Would an Amorous Ferret Be Better?

It was once said in another context that being in close quarters with such a volatile person was like being locked in a phone booth with an enraged ferret.

Divorce filed on behalf of Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons, quoted in the Las Vegas Sun

Meme, the idiom of the Web. From the Greek mimema, meaning “something imitated.”

Figaro will miss Jim Gibbons, who just lost the Republican primary for governor. He dallied (or something) with a former Playboy centerfold and a cocktail waitress, then claimed he hadn’t had sex with anyone, including his wife, in decades. (That admission probably shocked Nevadans more than the centerfold and cocktail waitress.)

Best of all, he’s responsible for the enraged ferret, an expression that has entered the zeitgeist as an Internet meme.

A meme can be a phrase, a picture, a joke, a grammatically challenged cat, or anything else that can be imitated. Coined by Richard Dawkins in his book, The Selfish Gene, the meme is the cultural version of a gene, something that spreads and replicates itself in the cultural body.

So why does Figaro call a meme the Internet version of an idiom? Because, like an idiom, it can stand on its own, has a discrete meaning, and can get imitated. Like a barrelful of monkeys or wooden nickels, the idiom and the meme are in the same kettle of fish. The “enraged ferret” is a cat on a hot tin roof, without the cat and the roof.

Someone has already reserved the web address. Expect LOL Ferrets to follow.

The Devil Wears Wingtips

This is the devil-in-the-details stage. It turns out the devil works for the lobbyists.

Journalist Simon Johnson on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Antistasis (an-TIS-tah-sis), the meaning shift. From the Greek, meaning “opposite stance.”

It appears that Congress will pass a tougher-than-predicted financial reform bill. By the time it gets signed by Obama and parsed into regulations, however, the Gucci-clad tenderizers on K Street will have made “reform” much easier for Wall Street to swallow. Simon Johnson, co-author of Thirteen Bankers, sums up the affair in a well-played antistasis, a figure that repeats a word while changing its connotation.

Figaro loves to screw up a good cliché, and the antistasis provides the perfect screw. Simon gives you a different picture of the devil, who’s no longer the incarnation of evil but its subcontractor. Now you try!

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. In our company, when you smoke, you’re fired.

Love makes the world go round. In your case, it goes round your penis.

Washington Made Me Cuckold Myself!

“In the poisonous environment of Washington, D.C., any personal failing is seized upon, often twisted, for political gain, I am resigning rather than put my family through that painful, drawn-out process.”

Indiana Rep. Mark Souder, in the Washington Post

metastasis (meh-TAH-stah-sis), the issue shifter. From the Greek, meaning “changing stance.”

Figarist Arie sent this quote into Ask Figaro, and fellow Figarist Al surmised that the congressman was employing a metastasis. Bing! 

The question is what kind of rhetoric lies behind a member of Congress who cheats on his wife and then quits to save his family from…the shame? No, Washington! It is indeed a metastasis—a word that literally means “changing stance.”

A particular form of metastasis is metastasizing in politics, where the speaker attacks on the basis of his own weakness. The Swift Boaters falsely slammed Kerry for being a Vietnam shirker, providing cover for George W. Bush’s, um, non-Vietnam service. The ploy seems awfully transparent, especially when delivered by a cheating husband—how dare you hurt my family, fellow politicians?—but it seems to work.

Why? Because tactics like that appeal to our increasingly tribal culture. If you’re a member of the congressman’s party, you see the media as a common enemy. If you’re an opponent, you’re not going to listen to him anyway. And if you’re under him, you’re probably not his wife.

Left Behind

We’re putting a tremendous amount of value on being able to pick the right one out of four little bubbles. 

Diane Ravitch on No Child Left Behind, interviewed in Slate

epiphoneme, the memorable sum-up. From the Greek, epiphonema, meaning “speak out on.”

No thinker did more to push for No Child Left Behind than Diane Ravitch, who served as assistant secretary of education under George Bush the First. She got her reforms, but now she calls them “deforms.” In a new book, she says she was flat-out wrong.

Her take on No Child Left Behind, the federal law that mandates tests to ensure accountability of public schools, boils down to the ultimate boil-down figure.  Pay close attention, class: the epiphoneme can make the difference whether you pass or fail as a memorable person yourself.

The figure acts like a reductio ad absurdum without the absurdum. Reduce an issue to its simplest, starkest point. If the result adds wisdom, you win. If you sound like Sarah Palin, you lose.

One of the most winning epiphonemes of all time comes from Charles Darwin, who neatly wrapped up human evolution and stuck a tail on it.  (You can see other examples from Figaro here and here.)

We’ll declare Ravitch a winner as well. But we’ll give her an F for timing.

You Shake. I’ll Stir.

You ought to get out of those wet clothes and into a dry martini.

“Every Day’s a Holiday” (1937)

antanaclasis, the pun. From the Greek, meaning, more or less, boomerang.

Technically, of course, the martini gets into the drinker. One generally doesn’t get into a martini without a large supply of bathtub gin.

Bertie Wooster, P.G. Wodehouse’s feckless English gentleman-about-town, often talked about wrapping himself around a drink. As with many good figures, the nonsense helps make it funny. But the liquid essence of the quote consists of some dry humor of its own: the word “dry.” It’s a special kind of pun that uses “wet” as a counterpoint to set it up.

The antanaclasis is that tricky kind of pun. It plays on a previous word, often through some sort of real or applied repetition; as in, “You ought to get into dry clothes and into a dry martini.”

Try the technique yourself by screwing up a cliché.  For instance, if your significant is a fashion hound, try something like: “The more clothes you change, the more you remain the same.”

Then pour a martini.

Git the Shotgun!

In red America, families form adults;
in blue America, adults form families.

National Journal

Chiasmus (key-ASS-mus), the criss-cross figure. From the Greek letter X.

Guess which state has the lowest divorce rate: Massachusetts, epicenter of taxes, secular humanism, and Satan.

The red states that work hardest to defend marriage, on the other hand, do the worst job of practicing it. That’s because their people marry younger. The younger the couple, the more doomed the marriage.

National Journal writer Jonathan Rauch uses a deft chiasmus to describe the national marriage gap. Use a chiasmus when you want to portray a difference as a mirror image. Rauch could have written: “In red America, people reach maturity when they marry. In blue America, people tend marry when they’re old enough to hold jobs and raise families.” Instead, he held a mirror up to one of America’s least-discussed scandals.

But then, maybe you don’t think a high divorce rate is scandalous. Maybe marriages are supposed to be serial. Seventeen-year-old Bristol Palin says she’ll marry her baby daddy, and conservatives cheer. Then they break up, and who cares?

To put it in a chiasmus:  In the blue states, reality dictates values. In the red states, values dictate reality.