I’ve noted in the past that the purpose of my titling this blog ‘Dr Jim West’ isn’t due to some sort of narcissism or self aggrandizement. There are plenty of academics who demand to be treated with deference even though they clearly don’t deserver or merit it. I’m not one of them. I demand nothing but truth.

But I have to differentiate myself from the folk out there who bear the same name. After all, there’s the ‘Jim West’ who served as mayor of Seattle (and who was gay). Then there’s the ‘Jim West’ who’s a photographer of unmentionable body parts. And of course there’s the famous tv character of the same name. So, on the whole, one must somehow be distinctive.

That said, imagine if you dare the horror of being a devoted Bible College student and bearing the same name as Eliot Spitzer’s ’server’. The Record reports

The Eliot Spitzer sex scandal has created an unintended victim — a preacher’s daughter with the misfortune of sharing the same name as the notorious prostitute who brought down the New York governor. Ashley A. Youmans is an 18-year-old from rural North Carolina who is pursuing religious studies at an Indiana Bible college, according to her father, Randy, a preacher who lives with his wife and two daughters in Hillsborough, a small hamlet along the Eno River.

Pray the next high profile scoundrel not share your name too!