My George Bush Moment

Thursday afternoon, I attended a talk at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. The speaker was a Georgetown University history prof who gave a great talk on considering the Virginia colony from a global view. Starting with the interesting fact that early Jamestown leaders had served in the Mediterranean, Madigascar, and other parts of the world, she built up a compelling argument about why the "global" careers of these men were important for understanding the early years of the colony. What made the talk particularly impressive was the spirit and enjoyment with which the professor talked about her work. The lecture was filled with an embracing laughter as the speaker discussed her sources and reached out to draw in the work of the other historians in the room. It was all extremely well done and done in a way that made me and everyone in the audience happy that we too were historians.

So, how did I get a George Bush moment out of this? Actually, the speaker was a first year graduate student at the same time that I was a fellow myself at the McNeil Center. Because she was dating another of the dissertation fellows, she was a fun part of the crowd when the fellows got together for seminars, dinners, and generally hanging out.

Yeah, I still haven't gotten to the Bush part yet. Anyway, the guy she was dating was from New Zealand and one night the beer brain in me decided that "Trevor" was not American enough and started calling him "Trev-Bob." And for good measure, I also called her "Muffy." It was the University of Pennsylvania after all, and there was a lot of "muffiness" in the air. There still is. And the nickname stuck so well that she was known as "Muffy" for the whole year.

At the end of the year, people went their different ways and I pretty much forgot my exercise in nicknaming until the speaker inadvertently reminded me after her wonderful talk. It seems that I had written a note on her illegally parked car for the cops to go inside and ask "Muffy" about moving it. Then it hit me. That's exactly what George Bush did with people like Karl Rove, or "Turd Blossom" as Bush calls him. I had been acting just like George Bush which was not exactly a morale boosting comparison.

But then I consoled myself that "Trev-bob" and "Muffy" were the beginning and end of my nicknaming career. Unlike Bush, I was able to stop giving my friends nicknames (although I actually think of Rove more as "doughface").