Bikinis Save Energy

Paris Hilton might not be as big a celebrity as Barack Obama, but she obviously has a better energy plan.

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds.

argumentum ad fortiori, the argument from strength. From the Latin, meaning “argument from strength.”

  New Paris Hilton video on Funny or Die! Responding to a McCain ad that likens Obama to celebrities like the airhead heiress, Paris appears in a leopard-spotted swimsuit. “I want America to know that I’m, like, totally ready to lead,” she says, announcing her candidacy to become president a mere eight years before the U.S. Constitution allows.

She does a nice mashup of her rivals’ energy policies: “We can do limited offshore drilling with strict environmental oversight while creating tax incentives to get Detroit making hybrid and electric cars,” she says.

The McCain campaign volleys back with a very nice argumentum ad fortiori. If something more-so is true, then it’s likely that something less-so will be true as well. Or vice versa. If Paris’s energy policy trumps Barack’s, then we all had better move to Jedda.

Snappy Answer: Plus, she’d be the only president to make energy policy seem dirty.

Scalia Re-invents Reality TV

Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. … Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?”

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in a speech made in Canada last summer, quoted by Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick.
  
Figure of Speech: contrarium (con-TRARE-ium), the one-two punch.
  

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Sorry About the Daily Figure

Our dear Figarist, if you asked for the Daily Figure and wonder why you haven’t received it, the reasons are purely technical—which, in Figaro’s case, means insurmountable.  He is unable to figure out how to get past spam.

We’re also sorry for the long hiatus in journals.  We’ve been traveling almost constantly, and haven’t quite learned how to manipulate goofy images of politicians on our Blackberry.

 But Figaro will not abandon figures. He promises.

This Flip Is a Flop

Quote:  “Don’t assume that because I don’t agree with you on something that it must be because I’m doing that politically.”  Barack Obama, quoted in Reuters.

Figure of Speech:  cacosyntheton (cak-o-SIN-the-ton), the bad speech. From the Greek, meaning “badly composed.”

When the silver-tongued Obama speaks badly, it’s news.  He shows real discomfort in rebutting liberal accusations that he has flip-flopped on:

• Iraq  (he is slightly backing off his original pledge to withdraw troops),
• Gun control (he tepidly praised the Supreme court’s recent decision uphold the Second Amendment while ignoring the “well ordered militia” part), and
• The right to privacy (he supports expanding the feds’ wiretapping authority).

Dems have a reputation for their spinelessness, whether deserved or not, and a flip-flopping creature qualifies as an invertebrate.  (You may think that McCain has been flip-flopping like a large-mouth bass on a slippery dock. But he’s a war hero and a Republican, which by definition means he is not spineless but flexible.)

So Obama must show good posture by refuting the flip-flopping charges every time he flip-flops.  But here’s a rhetorical lesson:  Watch when a normally articulate politician speaks with awkward syntax.  It usually means he finds himself on shaky logical ground. Today’s quote uses a double negative, an isolated pronoun, and two pathetically dependent clauses to mean:  I’m not being political. You just don’t like what I say.

Then again, Figaro used to be anti-flip-flopping, but now he’s for it.  If only Bush had flip-flopped on Iraq a week before the invasion.

Snappy Answer:  “You’re just saying that to be political.”

We Mean, Ick

Quote:  “They have to embrace the ‘ick’ factor.” Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, in the Washington Post.

Figure of Speech:  metallage (meh-TALL-uh-gee), the getting all medieval figure. From the Greek, meaning “making a swap.”

Are teens using oral sex to maintain their technical virginity? A recent study says no. Only 23 percent of teenagers who describe themselves as virgins say they have had oral sex in the last six months, while 82 percent of those who have had vaginal sex had also had oral sex.

The moral of that story, according to Sarah Brown, is for parents to “broaden the number of topics they discuss.”  You know, like birds, bees, fellatio…

Brown uses a currently popular idiom, “ick factor,” to describe the feeling that parents have when they hold a sexual discussion with the fruit of their loins. The expression qualifies as a metallage, a useful figure that takes parts of speech that aren’t nouns — such as verbs or adjectives — and uses them as the object of a sentence.

Samuel Jackson does this in the film Pulp Fiction, when he threatens “to get all medieval on your ass.”  Figaro assumes he was not referring to a sexual technique.

Snappy Answer:  “Do we have to embrace it? Can’t we, like, nod to it?”

She Can't Be Stopped

Quote:  “If he does not have the gumption to put me in my place, when superdelegates are deserting me, money is drying up, he’s outspending me 2-to-1 on TV ads, my husband’s going crackers and party leaders are sick of me, how can he be trusted to totally obliterate Iran and stop Osama?” Maureen Dowd in the New York Times

Figure of Speech: dialogismus (dial-o-GIS-mus), the quoting figure.

It’s overtime again. Obama just can’t “close the deal,” as Clinton triumphantly puts it. Maureen Dowd, the feline columnist for the Times, sums up Hillary’s argument in a hyperbolic dialogismus, a figure that puts words in another person’s mouth — often in a way that the “quotee” wouldn’t exactly put herself.

Good point about the husband and the party leaders, though, Hill.

Snappy Answer:  Do we have to totally obliterate Iran? Can’t we just, like, obliterate it?