Almost 25 Words or Less

L1: So the Prudecutor bases everything around her grandfather. That says a lot. The real problem is how to establish fullest reasonable safety while avoiding turning the law into Mommy Suspicion Culture. Beats me.

L3: This is a question? There really needs to be some advisor dedicated to corporate problems of this sort. At least it illustrates that Business Etiquette is a different species entirely from Human Etiquette, whether or not Mr Messy would agree.

L4: Why on earth would such a person with such a problem consult the Prudecutor? I could see him asking the Prudecutor how to act around CW3 after a dream convinced him there was some hidden connection between them, but this question really belongs to Dr Westheimer or someone of that ilk.

L2: Now, here the Prudecutor goes completely off the rails, although even without fumbling this one she was well above her usual average for the day. The reply starts out reasonably with a wish for more bipartisanship in personal relationships. But then the usual Prudecutorial Overreach kicks into gear. There is not a scrap of evidence to show that LW2 thinks RF2 arrived at his conclusions honourably. If anything, LW2 might be argued to be maintaining that an intelligent and well-educated person's repugnant political positions were almost certainly arrived at through other than honourable means. Yes, LW2 is actually silent on that point, if he thought it mattered, but that's the easier way to be able to argue the case. And there's certainly a case to be made that calling him a "great guy", which LW2 does not do, would be a stretch.

The interesting things here are two points on which the Prudecutor says nothing. RF2 requested a campaign donation from a friend. What ON EARTH would Miss Manners have to say about that little breach? That must be out of bounds in any book, surely. But the deeper point is that LW2 has already made a fairly clear statement by not eagerly raising the question as soon as the candidacy was announced of how he could contribute to his friend's push for victory.

This leads me to the point of the interesting dynamics of the friendship. Why does LW2 feel obligated to contribute? If he has such strong views of RF2's politics as to be repulsed by them, why has he such a subservient attitude that he feels so obliged? And why does the Prudecutor think that LW2's views are so completely unknown to RF2? Does she think that a person of RF2's stripe would have nothing to do with an opposite number? What seems curious to me is that LW2 is so ready to cave. It almost suggests the classic current theme of one major political leaning being of the take-no-prisoners, never-back-down-or-compromise variety while the other goes the route of appeasement and always searching for a middle way. Curious.

Moral: "...Mr Palmer is always going about the country canvassing against the election... but poor fellow! it is very fatiguing to him! for he is forced to make everybody like him."