Bush Under the Klieg Lights

Metaphors say a lot about a text, particularly when the they aren’t meant to be obviously “metaphorical.” That is, the underlying metaphorical structure of a text structures the understanding of the message in important ways.

One of the basic ways this comes out in texts is the appeal to sensory metaphors. Bill Clinton “felt” our pain. I might “see” your point. Or I could “hear” where you’re coming from. Something might “smell fishy” about what you say, or it could carry a “whiff” of desperation. I could even leave a bad taste in my mouth.

We use these metaphors so often that they often don’t seem much like metaphors at all.
I’d suggest that in President Bush’s most recent bit of damage-control rhetoric in his statement and answers about the firing of several U.S. attorneys, we see two fundamental sensory metaphors at work: sight and sound. The way Bush develops them says a lot about his attitude toward his audience and the issue at hand.

A specific phrase Bush used twice In his statement and answers during his press conference called attention to this. In talking about how it would be a horrible thing to call administration officials to testify under oath, Bush alluded to putting “the klieg lights” on these poor, hardworking folk.

When Bush uses such a specific bit of phraseology more than once in a short space, you can bet it’s something he’s been told to invoke. And in this case, I think it fits in with a wider way of couching the sacked-attorney issue.

Specifically, if you look at Bush’s comments, you’ll notice a lot of “visual” language. Administration officials shouldn’t have to suffer under the “klieg lights.” The Democratic call for sworn testimony “shows some appear more interested in scoring political points than in learning the facts.” In fact, Bush says they seem to be asking for “show” trials. The resignations of the attorneys have become a “public spectacle.” The attorneys are “being held up to scrutiny.” Democrats “view” this episode as an opportunity to score political points rather than “finding out” the truth. If they continue in pressing for subpoenas, the opportunism of the Democrats will be “evident for the American people to see.” Rather than being taken in by the “appearance” of something, Americans should “listen to the facts.”

That last phrase is interesting. Along with loads of visual language, Bush also uses metaphors of hearing, talking, and listening. White House officials and Attorney General Gonzales are going to “explain” the truth to members of Congress. Bush has “heard” the allegations, but the American people need to “hear the truth” (a phrase he uses three separate times, in addition to “explain the truth”). Twice, he begins a statement by commanding his audience to “Listen.”

A lot of public talk includes metaphors of sight and sound. As we’ve established, we use these phrases all the time without thinking about them. What’s interesting to me is how differently the sight and sound metaphors are used.

Even just looking at the examples above, the visual metaphors tend to be negative. It’s wrong to haul administration officials out under the “klieg lights.” But if the Democrats continue refuse the president’s offer and demand subpoenas, the American people will “see” what they’re really after. Viewing is seen as an act of aggression—something that subjects the object (rightly or wrongly) to the scrutiny of the viewer.

On the other hand, speech and sound metaphors are used in positive ways. “Hearing” is the way the president assures us we will get the truth. It will be “explained” to us. Just “listen” to the president, and the facts will become known.

I’m not saying all these instances are planned. On the contrary, I think many of them are unconscious choices by the president and/or his handlers in prepping for this press conference.
But that makes them all the more interesting. The visual=negative; hearing=positive relationship in the text, while not perfect, is strong—far too strong to be mere chance.
I suggest that this has to do with the nature of the senses involved. As I said above, to be seen is a passive thing. The one who gazes at us holds the power of how long to look and for what. If you want, you can go all post-modern, Michel Foucault with this and talk about how observation or surveillance is the essence of power.

Being heard, though, is something quite different. As the late psychologist Julian Jaynes noted, to listen is in a sense to obey. It is the speaker who controls a situation, not the listener. The power relationship between the sender and receiver of the signal are nearly the reverse in a speaker/hearer relationship than they are in a viewed/viewer relationship.

So, in a speech in which Bush is attempting to characterize investigations into the attorney-firing scandal as politically motivated and to stonewall Congressional attempts to get sworn, recorded testimony from administration officials, should it surprise us that Bush tells us to “listen” to him and to his subordinates as they “explain” themselves so that we can “hear” the truth? Should it surprise us that, when it comes to the truth about Democrats on the other hand, Americans will “see” what their motivations are, that Democrats in Congress will “show” us what they’re after?

The metaphorical world that emerges from Bush’s remarks conjures up a world in which viewing is an act of aggression that is unfair when it is applied to those who are blameless (the poor attorneys who are being held up to “scrutiny” or the administration officials called out under the “klieg lights”), but is useful for getting at the truth about those who aren’t forthcoming with it (i.e., the Democrats who will “show” themselves for what they are). Such people deserve—indeed, must—be subjected to the powerful gaze of the truthseeker.

On the other hand, to find the truth about those who are forthcoming (i.e., the administration), no such aggressive acts are necessary. In fact, truth comes from listening to these people. These people hold power justly, and can be trusted to “explain” the truth to us, provided we “listen” to them. If we do, we’ll “hear the truth.” No need to scrutinize them.

And for God’s sake, don’t put them under those cursed klieg lights!

Some questions for thought:

Another obvious dichotomy Bush’s remarks draw is between the “reasonableness” of his own offer and the “partisan” and “political” motivations of the Democrats. Any thoughts on ways Bush uses language to draw this picture for us?

Is there anything to be made about how Bush places himself in the narrative he tells? Occasionally, he seems to put himself in the background (such as referring to “the White House” rather than to himself). Other times, he asserts himself quite powerfully, such as saying “I named them all [i.e., the attorneys].” Is there a pattern?

Twice in response to the first question he’s asked, Bush uses the odd locution that “there is no indication” that “anyone did anything improper.” Again, the repetition of exact language suggests something premeditated about the word choice. What should we make of this phrasing?

More info on “Gonzales-Gate”:

Washington Post
ABC News
Guardian U.K.
Media Matters
NPR
Center for American Progress

Recommended Reading at Salon.com

There's a provocative piece in Salon today on the intellectual sterility of contemporary conservatism. Using the latest bit of hate mongering from Ann Coulter as a jumping off spot, the essay suggests that Coulter is simply one of the more high-profile examples of what the right wing in general has to offer: hatred and resentment (hence the fact that she can say anything, no matter how hateful, and not be abandoned by conservatives).

While the essay doesn't use terms like "rhetoric" or "discourse," that's essentially exactly what it's about. It's a short but good read. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.

A few questions I've started to mull over and would like to hear thoughts on:

Is the piece overly simplistic? Does it engage in the kind of characterization that it accuses conservative rhetoric of using?

What is the appropriate liberal/progressive rhetorical response to conservatives? Is it enough to let it eventually crumble on its own (as the author suggests it will), or are there positive, rhetorical moves Democrats can make to dismantle it? Is any progressive on the political scene doing that?

To the extent that Americans have fallen for this, why is that?

To any conservatives who might stop by, how do you feel about folks like Coulter, Limbaugh, Savage, et. al. being the most visible faces of your movement? Do you tend to agree with them? Are the necessary embarassments? Or are they simply embarassments that are beneath the dignity of a party that lays claim to a distinctive intellectual history? In short, do you think conservatism *has* made a "deal with the devil?"

Callin’ Out Cousin Pookie: Clinton and Obama’s Rhetoric at Selma

For a while, some of the right-wing folks had me intrigued.

The talk of Hillary Clinton suddenly taking on a Southern accent during her speech last week at Selma was on the lips of conservative talking heads across the country—just one more example, they suggested, of her cold and calculated political maneuvering.

And if Clinton had done that, it would be fascinating (although the fact that she lived for years and years in Arkansas would make it a bit less dramatic than it seems at first glance).

But then I saw excerpts of her speech, and from what I could tell, the only part when she dipped into anything like a Southern dialect was when she was quoting from an African American spiritual that contained some idiomatic Black English. The only thing that would make Hillary sound even dopier than suddenly taking on a Southern twang would be to recite Black dialect in her typical upper Midwest accent. That she tried to give the lines a more appropriate reading speaks to her rhetorical common sense, not her calculating manner.

But while conservative commentators predictably let their anxieties and antipathy get in the way of thoughtful critique, there is something interesting to be said about the Clinton/Obama dueling speeches in Selma.

I suspect that no matter what happens in 2008, these speeches will be the subject of many a rhetorical critique exercise in political science and communication courses. What makes them fascinating is that the situations were so parallel that you have almost a pure comparison of rhetorical styles. Clinton and Obama spoke on the same day, in African American churches only blocks apart, on the same general topic (the anniversary of the 1965 civil rights march at Selma). Their audiences were largely similar, and their purposes also paralleled each other: both were speaking in the context of running for their party’s presidential nomination, and both wanted make the case that they had connections to the soul of the African American community. To do this, both had to overcome a sense that they were separated from that community by a wide gulf of social class, geography, and (even in Obama’s case) race.

Clinton had to overcome the perception that, unlike her husband, she was a typical limousine liberal without a genuine attachment to the concerns of Southern African Americans. Obama had to overcome the notion that he was somehow not “Black enough,” and perhaps not African American at all, in the usual sense, since he is not the descendent of slaves.

There’s a lot that can and will be said about how each candidate handled their parallel challenges. To get the ball rolling, I’d like to invoke the name of Kenneth Burke, perhaps the most famous American rhetorical scholar.

You might have run into Burke’s ideas if you’ve taken a college-level composition class in the last 20-30 years or so. Many freshman writing texts mention Burke’s “Pentad” in terms of finding ideas or angles on a subject you want to write about.


Burke’s pentad is a grouping of five (obviously) terms: act, agent, agency, scene, and purpose. They basically boil down to asking questions about an event: What is happening? Who is doing the action? How are they doing the action? Where/when is the action taking place? What is the action intended to accomplish?

In some ways, these parallel the typical “reporters questions:” who, what, when, where, why, and how. The main difference is that reporters ask their questions about the events themselves. Burke’s Pentad primarily targets what people say about the events.

One of Burke’s suggestions is that in any piece of rhetoric, there are usually two terms of the five that emerge as the central tension. And these two terms exist in a “ratio” that privileges one over the other. Which of the two terms is privileged changes the character of the rhetoric (e.g., a speech that privileges act over agency will be different than one that privileges agency over act).

In the case of the Clinton and Obama speeches, it’s obvious that scene plays a major role in both speeches. They are giving speeches in Selma about an event that happened there. Their audience includes people who actually participated in this event. They speak in African American churches that evoke the genesis of the Civil Rights movement. When speakers are commemorating an event at or near the site of that event, it’s a safe bet that “scene” is going to be one of the central terms.

So, the next question is what is the other half of this central ratio of terms in each speech?

I suggest that Clinton and Obama’s speeches pair “scene” up with two different terms, and for understandable reasons. These choices shape the very different speeches they give.

In Clinton’s case, her speech centers on the purpose/scene ratio (with “purpose” being the dominant term). Obama’s speech centers on the act/scene ratio (with “act” being the dominant term).

Why is this?

To quote a fairly widely used introductory text on rhetorical criticism (Modern Rhetorical Criticism by Hart and Daughton), speeches in which “purpose” dominates “scene” (such as Clinton’s) tend to focus on the general feelings and intentions of the people who participated in the event rather than the specific situation of the community these people came from. Such a speech “argues that one’s feelings and thoughts are of such importance that they override social and other consequences.”

And that’s exactly what we see in Clinton’s speech. She often abstracts the specific motivations of the marchers to talk about their general commitment to social justice, and how the march, while ostensibly about civil rights for African Americans in the 1960s, was really a fight for equality in general. Clinton goes so far as to say that she might not have been able to run for president had it not been for the blow for equality the 1965 marchers struck.

Speeches in which “act” dominates “scene” (such as Obama’s) focus on the “freely chosen activities” of the people who participated in the event. Such a speech “describes a person or group’s behavior as being of such heroic proportions that the actions of others pale in comparison.”

And that’s what we see in Obama’s speech. He praises those who marched and bemoans the fact that “we might have lost something” since then, that the current generation might not have the same fortitude and commitment as the 1965 marchers. He, too, links himself to the marchers, but takes this link to a much more concrete level than does Clinton. Rather than simply aligning his own general political values with those of the marchers, he says he might not even exist, literally, if it hadn’t been for that march.


What this reveals is that despite the almost identical situations Clinton and Obama faced, as well as the shared obstacle of creating a sense of identity between themselves and a community they didn’t obviously belong to, the rhetorical options open to Obama were wider than those for Clinton. In the end, Obama, while perhaps not “Black enough” for some, *is* identified as Black. If we grant that race is a social construct, Obama fits into that construct, at least for most. Clinton, of course, does not (despite the fact that some have argued that her husband, despite his pigmentation, did fall into that social construct in important ways).

This cannot he more clear than in the section of Obama’s speech in which, after noting that the current generation might not be adequately filling the shoes of the ’65 marchers, he chides today’s generation (and, implicitly, today’s generation of African Americans) for a lack of motivation. This is a move Clinton could never make.

This culminates in the following excerpt from Obama’s speech:

We got power in our hands. Folks are complaining about the quality of our
government, I understand there's something to be complaining about. I'm in
Washington. I see what's going on. I see those powers and principalities have
snuck back in there, that they're writing the energy bills and the drug laws.
We understand that, but I'll tell you what. I also know that, if cousin
Pookie would vote, get off the couch and register some folks and go to the
polls, we might have a different kind of politics . . . We have too many
children in poverty in this country and everybody should be ashamed, but don't
tell me it doesn't have a little to do with the fact that we got too many
daddies not acting like daddies. Don’t think that fatherhood ends at conception.
I know something about that because my father wasn't around when I was young and I struggled.

If you think Clinton got raked over the coals for using a bit of Black dialect, what do you think would’ve happened had she invoked “cousin Pookie?”

Throughout the speech, Obama identifies himself with his audience, using “we” again and again. (Obama’s speech uses some version of the first person more than 50% more frequently than does Clinton’s). He breaks down the supposed barriers between his own past and the past of his mostly African American audience by talking about his own fatherless childhood, as well as the fact that his father faced discrimination in Africa similar to that faced by African Americans in the U.S.

While both Clinton and Obama attempt to forge an identity with their audience and with the people and events of 1965 (including, in both cases, dipping into the rhetorical style of African American sermons), they ultimately do it in different ways because of the essential difference in their separation from that community. Obama’s autobiography allows him to more clearly tie himself to the marchers and to his audience, hence the more specific focus on those who marched and our indebtedness to them. For Clinton, the color of her skin is an obstacle that can’t be ignored or talked away. She must settle for a broader, gauzier, sense of identity that focuses on shared abstract principles.

Not only does this affect the way Obama and Clinton create a sense of shared identity with their audience, but also what they can do with it. As we’ve seen, Obama can offer critique from an insider’s point of view; he can chide and goad his audience in a way that would be unthinkable for Clinton. He can do this because of his insider status.

If nothing else, this tells us a lot about the power of race in American political discourse. As much as we might like to think such boundaries have faded, they still offer insurmountable obstacles that must be negotiated carefully by rhetors.

Despite the length of this post, there’s tons more that could be said about these speeches, even just from the standpoint of the pentad-based analysis I’ve sketched out here. A close reading of the speeches reveals a great deal more. And any number of other approaches would likely reveal lots of good insights as well. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the speeches.

Some questions to ponder and comment on, if you feel like it:

Do you have a sense that either/both Clinton and Obama were being “inauthentic” in their speeches?

Would Bill Clinton have more rhetorical room to maneuver if he had been in his wife’s position? Why?

What other terms of the Pentad do you feel are in play in either/both speeches?

Do you think there would be a significant difference in the level of African American involvement and support for the Democratic ticket in 2008 if the nominee were Obama rather than Clinton?

Did Hillary Clinton have any more “baggage” to overcome in forging a sense of identity with her audience than other white politicians (e.g., John Edwards)? Less?

Generally, how did you personally respond to the speeches? There different situations aside, did you feel one clearly delivered the superior speech?

Porn Free: The Rhetorical Role of Matt Sanchez

Conservative blogger Matt Sanchez offers us a fine example of rhetorical “role creation” in an essay he just penned for Salon.com.

You may have heard that Sanchez got his picture taken with Ann Coulter at the event at which she referred to John Edwards as a “faggot.” When the photo surfaced, some noted the irony in a gay man literally embracing Coulter given her comments (which was hardly the first time she’s made offensive remarks about homosexuality). When the fact that Sanchez once starred in gay pornographic movies emerged, the scrutiny intensified.

Two main purposes drive Sanchez’s Salon piece. The first is to address his past in the porn industry—a past that he had apparently tried to keep secret. The other is to address why he would apparently condone the use of hateful language directed at a community he’s part of. The implicit question he responds to is, “How can a gay man support someone who attacks your humanity in such a vulgar way?”

Sanchez does this by casting himself in the role of the Victim—not of Coulter, but of “liberals” who “outed my gay porn past.”

To do that, he has to do two seemingly contradictory things: argue that his pornographic past is no big deal (to admit there’s anything “wrong” with it would implicate himself in an act of immorality), but also argue that porn is immoral (to say otherwise would cancel his conservative credentials, if simply being gay didn’t already do that).

He wouldn’t have to negotiate that tricky tension if he made another rhetorical choice—say, that of casting himself in the role of the Repentant Sinner (a la Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard, or even George W. Bush himself). But that approach doesn’t lend itself to placing responsibility on anyone else, and that’s what Sanchez wants to do.

So, we find Sanchez, in the space of a few paragraphs, both dismissing his porn career and condemning porn’s moral evils. On one hand, his stint in adult films happened “once upon a time” in the “ancient” past. It was a “long-ago summer job.” Porn itself is “self-explanatory and without depth.” It’s not something that he feels the need to disavow:

“It's just a part of my past, and as anyone who reflects on the past realizes,
it contributes to who I am today. No apologies, just recognition. No running
away, just moving forward.”

So Sanchez exonerates himself from any wrong-doing in the past. Yet, as a conservative, it’s not a rhetorical option to leave it at that. Sanchez cleanses himself rhetorically by scapegoating the porn industry itself for its moral lapses, or, as he calls it, “porn’s liberalism,” in which “everything taboo is trivialized and everything trivial is magnified.” It’s a “cult” in which he lost his belief (note again the lack of personal agency the metaphor implies). It’s this liberal mentality that ensnared him and kept him “anesthetized.”

But Sanchez accuses liberalism of more than simply sharing the same moral outlook as the porn industry. It’s guilty of hypocrisy. After all, he reasons:

Those on the left who now attack me would be defending me if I had espoused
liberal causes and spoken out against the Iraq war before I was outed as a
pseudo celebrity. They'd be talking about publishing my memoir and putting me on
a diversity ticket with Barack Obama. Instead, those who complain about
wire-tapping reserve the right to pry into my private life and my past for
political brownie points.

Of course, if he had espoused liberal causes, he likely wouldn’t have embraced someone who used the word “faggot” as a punchline. He elides the fact that the “attacks” result not from his past in pornography but from the apparent hypocrisy of a (professionally) gay man not only siding with a political camp that openly reviles homosexuality, but with a particularly ugly exemplar of its hateful excesses.

One can also take issue with his equation of himself to a victim of warrantless wiretaps. It’s one thing to have the government eavesdrop on your private phone calls without reason, quite another have regular citizens point out that they’ve seen you have mass-mediated sex for money. One’s “private life” isn’t exactly private if its on sale at the local adult bookstore.

But this isn’t simply a momentary lapse in analogical reasoning. I argue that it’s central to the rhetorical role Sanchez creates. He is the victim of liberals, a group that not only is in league with the porn industry (although, remember, there’s nothing wrong with *being* in pornography), but then hypocritically attacks and “outs” someone they would defend, if only he weren’t a Coulter fan.

As for Coulter, Sanchez says, “I don't agree with what she said, but anyone in the military would defend her right to say it.” Yet, if what Sanchez thought was so morally bankrupt about the porn industry is its penchant for trivializing the taboo (to use his own words), what is one to make of Coulter’s jocular use of “faggot?” One could argue Coulter’s entire career is based on trivializing the taboo by saying incredibly hateful and hurtful things, then writing them off as “jokes.” For that matter, Sanchez himself does this by making light of such remarks as so much weightless, meaningless babble:

We all have a tendency to want to hate the enemy. I suppose that's why Coulter
gets applause when she uses terms like "faggot" or "ragheads" (was that the last
Coulter scandal, or was it her comments about 9/11 widows?).

Perhaps most telling, however, is Sanchez’s admission that, “I am embarrassed to admit that was I worried that my fellow conservatives would distance themselves from me when the news about my film career broke.” He claims the opposite has, in fact, happened.

Whether that’s true or not is less interesting than the fact that Sanchez assumed that he would be distanced by conservatives. Perhaps it’s because conservatives have made political hay attacking gay marriage. Maybe it’s because they’ve attacked civil rights for gays and lesbians. Maybe it’s because they’ve tended to oppose hate crimes legislation. Maybe it’s because so many conservatives (including Ann Coulter) publicly say that homosexuality is degenerate.

And maybe it’s because the conservatives in Coulter’s audience laughed at her “joke.”

The fact that Sanchez worried about how his past would affect his relationship with conservatives suggests that perhaps his victim status is more than a rhetorical construct. As a gay man, he, along with gays and lesbians across the country, is victimized by so many on the Right on a regular basis.

And the anger and frustration aimed at Sanchez is not an attack on his conservatism itself, but on the fact that he seems so willing to aid and abet his own victimage.



Some questions to ponder and talk about via comments, if you like (along with anything else you might want to say):

For gay/lesbian Republicans (and those who love them): what about conservatism as an ideology speaks to you deeply enough that anti-gay aspects of the party platform can be overlooked? Is the “anti-gay” aspect of conservatism overplayed? Is the G.O.P. more open in practice than in its campaign rhetoric?

Why do you suppose Sanchez wrote this piece for Salon? Why do you suppose Salon published it?

Are there any other rhetorical options available for someone in Sanchez’s position? What else could he have said?

What other aspects of Sanchez’s article intrigue, bemuse, infuriate, entertain, surprise, or confuse you?

The Humorless Logic of Ann Coulter

As many have pointed out, there's nothing much new to say about Ann Coulter's latest bit of vile rhetoric in and of itself. She's made it painfully clear how unpleasant a human being she is, at least in her public persona (I've come to think she doesn't really believe much of anything, but, like a pidgeon in a Skinner box, simply behaves in ways that have proven rewarding in the past.)

There are two larger points to make. One is about the use of the word "faggot" as part of the larger right wing mode of using gender stereotypes as a means of attack. It's telling that, on Fox News, Young America's Foundation spokesman Jason Mattera defended Coulter by saying she wasn't smearing gay people. Rather, "she was basically calling John Edwards a wuss, that he was a girlie-man, and that if he were elected president he would probably embolden Al Qaeda to attack us."

Ah, well that's just so much better, isn't it? The smear wasn't at gay men, but simply an equation of the feminine with weakness and ineptitude! If that's an actual defense of Coulter, then she doesn't need any attackers.

I'd say more about this, but there are already a couple of good posts on this wider issue, one from Glenn Greenwald at Salon and by blogger Digby.

The other brief point to note is how Coulter, as she and so many others have done in such circumstances, falls back on the defense of "it was a joke."

But, the thing is, it wasn't. And I don't mean that it's not a joke because "faggot" is such an ugly term that no use of it could possibly be construed as a joke. I mean as a matter of logic, what Coulter said wasn't a joke.

As comedy writer, ex-radio host, and current senatorial candidate Al Franken often noted on his Air America show, jokes have an interior logic. They have a premise of some sort that makes the humor work. Even if a joke isn't funny, one can still see how it theoretically *could* be funny.

Here's what she said:

I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential
candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out that you have to go into
rehab if you use the word "faggot."

Now, there *is* a bit of humor logic here, specifically the use of hyperbole in the suggestion that saying the word automatically in "rehab." It's not funny, but it's at least operating in a way that follows (just barely) the logic of a joke.

But that has nothing to do with the central component of the comment, which is using "faggot" as a term of contempt for someone you don't like. There is nothing humorous about this, not simply because of the ugliness of the comment, but because there is literally no joke there on a logical level.

Saying something outrageously ugly does not constitute a joke by itself. One could *make* it funny by putting it into a humorous context, but to defend Coulter's remarks by saying that they constituted a joke is about as offensive to professional comedy writers as Coulter's original comments were to . . . well . . . just about anyone with a social conscience.

George Will's "Facts and Faith" Framing

In a recent column from Newsweek, George Will takes on the topic of global warming, arguing that we don’t really know that human activity is causing global warming, and even if it was, we don’t know that this would be a bad thing.

Will’s piece provides a good example of how someone can frame an argument with only a few choice words. In this case, Will carefully chooses his terminology in the early part of the column to insinuate that he’s the rational, sober voice of reason, while those who warn of global warming’s dangers base their beliefs on unsubstantiated beliefs.

We see this even in the title of the column itself, “Inconvenient Kyoto Truths.” These are the “truths” Will sets out to present to us, as opposed to the unthinking dogma of those on the other side.

Will’s first swipe at the idea of global warming as established fact is his line, “Many senators and other experts in climate science say we must ‘do something’ about global warming.” By ironically equating senators and climate scientists, Will gets a twofer: he sarcastically suggests senators who suggests senators who comment on global warming are hardly experts at all, and at the same time, he diminishes the idea of expertise in the area of climate science.

Will then links belief in global warming to dogmatic religious belief. Global warming, he suggests, is a matter of faith not based on reason and facts. Note the word choice in the following sentence from the piece: “The consensus catechism about global warming has six tenets.”

“Catechism,” of course, is a term that refers specifically to a body of accepted religious doctrine (particularly the Catechism of the Catholic Church). Coupled with this is the word “tenets,” which also carries connotations of a belief that is simply accepted as a given without criticism or reflection.

Will claims one of these “tenets” is that global warming will continue “unless we mend our ways.” Note the use of the moralistic, nearly Biblical, phrase, “mend our ways.”

Later in the essay, Will says that, “The president is now on the side of the angels, having promised to ‘confront’ the challenge of climate change.” Again, we have sarcasm used to suggest accepting the idea of global warming is tantamount to religious fundamentalism.

These word choices aren’t an accident. The concentration of such specific vocabulary is intended to frame those who warn of the dangers of global warming as unthinking, dogmatic, “true believers” who accept faith-based policy rather than looking objectively at the facts and logical relationships (as Will and his ideological allies presumably do).

In fact, Will’s entire piece is based on his assertion that we don’t actually know anything for certain about global warming. For example, take this excerpt from later in the column:

And we do not know whether warming is necessarily dangerous. Over the millennia,
the planet has warmed and cooled for reasons that are unclear but clearly were
unrelated to SUVs. Was life better when ice a mile thick covered Chicago? Was it
worse when Greenland was so warm that Vikings farmed there?

For the moment, let’s table the fact that the recent warming trend is far outside the parameters any similar previous temperature fluctuation recorded in the geological record, along with the fact that the ability to farm in Greenland as those lucky Vikings could would come at the price of significant portions of densely inhabited costal areas getting swallowed by the sea.

Let’s simply note that Will frames the argument to suggest that if any doubt at all can be raised regarding global warming or its effects, it cannot be accepted by anything other than a leap of unthinking faith. If one accepts Will’s terms for the debate, he wins, since there will always be a level of uncertainty about future events. No matter how much evidence is amassed, Will and his fellow travelers can always play the but-we-don’t-know-absolutely-for-certain card.

I suggest that Will is attempting a bit of rhetorical jujitsu here, attempting to make the weakness of his own position into a weapon to use against his foes. With hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific studies on global warming agreeing, without exception, that the earth is warming due to human actions, it is those who deny that it is happening who are basing their position on faith divorced from facts, largely because they feel that granting the validity of these facts would contradict the tenets of their own ideology (i.e., putting anything ahead of the free market and people’s ability to make and spend money at will is anathema). With science against him, Will tries to suggest, through clever word choice, that it’s really the other guys who hold the faith-based position.

Just one last note: Will makes another religious reference, one with a pagan flavor, when he refers to “climate change Cassandras” who insist that we must do something about global warming. Again, the idea is to suggest that those who are warning of the dangers of global warming are all just Chicken Littles shrilly shouting that the sky is falling.

I would have thought that someone with Will’s putative intellect would know his mythology a bit better. In Greek mythology, Cassandra was given the gift of prophesy by the gods. Her curse was that, although she saw the future clearly and tried to warn those around her, she was doomed never to be believed until it was too late.

Perhaps Will is more right than he suspects.