She said, He said, Whom to believe?

Economist and Journalist Robert Kuttner responded with the correct pronoun case to a "He said, she said" question concerning Senators Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama and their respective stances on mandated health insurance coverage. Incidentally, Kuttner probably also gave the right answer to journalist Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now! See below, in blue, Mr. Kuttner's proper usage.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, in terms of the mandates issue, because obviously both(Paul) Krugman, in his various articles, and Clinton have claimed, on the one hand, that Obama does have mandates—he has mandates for coverage of all children—so that the mandates issue is not a principled issue, it’s a tactical issue as to what you think could be approved. Your sense of that?

ROBERT KUTTNER: My point is that a mandate, in a situation where the whole system is sick, makes that sickness the problem of the individual. Instead of putting a gun to people’s heads, typically people who can’t afford good quality insurance, and saying to them, “You must, under penalty of law, or pay a tax or pay a fine, go out and find decent insurance,” it’s so much better policy to just have insurance for everybody. Then there’s no question of a mandate.

I think it’s a very bad position for progressives to back into, because it signals that government is being coercive, rather than government being helpful. Now, we can split hairs and argue whether Obama is being principled or tactical, but I think his discomfort with the idea of a mandate is something that I applaud. I wish that both he and Clinton had gone all the way and said, let’s just to do this right and have national health insurance. I think they could have used this as a teachable moment. They could have bought public opinion around. Medicare is phenomenally popular. Medicare is national health insurance for seniors. Let’s have national health insurance for everybody. Some might have been tempted to say: "...both him and Clinton."

"Both" may be either a pronoun, adjective, or conjunction depending upon its syntactical position in the sentence, how it is used.

A closer look at the sentence but by no means thorough:

I pronoun subject wish verb (transitive) that (1) conjunction both adjective he (2) pronoun subject and coordinating conjunction

Clinton (2) noun subject had gone 1st verb in compound verb (3) all the way (adverb phrase, modifies "gone") and said 2nd verb in compound verb (3)

[ let's just do this right and have national health insurance.] (complete direct object of the verbs "had gone" and "said")

note (1): "that" is a conjunction (“complentizer”complementing & connecting what is wished for)
note (2): “he” and “Clinton” act as subjects in the subordinate clause in which they operate
note (3): The compound verbs “had gone” and “said” stem from the compound subject "he" and "Clinton"

permalink

The "drought" continues in weather metaphors

Fritz Coleman, a genial weather reporter on NBC network's local Los Angeles affiliate, recently reported the ending of a winter rain storm, almost singing with relief : "There'll be no more rain after Sunday." (and therefore) "There's light at the end of the tunnel."

No, no, no, Fritz! Bad metaphor. Light at the end of the tunnel indicates: "hope that there will be an end to a crisis" Concise Oxford Dictionary.

The crisis Southern California has been experiencing apart from the occasional earthquake and fire storms (see posting of 10/29/2007, "Putting out dangling element fires") has been one of drought and a perilous drop in the water table the past few years. Although the water table is replenished by water run off from melting snow in the mountains, rain during the winter may serve as an indicator of snowfall. Therefore, Mr. Coleman is misapplying the metaphor unintentionally, surely, for he must be aware of the prevailing drought conditions. He is reassuring the spoiled Southern California populace that the sun will once again light our days, the very sun we see most of the year.

People need to be educated, Fritz. Don't lead them astray with a casual metaphor. We should be seeking more rain/snow fall if we truly wish to see light at the end of the tunnel. Sunlight that is, which, with abundant rainfall, should make for a glorious springtime.

Great cinematic performance: Daniel Day-Lewis comes from literary roots

Being a language oriented blog we encourage folks to be readers, to on occasion in this cinematic age, experience a story through the lens of one's mind, a more democratic instrument than the lens of a camera. Actor Daniel Day-Lewis is the son of a man who was a poet and member of the Irish Academy of Letters, Cecil Day-Lewis . The elder Lewis also had been a professor of rhetoric.

In saying this, good to report that not all is lost on the Big Screen. Below, a bold comment taken from a letter to a friend on Daniel Day-Lewis' performance in the now celebrated movie There Will Be Blood. The movie script was based upon the Upton Sinclair novel, Big Oil, which you are encouraged to read after experiencing the movie.

"Last night, after experiencing the movie There Will Be Blood, I had the distinct feeling, still do, that Daniel Day-Lewis' bravura performance may not be outdone in my lifetime. That’s saying a lot, I realize, but it may come true. Two forces came together to make it happen, Day-Lewis’ rare abilities linked with cultivated discipline, and writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson's savvy in staging an opportunity for the powerful actor to gather the momentum necessary for rendering a herculean performance. Here, I speak of both script, (even though flawed) and a set "to play in" (to paraphrase Day-Lewis). Give Anderson credit also for drawing upon Upton Sinclair’s novel Big Oil for inspiration. Paul Dano was accomplished in his work, providing a helpful counterpoint for Lewis to complete his masterful interpretation of the Daniel Plainview character."

permalink

War on Berkeley city council: confused headline or rhetorical device?

The headline in the Los Angeles Times read: "Berkeley likely to reverse declaration on Marines"

One would "likely" believe that the citizens of the small city across the bay from San Francisco would think better than to engage in a conflict with the United States Marine Corps of Semper Fi fame ("always faithful"). There are a lot of tropes (rhetorical devices) in this article. Let's identify them:

To begin, the headline itself probably contains the rhetorical device, Zeugma, intended or not. Zeugma means "yoke" in Greek. Zeugma is a figure of speech describing the joining or "yoking" of two or more parts of a sentence with a single common verb or noun. Zeugma may employ ellipsis, the omission of a word or words in order to avoid redundancy, not the case here. Regarding the headline, "Berkeley likely to reverse declaration on Marines," the omitted words (in blue) as gauged upon the context of the article:

The Berkeley City Council likely to reverse its declaration on marine corps recruiting at this time."

These are scarcely redundant words. They are necessary words if one is to avoid not only rhetoric but also a misrepresentation of the event in Berkeley. The verb "declare" (taken from the noun, "declaration," would be "yoked" with the omitted word "corps recruiting." A relevant omission for one engaged in a rhetorical acts, whether he intended to engage, or not.

These words were not omitted to "avoid redundancy" but to, by rhetorical device, suggest that the Berkeley City Council was generically "out to get" the "marines" and always has been because it is the "devil." (see later reference to devil).

It turns out the Berkeley City Council has gone on record as not being opposed to the institution of the marine corps, but does not wish in the context of this particular point in history to allow the marine corps to recruit young people in its city limits, young people sent to fight and possibly die in a war most members of congress and many high-ranking military brass now admit was ill-considered.

The writer of the piece, John Glionna, wrote such phrases as: "...the liberal city's antiwar stance." (rhetorical device: innuendo: indirect suggestion (usually derogatory) Concise Oxford English Dictionary. Here, Glionna suggests that only liberals may be opposed to the war). He did not need to modify the city of Berkeley with the term "liberal." In the piece itself, Glionna makes it clear a good many "conservatives" appeared in counter demonstrations. Were there any conservatives who agreed with the city council's decision? We don't know. Left out of the reporting.

It would appear that conservatives are mostly "for the war" and for maintaining recruiting efforts within the Berkeley city limits: reactionary members of both federal and state legislatures in Washington and Sacramento (California's Capitol City) "threatened to withhold million of dollars in federal and state funds" previously dedicated to the city. As it turned out, "antiwar protestors outnumbered pro-military protestors 2 to 1." More innuendo: suggesting that to be opposed to a given military adventure is to be opposed to the military and the strategic defense of the nation. Noticeably, many generals have come out and opposed the war, a fact Mr. Glionna omitted from his piece. (refer to above link).

Glionna concludes his reporting by quoting a "pro war" "pro recruiting" protester offering his view of the Berkeley City Council and the city itself: "Do you think the devil will ever be converted? Not on your life."

Hyberbole (overstatement, overkill), a rhetocial device which Glionna chose to use, although quoted by another, and which punctuates the article by concluding with it, sort of like a crescendo in a musical composition. Zeugma is also used. The "yoked" word which is omitted is clearly the word "Berkeley," the "devil" Berkeley.

Final note, a rhetorical question: Is this a clear example of the bias of the "liberal" media?

permalink

Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing chastens nonreaders, Take Note!

Author's note: I'm hopeful the content of this blog comports with Ms. Lessing's standards indicated below. Nevertheless, we all need to act in tempered ways once we walk through the URL gateway if we are to reemerge productive members of our respective cultures.

The British writer Doris Lessing casts a cold, sad eye on those nations whose "educated" classes no longer read. Below, an excerpt from the speech Doris Lessing wrote on accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007:

"What has happened to us is an amazing invention -- computers and the Internet and TV. It is a revolution. This is not the first revolution the human race has dealt with. The printing revolution, which did not take place in a matter of a few decades, but took much longer, transformed our minds and ways of thinking. A foolhardy lot, we accepted it all, as we always do, never asked, What is going to happen to us now, with this invention of print? In the same way, we never thought to ask, How will our lives, our way of thinking, be changed by this Internet, which has seduced a whole generation with its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging etc.

Very recently, anyone even mildly educated would respect learning, education, and our great store of literature. Of course, we all know that when this happy state was with us, people would pretend to read, would pretend respect for learning. But it is on record that working men and women longed for books, and this is evidenced by the founding of working men's libraries and institutes, the colleges of the 18th and 19th centuries. Reading, books, used to be part of a general education.

Older people, talking to young ones, must understand just how much of an education reading was, because the young ones know so much less. And if children cannot read, it is because they have not read.

...The storyteller is deep inside every one of us. The story-maker is always with us. Let us suppose our world is ravaged by war, by the horrors that we all of us easily imagine. Let us suppose floods wash through our cities, the seas rise. But the storyteller will be there, for it is our imaginations which shape us, keep us, create us--for good and for ill. It is our stories that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, the myth-maker, that is our phoenix, that represents us at our best, and at our most creative."

Be a reader. On occasion, experience a story through the lens of your mind instead of the dictatorial lens of the camera. Not that all is lost on the Big Screen. Recently found through email, a comment on Daniel Day Lewis' performance in There Will Be Blood, based upon the Upton Sinclair novel, Big Oil, which you are encouraged to read after experiencing the movie.

"Last night, after experiencing the movie There Will Be Blood, I had the distinct feeling, still do, that Daniel Day-Lewis' bravura performance may not be outdone in my lifetime. That’s saying a lot, I realize, but it may come true. Two forces came together to make it happen, Day-Lewis’ rare abilities linked with cultivated discipline, and writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson's savvy in staging an opportunity for the powerful actor to gather the momentum necessary for rendering a herculean performance. Here, I speak of both script, (even though flawed) and a set "to play in" (to paraphrase Day-Lewis). Give Anderson credit also for drawing upon Upton Sinclair’s novel Big Oil for inspiration. Paul Dano was accomplished in his work, providing a helpful counterpoint for Lewis to complete his masterful interpretation of the Daniel Plainview character."

"The wind will come back with vengeance"

Let's find alternative metaphors from those which devalue nature and animals, as for instance, when we're talking about weather. After all, neither nature nor animals can defend themselves in the court of language.

Mary Beth McDade on Los Angeles local KCAL "Weather Watch" news in forecasting the Santa Ana Winds, a wind condition peculiar to Southern California, said the following:


"The wind will come back with vengeance."

News to Mary Beth, nothing motivates the wind. Wind results from meteorological conditions.

Meteorological, Adjective:
1. of or pertaining to atmospheric phenomena, especially weather and weather conditions; the science of atmospheric events and weather. Those events are bound by the variables that exist in Earth's atmosphere, (not "vengeance"). These events include: temperature, pressure, water vapor, and the gradients and interactions of each variable, and how they change in time. The majority of Earth's observed weather is located in the troposphere. Concise Oxford Dictionary.

Mary Beth could have used meteorological language in describing the Santa Anas including gradients and variables of the predicted winds such as: atmospheric rises in heat as the winds descend the canyons heading toward the "Southland"; or rate of speed determining certain outcomes such as property destruction. All of this information is available from the U.S. Weather Service.

"Come back with vengeance" implies only that we think the winds will cause fire and damage. Fair enough, but just say it leaving out the word "vengeance."

(Brief editorial comment: Mary Beth basically said: "Those damn winds." She also could have said: Those "damn" developers who built homes in canyons known for over a century for being subjected to Santa Ana conditions. Or, she could have said: those "foolish" people who bought those homes ignorant of or complacent about the meteorological conditions of those canyons where the homes were placed. Don't mean to be harsh, but let's tell the meteorological and political truth. It's an inaccuracy to use the word "vengeance" with regard to the winds. Could a "willy-willy" (see below) ever be capable of vengeance? Just a thought.

What are the Santa Ana winds?

The "Santa Ana Winds" are local winds peculiar to Southern California which develop as "High pressure builds over the Great Basin (e.g., Nevada) and the cold air there begins to sink. However, this air is forced downslope which compresses and warms it at a rate of about 10C per kilometer (29F per mile) of descent. As its temperature rises, the relative humidity drops; the air starts out dry and winds up at sea level much drier still. The air picks up speed as it is channeled through passes and canyons." (Robert Fovell, UCLA).

Other local winds throughout the world include:

name of wind & location of wind condition

Cape doctor, western South Africa
haboob, North Africa
libeccio, western Italy
mistral, southern France
monsoon, South Asia
nor'wester, New Zealand
pampero, South America
shamal, Persian Gulf
santa anas, Southern California
sirocco, North Africa and southern Europe
solano, Spain
wet chinook, north-western USA
willy-willy, north-west Australia

Eloquence and the family of Heath Ledger

For those who have not read nor heard the words of Heath Ledger's father on behalf of the Leger family in Australia, the following is what dignity looks like:

"We remain humble as parents and a family, among millions of people worldwide who may have suffered the tragic loss of a child.... Few can understand the hollow, wrenching and enduring agony parents silently suffer when a child predeceases them. Today's results put an end to speculation, but our son's beautiful spirit and enduring memory will forever remain in our hearts."

--Kim Leger.

Rhetoric and the death of Heath Ledger

Of all the language used on television concerning young actor Heath Ledger's recent death, most of it has been rhetoric, empty rhetoric.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines empty rhetoric as: n. use of bombast which is itself is defined as: n. trite, clichéd, hackneyed. Hackneyed, in turn, means commonplace, unoriginal. Pleonasm also comes into play meaning: excessive, redundant.

And still other synonyms include turgidity: long-winded, embellished. Finally, an informal synonym: hot air.

But why so much empty rhetoric? The explanation comes in the shape of a question: If normal rhetoric is useful for persuasion, usually pointing to a credible subject, then what need for persuasion surrounding Heath Ledger's death? We already know Ledger's death was "untimely" and by some definitions "tragic." But aren't all deaths "tragic"? After all, life ending for anyone, regardless of age, qualifies as something of a tragedy given the length of eternity. These "commentators" and "reporters" have been reporting on something other than Heath Ledger's "untimely" death. Rather, they have been speculating with pleonastic variation on what might have been the cause of Ledger's death.

Though unseemly, they know this speculation, used as the subject of their rhetoric, will drive ratings up for their particular show. In effect, they are, as good employees, providing audiences to their sponsors. Otherwise, Ledger's death would have been credibly reported, put aside, and followed up with the final autopsy report that Ledger died from an accidental overdose resulting from "the abuse of prescription drugs," a tragedy many Americans, not just Australian actors, act out each year.

The following, very partial list comprises randomly recorded empty rhetoric taken from the commentary and reportage of such television networks as: TMZ Network, Show Biz Tonight, Tru TV, (formally Court TV), and Hollywood 411. We'll credit two of the three quotes while emphasizing that these quotes themselves were repeated bombastically by many others having been regurgitated from the same, general feeding ground.

We'll provide a specific label for the rhetoric by way of personal preference while also offering commentary, and we'll add that Ledger himself, being the consummate artist he was, shunned any expression of emptiness in his own work.

The Empty Rhetoric:

"unbelievable death, the mystery deepens" trite, clichéd, hackneyed

"a tragic, tragic story; we're all trying to make sense of...; he's going to be like James Dean: legendary because he did die so young; the mystery is still unfolding; the mysteries, so many questions; were the Olsen Twins involved? we want to know how it happened and why and how...so we can prevent it from happening in future" -- Katie Daryl, TMZ TV pleonasm, turgid, redundant

Commentary: Does Katie Daryl really mean, "...so we can prevent it from happening in future?" How many people have overdosed whom Ms. Daryl and her colleagues have probably never thought of? A partial list of past overdoses from Wikipedia: Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Beluschi, and who remembers Pamela Courson of a heroin overdose? (Courson was the common law wife of Jim Morrison who, himself, probably died of a heroin overdose (disputed). Tommy Dorsey, musician and bandleader, choked to death while sleeping with the aid of drugs; Chris Farley, comedian, cocaine and heroin overdose; Sigmund Freud, neurologist, long-term cocaine use, physician-assisted morphine overdose; Jack Kerouac, writer/poet, complications due to alcoholism; Marilyn Monroe, actress, overdose of sleeping pills, and many more.

"Now we're at the state where everyone is sad, depressed..." -- Jane Velez Mitchell on Michelle Williams, "I cannot imagine how she is dealing with the Paparazzi." basic bombast

Commentary: Do we really believe that Jane Velez Mitchell "cannot imagine" the suffering of Michelle Williams? Mitchell and the Paparazzi generally work the same territory for their pay, even if they may have different paymasters.

Explanation for the Empty Rhetoric: The focus of all the empty rhetoric comes out of the "culture of celebrity," particularly as it is set apart from the art forms the celebrities themselves practice. It's all about filling up the air with gossip and speculation surrounding the private life of someone, even when that private life has ended. All the bombastic noise is borne from the culture of distraction.

When A. J. Hammer (the name is eponymous for "pounding out emptiness" surrounding celebrities) asks: "What was Heath's state of mind leading up to his death?" embellished, he is using empty rhetoric marked purely by speculation. What possible sincerity or usefulness could his question have? How does this thought connect with the amount of time these celebrity "reporters" spend on the actor apart from his craft? What a disservice to Ledger. What was Heath's state of mind. Is Hammer the right person to be asking such questions? Of course not.

For those interested in credible reporting and commentary, we refer you to Los Angeles Times writer Reed Johnson's homage to Heath Ledger.

Final Word: The celebrity media craze possibly stems from a one page feature in Time Magazine called People. People, owned by Time-Life, Inc., then matured into a magazine solely devoted to celebrities. From this, others followed in print and on to television. The World Wide Web is the latest in the act. The race to distraction was on.

For what reason do people tune in and fixate? They are undoubtedly on the wrong frequency given so many matters of greater importance in their lives otherwise competing for their attention. Yes, they must search for these greater matters, usually no further than their daily newspaper. Meanwhile, these concerns go unattended.

Elitists of the past would have referred to such audiences as "the bewildered herd." Historians describe such cultures as "decadent."

Rick Neuheisel has a "good vibe" but it's the wrong case

In pursuing (and eventually landing) defensive specialist assistant coach DeWayne Walker on his UCLA football staff, recently hired head coach Rick Neuheisel stated he had "a good vibe" after talking with Walker. Unfortunately, coach Neuheisel's vibe did not get the pronoun case right. The sentence in question:

"The goal is for he and I to lock arms and do this together."

The compound subject "he and I" follows a preposition. Odd as it may sound, him and me is used as the objective case subject in its own clause.

The infinitive, "to lock" is of interest. Infinitives may be used as adverbs, and as such will express themselves as adverbs by showing: condition, degree (or comparison), manner, reason, purpose, or result. We are focusing on the use of the infinitive of purpose in Coach Neuheisel's sentence: to lock arms... How will "we" do this?" By locking arms. "How" is an adverb question, "to lock arms" answers the adverb question. Without the preposition "for," and with syntax rearranged, a correction variation would be:

He and I will do this together by locking arms, this is our goal.

The rule: The infinitive of purpose is frequently the object of the preposition for and has a regular objective-case subject. (Harper's English Grammar, John B. Opdycke). Thus, Coach Neuheisel should have said:

The goal is for him and me to lock arms and do this together.