Literary Legs

Sure, Joannie Rochette Was Courageous. But She Was Also a Freakin' Animal.

Last week I discussed Joannie Rochette's performance at the Vancouver Winter Olympics, where she won a bronze medal in figure skating only days after her mother died suddenly of a heart attack. For a while, Shaun White's performance was the most impressive of the games, but after Rochette, no one comes close to her.  Hands down the best.

Reading some of the online news stories, I was struck by all the words and phrases used to describe Rochette and her performance.  Phrases like grace under pressure (10,800 Google hits) and words like courage (122,000 Google hits) were thrown around. In the Boston Globe, Bob Ryan said that "the gold medal for Grace Under Pressure went to Canadian figure skater Joannie Rochette, whose mother died of a heart attack hours after arriving in Vancouver. She skated a truly elegant short program and followed with a top-notch long program and she skated off with the bronze."

Dr. Robert Quinlan Costas, a psychotherapist, probed Rochette's innermost feelings in an interview on NBC.  Held in front of a toasty warm gas fireplace, this interview no doubt fueled the perception of Rochette the Courageous. 

True, Rochette was courageous, and she displayed enormous grace under pressure.  But how many of these words were used because she was a dainty female figure skater?  (I am assuming that those who said she exhibited grace under pressure were not using it according to the Hemingway definition: guts.) Now, I am not saying that it would be proper to write that Ray Lewis from the Baltimore Ravens exhibits grace under pressure when he pulverizes a quarterback.  But, to me, courage is something you have when you withstand something.  It's not the same as aggression. 

So when I saw Rochette's performance, what came to my mind was her ability to attack, to grab her routine by the rhinestone-studded lapels and destroy it.  That's what separates professional athletes from the rest of us: their aggression--whether internal or external--and fiercely competitive nature.  But most of the news stories focused on her ability to withstand what was coming at her, rather than this ability to attack.  Rochette did not merely overcome adversity; she annihilated it. In his interview, Dr. Costas read a quote from Rochette in which she said that in order to focus, she had to become, in her words, "cold"--just two days after her mother's death.  Rochette may have been graceful, but those are the words of an assassin, someone who wants to crush her routine, and probably her competitors (though the Christian Science Monitor says she was "buoyed by love"). I can't help but wonder if someone like Bode Miller would have been called "courageous" had the same thing happened to him. 

Note to teachers: easy paper topic!

Did espn.com Need to Publish the Dead Luger's Identity Before the Family Was Notified?

By now, most people are aware of the death of the 21 year-old Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili at the Winter Olympics.  I first heard of the account on ESPN's website soon after the accident.  The early story on the site had this to say, from the AP wire:

The official told The Associated Press that the International Olympic Committee received confirmation of Nodar Kumaritashvili's death. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the 21-year-old luger's family hadn't been notified yet.

There was no immediate comment from Vancouver organizers, international luge officials or the International Olympic Committee. At the Whistler track, officials said the IOC and VANOC were preparing a joint statement to be released Friday afternoon.

(See screenshot of full article here)

What troubled me, in the immediate aftermath of the event, was the willingness of so many news outlets to reveal Kumaritashvili's identity before it had been officially released by the IOC, who was holding off until his family had been notified.  Many can be blamed here, starting with the "official" who released the luger's name to the media, upholding the long tradition of the IOC's moral integrity. 

But what about the AP?  They obviously knew Kumaritashvili's identity before the family had been told.  Did they need to put that information out?  "If we didn't, somebody else would have" is not good enough for me.  And what about ESPN?  Did they have to post the AP story verbatim?  Could they have posted the story without the luger's name? 

I have to wonder if both the AP and ESPN would have shown the same deference if an American luger had been killed.  Assuming ESPN is not as big in Georgia as it in the United States, maybe that made it easier. 

Along those lines, NBC was criticized for showing Kumaritashvili's final run several times on its evening newscast, along with the disclaimer that "what you are about to see is extremely graphic and disturbing"--words that, of course, only make more people salivate.  In the video clip, we see the luger fly off his sled and slam into a metal pole.  He is killed instantly. We see the impact from behind, so we never see Kumaritashvili's face.  Had the camera angle been a head-on shot--allowing us to see the luger's face at the moment of death--I don't think NBC would have shown it.  And again, I have to wonder: if this involved an American luger, would this moment of death been so prominently displayed? 

In the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake, Americans saw death and dying up close in an endless stream of photographs and videos, over every news outlet and every medium, in ways that we have never seen before.  I was surprised that NBC decided to show Kumaritashvili's death.  Has the Haitian tragedy shifted the bounds of what is acceptable to show on television? 

This is Clearly Overuse

One of the common traps into which attorneys fall when advocating is the use of the word clearly.  Eliminating this word is one of the easiest revisions to make, since it means nothing.  If you use clearly, take it out.  Even better, don't start using it in the first place.  Clearly is an ineffective intensifier.  No judge reads a brief--or for that matter, no one reads any piece of advocacy, legal or not--and says, "Well, your opponent says that the evidence 'proves his guilt,' but since you said that the evidence 'clearly proves his innocence,' you must be right."  In other words, clearly never pushes your readers one way or another.  They do not say, "You said that something was erroneous, but had you said it was 'clearly erroneous,' I would have supported you.  That's a whole different story!" 

But don't take my word for it.  Here's what Chief Justice John Roberts told the Northwestern University School of Law back in 2007:

"We get hundreds and hundreds of briefs, and they're all the same," Roberts told a crowd of eager law students and faculty members last week at the Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago. "Somebody says, 'My client clearly deserves to win, the cases clearly do this, the language clearly reads this,' blah, blah blah. And you pick up the other side and, lo and behold, they think they clearly deserve to win."

In short, clearly smacks of desperation.  I was reminded of this in a recent article by Alec MacGillis and Paul Farhi in the Washington Post entitled "In Obama's speeches, one favorite phrase: "Let me be clear.'" MacGillis and Fahri discuss Obama's overuse of this set-up in his speeches. They write that "in a presidency in which everything is murkier than Obama could have imagined, the 'let me be clear' preface has become a signal that what follows will be anything but."  Has Obama used the phrase so often that it is now cliche, a metaphorical device that once was to be taken literally but through overuse has lost all meaning?  

In the beginning, when he was still a presidential candidate, Obama used the device to say, "Listen to what I am about to tell you.  Sometimes what I say might be opaque, but I tell you this with no trace of ambiguity or shred of doubt."  MacGillis and Fahri say that once Obama became president, he used the phrase to defend against his detractors, to rebut them when things were really not that clear.  His opponents saw the phrase "as a sign of indecision to follow."

Of course, the other problem with overusing the phrase "let me be clear" is that it implies that there are times when he is not being clear, when he is not as assured or unambiguous or decisive. In his November speech announcing the troop increase in Afghanistan, Obama pronounced his clarity eleven times.  Not only does he risk tiring his audience with the phrase, but he also risks removing the power from the phrase when he really does mean to be clear. 

To sum: don't overuse any stylistic technique or rhetorical device.  When you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing. 

 

A Lesson in Writing With Style: Using the Isocolon

The best tip for improving your writing: read everything you write out loud.  You'll catch weak areas--awkward sentences, unintended repetition, punctuation and grammar mistakes, poor sentence construction--that you would never catch reading silently. 

Good writing, as I've said before, is euphonic: it sounds good. One way you can achieve euphony is through isocolon, a method of parallelism in which the clauses in a sentence are of equal length.  Everyone likes harmony and parallelism, and balanced clauses are easy to read since they reinforce these two concepts.  Probably the most famous example is Caesar's veni, vidi, vici (which is also a tricolon, or the use of three parallel members).

So imagine my glee when I found this fantastic example of isocolon in Nick Paumgarten's essay in the January 4 issue of the New Yorker entitled "Food Fighter." It's a profile of John Mackey, the Whole Foods CEO.  Here's the sentence:

"Depending on where you are on the spectrum of epicurean cultural politics, you may consider Whole Foods to be a righteous grocer or a cynical con, a prod to self-improvement or a gateway to decadence, a neighborhood boon or a blight, a force for social good or a place to pick up chicks."

Let's break this down.  Each item in the four pairs below contains the identical number of syllables on either end of the coordinating junction or:

• a righteous grocer or a cynical con: 5 syllables
• a prod to self-improvement or a gateway to decadence: 7 syllables
• a neighborhood boon or a blight: 1 syllable (you have to use boon and blight here)
• a force for social good or a place to pick up chicks: 5 syllables

This, my friends, is what good writing looks like.  When we talk about good writing having style, this is what we mean, and it's tangible examples like this that teachers of writing--on any level--should be showing their students.  Your use of grammar and punctuation can be flawless, but you are nothing without style. 

The DC Police Chief and Valspeak

An off-duty DC plainclothes detective received some unwanted attention this weekend when he pulled his gun (read and watch here) on a bunch of snowball-throwers who, after pelting his Hummer when it got stuck in the snow, decided to help him by pelting him with snowballs after he got out. 

In response, DC Police Chief Cathy Lanier put out an official statement, where she put on her best Valley Girl impersonation:

"Let me be very clear in stating that I believe the actions of the officer were totally inappropriate!"

An attorney at our firm once asked me if I could go over the rules regarding the use of exclamation points. I jokingly told him no. Since he should never be using exclamation points in legal writing in the first place, I told him, he does not need to know the rules. And Lanier's sentence illustrates my point.  They have no place in formal writing, whether it's legal writing, business writing, technical writing, press releases, you name it. 

Furthermore, the word totally adds nothing.  Is totally inappropriate any more severe than just plain ol' inappropriate?  It's a useless, meaningless intensifier.  Part of the problem, I think, is that inappropriate has become a cliche and itself almost means nothing due to its overuse in describing any type of behavior that we think is wrong: sexually inappropriate behavior in the workplace, for example, or inappropriate behavior in the classroom.  Still, for those of us who grew up in the 80s, totally reminds many of us of Valspeak.

Lastly, this statement is loaded with the kind of metadiscourse (let me be clear, in stating, I believe) that weakens what is supposed to be a forceful position.  Metadiscourse is a discussion about a discussion, or a reference to our own thinking.  It is usually a waste of time and just gets in the way of the writer's message.  Sometimes we can use it to soften a message, and to be fair to Lanier, if she had written

The officer's actions were inappropriate

She may have been viewed as throwing a fellow officer under the bus.  So I think maybe one of the metadiscourse examples could have stayed:

Let me be clear that the officer's actions were inappropriate OR

I believe that the officer's actions were inappropriate

But all three?  No way.  If you teach a writing course, take a look at Lanier's whole statement. Use it with your students for a great exercise in revision. 

The Surprisingly Brief History of "To Overdose"

The Washington Post is currently covering a story here in metro DC about a five month old baby who ingested heroin (and survived).  What struck me as odd was that most of the headlines about the case and the accompanying text say that the baby "overdosed" on heroin.  Since to overdose means "to take too large a dose of something," this got me wondering: is there really any acceptable level of heroin use for a five month old that would not be considered an overdose?  The Post's use of the verb would seem to imply that.  

Then I thought a little more and went to my favorite online resource, the Oxford English Dictionary. And what I found was quite surprising: that for most of its life--since around 1700--to overdose was a transitive verb meaning to "give too large a dose to."  In other words, it required an object, and it was not restricted to medicine.  The OED cites, for example, a 1977 Washington Post article cautioning readers that "Iceberg lettuce salad cannot be saved by overdosing it with garlic and oregano" and a journal that mentions "a diabetic patient who has been overdosed with insulin."

The first entry of to overdose as an intransitive verb--one not requiring an object--is only from 1973, surprisingly. It's from a Robert Ludlum book where he writes, "The doctor told me that he'd prescribe heavier ‘medication’ but warned me not to overdose." As we can see, the old definition, as an intransitive verb referring to any substance, has been largely replaced by its current use as transitive verb referring most often to taking too large a dose of medicine or some other pharmaceutical substance. 

Why such a change?  Look at the date: 1973.  This was the early 1970s, a time when illegal drug use was becoming mainstream as more and more people started experimenting with marijuana, LSD, and other mind-altering substances.  And as the popularity of these drugs increased, it would follow that people began to ingest far too much.  Thus, to overdose took on a new meaning as people looked for a word to describe such as action. 

 

CNN Says That President Obama Eats His Children With His Popcorn

From CNN's Political Ticker last week, discussing President Obama's attendance at the George Washington-Oregon State basketball game (Obama's brother-in-law is the Oregon State coach):

Robinson, who coaches the Oregon State Beavers, was cheered on by the President, who snacked on popcorn, the First Lady, Sasha, Malia and the girls’ grandmother Marian Robinson.

What would you do to correct this?

Listen, we all know what the author is saying, and no one believes that Obama ate Sasha and Malia.  But when we see a sentence like that, we start thinking less about the message and more about its impression upon us (in this case, we laugh) and how it looks.

Full text here (thanks to the ADS-L listserv for this gem)

Update: after about three weeks, the sentence has been corrected on CNN's blog:

Robinson, who coaches the Oregon State Beavers, was cheered on by the President, who snacked on popcorn, joined by the first lady, Sasha, Malia and the girls’ grandmother Marian Robinson.

Small Error Leads to Big Difference in Meaning

Sometimes a small error in grammar can make a big difference in the meaning of a sentence, and today's AP story about former 100m record holder Tim Montgomery is a perfect example.  Montgomery's record was wiped from the books after he was implicated in the BALCO scandal and had admitted doping.  He is serving time now for bank fraud and drug dealing.  Montgomery also had a relationship with fellow disgraced sprinter Marion Jones.

Both espn.com and si.com have Montgomery's story from the AP wire.  Here's a sentence from ESPN's version:

A short time after they got together, Montgomery set the world record in the 100 in Paris, running 9.78 seconds -- one hundredth of a second faster than Greene's previous record, which has been wiped from the books.

And here is the same sentence from Sport Illustrated's version:

A short time after they got together, Montgomery set the world record in the 100 in Paris, running 9.78 seconds -- one hundredth of a second faster than Greene's previous record but now wiped from the books.

Obviously, a huge difference in meaning here, and in fact a factual error on ESPN's part.  Their version means, with the non-restrictive clause at the end, that Greene's previous record was wiped from the books.  That is not true, and it also makes Greene look bad by implying that his record was erased because of steroid use.

Sports Illustrated's version is the right one.  Montgomery's record, not Greene's, was wiped from the books.

A Disinterested Account of an Execution

My post two days ago on subtle bias in a death penalty article elicited considerable dialogue.  The post was not intended to be--as some perceived it--an attack on left-wing media bias.  What I tried to show was that unintended bias is almost impossible to overcome, despite our best intentions.  For example, saying that someone was "electrocuted" is a much more graphic way of saying someone was "put to death."  Perhaps a writer may intend no difference in meaning, but to me there is a difference in how these two terms are taken.

Similarly, writers use angle of vision. They are in complete control of what the reader sees--and does not see.  And this absolutely impacts the reader's perception of an event.  For example, had White simply written that "Elliott was strapped to the chair, the switch was thrown, and five minutes later he was dead," such a sanitized version probably would not have moved many people.  However, had he gone into greater detail about Elliott's convulsions as the current flowed through his body, the bodily fluids streaming from his mouth and skin, the smoke, and other sensory images, many people would have been repulsed by what they perceive as barbaric behavior.  This is angle of vision: same event, different versions.

Josh White, the author of the Washington Post article I discussed on Monday, wrote a follow up blog post, a first person account of Larry Elliott's execution.  White was one of the witnesses, and I think he does a fantastic job of describing an emotional experience with impressive disinterest.  This is what White wrote about the moment the current hit Elliott's body:

Another officer, concealed in a room adjacent to the death chamber, hit a button marked “execute” on a machine that was described as being about the size of a domestic clothes dryer.

It was clear when the electricity hit Elliott, as his body jerked bolt upright in the chair and his hands appeared to tightly grip the oak arms. A large blister formed on the inside of his right knee, just above the electrical contact. Smoke rose from both his leg and his head. Spit bubbles formed below the left side of his face mask, near where the corner of his mouth would have been.

This is a strong piece of writing about the moment a man dies (or is killed, depending on your view, right?).  There is not much here that gives away White's position.  Remember: White has witnessed a pretty graphic death.  It would be easy to descend into hyperbole, but he writes just the facts.

If you teach argumentative writing, a good classroom exercise would be to take a passage (like the one above) and make it more persuasive by adding details to alter the angle of vision.  If you have a particularly morbid curiosity, plenty of websites can explain just what happens to the body when the "execute" button is pushed. 

Subtle Bias in a Death Penalty Article?

Few issues are as difficult to write about from an unbiased perspective as capital punishment.  The debate invokes a lot of passion when a person's life hangs in the balance. (See here for my recent post on print media's varying reactions to Manson family member Susan Atkins' death.)

Reporters who cover executions no doubt are susceptible to the emotions that accompany seeing someone die. Still, they must cover these events in an impartial fashion.  And try as they might, sometimes we can still see elements of subtle bias in their reporting.  The biased language is probably not intentional.  From an argumentative or legal writing perspective, performing a close reading of a text like this can help uncover subtle or hidden biases in your opponent.

Last week in Virginia, Larry Elliott was executed for the murder of a couple in 2001.  Elliott, a former Army counterintelligence officer, denied that he was the killer.  A close reading of the Washington Post's coverage of his execution can be an instructive lesson in hidden, and quite possibly unintended, bias.  I have no idea if the author of the piece, Josh White, supports the death penalty (though White said in a blog post, "Let me say upfront that I do not have strong views on the death penalty in general."  I find this hard to believe).

First, let's look at the narrative structure. We open with a two paragraph lede, the five W's of the actual execution.  The third paragraph, however, paints a somewhat sympathetic picture: a confused Elliott, hardly defiant, strapped into the chair: "Instead of making an oral statement, Elliott said he didn't know how much time he had to speak, so he gave a written statement to his attorneys." 

The next three paragraphs detail the statement in which he professes his innocence.  In this statement, Elliott says, "In this great country, we should not arrest and convict innocent people of any crime, let alone capital murder, nor should we kill innocent people as the Commonwealth of Virginia has done today." So far, then, this is what we have: a confused man not able to comprehend why he is being executed.