Dead Men Don't Say "I'm a Dead Man"

Quote:  “I’m a dead man.”  Lobbyist Brent R. Wilkes in the New York Times.

Figure of Speech:  enallage (en-ALL-a-gee), the grammatical swap.

Brent Wilkes is a master at what he calls “transactional lobbying.”  For a mere $706,000 in “campaign contributions,” he and his firm received $100 million in federal defense contracts earmarked quietly into law.   Wilkes drives a black Hummer cutely adorned with the license plate “MIPR ME.”  The acronym stands for “military interdepartmental payment request,” a.k.a. big-time payoff.

But the fun is over;  a plea agreement signed by crooked Congressman Randy Cunningham names him as “co-conspirator No. 1.”  Wilkes naturally denies any wrongdoing, but the plea makes him radioactive.  He describes his condition with an enallage (“switch”), a figure that swaps one tense, case or mood for another.  Not I’m gonna die, but I’m dead.  Then again, maybe he is a dead man. In Washingtonese, that means “won’t get phone calls returned.”

They say if you want a friend in that town, get a dog.  Figaro thinks that would be cruel.

Snappy Answer:  “Don’t get our hopes up.”

Except in Texas, They Pretend to Like It

Quote:  “This is Texas hot.”  Carla Sullivan, dockmaster at Hyannis Marina, Massachusetts, in the Associated Press.

Figure of Speech: anthimeria (an-thih-MER-ia), the verbing figure.

Global warming is having a swell summer.  In New York City, the nighttime temp failed to dip below 92 last night.  Pitiful hordes carrying little more than a bathing suit and a bottle of gin could be seen fleeing to the Hamptons.

Carla Sullivan, a resident of normally brisk Cape Cod, describes the weather by using “Texas” as an adverb instead of a comparison.  Not “It’s as hot as Texas,” but “It’s Texas hot.”  When you change normal grammar — turning a noun into a verb, a verb into an adjective, and so on — you coin an anthimeria.  It’s one of Figaro’s faves, as anyone who has read his “In Defense of Like” knows.

Carla also could have anthimerized the weather by saying “It’s Hell hot.”  That works, too.   In fact, we’re not sure we can tell the difference.

Snappy Answer:  “And Florida humid.”

A Glass Half Full of Quagmire

Quote:  “If this is an opportunity, what’s Iraq? A once-in-a-lifetime chance?”  Richard Haass, former official with the Bush State Department, in the Washington Post.

Figure of Speech:  diasyrmus (di-a-SYR-mus), the ridiculous comparison.

In his weekly radio address, Bush called the war in Lebanon “a moment of opportunity.”  That got a laugh out of Richard Haass, who was the State Department’s policy director during Bush’s first term. Haass ridicules Bush’s knee-jerk optimism with a diasyrmus (“tearing apart”), a comparison that reduces the opponent’s point to absurdity.

The diasyrmus is a powerful figure because it’s tough to answer without digging yourself even deeper into absurdity.  Which, come to think of it, does not seem to bother this president.

Snappy Answer:  “Halliburton sure thought so.”

And Hold the Ancho... I Mean, The Fish Whose Stench Offends Allah

Quote:  “President Ahmadinejad has issued a decree banning the use of foreign words and urging us to find substitutes for those words.” Spokesman for Iran’s Academy of Persian Language and Literature.

Figure of Speech:  Atticism (ATT-i-cism), the native language ploy.

From now on, you must call an Iranian pizza an “elastic loaf.”  A helicopter is not a helicopter but “rotating wings.” And a mobile phone now has the sexy name of “companion phone,” allowing randy young Iranians to set their companion phones to vibrate.

Why would a democratically elected religious fanatic care about foreign words?  Because speaking pure Persian makes modern Persians feel more Persian, raising them over pizza-spewing foreigners and boosting loyalty to their plain-spoken leader.  Atticism, the use of “pure” language, dates back to ancient Greece, when Athenians insisted on speaking good old Attic Greek (free of Persian words, coincidentally).

Fundamentalists and “official language” boosters are often the same people, because values and thenative tongue serve the same purpose:  to make the tribe feel purer than thou.  Thank God they don’t live in America.

Snappy Answer:  “But Persian is foreign.”

Whose God?

Quote:  “Are we children of a lesser God?  Is an Israeli teardrop worth more than a drop of Lebanese blood?”  Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

Figure of Speech:  epiplexis (eh-pih-PLEX-is), the emotional rhetorical question.

Prime Minister Siniora is watching the destruction of his country while diplomats dither.  He pleads for help with an epiplexis, a kind of rhetorical question that arouses guilt in an audience. The word comes from the Greek for “to strike upon,” presumably because the orator would smack his chest in a gesture of grief.

Siniora’s comparison of a drop of Lebanese blood with an Israeli teardrop sounds poetic, if a little bizarre.  (He fails to mention Hezbollah’s — what — drop of sweat?)  The analogy recalls Cicero’s warning against using too much pathos in a speech. “Nothing,” the great Roman said, “dries more quickly than a tear.”

And when tears dry, anger often follows.

Snappy Answer:  “Don’t worry.  The war in Iraq will bring peace to your region.”

Exceeding Bush's Attention Span

Quote:  “Ex-cop and ex-con help sexy customs agent indict money launderer.  Two fine performances, both by cars.”  TV listing for 2 Fast 2 Furious in the New York Times.

Figure of Speech: paraprosdokian (para-pros-DOK-ian), the surprise ending.  Also chleuasmos (clu-AS-mos), damning through faint praise.  Also epiphonema (e-pih-pho-NEE-ma), the memorable summary.

Slate  astutely judges the Times’s TV listings to be the paper’s best writing.  (Review of Before and After:  “New England couple’s son charged with murder.  Needs more in between.”)  We especially love the Times’s capsule on 2 Fast 2 Furious, because it achieves a trifecta of figures.  The paraprosdokian starts with a bland clause or cliche (“Two fine performances…”), then hits you upside the head with an unexpected follow-up (“both by cars.”) The chleuasmos (“taunt”) slings an insult via ironic flattery; it damns through faint praise of cars.

Finally, the epiphonema captures an argument in a short, pithy summary.  Nostalgists lament the decline in readers’ attention spans, but the ancients were crazy about the witty one-liner.  They would have loved the Four Word Film Review.  (Superman Returns:  “Superman stalks Lane family.”  The Devil Wears Prada:  “Wolf in Streep’s clothing.”)

How about a site that summarizes political issues in four words? (Stem cells: Amoebas, or midget humans?) Oh, wait.  The media already do that.

Snappy Answer:  New York Times:  Lousy reporting, great TV.