Mrs. Figaro Rocks the Marriage Boat!

Figaro’s wife, Mrs. Figaro, put this author in a terrible bind. Writing a question on Ask Figaro, she clearly wanted her husband to excoriate a certain pudgy commentator for lying about a historical document. Instead, Figaro found him innocent! Can this literal marriage be figuratively saved?

Dear Fig.,

Is a lie a figure of speech as Stephanie Mencimer implies in her piece for Rolling Stone?

Love,

Mrs. Fig.

Dear Mrs. Fig.,

It’s so nice to exchange sweet nothings over a public website. In this case you refer to Glenn Beck’s claim that he “held the first inaugural address written in his own hand by George Washington.”

The National Archives promptly replied that no one, not even a Constitution-adoring patriot, is permitted to touch the sacred documents. Glenn Beck most certainly did not make physical contact with Washington’s first inaugural address.

But does his claim constitute a lie? According to Figaro’s Oxford English Dictionary, to “behold” an object implies that one is holding that object in one’s eye.  This is a definite trope—a metonymy, to be exact.

Therefore, Figaro declares Mr. Beck’s little stretcher to be figurative (or, more accurately, tropical) and not a literal lie.

On the other hand, if Mrs. Figaro plans to take this conclusion badly, we declare Mr. Beck to be a lying two-faced bastard.

All our love,

Fig.

Comments

[Real American]

I just don't see what you-all's problem is with Glenn Beck. He's a comedian like Colbert. Is Colbert lying?

[Marie]

I just read your book and don't see how Dorothy ever stays mad at you. It sounds like a wonderful relationship.

[Peter]

Looks like Glenn, despite the inflammatory Photoshopped Godwinism, gets to skate on this one - hold and behold - close enough for jazz.

The real question? Will Mrs. Fig's lie about the publisher of the Mencimer article (Mother Jones, not Rolling Stone) stand?

(although in all fairness to the Mrs., the distinction between the two magazines is pretty thin.)

[Figaro]

Thanks for the correction! We knew it was Mother Jones but our rhetoric goggles were on.

Re: hold-behold, it's not that the concepts are "close enough," it's that they both share the same trope, the idea of holding something in the eye. Did Beck intend that trope? He certainly intended to tell a good story, and he thinks tropically. Sometimes too tropically.

[David]

Dangerous as it is to involve oneself in (ah, how to describe this? What rhetorical term best defines the situation - the land mine - I am about to transgress?) - if Beck claimed he HELD the document, that is not the same as BEHOLDING the document. (Whether we mean BEHOLDING as in SEEING or BEHOLDEN as in one's debt, which certainly we Mr.s are to the Mrs. (ah! a punctuational rhetorical move).

An interesting side note: There is a Talmudic debate regarding possession of an ownerless object. If two people claim ownership, simply saying "I saw it first" does not establish ownership, even though colloquially "seeing" may mean the same thing as holding. One must physically hold the object to claim honestly to have held it.

I do notice, however, that Mr. Beck performed a grammatical rhetorical foul, or foul-up. If he wrote out Washington's inaugural himself, that is, if he copied it by hand, and it was the first time he did so, then indeed, he could "hold the first inaugural address written in his own hand" and it would be - grammatically transferring the verb - the first inaugural that Washington wrote. But there would be two documents. The one Washington wrote that no one touches, and the one that Beck wrote that is a copy, and is the first one that Beck wrote.

Such ambiguity might be amusing, if it did not also conceal duplicity and rhetorical demagoguery. I refer us back to p. 18 of Thank You For Arguing.

[Figaro]

OK, David, the Talmud trumps Figaro. Is this a great comment board or what?

[Marco]

Wouldn't Figro's wife's name be Figura?

[Figaro]

Not to her face, Marco.