Of course, what we're actually seeing is the entirely different option (c): That Obama is so familiar with bookclub-level literary allusions (in this case the aphorism "living well is the best revenge"), rather than anything super highbrow, that he (c1) recognizes them as cliches or formulas that can be adapted, and (c2) assumes that at least some other people will also recognize them as such.

Illustration of point (c1) concerning language so familiar it can be adapted: In the first season of Homeland, the Brody family is taking a drive from the D.C. area to Gettysburg. They've just been discussing "Four-score and seven years ago..." One of the kids asks how far they still have to drive. The mother says, "Three-score miles." In the circumstances of that car, this also illustrates (c2).



When it comes to Obama's off-hand remark, I have exactly zero doubt that he thought he was applying a widely familiar term. That is what anyone of his age, background, and education would have had in mind. Let me put it this way: Last night, in an NPR interview with Guy Raz, Taylor Swift, who is all of 22, was discussing poems by Pablo Neruda. Is it so surprising that a sitting president, who is nearly three decades older than Swift and, unlike her, a college and law-school grad and author of a memoir packed with literary allusions, would have heard the very familiar saying "living well is the best revenge"? And would know that it doesn't mean anything like what Romney claimed. [Update: a number of people have written in saying, "Ok, what does it mean?" That's why I have the links below to Calvin Tomkins's article and other references. Look it up! Or listen to R.E.M. Short answer: it is about the opposite of "revenge" in the normal sense.] [And another update: This post's title is obviously exaggerated for effect, and I am not saying that anyone unfamiliar with "living well..." is an ignoramus. I am saying that the Romney campaign certainly knows what Obama was saying, and why -- and the ad suggesting otherwise is pandering to know-nothingism.]

Bonus question: is it possible that Mitt Romney himself -- who went to Stanford and then BYU, who lived in France, who went to Harvard Business School and like Obama to Harvard Law, who has lived for decades in Boston and considers himself well-read and has some literarily accomplished advisors -- has never heard of this saying? Is it conceivable that he actually believes Obama was talking about revenge-voting as if it were basically like "revenge sex"?

Just to show that familiarity with the phrase is not confined to people interested in F. Scott Fitzgerald; or Gerald and Sara Murphy, the arty American exiles in France who were supposedly the model for Dick and Nicole Diver in Tender Is the Night and were the subjects of Calvin Tompkins's very popular book Living Well Is the Best Revenge and New Yorker article; nor even George Herbert, the English poet who 400-plus years ago coined the term "living well is the best revenge," I give you R.E.M.:



Plus:







Bonus-bonus question: Why are reporters outside the Fox News ecosystem reporting this "controversy" at face value? E.g.,



Plus:Bonus-bonus question: Why are reporters outside the Fox News ecosystem reporting this "controversy" at face value? E.g., from ABC News



I am going to town on this because it's the end of the election cycle, and I don't know whether to laugh or cry* about this latest glimpse into our public culture. Maybe I will escape these next two days by watching football. Or opening Tender is the Night for the first time since college.

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* Not really! This is a cliche that I am using on purpose. In real life I am sitting here drinking some coffee.



And one more update! Fox goes all in, saying that Obama "coined a new campaign catchphrase":





I am going to town on this because it's the end of the election cycle, and I don't know whether to laugh or cry* about this latest glimpse into our public culture. Maybe I will escape these next two days by watching football. Or openingfor the first time since college.__* Not really! This is a cliche that I am using on purpose. In real life I am sitting here drinking some coffee.And! Fox goes all in, saying that Obama "coined a new campaign catchphrase":