"What's that thing, I think, Voltaire said — 'Not that I should succeed, but that my friends should fail'?"

Said Duncan Trussell, near the end of a new 3-hour Joe Rogan podcast. 

Voltaire?! 

I love Duncan Trussell, who is also, and very obviously, Joe Rogan's favorite guest, but I think he's got the attribution wrong. 

I associate it with Gore Vidal, but in the form "It is not enough to succeed; others must fail." No friends in that picture. 

But Quote Investigator looked into a set of similar quotes, one of which was "It is not enough to succeed; one’s friends must fail."

I think it's better without dragging the friend relationship into the concept, but the oldest appearance of the approximate idea was: "Now that I’ve grown old, I realize that for most of us it is not enough to have achieved personal success. One’s best friend must also have failed." 

That's Somerset Maugham (quoted in 1959). There's an older appearance if you count this as the same thing: "In the misfortune of our best friends, we always find something which is not displeasing to us." That's La Rochefoucauld (in the 17th century). He also said, "We all have strength enough to bear the misfortunes of others." 

Gore Vidal's name comes up in a 1973 NYT article by Wilfrid Sheed. Vidal is quoted saying "Every time a friend succeeds I die a little," and then Sheed goes on to credit La Rochefoucauld for the quote, "it is not enough to succeed; a friend must also fail." 

The first use of the form that I think is best — "It is not enough to succeed; others must fail" — comes from Iris Murdoch in 1973.

Anyway, leave Voltaire out of it. He wouldn't say that. Would he?

IN THE EMAIL: 2 readers — policraticus and dksd — independently thought of this New Yorker cartoon by Leo Callum (from 1997):

"This was an extremely long game, 18 innings. A lot of pitchers were used. Every position player was used. Injuries on both sides. Their guys are banged up, our guys are banged up."

"It's one of those things when you're able to come out on top from a game like this, you have to feel it gives you a little momentum going to the next one."

Said Max Muncy, who hit the home run that ended the 18-inning World Series game last night. It was the longest post-season game in baseball history. Now, the series is 2-1 and not 3-0, a big deal, considering that "No team has ever come back from a 3-0 hole in a World Series."

In other baseball news, the Wall Street Journal has a no-pay-wall article, "Our Insane Ideas to Save Baseball/Baseball has problems. There aren’t enough hits. There are too many pitchers. The games take too long. So we bullpenned our solutions. Are you ready for Strike Four?" Too long, indeed. And that article was published before the 18-inning World Series game.

And the NYT has a big article on the checked swing: "Baseball Has a Rorschach Test: The Checked Swing/Did the batter hold up in time? Did he actually swing and miss? It depends on your point of view. Well, actually it depends on the umpire’s point of view."

The Major League Baseball rule book does address swings, although the guidance it offers is limited. In the “Definitions and Terms” section, it states that a strike occurs when the pitch “is struck at by the batter and is missed.” But it does not say how far the bat must go to be called a swing....

A.J. Hinch, the manager of the Houston Astros, said... "It’s break the wrist... It’s break the plane of the plate with the bat. Did the bat head come forward?’’

[Boston’s designated hitter, J.D. Martinez], in turn, offered his own interpretation. “Did the bat break the plane of the plate?’’ he said. “Was there intent to hit the ball? To me, if the head of the bat gets in front of the wrists, then you swung."

“You have to determine whether he offered at the pitch,’’ [said veteran umpire Joe West], in reference to the batter. “Or did he actually hold the bat up.”

West’s use of the word “offer” was hardly arbitrary. It comes directly from Rule 5.01(c), which states: “The pitcher shall deliver the pitch to the batter who may elect to strike the ball, or who may not offer at it, as he chooses.’’

So the rule makes it subjective and requires inquiry into the mind of the batter. That's how West explains it: "That’s why it’s so difficult. It’s subjective. Each swing is different, each checked swing is different." It's not a specific thing done by the bat but what the batter thought he was doing. Can you change your mind in the process and revoke the offer? It makes me want to think of contract law, but if the swinging is offering, you could revoke the offer up until there's an acceptance, but what's the acceptance — something the ball is doing? It seems more like the pitch is the offer and the batter is the one in a position to accept, but that's not how the baseball rule is written, with that "offer at" language.

"Offer at" feels alien to me, a native speaker of English. The OED defines it as "To make an attempt at or upon; to aim at" and deems it obsolete. I have read it at least once, since I've read "Bleak House," — Dickens, 1853 — which contains the line, "There ain't no danger, gentlefolks..she'd [sc. a cat] never offer at the birds when I was here, unless I told her to it." That sounds like dialect, paired with that "told her to it."

IN THE COMMENTS: policraticus said:

One of my great peeves is the inability of many people today to accept a judgement, even if there is some reason to doubt it, and move on. Perfect Justice does not, indeed cannot exist given our human limitations and fallibility. Part of what made baseball a great sport is that it could live with a certain amount of uncertainty regarding the rules. Bad calls were part of the game. Complaining or arguing calls was also part of the game. Having a brouhaha at home plate and getting tossed for calling the ump a cocksucker was part of the game. Baseball is, perhaps, one of the last great organic expressions of sport. The more we try to shoehorn this ancient accretion of traditions and emotions into a modern digital framework, the less appealing the game will become.

Let baseball be baseball. An 18 inning game is not a bug, it is a feature.

Can state law require that churches permit women to breastfeed openly — with no covering — in the congregation during a service?

Virginia has a law that gives women a right to breastfeed wherever they are "lawfully present." I can see why laws like this get passed, and I feel sympathy for this woman who was embarrassed to be told she can't breastfeed in the manner she presumably believed was okay (especially after the government has purported to enshrine this right in the law)...


But I think privately owned places — especially religious institutions — should be allowed to impose their own standards of modesty. There's a big difference between being deprived of the freedom to  breastfeed wherever you are and being required to drape a light cloth over the exposed breast.

This WaPo report on the subject completely takes the perspective of the woman and makes the churchgoers seem prudish and ignorant of the law:

A woman promptly asked the Dumfries mother to decamp to a private room, she said. Peguero declined and was later told that the church does not allow breast-feeding without a cover because it could make men, teenagers or new churchgoers “uncomfortable,” she said. One woman told her the sermon was being live-streamed and that she would not want Peguero to be seen breast-feeding....

It is also a legally protected right in Virginia, where the legislature passed a 2015 law that says women have a right to breast-feed anywhere they have a legal right to be....

The woman, Annie Peguero, is described as a "42-year-old personal trainer and fitness and nutrition specialist" and — these are her words — a “hippie mama."

It seems to me that churches — and other religious organizations — have rules about how covered up you need to be in the building or during a service. And the last time I looked, Virginia has a Religious Freedom Preservation Act, § 57-2.02:

No government entity shall substantially burden a person's free exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability unless it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person is (i) essential to further a compelling governmental interest and (ii) the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.

Quite aside from whether Peguero has a statutory right to breastfeed uncovered in church (and I don't think she does), as a matter of etiquette and caring for others, she should have willingly covered her breast as soon as she noticed the exposure distracted or bothered anybody.

Here's the highest-rated comment at WaPo:

As someone who has lived all over the world, I can assure you America is the only place on earth where people get hysterical seeing mothers breastfeed their babies.

Exactly what is it about a breast that has you guys upset? It is not a sex organ. It was made for women to feed their babies. The fact that it has been sexualized by men does not make it a sex organ.

Here's the second-highest-rated:

I get the whole "it's natural" thing, but have a little consideration for those around you. You still cannot walk around nude freely in our society. And, it does make people uncomfortable ... which is also "natural". Use a blanket or step out of the room. Why is that such a huge deal?

 ADDED: I'd originally misread a sentence in the article that said: "Now Peguero, and an attorney, are pressing church leaders to issue a statement and reverse their policy." I've corrected the post.

IN THE COMMENTS: I Have Misplaced My Pants said:

Haha. Women who make a fuss about this are almost always attention seekers best ignored.

I am on my fourth breastfed-into-toddlerhood child over 15 years (didn't breastfeed the adopted one, alas) and I have always nursed wherever I happen to be and no one has ever once given me so much as the stink-eye, let alone approached me and been an ass. Of course I've been discreet when appropriate, finding a quiet corner if it seemed like the thing to do, but I have never nursed under a drape or cover of any kind and I have never nursed in a bathroom.

The whole "zomg men sexualize the breast waah waah waah" thing is a hoax. Again, in 15 years of off and on public breastfeeding and hanging out with other public breastfeeders I have never had a man be anything but polite. I'm calling bullshit.

Policraticus said...

You know, I'm all for modesty and things having a time and place. I am sure the mother in question could have been a little more discreet.

But... the reaction of the church officials crosses over into the absurd. The idea that a woman breastfeeding a child should hardly be shocking. The image of Maria Lactans is ubiquitous in Christian art and you can find images of Mary breastfeeding the infant Jesus pretty much everywhere you look. Irony. It can be pretty ironic sometimes.

Good point (though I think the images of Mary are not so common among protestants). Here's an example:



There's also Lactatio Bernardi, where Mary squirts some milk sideways onto Saint Bernard: