While I think it was a good idea for HT to change Steele's would-be assassin into a member of the U.S. military for story purposes (the military purges make much more sense in that context, and the event very broadly parallels the OTL assassination of Kirov), the "Oliver North" joke was rather grating. Plus, I'm sure HT could have found a viable historical figure, but even so, he should have just taken his tongue out of his cheek and gone with a more generic name. TR (talk) 20:40, June 4, 2015 (UTC)
- What about Edwin Walker? He'd have been a little young in 1937, but he'd graduated West Point six years earlier, and with his politics and disdain for the American tradition of active-duty officers remaining apolitical, he could have been pressed in that direction. It also makes things a bit ambivalent for the reader, because even though we know Steele can't be trusted, we're also uneasy with the idea of someone like Walker using his position in the armed forces to create even more mischief.
- Good choice. Hell, some anonymous fictional character named "Bob Brown", or making Otto Spitzer into a soldier would have been less labored. TR (talk) 21:35, June 4, 2015 (UTC)
- He's even got a footnote in the OTL history of presidential assassinations, since Lee Harvey Oswald once took a pot shot at him. Turtle Fan (talk) 00:08, June 5, 2015 (UTC)
- Otherwise, yeah, the North/South joke is pretty labored. It's not even like South is modeled on North or is doing anything remotely close to something North did. Turtle Fan (talk) 21:22, June 4, 2015 (UTC)