He’s Really a Robot Controlled by Donny Osmond
Quote: “His teeth are on message, and no hair grows without a plan and a briefing.” John Dickerson in Slate.
Figure of Speech: anthropomorphism (an-thro-po-MOR-phism), the personification figure. From the Greek, meaning “turning human.”
Figaro’s Rhetorical Rule No. 1: Don’t let your rhetoric show. If Mitt Romney wins in 2008, he’ll be the most presidential-looking president since Warren Harding. But looking the part isn’t always rhetorically correct; a strong chin and perfect grooming can make a candidate look too slick, especially if he lacks Reaganesque ideological passion.
John Dickerson, Slate’s political pundit, showcases Romney’s slickness with a spot-on anthropomorphism, a figure that lends human characteristics to inhuman objects or beings. (Figaro hates calling a ship a “she,” for instance. Click here to offer your most annoying anthropomorphisms.) Dickerson deftly uses political jargon (“on message”) to politicize Mitt’s whitened and coiffed charms, and he throws in a double negative (“no hair grows without…”) to imply zero tolerance for the non-camera-ready.
So what should Romney do: stand in front of a wind machine in his next ad? Not necessarily. The self-conscious flaw can look slick, too. This is why sensible people don’t run for the presidency. As Mitt himself might say, you’re darned if you do and darned if you don’t.
Snappy Answer: “But were those eyebrows properly focus-grouped?”
Reader Comments (20)
Anthropomorphism screws up conservation by making us treat species inappropriately, favor the cute over the ugly, and the individual creature over the ecosystem.
"America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality...."
That may not be directly relevant to your request for annoying anthropomorphisms; but I think it would be a mistake to confuse Harding with a human being.
S.
Kim
Sorry.
Fig.
Fig.
Fig.
Fig.
Fig.