Wordability » rhetoric

Insinuating nods: Obama & McCain at Saddleback

bruce — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 03:56:04 +0000

Here in Oz we like our believing politicians to wear their religion lightly: Tony Abbott for this reason will never be Prime Minister. Not so in the US, where all candidates for high office must be pious. Even so, the spectacle of confession and group hug at Saddleback Church was disgusting. We are inured to boasting in candidates: modesty and a proper degree of reserve are luxuries reserved for the obscure. But Saddleback took us into that dark place in which the sincere is contaminated by performance.

It’s interesting to compare the two candidates’ answers to the question about regret. Which, I wonder was the more hypocritical?? McCain spoke about his first marriage, using a ritual formula in which one party is entirely responsible for something described as a ‘failure’. Besides the obvious point – that the formula deprives the first Mrs McCain of agency – an admission in that form follows the adman’s recommendation for damage control: admit everything and apologise repeatedly.

Obama I suspect was more complicated. First we had blame-transfer. Gee, I lacked a father and consequently dabbled a bit. The audience knows all about absent fathers in the black community, so it does no harm to offer oneself as an example. You get to be a victim. As for drugs, Clinton has lowered the bar on those: after him politicians fell over themselves to confessing a tiny bit of youthful naughtiness. Which leaves only self-pity, as regular a feature of adolescence as acne.

Too cynical? Onscreen,? McCain convinced me that he really does feel lousy about whatever he did in his first marriage, not that that matters a damn. Obama reminded me of Prince Hal in the Eastcheap Tavern. This man is not knowable, either, not yet. Wait for Act V.

The whole scene brought to mind the scene in Coriolanus in which Menenius and Volumnia busily compute how many wounds Coriolanus has on his body. It was customary to exhibit before the plebeians the scars of wounds received in battle against Rome’s enemies. Oh goody, says Volumnia, ‘there will be large cicatrices to show the people.’ (She’s his mother, by the way.) He gets away with it, but only just:

Third Citizen: ? ? ? ?

Joan Didion and the CIA: a literary friendship

bruce — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 01:48:19 +0000

From a 1967 internal report (released 1978) by the Inspector General of the CIA (and you should see his uniform!):

. . . There is a third point, which was not directly made by any of those we interviewed, but which emerges clearly from the interviews and from reviews of files. The point is that of frequent recourse to synecdoche – the mention of a part when the whole is to be understood, or vice-versa. Thus we encounter repeated references to phrases such as “disposing of Castro,” which may be read in the literal sense of assassinating him, when it is intended that it be read in the broader, figurative sense of dislodging the Castro regime. Reversing the coin, we find people speaking vaguely of “doing something about Castro” when it is clear that what they have specifically in mind is killing him. In a situation wherein those speaking may not have actually meant what they seemed to say or may not have said what they actually meant, they should not be surprised if their oral shorthand is interpreted differently than was intended.

_ quoted in Joan Didion, Miami, 1987

Ah, the advantages of a liberal education. It would be embarrassing to compare even this rather cumbersome example of the Inspector General’s prose with any of the recently-released ASIO transcripts.

In context (readers of Didion might agree) hr quotation of this passage reads like a rhetorical ploy-within-a-ploy. Precisely this kind of analysis, although considerably more subtle, is what she delivers in Miami, as in all her non-fiction from Salvador onwards. And like the Inspector-General, she pays the price of a certain laboriousness. In a world of crazy language, however, spelling it out may constitute a virtue.

That said, there is the question of Didion’s own copious use of synecdoche . . .

Duck

bruce — Sun, 18 May 2008 12:48:51 +0000

IT came as no surprise to anyone who knew her that Dr. Elena Wechsler would find herself with a man who won her heart with ducks.

But the ducks worked their magic only after the bride had been prinked up by Rachel Greenwald, the author of

Fine words, no butter

bruce — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 00:24:29 +0000

. . . especially for less well-off voters, the specific things government can do to relieve a few of the burdens they bear may be more important than Obama’s soaring and prophetic rhetoric that moved the young and the affluent. To eat some of my own words, maybe prose wins elections after all.

E.J.Dionne Jnr in The New Republic online today.

Aristotle:

In a political debate the man who is forming a judgement is making a decision about his own vital interests. There is no need, therefore, to prove anything except that the facts are what the supporter of a measure maintains they are. It is clear, further, that [rhetoric's] function is not simply to succeed in persuading, but rather to discover the means of coming as near such success as the circumstances of each particular case allow.

Effectiveness is how we judge rhetoric. Looks like people are not in the mood for soaring. If style trumped content we would expect Obama to win South Carolina – but I’m willing to bet he loses there by a larger margin for reasons I’d rather not contemplate this morning.