One of Bill Buckley’s better-known statements is the following: “I feel I qualify spiritually and philosophically as a conservative, but temperamentally I am not of the breed.” That was for sure. He made that statement to Time magazine in 1967. I quote it in an essay of mine today: “Dress Codes and Their Discontents.” Dress codes have their place, heaven knows; but sometimes I chafe at them — even literally.

See what you think. Odd subject, and contentious, too.

Some mail? In a column last Monday, I noted a tactic of DeSantis backers: Make voters aware that Nikki Haley was not born with the name “Nikki Haley.” These guys produced an article headed “Republicans Shocked After Discovering Nikki Haley’s Real Name.”

This put me in mind of a tale about the 1950 Florida Senate campaign — the Democratic primary in that campaign: “Are you aware that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert? Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law, he has a brother who is a known homo sapiens, and he has a sister who was once a thespian in wicked New York.”

George Smathers never said this about Claude Pepper, but it is legendary that he did.

A reader writes,

Dear Jay,

. . . You’ve reminded me of something I read in Mad magazine (35 cents at the time): “Mad’s Guaranteed Effective All-Occasion Non-Slanderous Political Smear Speech.” Here. It’s brilliant.

A sampling:

“It is a known fact that, on a number of occasions, he emulated older boys at a certain playground.”

That’s when our opponent was a child. Later on, he “perambulated his infant son on the street.” He also “attempted to interest a 13-year-old girl in philately.”

He has been “deliberately averse to crime in our city streets.” Last summer, “he committed a piscatorial act on a boat that was flying the American flag.”

And so on.

Another subject? I wrote of the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, shared between Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho. A reader writes,

Jay,

As an undergraduate political-science major at Rutgers University, I read the Paris Agreement and readily concluded that it was both an American surrender and an abandonment of an ally. Two years later as a graduate student, I was the only one in my class who didn’t celebrate the fall of Saigon.

One more subject: Maria Callas. The centennial of her birth was observed on Saturday. I wrote about her here. She was christened “Maria Anna Cecilia Sofia Kalogeropoulos.” A reader writes,

. . . My father’s parents immigrated from Greece before World War One, and their surname was “Kalogeropoulos” (which means “son of a monk”). The name was shortened to “Caloyer,” which, if you consult your better dictionaries, means “monk of the Eastern church.” I assume this was a French or English spelling. Lord Byron used the word caloyer in his work The Giaour, describing a monk living under Ottoman rule.

Back to Maria: I have never determined that our family is related to hers. The name is fairly common in Greece. It belonged to a briefly serving prime minister [Nikolaos Kalogeropoulos, 1851–1927]. The life of Maria Callas was every bit as epic and tragic as her operatic roles. The word icon is overused today, but she certainly qualifies.

A thank-you to all readers and correspondents.