Footnotes to the TV series
POE 1: It was an election year [that Poe was court-martialled].
POE 2: It was not an election year. President Jackson was to serve five more years.
President Andrew Jackson, previously discussed.
He became president in 1829 and was in office until 1837, so in 1831, President Jackson actually had six more years to serve, not five. Both Poes manage to be incorrect this time.
PARIS: Even if I was the Billy Carter of the family, the name is still supposed to carry some weight.
William “Billy” Carter (1937-1988), the younger brother of President Jimmy Carter, previously discussed. At the time his brother was running for president, Billy developed a colourful image as a beer-drinking Southerner in the press.
During his brother’s presidency, he ran a gas station, and was the spokesperson for Peanut Lolita liqueur; in 1977, he endorsed Billy Beer. He was known for his outlandish public behaviour, once urinating on an airport runway in full view of the press and dignitaries.
In 1978 and 1979 he made visits to Libya, was registered as a foreign agent of the Libyan government, and received a loan of $220 000. However, a CIA agent claimed he had actually received $2 million from Libya. This led to a Senate hearing on alleged influence peddling which the press named Billygate, leading President Carter to publicly disassociate himself from his brother during his presidency.
LORELAI: She’ll be on C-SPAN if she does … You’re a hell of a lot more interesting than that usual shit they have of all the white men walking around that big empty chamber with the numbers all over them.
RICHARD: That’s a televised house vote, and I find that fascinating.
Richard refers to the voting in the US House of Representatives, broadcast on C-SPAN (it’s now streamed live).
LORELAI: And you couldn’t have taken two seconds at work to call and tell her that?
JESS: No.
LORELAI: Really? You don’t get breaks? Do you get food, water? Should I get Michael Moore on the phone?
Michael Moore (born 1954), filmmaker, author and left-wing activist. His documentaries frequently address the topics of globalisation and capitalism.
LORELAI: Man, that was some stealthy little maneuver she pulled there, huh? Applying the guilt over not knowing about the Dean breakup and making you all weak, and then using that to get Jess to come to dinner on Friday. She’s like Lyndon Johnson with the Senate, effortless.
Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, the 36th president of the US from 1963 to 1969. Elected to the US Senate in 1948, he was appointed Senate Majority Whip in 1951, and Majority Leader of the Senate in 1954.
Lyndon Johnson is considered the most effective Senate majority leader in history. He was unusually proficient at gathering information, discovering exactly where every senator stood on issues, his philosophy and prejudices, his strengths and weaknesses and what it took to get his vote.
Central to his control of the Senate was what was called “The Treatment”, his way of emotionally manipulating, intimidating, or bullying people into doing what he wanted. Lorelai is suggesting that Emily uses similar techniques to get her own way.
EMILY: A mutual friend or something.
LORELAI: You and Dean have mutual friends in common that Rory and I don’t? Who would that be, the Talbotts or that senior partner at Deloitte & Touche?
Talbotts
Possibly referencing Nelson “Strobe” Talbott III (born 1946) [pictured], foreign policy analyst and diplomat from a distinguished family who served as the Deputy Secretary of State from 1994 to 2001, during the Clinton Administration. A Yale alumnus, after leaving government he was briefly the Director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. Notice that his nickname is said the same way as the name of Rory’s paternal grandfather, Straub Hayden.
Deloitte & Touche
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, commonly referred to as Deloitte, is an international professional services network headquartered in London, England. Deloitte is the largest professional services network by revenue and number of professionals in the world and is considered one of the Big Four accounting firms.
RORY: Nixon’s bad seed.
Bad seed, an American expression referring to someone who is evil or unprincipled by their nature, “born bad”.
The expression gained widespread notoriety through the 1956 psychological thriller The Bad Seed, directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Patty McCormack in the title role. It is based on the 1954 play of the same name by Maxwell Anderson, which in turn was based on the 1954 novel by William March. The film is about a sociopathic little girl, and was a hit at the box office, receiving positive reviews from critics.
Rory suggests that Paris was born from the “bad seed” of disgraced president Richard Nixon, to explain why she is such a bad president herself.
PARIS: I move to put to a vote the impeachment of Rory Gilmore.
Impeachment is the process by which a legislative body or other legally constituted tribunal initiates charges against a public official for misconduct. In the US, impeachment at the federal level is limited to those who may have committed “Treason, Bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”—the latter phrase referring to offenses against the government or the constitution, grave abuses of power, violations of the public trust, or other political crimes, even if not indictable criminal offenses.
The US House of Representatives has impeached an official 21 times since 1789: four times for presidents, 15 times for federal judges, once for a Cabinet secretary, and once for a senator. Of the 21, the Senate voted to remove 8 (all federal judges) from office.
The four impeachments of presidents were: Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, Donald Trump in 2019 and again in 2021. All four impeachments were followed by acquittal in the Senate. An impeachment process was also commenced against Richard Nixon, but he resigned in 1974 to avoid likely removal from office.
As the student advisor says, school councils don’t have the authority to impeach anyone.
ALEX: Ready to try another? I hear there’s one from Peru that comes with a Surgeon’s General warning.
Peru, a country on the west coast of South America. Despite Alex’s warning, Peruvian coffee is said to be mild and light in flavour.
The surgeon general of the United States is the operational head of the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and thus the leading spokesperson on matters of public health in the federal government of the United States. The US surgeon general is nominated by the president of the United States and confirmed by the Senate.
In 2003, the Surgeon General of the US was Richard Carmona (born 1949); he was in the post from 2002 to 2006. In 2014 he wrote a book called 30 Days to a Better Brain, where he actually promoted coffee as a healthy drink that could improve mood and memory.
Alex’s children are named Hillary and Jeff, aged six and nine; he shares custody of them with his ex-wife. Hillary seem to have named their daughter after Hillary Clinton, previously discussed and frequently mentioned, as a sign of their Democrat allegiance.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 