Updated Labels: Shunned, Nut

Back at the beginning of the year, I worked on the epistemological task of updating my blog-labels. One change was to add titles to politicians, e.g. instead of plain old Bill Clinton, he became Citizen Bill Clinton. I explained the change thusly:

Herr is a title for evil politicians (and the appropriate gender specifics, e.g. Herr Cheney, Frau Coulter);

Citizen for good guys (for the most part; I'm being generous by including Krugman here);

Comrade for bad leftists (e.g. Ralph Nader).

Since that time, early January, I've added a few more categories:

1. "The Nut" = This applies to people I used to align with but who have since either gone completely crazy or whose previously existing crazy has shown to be no longer useful. This applies to my bygone favorite politician Joseph Lieberman who has transformed himself into a monster, and Martin Peretz (editor of The New Republic) who has always been crazy but while it was useful during the Bush Years and the two Israeli Wars of 2006-2008, his anti-anti-Zionism has gotten too shrill and unhinged to be useful.
   
   
2. "The Shunned" = This applies to people/politicians who's early promise was destroyed by subsequent immorality and/or incompetence. This applies to John Edwards and Ehud Olmert. Edwards had such promise but it turned out that his tacky lack of judgement was deeper than I could have imagined. And Olmert, oy, whose talent as a consummate political strategist and in-fighter was unbalanced by his utter inability to lead a nation, resulting in thousands of innocent deaths.
   
   
3. Miscellaneous additional titles = Extremely crazy or evil right-wingers get added fascist titles, e.g. "Mayorissimo Herr Rudolf Giuliani" or adding a "von" to the middle of the name "Herr Ronald von Reagan"
   
   
4. Borderline cases = Despite my grand disappointment with Paul Krugman, I've given him a "Citizen" title; Hillary Clinton, once she joined the Obama admininstration earned her a "Citizen" title as well. But these can be lost.

For the special cases of Hillary and Lieberman, I will explain more of my thinking anon.