Anderson Cooper just asked whether anyone noticed that John Edwards keeps calling Senator Clinton, "Hillary" rather than the former. I noticed, and found it odd -- but smart. Too much respect of each other is not a winning style. He's putting her down in a pleasant way. But she's not letting him get an inch from her on that. Very interesting how the body language stuff matters on TV.
Dano, in the Télérama interview, says this of the de-credibilisation of Royal:
Elle perd l'élection dès décembre-janvier, par ses erreurs certes, mais parce que Strauss-Kahn et Fabius avaient semé le doute sur ses compétences. Les journalistes et la droite n'avaient plus qu'à reprendre leurs accusations...She lost the election in December-January, by her own mistakes certainly, but also because Strauss-Kahn and Fabius had introduced doubt about her competence. Then all the journalists and the right needed to do was repeat their accusations.
But there probably was an element of making her appear less serious. I know that it did not feel right writing about Ségo doing this or that when I wrote my diaries - so I used Royal. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Yes, that is exactly the point: we put women down in a pleasant way when we call them by their first name more often than we do men.
Even when I am calling people by their last name, I find that I am often inclined to call women by their full name (given name plus family name) rather than just their surname. In other words, surnames are assumed to refer to men unless qualified by the first name. Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?
