The language-police issue aroused by Blanchard's use of the word cripple doesn't alarm me all that much. As an English teacher, I've certainly called my share of students to task for imprecise and impolitic word choice. I knocked a big chunk off one student's grade solely for referring to Arabs as towelheads. The usage was not simple ignorance but a willful expression of racism and thuggery.
But sometimes getting hung up on word choice just distracts from the bigger issue. When I judge policy debate on the weekends, I'm increasingly hearing annoying arguments called kritiks (I much prefer to just write critique, but policy debaters like to be fancy and use the German). It's a generic and generally boring strategy whereby the Negative team prepares a stock response that picks out one word or theme from the Affirmative team's argument and bloviates for 4-7 minutes about how I ought to vote against the Aff team for using such language. For example, last month at Mitchell, I heard two Watertown boys run a reasonable Aff plan to build water treatment systems in Africa to save millions of lives. The Neg team from O'Gorman got up and straight-facedly said I should vote against that plan because the Aff's case referred to African children dying of diarrhea, which constitutes "disaster porn," which victimizes and oppresses Africans and perpetuates Western imperialism.
Clever. Plus Neg had evidence from academics backing their thesis. But the kritik ignored the main issue of the debate: should the US spend money on water treatment programs for Africa? I vote down kritiks because they distract from the main point of the argument.
So does getting excited about Blanchard's use of the word cripple. Blanchard simply captured exactly the strategic problem the Republicans face in challenging Senator Johnson: many folks will look at attacks on Senator Johnson with the same distaste as attacks on a person who has experienced a health event that has rendered that individual, who still retains his worth and dignity as a human being, differently abled from what narrow-minded people incautiously refer to as the norm. Millions of dollars are not about to be spent on reforming Blanchard's word choice; instead they'll be spent on the really important question of who will serve South Dakota for the next six years in the US Senate.
Unfortunately, Blanchard appears to commit a similar missing of the point as he turns to address Newquist's commentary on uncivil blog discourse and fascism in America. Blanchard's evasions seem akin to the "misdirection, defamations, and misinformation" that Newquist ascribes to Jon Lauck's book on the 2004 Senate race.
Blanchard opens with "a formal point," taking small issue with Newquist's use of the term straw man, chiding Newquist for inaccurately directing the fallacy against a person, not an argument. "Formal point" indeed, and hardly that: Newquist accuses numerous commenters of ascribing to opponents imagined, easily assailable positions that appeal to fears and resentments rather than the facts. Whether properly aimed at position or person, Newquist's point stands: the blogscape is littered with straw men erected by the fearful and fallacious...
...and the occasional fascist. Newquist flows quite logically to this point. Fascists make use of straw-man arguments, personal attacks, and scapegoating to forward their political agenda, as well as to distract from their actual policies. Newquist properly identifies numerous aspects of current American policy that smell of fascism:
Our current regime is fascist in many respects. It espouses a belligerent nationalism. It is militaristic. It is moving toward totalitarianism with its warrantless wiretaps, its advocacy of torture, its systematic defamations of its opponents and its repressive policies and actions, its control by a corporate hierarchy that is allowed to set policy and rig the economy to only its advantage, It fits the descriptive taxonomy that defines fascism. Anyone who supports the ideologies and political machinations that define fascism might be said to be a fascist as a legitimate denotative term, not as a gratuitous epithet.
Newquist isn't just throwing out a term to raise hackles: he is offering disturbing examples of how the US is not acting in accordance with its ideals.
Blanchard addresses none of these issues. He makes no argument that belligerent nationalism, warrantless wiretaps, torture, or the rest are truly non-fascist or democratic, and he does not refute that the current president has promoted exactly those ills. Blanchard instead merely diverts our attention:
This, if I am allowed to quote Marx, is nonsense on stilts. Fascism, if it means anything, means an ideology that elevates the nation over the individual, and identifies loyalty to the nation with loyalty to a single, charismatic leader. Where are the brown shirts marching in lock step? If we are moving toward totalitarianism, how is it that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have escaped arrest? How is it that the New York Times has not yet been silenced, not to mention MoveOn.org? And how is it that one party controls the White House, and the other Congress?
In fact, Professor Newquist refutes himself. Fascism is by definition a unitary national system. America remains a Federal Republic.
Blanchard addresses no one of the specific characteristics of a fascist regime identified by Newquist. Blanchard cites a few specific examples that show Americans still enjoy freedom of dissent and thus do not live in an absolute dictatorship. But here Blanchard makes Newquist's point about straw-man arguments (or, if you're feeling formal, feel free to submit the name of your favorite failure of logic). Blanchard ascribes to Newquist a laughable point that Newquist does not make. Newquist doesn't say, "America is Nazi Germany!" Newquist says, "Fascism is undergoing a renaissance in the 21st century. It has pervaded American politics. Our current regime is fascist in many aspects." Newquist cites examples to back his point. Blanchard, unable or unwilling to address those specific examples, chooses easier examples of his own.
Is America a fascist regime? No. Newquist never said it was. Are there fascist tendencies in our discourse and presidential administration? Newquist says so, and Blanchard fails to respond.
Update [10:45]: Newquist is nobody's fool: he catches Blanchard's evasion as well and addresses them this morning.
I don't consider chiding Ken Blanchard for saying 'cripple' to be "getting hung up on word choice." Many people with disabilities have set forth a precise way with which they'd like people to discuss them. (If you'll recall, there was a bill in the SD Legislature last year requesting a change in the way that state agencies refer to PWD, and that was pushed by community groups of disabled people in SD). So, actually, people did spend money last year in an attempt to reform people's word choices, and it was obviously something important to them. I think using respectful language (which is one very important way of treating people with respect) is incredibly important. Sorry if you think I was missing the point.
ReplyDeleteNo, Anna, I don't think you were missing the point. You bring up a reasonable point. I just note (at my own peril) that even in the midst of my love of words and respect for their power, I'm usually less interested in that point, the words themselves, than in the issue at which the words are directed.
ReplyDeleteOne small clarification: I ascribed the misinformation, et al, to Lauck's blog, not his book. I have only had a chance to take a cursory look at his book.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your discussion on the principles of rhetoric. I added to the list of fallacies today on the NVB blogs. I read with interest your account of debate judging. As an undergraduate who judgged debate contests, I had to attend workshops conducted by the rhetoric faculty so that we would be familiar with fallacies of reasoning and be able to identify and comment on them in our critiques.
We may need to revive those workshops for bloggers.
The key in the Tim Johnson race will not be based on his physical appearance or abilities, but whether the changes that have occured to Tim are significant enough to create doubt in the mind of voters of both parties as to his ability to perform effectively. I remember former Sen. Jim Abnor and the criticism he faced for his speech difficulties. The voters of the State of South Dakota are caring, but they are also careful and observant. Knowing the addictive nature of politics, it doesn't surprise me that Mr. Johnson will seek another term, when most of us would have decided to focus on what really matters in our "second chance", which is his wife, children and grandchildren.
ReplyDelete