Now a popular pundit with Ireland's RTE on a show that puts some of our controversy-phobic TV pundits to shame, Giles is caught in a familiar contradiction between his own conduct as a player and the behaviour he finds disagreeable today.
But this year it bears rereading: My countrymen, we do not now differ in our judgment concerning the controversies of past generations, and fifty years hence our children will not be divided in their opinions concerning our controversies.
In the old days when Harry and I used to clear the Halfway House in Edinburgh with the fury of our controversies I would tease him by saying he had the appearance of an Oxonian divine (he attended that university).
And one should generally be very circumspect in interpreting medieval texts on issues like these: key terms tend to be used in subtly different ways than in the modern literature, and controversies tend to be about issues which are rather different from our controversies (Zupko 2001).
Bower (1970: 314), in particular, highlights these socio-political factors in capital budgeting activities, noting that, "At least two kinds of problems exist" in attempting to undertake financial decision-making, including uncertainty and what Bower refers to as controversialism (in our terms, controversy).
The Nixon moment was one step in the road toward our current controversy over the amount of time presidential candidates are spending on television, talking about their families and favorite foods.
The Iraq Thing wasn't our only controversy.
Which leads us to our next controversy: Still about sex.
"Tell them to give us a call," said Greg Aiello, a spokesman for the N.F.L. "We're always interested in technology, and we have our own controversies over calls".
This pushback can and should include the possibility of reforming the way the court does business: Term limits and supermajority requirements, for instance, are both plausible responses to the weirdness of having our great controversies settled by the timing of an aging justice's final illness, or the idiosyncracies of Anthony Kennedy.
