Ok, so in one of my higher moments, I have come to truly appreciate the period as a grammatical tool. I know that the ellipsis is really popular now in popular culture and everything, but what an overly used, trite piece of wannabe ironic visual twist on discourse. I'm guilty, I know. I used to love the ellipsis. What a great way of adding the temptuously tongue in cheek way of writing. After all, it's so easy. There's no effort in what must come next to indicate a sarcastic comment coming. The ellipsis says it all.
But what about the period. Nothing is more blunt than a period. It is an abrupt stop. There's no instruction for pause as with it's cousin the ellipsis, it demands an immediate halt. The tantalizing pause of the ellipsis is widely overused and abused. What a pretentious way of trying to feign intelligence by using what used to be a sacred mark of punctuation rarely used and only when its true intention was intended. Perhaps its just another sign of our ridiculous nature to make anything remotely popular a cultural symbol. Which in the ironic postmodern generation currently underway, provides a sort of paradox as to the loss of meaning when a postmodern icon is symbolized and popularly internalized. That which it was supposed to represent is no longer embodied in the symbolized version digested by popular culture. Nonetheless, I digress.
The ellipsis has lost all meaning now. I say go old school. I say remember the period. Remember how it's simplicity and directness. There's no cowardly pause. There is no sign of weakness, strength and conviction are conveyed by the period. There's no moment of false deliberation purposed here. There's not a single semicolon here, no sir. I am a firm believer in the period, and all that it stands for. I say to you bring confidence to your writing. Don't complicate things by injecting vagueness. Get back to your roots people. May God bless the period, and may God bless America.
Showing posts with label postmodern. Show all posts
Showing posts with label postmodern. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Monday, October 6, 2008
Political Rhetoric and Your Freedom, the Reasonable Person Standard
I just finished watching a rerun of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and he said something that really hit home with me, and was a very articulate, yet not pretentious, way of explaining my personal position on political discourse in the modern and postmodern eras. I can't remember the exact quote, but he was talking about the mannerisms and style of rhetoric used by politicians when speaking. I should elaborate here, I am describing the flow of words and sentence structure along with word choice that effects how information is presented to and received by an audience.
Stewart's comment was something to the effect of "Why can't we just sit down and talk like adults, without the use of 'code.' Politicians devise sentences that allow them the 'wiggle room' to go back and restructure our positions later for 'plausible deniability.'"
The purpose of this blog is not to show examples of our of politicians performing, it is rather to argue for the loss and potential recovery of the Reasonable Person Standard, as described by Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman in their book, The Press Effect: Politicians, Journalists, and the Stories That Shape the Critical World (great read, really very interesting if you're into Journalism or Sociology at all, easy to follow for the most part). The Reasonable Person Standard (RPS) is relatively self-explanatory, but it still warrants further explanation.
Now, I should tell you I'm not going to cite anything here. If/when I use a quote, I'm not going to do page numbers in the book and all that jazz. I'm posting my formal essay after I finish this blog, and it contains all the proper citations for the references I'm using. So check that one if you need specificity.
The RPS could be obtusely defined as "common sense;" however, this would be an oversimplication. I think the best way to explain it is to think of jury duty. When your on a jury, you're job is to look at the facts, and decide what a reasonable person placed in that situation would do or understand. It's not rocket science, there are absolutely no academic requirements for serving on a jury. Now Jamieson & Waldman go more in depth and explore about nine other guidelines for political press coverage, which are more specific in how to successfully execute the Reasonable Person Standard in a journalistic setting and are important, but not necessary here. They can pretty much just be lumped under the umbrella of the RPS. Again, refer to the formal essay for detail.
When politicians use spin or misleading rhetoric to confuse the public perspective, they are undermining your right to information and your right to make your own choices based on pure information. Dare I say it, your freedom? Isn't that kind of what freedom is, at least from a very broad democratic perspective. People are supposed to be able to make their own decisions about their lives, based off of accurate information provided to the public. Now, I'm not going to argue that most people don't want to participate and are uninterested in active democracy, but that's partly due to the difficulties in finding clear, unspun information that is widely available and easy to understand. Enter what is supposed to be the role of journalism in society. With spreading postmodern skepticism, however, the media is losing its reputation as an unbiased source of clear and reliable information. To go in deeply here would take too long, and would not be effective for the purpose of this blog, but maybe I'll write about it soon in another.
This is becoming one of the great problems of society in our time. The manipulation of information to present a distorted view of facts is undermining our freedom and our ability to govern ourselves. Then again, we've done it to ourselves. We've made the true facts so complicated, so difficult to find, that most Americans have given up searching for them. Further, any information that is presented to individuals rather than observed by them is increasingly beoming suspect as fraud in the mind of the individual. We've let a few bad apples spoil the bunch. Fellow Americans, call for reliability and accuracy from your media. Demand clarified, but not oversimplified information. Don't allow rhetoric to twist facts to fit the story, use the facts to write the story. Become an active member in your democracy. Freedom is yours for the taking.
Supes
Stewart's comment was something to the effect of "Why can't we just sit down and talk like adults, without the use of 'code.' Politicians devise sentences that allow them the 'wiggle room' to go back and restructure our positions later for 'plausible deniability.'"
The purpose of this blog is not to show examples of our of politicians performing, it is rather to argue for the loss and potential recovery of the Reasonable Person Standard, as described by Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman in their book, The Press Effect: Politicians, Journalists, and the Stories That Shape the Critical World (great read, really very interesting if you're into Journalism or Sociology at all, easy to follow for the most part). The Reasonable Person Standard (RPS) is relatively self-explanatory, but it still warrants further explanation.
Now, I should tell you I'm not going to cite anything here. If/when I use a quote, I'm not going to do page numbers in the book and all that jazz. I'm posting my formal essay after I finish this blog, and it contains all the proper citations for the references I'm using. So check that one if you need specificity.
The RPS could be obtusely defined as "common sense;" however, this would be an oversimplication. I think the best way to explain it is to think of jury duty. When your on a jury, you're job is to look at the facts, and decide what a reasonable person placed in that situation would do or understand. It's not rocket science, there are absolutely no academic requirements for serving on a jury. Now Jamieson & Waldman go more in depth and explore about nine other guidelines for political press coverage, which are more specific in how to successfully execute the Reasonable Person Standard in a journalistic setting and are important, but not necessary here. They can pretty much just be lumped under the umbrella of the RPS. Again, refer to the formal essay for detail.
When politicians use spin or misleading rhetoric to confuse the public perspective, they are undermining your right to information and your right to make your own choices based on pure information. Dare I say it, your freedom? Isn't that kind of what freedom is, at least from a very broad democratic perspective. People are supposed to be able to make their own decisions about their lives, based off of accurate information provided to the public. Now, I'm not going to argue that most people don't want to participate and are uninterested in active democracy, but that's partly due to the difficulties in finding clear, unspun information that is widely available and easy to understand. Enter what is supposed to be the role of journalism in society. With spreading postmodern skepticism, however, the media is losing its reputation as an unbiased source of clear and reliable information. To go in deeply here would take too long, and would not be effective for the purpose of this blog, but maybe I'll write about it soon in another.
This is becoming one of the great problems of society in our time. The manipulation of information to present a distorted view of facts is undermining our freedom and our ability to govern ourselves. Then again, we've done it to ourselves. We've made the true facts so complicated, so difficult to find, that most Americans have given up searching for them. Further, any information that is presented to individuals rather than observed by them is increasingly beoming suspect as fraud in the mind of the individual. We've let a few bad apples spoil the bunch. Fellow Americans, call for reliability and accuracy from your media. Demand clarified, but not oversimplified information. Don't allow rhetoric to twist facts to fit the story, use the facts to write the story. Become an active member in your democracy. Freedom is yours for the taking.
Supes
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