've been trying to figure out for months now why my tendency was to refer to Barack Obama as "Obama", but to Hillary Clinton as "Hillary" and trying desperately to figure out if this was some subtle technique on my part to minimize her, either because she's a woman (which I really would hate in myself) or because she was the candidate I wasn't supporting.

But I've come to a conclusion. Referring to her by her first name isn't unique to Hillary, early in the campaign process I also had to fight to stay on a last name basis with Giuliani, wanting to refer to him as "Rudy", and that gives another data point.

What do the two have in common? Well, they both went for the "familiarity" vote. Much of the early campaigning (posters, bumper stickers, etc) from the two camps say "Hillary in '08" and "Rudy For America", while everything out of the Obama camp has had him listed as "Obama" or "Barack Obama", rarely if ever just "Barack".

So I'm pretty sure the tendency to want to frame the recently ended Democratic contest as "Hillary" v. "Obama" was nothing more than the way the campaigns themselves introduced their candidates to us.

That's the end of the comment I wanted to make, but in thinking about this whole naming issue, a few interesting points that really don't relate to the issue at hand popped into my head. If you stop here, you've read the entire intended entry. If you continue (as you're welcome to), you're just reading my "typing out loud".

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Some of the others of course had to be referred to by last name in order to differentiate (or to use a term I've recently heard a lot in C++/Java programming circles, "disambiguate") two candidates. Without a clear and specific context, candidate "John" could have referred to either McCain or Edwards. "Joe" as a Senator could just as easily evoke the 2004 campaign of Lieberman as Biden, or even the delusional "McCarthy". And of course "Mitt" could be the wacky "centrist, extreme right wing" cocktail that is Romney or a large inanimate leathery object used to try to catch things. (Come to think of it, when trying to catch VOTES, that could STILL mean Romney).

The other thing I found interesting in thinking about this is how some names are so generic that both names are necessary. I don't believe I've heard "Ron Paul" referred to by anything other than the full tag "Ron Paul" except from his campaign mailings, which refer to him as "Dr. Paul". (yes, I got on his mailing list... and just about all of the others as well, I'm still getting Huckabee messages with some frequency, and Kerry is STILL using his 2004 list to send out periodic updates on party issues).

Liam.