Let’s Disagree to Disagree

Quote:  “Don’t expect to agree with me on everything because that would be unrealistic. I don’t even agree with me on everything.”  Rudolph Giuliani, speaking at Regent University

Figure of Speech:  aporia, the figure of doubt.  From the Greek, meaning “doubt.”

The leading Republican candidate for president believes supports gay rights and choice in abortion.  Rudy Giuliani was careful not to mention those tricky stands when he addressed Pat Robertson’s Regent University today.  (Robertson is not so keen on gays or abortion.)

But the pugnacious former New York mayor hinted at their differences with a disarming aporia, a figure that admits ignorance or uncertainty.  Lincoln was a master of aporia, lowering his audience’s expectations at the beginning of a speech by telling them not to expect much.

In Giuliani’s case, though, something else is going on .  He’s making fun of his own well-known pugnacity.  So he doesn’t plead uncertainty; he’s so certain that he can argue both sides and convince even himself.

Now, there’s an arguer after Figaro’s heart.

Snappy Answer:  “I don’t blame you.”

Pumping America

Quote:  “Power has made reality its bitch.”  Mark Danner, in a commencement address delivered to graduates of the rhetoric department at Berkeley.

Figure of Speech:  prosopopoeia, the figure of personification.  From the Greek, meaning “to make a person.”

Today’s quote refers to a famous interview an “unnamed official” (probably named Karl Rove) gave to writer Ron Suskind for the New York Times Magazine.  “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality,” the official said (anonymity being its own form of reality-creating, or un-creating).

Mark Danner takes the White House reality and gives it life, Frankenstein-like, in a prosopopoeia.  The figure makes an animal or thing take on human qualities.  Danner’s rhetorical reality takes on the qualities of a prison rapist — hyperbole at its most hyperbolific.

“Our age,” Danner says, “is truly the Age of Rhetoric.”  But, as Isocrates would say, isn’t every age the Age of Rhetoric?

Snappy Answer:  “Reality should get a WMD tattoo.”

Did the Earth Move for You?

Quote:  “The biggest problem with earthquake prediction studies is that you do not know when there will be an earthquake.”  Alasdair Skelton , Stockholm University, Sweden

Figure of Speech:  Catch-22; or, in rhetoric, autophasia, the rule that chases its own tail. From the Greek, meaning “speaks of itself.”

Poor Professor Skelton.  If he only knew when an earthquake was going to happen, his prediction could be 100 percent accurate.  But then he’d be out of a job.  Thanks to the nimble Figarist Jack Quick for providing today’s quote.  It’s a superb example of an autophasia, a rule that one must violate to obey. 

Long before Joseph Heller’s classic novel, the ancients knew their Catch-22.  After all, it takes a logician to catch an illogician.

Snappy Answer:  “To paraphrase our President, we Americans don’t predict earthquakes.  We make them.”

But the Chicks Really Dig His Fake-Abs Shirt

Quote:  “If you need a clever t-shirt to seem like you have a personality, the actual subtext of the t-shirt is that you have no personality.”  Hot Chicks with Douchebags blog.

Figure of Speech:  concessio, the ju-jitsu figure.  From the Latin, meaning “concession.”  Also antistrophe, the last-word repeater.  From the Greek, meaning “turn to the opposite side.”

Figaro should be doing actual work to support his Isocrates habit.  But his devotion to fellow Figarists made him spend the morning with a website on hair-gelled guys with dog tags and bottle tans who pose with, um, hot chicks.  It’s blogalicious: tasteless, sexist, and hilarious.

The site’s creator, douchebag1, demonstrates a colloquial mastery of figures and neologisms.  (See his desperately hormonal definition of cleavite.)  With today’s quotation, he offers an astute observation in a figurative two-fer.  The concessio takes your opponent’s point and use it to your own advantage.  Hey, clever tee shirt, which means you’re not.  And the antistrophe repeats the last word in consecutive phrases or clauses.  Use it to contrast a pair of ideas, such as cleverness/lameness.  Or, in this case, douchebags/hot chicks.

Snappy Answer:  “That’s okay.  She’s with stupid.”

For more on the art of concession, see page 20 of Figaro’s book.

But His Penmanship Is First Rate

Quote:  “The president cannot eliminate constitutional protections with the stroke of a pen by proclaiming a civilian, even a criminal civilian, an enemy combatant subject to indefinite military detention.”  Federal Judge Diana Gribbon Motz

Figure of Speech:  metonymy (meh-TON-y-my), the scale-changing figure.  From the Greek, meaning “name change.”

A three-judge panel ruled that the president does not have the authority to declare civilians “enemy combatants” and jail them without habeas corpus.  Judge Motz uses a classic metonymy when she writes for the 2-1 majority.  The president is literate enough to sign documents with more than one stroke, and that makes it a metonymy, a little thing that stands for a big thing, or the reverse.

The difference between a metonymy and its unpronounceable look-alike cousin, the synecdoche, causes a lot of confusion. There’s too much overlap between the two figures, and  Figaro is tired of parsing it.  He’s more interested in the practical use of rhetoric than in being right all the time.  So from now on, anything that makes a part stand for a whole, or a species for a genus, or little things for big things, or vice versa, shall henceforth be a metonymy.

There.  He corrupted a 2,500-year rhetorical tradition with the stroke of a, uh, keyboard.

Snappy Answer:  “If the Constitution won’t keep us safe, let’s get rid of the Constitution.”

Technically, the metonymy is a kind of figure called a trope.  For more on tropes, see page 212 of Figaro’s book. 

The Political Yawn

Quote: “Is it possible to be quoted yawning?” Philippe Reines, Hillary Clinton’s Senate spokesman, in the Washington Post.

Figure of Speech:  mycterismus (mik-ter-IS-mus), the sneer.  From the Greek, meaning “sneer.”

Two Hillary biographies — one by Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame and the other by a pair of longtime New York Times reporters — offer more dish on both woman and husband.  Nothing new, says (sorry: yawns) Hillary’s mouthpiece. Reines pulls off a very nice mycterism, a figure that insults or belittles the victim while making an appropriate gesture.  The figure traditionally has the insult actually describe the gesture; John Cleese does this at King Arthur in a Monty Python movie.

The trouble with Reines’ mycterism is that some of the new stuff is kind of interesting.  Bill apparently wanted to leave Hillary for another woman (not Flowers), and both spouses appear to have made some very sleazy attempts to keep the Prez’s affairs under wraps.

But the worst stuff is more about Bill than Hill.  Figaro divides recent presidents into three categories:  horny, feckless, and alarmingly faithful.  Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Clinton belong in the horny category.  Carter and H.W. Bush, along with the vastly overrated Truman, we’ll call feckless. Then you have Nixon, Reagan, and George W. Bush, devoted husbands.  So, being president means screwing around, being screwy, or screwing the country.

Take your pick.

Snappy Answer:  “Can you say it while spinning?”