What's in a Name?

If you're running for President, name recognition is very important. Just ask Mark Foley (via Classical Values):

Local Florida lawmaker Mark Foley has withdrawn his name from consideration for the 2008 presidential nomination, his hometown newspaper reported recently. "It's just no use," Councilman Foley complained. "Everyone thinks I'm that other Mark Foley who solicited underage congressional pages in Washington DC and then blamed it on alcoholism." Foley repeatedly grumbled that, "my campaign just can't overcome that other Mark Foley's name recognition factor."

Anderson Cooper is not Paris Hilton, even though they lack a first name between them. And yet (according to Newsbusters.org) Fox is claiming that they are the same. Neither of them is running for President, a development about which we are all relieved. Well, perhaps not engravers, who would be very busy with plaques reading "President Hilton Slept Here".

A man who is a presidential hopeful, Senator Barack H. Obama (D-IL) has a hard time keeping people from spelling his name "Osama", and and harder time keeping people from spelling out his middle name, which is "Hussein". Not that there's anything wrong with that, really. As Juliet says to Romeo:

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;--
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title:--Romeo, doff thy name;
And for that name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself.

Not really much of a point, here. It's just a namey day today. Must be the weather.

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