Number 80
Rhetoric has a bad rap. True, one of its definitions is high-flown, empty talk, but that developed from its basic sense of skillful talk. It has been an academic study much neglected now, like declamation (reciting poetry or prose to an audience). My mom had to memorize poetry and recite it in class when she was a kid. But carefully considering how you're going to express yourself does not mean you're insincere. We all would like to be able to convince others of our opinions. I was accused once years ago of using words like weapons, but I guarantee you my words don't have the same effect as hammers and guns.
Likewise propaganda has a legitimate function, although the word has a somewhat sleazy sound. It simply means the propagation of material that promotes your cause or beliefs. We like to think others (i.e. our enemies) disseminate propaganda, but we give information.
So, let us concede that Michael Moore has a perfect right to make his case using the rhetoric of film-making conventions in his latest movie Fahrenheit 9/11. Are his arguments made fairly and legitimately? I'm not terribly knowledgeable about foreign affairs and even recent history, but here's some of what I saw in the theater.
The movie opened with audio tracks, but no visuals, of the attack on the New York World Trade Center towers, the sounds of people about to die. Later in the movie, we have sounds and visuals of dead and wounded in Iraq, the bodies of American soldiers killed and desecrated by angry Iraqis, and a particularly big, bloody wound in an Iraqi child's leg. These are rhetorical appeals to emotion, not argument, but it is unbalanced rhetoric. Let's see the pix from the 9/11 attack too.
Moore interviewed an American woman understandably distraught about the death of her soldier son in Iraq. In an extended version of the cheapest sort of "How do you feel?" journalism, he also took her to Washington, D.C. to ululate and shake her fist at the White House. Pointing out that mothers suffer when their children die is not argument, unless that is your whole argument against all wars: We must not make mothers sad.
Moore also found an unhappy soldier who didn't like the war. He found soldiers in Iraq who were unsure of the purpose of the war, and their role in it, and also found some who were vulgar young barbarians. You could find all sorts of people among the soldiers. This is not argument.
He taped military recruitment efforts among young men in Michigan who don't have jobs. It's true that a lot of men (probably women too) join the military for the "benefits," as one soldier told me years ago: steady income, medical coverage, educational bennies, etc. This does not mean they've been tricked. The slightest acquaintance with American, or any other history, would reveal that military bodies eventually go to war, wars are propagated by governments, and governments and thus wars are not always righteous. I feel compassion for young people whose vague knowledge suddenly meshes with reality, but this is the lesson of life: it's real, and you're probably not going to get something for nothing. Some years ago, a medical doctor in the Army got busted for refusing to serve during the Gulf War. She disapproved of that war. But she was older and better educated than most of these young recruits, and ought to have been aware when she enlisted that her approval was not requested by the Army. She ought to have heard of Vietnam, of which some people disapproved. Also, medical work in combat helps people; she wasn't required to kill. Why did she join up? The Army is not a public works organization, like the old WPA / CCC projects.
All this is not to say that Moore doesn't make some points worth making. Bush is a doofus, and undoubtedly oil interests (of Bush and friends, not just of the U.S.) are at stake, although that's not all that's at stake. Lies have been told, but the story is more complex than these lies. Fahrenheit 9/11 is not a worthy rebuttal (and I used to be a fan of Moore).
Tere's what looks like a useful Web site on rhetoric. Go there, study it, say something rhetorical, report back later.
From somewhere out there: ". . . treatments geared to your customized needs." The meaning is clear here, but wrong. It's the treatments that are customized (i.e. tailor-made), not your needs. Although in a deeper sense, your needs are customized, by yourself, or . . . hmm.
You've probably heard the popular song that goes, "I'm proud to be an American / Where at least I know I'm free!" ("God Bless the U.S.A." by Lee Greenwood). I don't fault the sentiment, and yet . . . why "at least"? This is what you say when you're in an argument and your defense is a taunt and a faint boast. It's unconvincing to say, "Oh yeah? Well, at least I'm, uh, free!"
A friend forwarded this inventive bit of Web etymology (with minor copyedits per moi):
Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore they would be incapable of fighting in the future. This famous weapon was made of the native English yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking the yew" (or "pluck yew"). Much to the bewilderment of the French, the English won a major upset and began mocking the French by waving their middle fingers at the defeated and saying, "See, we can still pluck yew!" Over the years some "folk etymologies" have grown up around this portrayed symbolic gesture and verbal utterance."Pluck yew " . . . derivation and evolution: Those of you who you had to gather the feathers used on the arrows for the longbow were often referred to as a "pleasant mother pheasant plucker". This jargon as well as "pluck yew" contain a difficult "consonant cluster" which was found to be rather awkward to pronounce. Both terms, and in particular "pluck yew" have gradually evolved to contain a biodental fricative "F", and thus the words often used now in conjunction with the one-finger-salute are mistakenly thought to have something to do with an intimate encounter. It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows that the symbolic gesture is known as "giving the bird."
MOI:
I think the latter etymology is flawed. The "PL" was unlikely to have become "F", although there is a flow between the letters F, P, V, and B because they're formed with similar lip positions. "Pluck yew" actually became "Plucky you!" accompanied by a bent middle finger with all the other fingers extended, the reverse of the familiar insult. However, this was used only by pleasant pacifist dweebs and so it died out as they did.
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