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July 12, 2023

Best of Partner Emeritus No. 2: PE Does 'Nam.

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If you work for a peer firm, you will encounter me or someone very much like me. [Y]ou cannot avoid the essence of my character if you aspire to succeed... I or some form of my embodiment will exist to make your existence as uncomfortable and unpleasant as it can be. Welcome to the legal profession you self-entitled nimrods have created.

--Partner Emeritus, commenting at Above The Law, 2009

There is a reason that my late Union Street, Nantucket neighbor David Halberstam did not devote a chapter or two in his highly admired The Best and the Brightest to my friend Partner Emeritus, celebrated Dean of Above the Law's Commentariat. Sometimes, a Polo injury at Meadowbrook will change the course of world history--and not for the better:

I remember the Summer before the Tet Offensive so vividly.

I recall entering the MEPS station at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn where I took my physical examination, which was a requirement prior to being shipped out to OCS. I wanted to serve my country and kick g**k posterior so badly that I even let a proctologist stick his index finger in my rectum while I coughed. Alas, a Polo accident caused me to incur a hairline fracture in my pelvis and I was disqualified from service just two weeks from my deployment date.

I am confident that had I gone to 'Nam, I would have deployed a strategy that would have won that war. They don't teach this at the Army War College but my endgame to the Vietnam War would have been to round up all the hippie stoners and opium addicts in the States and parachuted them into Vietcong territory. I would have used the MK Ultra Program to convince the paratroopers that the Vietcong had stolen their drugs and that the opium fields would be their prize for killing every last member of Charlie.

West Point would have been renamed after me but I accept that God had other plans for me (i.e., conquering the legal profession and establishing myself as a legal icon).

--PE comment to 3 Things Law Students And Young Lawyers Can Learn From Podcaster-In-Chief Marc Maron, ATL June 26, 2015.

Even more than about Charlie, what Partner Emeritus worries about most is gene pool dilution and mediocrity in the legal profession. We will get to that soon enough. First, though, we'll do a few posts about PE's younger years, including a few sexual adventures during the 1960s-1980s. In the meantime, below is the famous negotiation between Yank actor Matthew Modine as "Joker" and British actress Papillon Soo Soo as "the Da Nang hooker" in Stanley Kubrick's 1987 war satire Full Metal Jacket.


Posted by JD Hull at July 12, 2023 12:59 AM

Comments

PE, I found that language myself a couple of weeks ago.

I'd like to make it your signature/repeating/introductory quote--your prose overture or refrain, if you will. Unless of course you can point me to a better one.

I also think in the future we should cite the 2009 article. Lots of comments. Lots of people not just funny but on fire.

Imposters. Been there myself. We will be diligent there, too, kind sir. Thanks for the heads-up.

Posted by: Dan Hull at July 25, 2015 11:05 AM

I see your interns have been working diligently to unearth my earlier posts. You may instruct them to search the auto admit site as I have been quoted there a few times by the commenters. I have never commented on that site although beware of the impostors. During 2010, there were several impostors including one who claimed to be my son, JaKe Emeritus.

With respect to the first quote of this article, I precisely captured what inspires greatness. This was the central theme of the movie, "Whiplash," which I enjoyed because I got the essence of J.K. Simmons' character. Telling a lad he is "good" only breeds mediocrity. Pushing him to try harder engenders greatness. If you can't take the criticism, then you will never be great.

Posted by: Partner Emeritus at July 24, 2015 09:48 PM

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