"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
Tuesday, November 12, 2002 Speaking of true-blue Toryism:
Who at the networks decided on the color scheme of red & blue states that had the Republican states red and the Democratic states blue? That's backwards. Note this etymology of the term "true blue":
It meant: 'faithful, staunch and unwavering in one's faith, principles, etc.; genuine, real' (OED). Thus, in 1663, Butler writes in Hudibras: 'For his Religion it was fit To match his Learning and his Wit; 'Twas Presbyterian true Blew'. The phrase was subsequently taken up by various political parties in England before it became the distinctive term for the Conservative party and meant 'staunchly Tory'. Hence Trollope in Framley Parsonage (1860): 'There was no portion of the county more decidedly true blue'. And this is one of the two senses it still has in England - `true blue adjective extremely loyal or orthodox; Conservative; noun such a person, especially a Conservative' (The Oxford English Reference Dictionary, 1995).*
In America, the term "true blue" has come to mean politically sound. The color red, meantime, has other, readily apparent, political connotations.
The map of the American heartland – flyover country, Bush country in the 2000 election – should be colored true blue.
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