Death Panelicious

Today on Label Monday we pay homage to the labeling champion, that superstar of underhanded rhetoric, the insurance industry. Wendell Potter, top flack for the insurance giant CIGNA, helped lead the fight against health-care reform, successfully getting the public to believe that America (which ranks below Bosnia in life expectancy) has the greatest health care in the world.

Potter had an awakening in East Tennessee when he observed a health fair with long lines of people waiting to be treated in the fairgrounds’ horse stalls. He later saw a television interview with the district’s congressman, Zack Wamp, who claimed that the 45 million uninsured chose their lot. Wamp was using a script Potter himself had helped write.

The reformed flack has since written a book claiming that labels like “socialism” and “death panels” arose from the well-paid efforts of PR people like him. Potter even asserts that the Tea Party movement came out of the same “playbook.”

If a fraction of what he says is true, then Figaro tips his rhetorical hat to the insurance industry and its clever PR minions.  Well done, sirs and madams!

“I Want Us to Live Up to Her Expectations”

Obama’s Tucson speech turned the conversation from blame and blood libel to make us look through the eyes of a little girl. The rhetorical device he used might look familiar; it’s the same that expressed MLK’s dream.

I want us to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it. All of us—we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations.

Optatio (op-TOT-io), the wish. From the Latin, meaning “wish.”

According to Gideon Burton, the Greek word for the wishing figure, oeonismus, referred to the act of divining the future by watching the flight of birds. How appropriate to eulogize the hopes of a little girl.  

Nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green had been elected to the student council and was off to see her congresswoman “undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted,” Obama said. He then switched the tense from the past to the future, where dialog gathers hope and maybe even gets some work done.

The optatio makes an ideal figure for this switch, because by stating a wish it allows a speaker to paint the future in deeply personal terms. Obama takes the figure and shines it in the glow of a hopeful little girl.

Martin Luther King based his whole “I Have a Dream” speech on the optatio and made us live up to his higher expectations. Use it when you have something noble and important to say.

Figaro has argued since Obama got elected that the president lacks “virtue,” the rhetorical skill of making an audience believe the speaker shares the audience’s values. In this speech—his best so far as president—he showed great virtue indeed.

Permissible Pocket Picking

Every Monday, we offer a label to stick on a phenomenon or issue. Today’s label: sneak-a-tax.

For only 900 billion borrowed dollars, Congress gave American taxpayers a wonderful tax cut! The left made some noise about fat cats getting more than their fair share, but the argument didn’t get much traction. We Americans are a generous people and don’t like afflicting minorities, even of the jillionaire variety. Instead, opponents should look at the long term—not just the deficit but whether tax cuts even exist.

Figaro’s advice to liberals:  Point out the hidden costs we pay when Republicans propose tax cuts. Cut back road maintenance, and car maintenance costs go up. Slash park budgets, and you get slapped with user fees. Your state legislature cuts aid to education, and parents suddenly bear an added burden for textbooks, sports and music. Sneak-a-tax! It’s like a tax…but sneaky!

So how do you make a label like that? By familiarizing yourself with homonyms, words that sound the same but have different meanings. Homonyms mean “same name” in ancient Greek. They serve as the raw material of puns. “Tax” and “attacks” are homonyms (well, close enough for government work). So, to create “sneak-a-tax” out of the hidden costs of tax cuts:

1. Say what you mean. This so-called tax cut is really just a sneaky way to disguise more taxes.
2. List possible homonyms. What sounds like “tax”? Tacks, ax, acts, pax, attacks.
3. Put the homonyms in phrases, whether they make sense or not in this context. Thumb tax (on the seat of power!), ax cuts…tax attacks.
4.  Try your homonyms in context. There’s nothing sneaky about a thumb tax, or a tax attack. But a sneak tax attack yields…a sneak-a-tax!

BTW: Why is Figaro offering advice to the Democrats and not the Republicans? Because he believes in special education.

The Dumbest Judge in America

In declaring mandatory health insurance unconstitutional, Federal Judge Henry Hudson uses a perfect tautology—a fallacy that proves a point by restating it. Buying insurance isn’t covered under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, the judge says. Therefore, he says, the law can’t be covered under the Necessary and Proper Clause.  

The problem is, the Necessary and Proper Clause exists to extend federal power over things not covered by the Constitution. 

In other words, Hudson argues that because insurance isn’t covered by the Constitution, it can’t be covered by the part of the Constitution that exists to cover stuff that isn’t otherwise covered. You follow?

While striking down a key part of the health care law, Judge Hudson has pulled off an equally impressive feat: embarrassing his fellow conservatives.

See this piece in Talking Points Memo. Then laugh till you cry.

Sacred Cowardice

On this Label Monday, we aim our figurative beam at the faceless fat cats behind an explosion of political attack advertising. In the infamous Citizens United case, the plumply feline Supreme Court bestowed human status on corporations. The American left went ballistic. A corporate takeover of American politics! But it’s not the corporations we should be afraid of. It’s the anonymity. This year alone, anonymous donors spent $132.5 million to sway elections. As we’ve seen on the Internet and on our highways, anonymity kills responsible debate.

The dough needs a label, and Figaro is here to provide it: anonymoney. It’s the root of much political evil. (Once again, we apply a portmanteau to labeling. This mash-up figure lets you associate two different concepts in one word to achieve rhetorical hybrid vigor.)

The American Founders risked their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. America’s rich and powerful won’t even risk their comfort.

Fangs for the Metaphor

Bernie Sanders, the Socialist Senator from Vermont, has given an old-timey rip-snorter of a speech that’s gone viral among true believers. Figaro declares it a rhetorical failure. 

Everything about the speech is off:  the timing (better to stir up the troops before the election), the accent (Bernie, who grew up in New York, sounds like a Socialist), and the metaphor. Especially the metaphor: “There is a war going on in this country.”

Politicians love war metaphors. War brings people together to join forces and battle evil. Or it’s supposed to, anyway. But even the sexiest metaphors don’t work if they fail to match the subject. You can declare war on poverty, but poverty doesn’t fight back. It just sits there, a passive-aggressive enemy. You can declare war on drugs, but drugs just retreat back into their dens, where they do drugs. The “war” Bernie talks about isn’t a war at all. It’s a vast shift of wealth from 99 percent of the nation to the richest one-tenth of one percent, as Bernie himself points out.

It’s Label Monday again, so let us suggest a different rhetorical strategy for Bernie and his gauche-wing compatriots: label your opponent, not the phenomenon. Call the super-rich the Vampire Class. They suck the life force from the American economy, hide their identity behind anonymous political ads, and glamour independent voters with their mysterious mock-patriot charm. The Vampire Class. They’re coming to a Main Street near you.