Kramer's Self-Lynching

Quote:  “At last I feel vindicated for finding him to be the least funny character on that show.  After Jerry, that is.”   Comment on The Defamer.

Figure of Speech:  anesis (an-EE-sis), the lessening figure.  From the Greek, meaning “abating.”

When the bad-haired, unfunny Michael Richards played Kramer on Seinfeld, we thought he was channeling Phyllis Diller.  Turns out he’s really a serious Borat. “Shut up!” he replied wittily to African-American hecklers during his “comedy” routine, adding a nostalgic description of a lynching and liberal use of the N-word.

A Defamer participant named Trixie from Toronto responds with an anesis, one of the subtlest, most enjoyable figures.  The anesis begins with a thought and promptly unravels it with a devastating follow-up.  Trixie’s anesis kills two celeb birds with one stone:  Kramer was the least funny character on Seinfeld.  After Jerry.

Cue the rimshot.

Snappy Answer:  He’s taking a sensitivity workshop.  From Mel Gibson.

They Win the Squirrel Vote.

Quote: “We’re nuts! We’re all nuts!” Donald Fowler, a South Carolina Democratic leader, in the New York Times.

Figure of Speech: diacope (die-AH-co-pee), the near repeater.  From the Greek, meaning “cut in two.”

Having triumphed in Congress for the first time in 13 years, the Democrats are resuming their comfortable old habit of fighting each other.  Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi is strong-arming reluctant colleagues to accept earmark-crazy John Murtha as her Number Two.  Perennial pundit James Carville blames party chairman Howard Dean for not winning enough seats.  Deaniacs blame Democratic stalwarts for not giving Dean enough credit.  And liberal bloggers think they deserve more propers.  

“We are a diverse party,” explains Fowler, a southern Dem stalwart. But then he switches from the usual political pabulum into a diacope. The figure repeats a word or phrase (“We’re nuts!”), inserting another word in the middle (“all”) to jack up the emotion.

It’s just like old times.  Break out the silly hats!

Snappy Answer:  “And Figaro thanks you for it.”

Figaro Is a Draft Dodger.

Quote:  “You rewrite it, that’s how you write it.  You rewrite the rewrite, then prune that and add other stuff.”  Garrison Keillor in the New York Times Magazine.

Figure of Speech:  ploce, the subtle repetition.  From the Greek, meaning “braiding.”

Rarely have we seen a better example of a ploce — a figure that repeats words with slight changes in connotation, emphasis, or case.  Keillor does not just describe how to write a movie script; he evokes the act by repeating the word “rewrite” and using it a little differently each time.  The result is a sentence that seems to rewrite itself as you read it.

Not to mention excellent advice.  Figaro might take it someday.

Snappy Answer:  “That last clause is a little clunky. Can you rewrite it?”

Our All-Time Favorite Defense Secretary.

Quote:  “He would clap his hands, lick his lips, narrow his eyes into a squinty gaze and extemporize, patronize, chastise, sermonize and crack wise all at the same time.”  Linton Weeks, describing Donald Rumsfeld in the Washington Post.

Figure of Speech: homoioteleuton (ho-mee-o-tel-OO-ton), the rhyming figure.

Okay, so he botched a war.  We’ll miss Rummy nonetheless.  He was a rhetorician among rote players, a poet among prosaics.  He played the chiasmus like a yo-yo (“The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”), and gripped the conduplicatio like a hammer (“We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.  But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know”).

His rhetorical flights spurred reporters to match him.  Take Linton Weeks, whose postmortem column uses the rhyming homoioteleuton to capture Rumsfeld’s showmanship.  Hard as the figure is to pronounce (it rhymes with rootin’ tootin’), it conjures a rhetorical three-ring circus, rendering an image of overwhelming activity. We’re strangely reminded of Arlo Guthrie’s anti-war song “Alice’s Restaurant,” whose draftees are “injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected.”

As Rumsfeld’s enemies had expected, the Democrats got elected.  Now, will the course be corrected?

Snappy Answer:  “The only thing he couldn’t do well was defense.”

A Gadfly Flew Into His Mouth.

Quote:  “Casey’s campaign style was sleep apnea — periods of breathless gasping interrupted by occasional incoherent snorts.”  Time’s Joe Klein on Bob Casey beating Rick Santorum for the U.S. Senate.

Figure of Speech:  metaphor (MET-a-phor), the image swap.  From the Greek, meaning “carry beyond.”

Congratulations, Democrats, but don’t let it go to your heads.  You didn’t win it; the Republicans lost it.  Columnist Joe Klein imposes a hilarious metaphor on one such lucky candidate, creating a vivid picture of a snoring politician — a rhetorical special effect that rhetoric calls enargeia.  (The “snort” is another figure, the onomatopoeia. )

Metaphor is king of tropes — figures that swap one thing for another.  (The other three major tropes, according to the great rhetorician Kenneth Burke, are metonymy, synecdoche, and irony.)  Aristotle said that the metaphor combines two perspectives to “take hold of something fresh.”  Even apes seem to coin it; an orangutan named Chantek uses American Sign Language to call ketchup “tomato toothpaste.”

If the Democrats use their win arrogantly, Figaro offers a jeremiad:  Their goose, as we say metaphorically and idiomatically, will be cooked.

Snappy Answer:  “Then again, political reality seems like a nightmare.”

Tweedle Dee Versus Tweedle Stupid.

Quote:  “In this election, the Republicans deserve to lose, and the Democrats don’t deserve to win.”  Robert J. Samuelson in the Washington Post.

Figure of Speech:  scesis onomaton (SKEE-sis o-NOM-a-ton), the idea repeat.  From the Greek, meaning “related words.”

Voters are sick of the Republicans, and not just because the party led us into an unnecessary war and jacked up the biggest deficit in history.  Americans hate corruption more than anything; you usually get a sea change in Congress when it’s clear that the party in power is corrupt.  And, boy, is this party corrupt.

So what will Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi do if she becomes Speaker of the House?  As one of her first moves, she’ll appoint Alcee Hastings chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.  A former federal judge, Hastings was convicted by the Senate of bribery.  Way to clean things up, Nancy!

Robert Samuelson responds with a particularly neat scesis onomaton (or S.O., as we like to call it), in which an idea gets repeated in successive phrases.  Unlike the tautology, which claims to prove something, the S.O. simply offers a parallel set of opinions.  It lets you spring a clever little surprise.  Readers think they’re being set up for a contrast:  the Republicans deserve to lose…  But they get a comparison instead: …and the Democrats don’t deserve to win.

Figaro is beginning to wonder whether our republic’s founders were right about the two-party system.  They thought it was a very bad idea.

Snappy Answer:  “And non-voters don’t deserve anything.”