Daniel Drezner should need no introduction from me, but in case you somehow missed him his excellent economics/international relations blog can be found here. But he isn’t just brilliant, he is deeply classy. He was just denied tenure and his response to an outpouring of condolences is here.
He structures it around a great passage from Adam Smith–classy and always a teacher.
I want to leave this as a thread to point to really classy things you’ve seen lately. (Hopefully it won’t be empty.)
I was watching the Yankees/Angels game last night and it occurred to me that Derek Jeter carries himself and performs as a ballplayer in a very classy way. Smooth and clutch, determined and calm. It reminds me of the Yankees of the 1950s and 1960s; guys who knew they were winners and didn’t need to talk trash.
Then we have Darin Erstadt, the Angels’ first baseman. He made a couple of nifty plays at first and hit a double. He just did it. When you consider that he swallowed some amount of pride when he was moved from center field (where he was a gold-glove winner) to first base (where he has become a gold-glove winner) .. again, very classy.
Two guys, one a winner and one a loser, for now, but both equally classy.
Drezner’s post was classy, as was Adam Smith. Since you pointed to them, Sebastian, you get to be classy, too. I took my son and his buddies to school this morning and, for some reason, I was thinking of all the natural and human disasters recently and feeling overwhelmed in a sinking sort of way, so the Smith quote arrived at the right time.
I console myself in my personal lack of classiness by remembering that Mel Brooks pointed out the following: when the other guy is walking down the sidewalk minding his own business and he falls down an open manhole, that is funny. If I get home and discover I have a hangnail on my pinky, that’s a tragedy.
But maybe like Derek Jeter, I can hit a single, even under the pressure of a losing cause.
This isn’t recent, but I’ve always been impressed with what a frikkin’ classy answer Philip Seymour Hoffman gave when handed an opportunity to slam Keanu Reeves in an interview:
When I grow up, I’d like to be that classy.
John, I think that we can just close the comments now, ’cause you summed up anything which needed to be said.
It’s a small thing, and don’t know how classy it may be, but I’ve recently had three bike accidents on my daily 22 kilometer bike commute. In every case, I’ve had bystanders and other cycle commuters immediately on the scene, asking if I was okay (I was), and whether they could help.
Cyclists are a nice bunch of people.
A recent citation of (old) classiness.
This has nothing to do with classiness: I can’t get the comments on Charles’s post to show on my computer screen. The computer says “Done”, but the screen is blank. Isn’t that odd?
lily, me too. Running firefox on linux. I hope that’s not someone being classless.
Actually, I do have a piece of political classiness that occurred here in Canada to mention.
A few months ago, our minority government in Parliament had a vote of non-confidence over the budget to weather, or the government would fail. The reigning Liberal Party looked for and found support from support from the socialist NDP, based on some left-wing concessions in the budget.
Facing the Liberal/NDP coalition were the Conservative Party in an unholy alliance with the Quebec (largely) seperatist and (nearly) socialist Bloc Quebecois.
The votes balanced out, with a wildcard in the person of independent MP Chuck Cadman, who was suffering from terminal cancer. He indicated that he did not yet know how he would vote, but would heed his constituents.
Another problem was that a Conservative MP would be unable to vote as he was undergoing treatment for cancer. In an incredibly classy move, NDP MP (and long-time former leader of the party) Ed Broadbent announced that he would withhold his vote in order to balance the missing Conservative vote, as he didn’t want to to see political gain because of the man’s illness.
Folks, you just don’t see that level of honour in politics much.
Broadbent has now resigned to care for his cancer-stricken wife. Chuck Cadman voted to support the government, despite being of a conservative frame of mind, on the wishes of those who elected him, and he died soon after.
I want to be a Canadian.
I think we are having something funny with the comments. I’ve posted 3 sets of comments that seem to have just vanished into thin air (sorry Lizard). I was also informed that I didn’t have access to the comments–I wonder if I temporarily banned myself?
I think typepad’s on the fritz.
Don’t worry about it, SH — I’m looking forward to your comments whenever typepad lets you post them.
I think typepad’s on the fritz.
This morning, when I tried to go to ObsiWi, I was greeted with a message that the account had been suspended. After a hysterical crying fit, I tried again and all was well.
I blame myself. Probably unwarranted, but who knows in what way I’ve contributed to the patriarchal paradigm that permeates everything we do and think?
Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park said today that, after the earthquake in Pakistan, a fire which wiped out the “entire history” of Aardman Animation was “no big deal”.
He said: “Even though it is a precious and nostalgic collection and valuable to the company, in light of other tragedies, today isn’t a big deal.”
OT: fixed Charles’ post.
out of curiosity, what was wrong?
I dunno; I checked, couldn’t see anything that looked wrong, and, having made no changes at all, just republished it, thinking: who knows, it might help, and it did.
On an Islamic message board that I normally can’t stand (it is really conservative and anti-fun generally) I read a really nice message by a girl who cancelled her Ramadan trip to Mecca to send the funds to the earthquake victims. Many of these fundamentalist type people who normally I really can’t stand wrote in to say that they felt this was the rigth decision and that helping others was a higher priority than fulfilling extra religious obligations. I thought that was a rare moment of class on their part. Hopefully it won’t be the last.