What’s a Natoma Worth?

 If in this job I can save one life, one family, one person, one Natoma, this job is worth it.

Rep. John Boccieri (D-OH),
explaining his decision to vote for the health care bill.

anaphora (an AH for ah), the first-word repeater. From the Greek, meaning “carrying back.” Also synecdoche (sin-EK-doe-kee), the generalizing trope.

Natoma Canfield, an Ohio cleaning woman, can’t afford health insurance since her current insurer jacked up her rates. And she can’t switch to a new policy because of  a pre-existing condition. President Obama flew to see her—and to convince wavering Democrat John Boccieri, who just happened to represent Canfield’s district.

Boccieri uses an anaphora—repeating the first word of successive phrases or clauses—to  explain his anecdote-based decision. Often employed to express politically useful emotion, the figure shows he cares for every single blessed constituent. Thus he polishes his disinterest—one of the three characteristics of a healthy ethos (the other two being virtue and practical wisdom). Why, he’d sacrifice his job if it saved just one life!

He might have organized his phrases better, starting with “family” and then listing “person,” “life,” and “Natoma.” But we’ll give him credit nonetheless. Plus he gets a bonus for throwing in a synecdoche, making a Natoma the currency of insured people.

Of course, it would be rather difficult to prove whether anyone’s life will be saved by one congressman’s vote. But health care lies in the realm of rhetoric. Certainly not logic.

Wants a Punning Dime

A loyal Figarist, Arthur, inquired on Ask Figaro why Figaro had not yet written about the punned cliche called the Feghoot. Although Figaro once proudly wrote a magazine headline that read “Hale, Britannia? Britannia Waives the Rules,” he confesses to having been ignorant of the term “Feghoot.”

It seems that the Feghoot is an eponym for Ferdinand Feghoot, a science fiction character invented in the mid-1950s by Reginald Bretnor under the gnome de plume Grendel Briarton. Feghoot went on short intergalactic missions for the Society for the Aesthetic Re-Arrangement of History, with each shaggy-dog tale ending in an outrageous, cliché-based pun. Time Magazine carried a great Feghoot headline in 1971, when China became a member of the U.N.: “China in the Bull Shop.”

While the Feghoot technically includes a very short story, we hereby declare that this species of punchline qualifies as a figure of speech under that name. You may find this hard to swallow; but Figaro is the bastard of his own ptomaine.

Izzums Feewing Bwue?

Sacha Baron Cohen, sadly, has been taken off the list after a skit he prepared with Ben Stiller spoofing Avatar was deemed too potentially hurtful to James Cameron’s feeling-weelings.

Dana Stevens in Slate

Reduplicative, the dilly-dallying figure.  Also prosopopoeia (pro so po PEE a), the figure of personification. From the Greek, meaning “to make a person.”

Poor widdle Jimmy. As every rhetorically minded 13-year-old knows, baby-talk mimicry works great for abusing someone, especially other 13-year-olds. One rarely sees the device used to discuss Oscar nominations.

Our quote’s baby talk takes the form of a reduplicative, which repeats a word with a different letter or two; e.g., flim-flam, hee-haw, uh-huh, shilly-shally, tick-tock, and the sweet Tic Tac. The reduplicative is not to be mistaken for the reduplicatio, a.k.a. anadiplosis. Someday Figaro is going to attempt to rename all these darn terms, most of which are Greek to him.

But the prosopopoeia, which addresses someone who’s absent, shall never be renamed, because it’s so impressive when one uses it in a sentence—which Figaro does as often as possible. (To a dog barking up the wrong tree: “No squirrel there, Sir; your utterances constitute a mere prosopopoeia.”) If we were going to rename the prosopopoeia, though (there, we used it again!), we would probably call it the avatar.

Aw, Shoot

Praise the Lord 
and pass the ammunition. 

Chaplain Howell M. Forgy of the USS New Orleans

isocolon (i-so-COL-on), the figure of even clauses. From the Greek, meaning “equal member.” For another example, see this.

On December 7, 1941, when Japan attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Lieutenant Forgy walked along an ammunition line encouraging the sailors. He employed a beautifully rhythmic isocolon, a figure that balances a pair of clauses of similar sound and length. It works great in comparisons, contrasts, and paradoxes; in Forgy’s case it became the lyrics of a hit song.

You would think that Figaro would do this on Pearl Harbor Day. But today seems equally apt:

• We can now carry our guns onto Amtrak trains, thanks to a new law signed by President Obama.
• Last month, the Indiana legislature passed a disgruntled-workers’-rights bill allowing employees to keep guns in their vehicles on company property, even if the employer forbids it.
• In Virginia, legislators have reintroduced an NRA-backed proposal to allow students to carry guns on college campuses. Maybe the law can be enacted in time to commemorate the third year anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre.
• Best of all, Virginians are celebrating passage in its General Assembly of a bill allowing citizens to carry concealed guns in bars. The new governor supports it, too.

Praise the Lord and pass the Jack Daniels!

This Is Your Federal Budget

They ‘potatoed’ him
into eternity. 

Alan Simpson, co-chairman of the new deficit panel, speaking of press attacks on Dan Quayle.

anthimeria (an thih MARE ee uh), the verbing figure.
From the Greek, meaning “one part for another.”

Figaro is definitely dating himself here. But, hey, we’re talking Alan Simpson, the 2,000-year-old former Wyoming senator and conservative funny man. The quote refers to George H.W. Bush’s hapless running mate in the 2000 election, who misspelled “potato” on a blackboard while talking up education to students.

The figure Simpson uses takes one part of speech and turns it into another. As strip Calvin said in the comic strip, “Verbing weirds language.” Verbing can also humorize language, as Simpson proves here. (Hard-core Figarists are welcome to point out that Simpson’s “potatoed” is also a rather starchy metonymy.)

We’re glad to see Simpson back in the political limelight. He’s the only hope for Obama’s toothless deficit panel. Simpson will not only give the panel some serious policy dentures; the straight-talking Republican is likely to shame the hacks in both parties and get the few remaining fair-minded Americans to understand the fix we’re in.

The national debt will grow six-fold in the decades to come if current fiscal policies remain in place. Obama’s so-called freeze on domestic spending won’t help. If we eliminated all non-defense discretionary spending—wiping out all anti-terrorism activities, airport security, border security, education, law enforcement, environmental protection, transportation, and so on—we still wouldn’t close the budget gap. Defense is off the table. Congress won’t do anything about the soaring health costs that are behind most of the growth in debt. How about raising taxes to Reagan-era levels? Forget about it. Result: bankruptcy within 15 years.

Simpson had better spell one heck of a potato.

Figaro Isn't Bi. He's Non.

For Obama, bipartisanship means good-faith outreach to the other party, a genuine consideration of their ideas, and incorporation of those ideas that both parties agree on. But the starting point is what Democrats want. Republicans’ definition of bipartisanship is starting at zero and building from there. In other words, the two parties begin on equal footing.

Christopher Beam in Slate

oxymoron (oxy-MOR-on), the contradiction in terms. From the Greek, meaning “sharp dullness.”

The ancients Greeks, those witty chaps, made their term for an oxymoron … an oxymoron! (By “sharp dullness” they meant “cleverly stupid,” not “old knife that can give you tetanus.”) 

“Bipartisanship” is sharply dull, all right. Let’s take it apart.

In a democracy, “partisanship means “along party lines.” As in, “I’m voting for this even though it doesn’t make any sense, simply because I’m a (circle one) [Democrat] [Republican].”

“Bi,” when not used by adolescent males, means “two.”

Put them together and the meaning becomes, “People who detest each other singing ‘Kumbaya’ for the cameras.” When people go beyond party lines and actually accomplish something—Figaro is old enough to remember when that actually happened in Washington—the effort is not bipartisan but nonpartisan.

Meaning: Abstinence from party. Not some bi fantasy.