I’ll Stay with the Circus, Thanks

Quote:  “It’s a known fact y’all tired of the circus/ so come home where you smell the crack in the verses.” Rap group Clipse in their song “Reup Intro,” quoted in Slate’s “Music Box” column.

Figure of Speech:  enthymeme (EN thih meem), the argument packet.

Clipse isn’t like those phony rappers who never earned their street creds.  The two men in this group claim superior authenticity through their careers as cocaine dealers.

They state their case through a classic enthymeme, Aristotle’s rhetorical version of his logical syllogism.  The enthymeme (“something in the mind”) takes the audience’s value or belief as a jumping-off point for an argument.  It goes like this: belief, therefore conclusion.  It’s the centerpiece of Aristotelian Logos, the rational part of argument.

Figaro thinks these gentlemen make better logicians than rhymesters.

Snappy Answer:  “Is that a song or an advertising jingle?”

Not to Mention a Muddled Mix of Metaphors

Quote:  “Torino’s Olympics, a topsy-turvy mix of marvels and misadventures…” USA Today

Figure of Speech:  alliteration, the figure of picked pickled peppers.  Also known (among a very few rhetoricians) as paroemion (par OH mee on).

Why did Figaro wait to do this figure, after 148 entries ranging from accismus to yogiism? Well, for one thing, you presumably already know it.  For another, alliteration is the clumsiest, laziest figure of all, and an unfortunate favorite of under-caffeinated headline writers.

The USA Today reporter, suffering from jet lag and over-hyped American athletes, resorts to alliteration (“mix of marvels and misadventures”) in a frantic attempt to warm up a chilly extravaganza that few Americans watched.

Snappy Answer:  “Say that five times fast.”

The Royal “We” Is a Nice Touch

Quote:  “We will be on the offense, and we will protect the American people by defeating them overseas, so we do not have to face them here at home.” President Bush.

Figure of Speech:  bushism (BUSH-ism), mangling syntax in the service of one’s homeland.

Taking a break from fundraising in the Midwest, Bush spoke to a college crowd in Cincinnati.  The president assured his audience that he would lead them to defeat overseas and avoid facing them here at home.

The bushism is more subtle than its detractors think; it emphasizes key “value” terms (offense, American people, home) without the distraction of logic.

Snappy Answer:  “Thank you for your candor, Mr. President.”

Learn to talk like Bush!

You’re Fired

Quote:   “We didn’t think we were hiring Dag Hammarskjold.”  Anonymous member of the Harvard Corporation in Slate.

Figure of Speech:  litotes (lie TOE tees), the figure of ironic understatement.

Harvard’s president, the less than circumspect Larry Summers, was forced by to step down for doing exactly what the university’s board of directors hired him to do:  stir the doddering old place up.  Or perhaps he had to resign because he did it badly.

Either way, the anonymous director employs a litotes, which makes an understatement (usually negative) as a form of irony.  Dag Hammarskjold was a secretary of the U.N. noted for his adroit diplomacy.  Larry Summers was not.

Snappy Answer:   “More like Donald Trump, we’d say.”

Not That She’s Prejudiced Against Those Ragheads

Quote: “Maybe it’s corporate racial profiling, but I don’t want foreign companies, particularly ones with links to 9/11, running American ports.” Maureen Dowd in the New York Times.

Figure of Speech: parrhesia (par-REZ-ia), the excuse-my-French figure.

Congress is having what the L.A. Times calls a “bipartisan hissy fit” over the United Arab Emirates’ acquisition of a British company that runs some terminals in major U.S. ports. The “links to 9/11” probably refers to the fact that a few of the hijackers passed through the UAE; by which definition, the USA has even greater links to 9/11.

MoDo’s use of a parrhesia (“frankness”) betrays the real reason for Congressional and columnist grandstanding: the terrifying word “Arab.” The parrhesia apologizes in advance for candid speech. You usually hear it right before a thoughtless generalization. (“It isn’t PC to say this, but…”)

Snappy Answer: “The Brits don’t count as foreign. (Except Arab Brits. They’re foreign.)”

Space: The Final Mausoleum

Quote: "Space travel is becoming affordable if you die first." William Saletan in Slate .

Figure of Speech: Two of them, actually -- synoeciosis (sin-eh-SEE-eh-sis), and Catch-22.

In March, a rocket will blast 186 cremated corpses into space, including the remains of James Doohan, the actor who played Scotty on "Star Trek." (Talk about playing a role to the hilt.) The price starts at less than 100 bucks, versus $25,000 for economy class on future launchesfor a passenger with a heartbeat.

Saletan, who does Slate's "Human Affairs" column, employs a Catch-22: You can enjoy an affordable space flight only if you're dead. The figure, which comes from Joseph Heller's novel of the same name, refers to a "catch" in military regulations: You can get a insanity discharge if you request it, but anyone who requests it must be sane. The Catch-22 is a close relative of the synoeciosis ("with itself"), a sort of long oxymoron.

Snappy Answer: "You go first."