In This Issue

Larry the Git-R-Done Cable Guy. Monopolist tool?

Did You Know?

Let us know if you want more information about cable antitrust cases.

Jebediah Obadiah Zachariah Jedediah Springfield. He had a silver tongue -- literally.

Cromulent Words

"A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man." So says Jebediah Springfield, the pioneering founder of the town in which Matt Groening sets his cartoon series, The Simpsons.

Schoolteacher Edna Krabappel objects that she never heard embiggens before moving to Springfield. Colleague Miss Hoover replies that embiggens "is a perfectly cromulent word." And Principal Seymour Skinner later praises Homer Simpson's work as town crier by saying that Homer "embiggened that role with his cromulent performance."

The Oxford English Dictionary has no entry for embiggens or cromulent. We must assume that the writers of The Simpsons know that. And we must conclude that they knowingly and intentionally, with malice aforethought, made up a word and then made up another word to poke fun at their making up of words.

Why do I mention this episode? For the same reason that Homer Simpson tells an off-subject story to his son Bart in another one. Bart interrupts his dad, asking "what's the point of this story?" Homer replies: "I like stories."

So does Your Editor.

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Hot Lunch

Little did Your Editor know that last month's issue would send him to research one of Shakespeare's History plays. And even less did he imagine that the quest would provide cause to talk this month about a movie featuring Louie from the Taxi television series.

As you can see from the nearby Eat What You Kill Update, Henry V includes a line in which the Constable of France muses that the bloodthirsty Dauphin of France "will eat all [the English soldiers] he kills" in the soon-to-start Battle of Agincourt.

Reading the historical background of Henry V and the momentous battle on which it centers recalled to Your Editor one of the most famous speeches that a literary figure ever delivered. Shakespeare has the English King Henry, on the eve of the main contest as he seeks to avert a disastrous loss, voice words that would enthral even the dismalest defeatist.

Four-hundred years later, in Renaissance Man (1994), Hollywood puts the kingly lines in the mouth of a washout American trainee-soldier. He and his fellows wobbly stand in muck as a frigid rain pelts them -- much as at Agincourt, the day before the feast of Saint Crispin. The trainee has memorized the words to please the remedial English instructor that Danny DeVito (the erstwhile Louie) plays in the movie. And he says:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother, be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Shakespeare's words hold their power today. And remind us of nobler aspirations than simply wanting to eat what you kill.

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The Enemy of the Good

Death mask of Francois-Marie Arouet (1694-1778), who wrote under the pen name Voltaire. The French keep his heart at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.

Should lawyers, clients, and judges strive for perfection or work for the merely attainable? How hard ought we to fight for the best?

The answer seems obvious. As our parents taught us, we should always do our best.

But the philosopher Voltaire took a more . . . Gallic view. He wrote that "the best is the enemy of the good." Le Beguele (1772).

The story of the ancient Greek innkeeper Procrustes may help illustrate the Voltairean ambivalence. This hotelier had an odd notion of hospitality. He gave his guests a bed but insisted that they fit it exactly. He stretched short ones and shortened tall ones. Thus he enforced his perverse idea of perfection.

(The hero Theseus gave Procrustes a taste of his own medicine when he lopped off the Procrustean head upon the Procrustean bed.)

The polymath Bryan Garner suggests a way to reconcile the good with the best. He identifies enmormous creativity as a key characteristic of the most successful lawyers. They see potential solutions where others find obstacles. They consider all possibilities while retaining the flexibility necessary to identify the strategy likeliest to achieve a favorable result. And then they execute it.

Your Editor thinks that creative lawyers don't let preconceptions or vainglory obscure solutions for their clients' problems. They don't allow dreams of an unachievable ideal to fog their judgment. Their creativity enables them to achieve optimal results.

They do their best by using -- and keeping -- their heads. Unlike poor Procrustes.

Barry Barnett, Editor

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The Manhattan Transfer

Stephen D. Susman. Founder of Susman Godfrey L.L.P. Leading commercial litigator in the world. Also a piano player.

Aficionados of jazz and swing music may recall a group that belts out songs like "Birdland" and "Boy from New York City". Also "Popsicle Toes", a personal favorite. You can check out The Manhattan Transfer here.

Now you can also check out another Manhattan transfer -- the ivory-tickling Steve Susman.

Steve has moved himself, bodily, to Susman Godfrey's spanking-new New York City office. He will spend about half of his time in our digs at 590 Madison Avenue.

You can reach Steve at 212-336-8330. Email works, too.

A gala reception at the Yale Club of New York City inaugurated the opening of the fifth Susman Godfrey outpost. (The firm also has offices in Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, and Seattle.) Hundreds of friends and well-wishers honored us by their attendance. Thank you, New York, for the warm welcome.

Get more information on our Manhattan office.

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Eat What You Kill Update

Forces of English King Henry V and French King Charles VI sally out for the Battle of Agincourt (1415). Henry's introduction of the longbow helped him win the fracas and the French regency.

Your Editor laid down a gauntlet last month. The taunt challenged gentle readers to find a pre-September 1986 publication that used "eat what you kill" in the sense of tying a lawyer's compensation to his performance. Peter Lattman's Law Blog in The Wall Street Journal took up cudgels on the question, asking online subscribers: "Did Barry Barnett Invent the Phrase 'Eat What You Kill?'"

The Journal Law Blog comments don't settle the issue. Some of them recall earlier uses but offer no citations. Others suppose either that Your Editor's claim to coinage implies less than admirable traits, and another suggests that the opening of our New York office drew "gunners" from around the globe to live on the streets of Manhattan in hopes of gaining employment. Touche.

But hark! One of my partners cites a rendition slightly earlier than mine -- from 1599. He points to a play in which Shakespeare writes about the pre-dawn anxiousness of the French Dauphin -- the eldest son of King Charles VI. The prince fairly pants to smash the English King Henry V's smaller force at the impending Battle of Agincourt (1415).

The heir to the throne, the Bard tells us, "longs for morning." A lord replies that the French prince "longs to eat the English" and the Constable of France that "I think he will eat all he kills." Henry V, Act 3, Scene VII.

Does that resolve the provenance question for "eat what you kill"? Let us know what you think.

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Spoils of War

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