Monday, January 19, 2009

Middle Names

What's in a Middle Name?

The fuss over The Middle Name reminds of me of this scene from The Right Stuff when, at the height of the Cold War, the PR machine meets the astronauts:
Henry Luce: Now, I want them all to meet my people who will write their true stories, Naturally these stories will appear in Life magazine under their own bylines: For example, "by Betty Grissom", or "by Virgil I. Grissom", or...
Gus Grissom: Gus!
Luce: What was that?
Grissom: Gus. Nobody calls me by... that other name.
Luce: Gus? An astronaut named "Gus"? What's your middle name?
Grissom: Ivan.
Luce: Ivan... ahem... well. Maybe, Gus isn't so bad, might be something there... All right, all right. You can be Gus.

President John Glenn had no comment. (Any other old timers remember how this came out right before the `84 caucuses, and folks thought Glenn would ride the Redstone to the White House? Yeah.)

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