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How To Have The Language Intelligence Of Abraham Lincoln, Part 1: Study The Figures Of Speech And Shakespeare

By Joe Romm on Dec 1, 2012 at 4:18 pm

Part II: Use irony, the twist we can’t resist

What with a masterful must-see-movie on our 16th President and the general failure of Obama to be the rhetorically inspiring leader that climate hawks had hoped for on global warming, I’m going to repost my multi-part series on Lincoln.

This is material that comes from my recent book on rhetoric and politics — “Language Intelligence: Lessons On Persuasion From Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, And Lady Gaga,” which is available at Amazon.com [Kindle is here].  I must say the Spielburg movie — screenplay by Tony Kushner based in part on a Doris Kearns Goodwin book — creates a very plausible version of our most rhetorically gifted president. I like the fact that Lincoln constantly quotes Shakespeare in the movie (as he did in real life) but doesn’t tell you that he is. Also, I like the way he lets people get annoyed with his constant homespun stories — that is, as we’ll see, the very definition of irony, something Lincoln had mastered.

I think science has mostly told us what it can about the urgent need to act swiftly and strongly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and avoid destroying the planet’s livability for the next several hundred years (see “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces“).

Yes, more observations and more analysis are valuable — which is why I keep reporting on the ever-worsening climate outlook — but right now we need much more persuasiveness (see Why scientists aren’t more persuasive, Part 1).   As James Hansen says, we are still waiting for our climate Churchill.

One of Churchill’s defining characteristics was his mastery of rhetoric.  Indeed, at the age of 22 he wrote a brilliant, unpublished essay, “The Scaffolding of Rhetoric so.”  But this is the day we remember Lincoln, so I’m going to rerun my series on Lincoln’s mastery of rhetoric, the 25-century-old art of influencing both the hearts and minds of listeners with the figures of speech. If you have any doubt about the importance of the figures to Lincoln, consider this:

In a famous 1858 speech, Lincoln paraphrased Jesus, saying “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” and he extended the house metaphor throughout the speech. His law partner, William Herndon, later wrote that Lincoln had told him he wanted to use “some universally known figure [of speech] expressed in simple language “ … that may strike home to the minds of men in order to raise them up to the peril of the times.”

Part 1 will look briefly at how Lincoln taught himself the figures. I’ll also include here his use of irony. Part 2 will look at his use of two other key figures: metaphor and extended metaphor. The best textbook on the figures of speech in the English language, other than the King James Bible, is the complete works of Shakespeare.

The Bard and his audience knew and used over two hundred figures of speech. The figures-the catalog of the different, effective ways that we talk-turn out to “constitute basic schemes by which people conceptualize their experience and the external world,” as one psychologist put it.

Elizabethans like Shakespeare learned the figures the hard way. William likely attended the town grammar school from age seven to at least age thirteen. Grammar schools got their name because they taught grammar-Latin grammar. The schooling was intensive: ten hours a day, six days a week, thirty-six weeks a year.

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Security

Study: Anti-Islam Messages Dominate Media Coverage

By Hamed Aleaziz on Dec 1, 2012 at 2:05 pm

Frank Gaffney and Pamela Geller feature prominently in Fear, Inc.

Between 2001 and 2008, mainstream media outlets predominantly featured anti-Islam organizations, leading to altered “contours of mainstream discourse.” That’s according to North Carolina Professor Christopher A. Bail’s study that used “anti-plagiarism” software to examine the coverage of Muslims in the mainstream American press. Bail surveyed more than “1,084 press releases about Muslims produced by 120 civil society organizations to 50,407 newspaper articles and television transcripts” during the seven crucial years after 9/11.

Bail told the British Wired magazine that journalists became enamored with the those spouting anti-Muslim rhetoric, and that even though “the vast majority of organizations competing to shape public discourse about Islam after the September 11 attacks delivered pro-Muslim messages,” journalists so closely followed extremists that the groups became perceived as “mainstream.” Muslim groups, as a result, were sidelined and became less influential. Bail painted a disturbing picture for Wired, saying:

“I think most Americans are exposed to anti-Muslim messages in the media and elsewhere. The danger, I believe, is that many Americans have not been exposed to the positive messages of moderate Muslim organisations because they receive so little media coverage. Perhaps because of this distorted representation, we have seen a recent increase in anti-Muslim attitudes within the United States — even though anti-Muslim attitudes briefly decreased after the September 11 attacks.”

An August 2011 Center for American Progress study, Fear Inc, The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America, revealed that seven different organizations spent $42 million on efforts that fanned “the flames of anti-Muslim hate in America” over the last ten years. The money helped Islamophobic messages take hold:

Over the past few years, the Islamophobia network (the funders, scholars, grassroots activists, media amplifiers, and political validators) have worked hard to push narratives that Obama might be a Muslim, that mosques are incubators of radicalization, and that “radical Islam” has infiltrated all aspects of American society — including the conservative movement.

And the network has had its effect. “The groups that were getting the majority of the attention, especially after 9/11, were some of the least representative groups, or what I call fringe groups,” Bail said.

Justice

Top Conservative Author Endorses ‘Benevolent Sexism’

By Zack Beauchamp on Dec 1, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Charles Murray.

Charles Murray, a scholar at the leading conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute, may be the most influential populizer of racist views in the country. His book The Bell Curve, which posits that black people are genetically less intelligent than whites, practically spawned an entire field of scholarship devoted to debunking it. His most recent book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 even made an appearance on the campaign trial during the recent presidential election.

Murray, however, appears to have set aside his retrograde views about race in order to tout equally backwards views about gender. In a short piece on AEI’s website, Murray recently suggested that “benevolent sexism” might be “healthy.” The only problem is that he appears not to have read the research on which he bases this extraordinary conclusion, which cited strong evidence that “benevolent sexism” was itself linked to discrimination against women and rape victims.

The paper in question, by Kathleen Connelly and Martin Heesacker, studies why “benevolent sexism,” understood as “an ostensibly flattering ideology that idealizes women who conform to feminine norms,” is so commonly accepted by men and women around the world. The authors find that “although benevolent sexism perpetuates inequality at the structural level, it might offer some benefits at the personal level” by giving men and women a sense of order and structure in their lives.

Though the authors see this as a concern, given that so-called benevolent sexism is net-destructive for women, but Murray believes this is knee-jerk liberal prejudice. “When social scientists discover something that increases life satisfaction for both sexes, shouldn’t they at least consider the possibility that they have come across something that is positive? Healthy” he asks rhetorically. “Something that might even conceivably be grounded in the nature of Homo sapiens?”

Had he read the paper in question, and not just the abstract, he would have understood why: there’s a mountain of evidence cited by Connelly and Heesacker that “benevolent sexism” is extraordinarily harmful to women. As Connelly told ThinkProgress, “it’s pretty well documented that benevolent sexism is associated with negative outcomes for women.” As her paper shows, Connelly is putting the point mildly:

Correlational research also suggests that benevolently sexist attitudes contribute to women’s subjugation. For instance, Fiske and Glick (1995) as well as Pryor, Geidd, and Williams (1995) found that benevolently sexist attitudes are associated with beliefs that excuse sexual harassment. In a multinational study, Glick et al. (2000) found that higher national averages of benevolent sexism predicted greater gender discrimination. Glick, Sakalli-Ugurlu, Ferreira, and Aguiar de Souza (2002) noted that individuals who endorse benevolent sexism tend to hold beliefs justifying spousal abuse. Abrams, Viki, Masser, and Bohner (2003) and Viki and Abrams (2002) demonstrated that men who possess benevolently sexist attitudes reacted negatively to female rape victims who violate traditional feminine norms. Moya, Glick, Expo´sito, de Lemus, and Hart (2007) reported that women who endorse benevolent sexism are more likely to accept men’s behavioral restrictions. Finally, Expósito, Herrera, Moya, and Glick (2010) documented that women who hold benevolently sexist attitudes believe that men will react negatively, and even violently, to a wife’s career success.

There’s also evidence that “merely exposing women to benevolent sexism increased self-objectification” and that “women who read benevolently sexist comments performed worse on a cognitive task and reported increased feelings of incompetence and self-doubt.” So to answer Murray’s question: the authors conclude “benevolent sexism” is bad despite some positive side-effects because that’s what the evidence says. If he wants to challenge that consensus, he’s free to do it — but it would help if he actually weighed the evidence rather than speculating wildly about human nature.

Politics

Republicans Claim That Obama’s Long Time Economic Proposal Represents A ‘Classic Bait-And-Switch’

By Igor Volsky on Dec 1, 2012 at 11:47 am

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) ripped into President Obama’s opening offer on a package to avert the so-called fiscal cliff, during the GOP’s weekly address on Saturday, characterizing the proposal as “radical” and a “classic bait-and-switch.” “Maybe I missed it but I don’t recall him asking for any of that during the presidential campaign,” Hatch said. “These ideas are so radical that they have already been rejected on a bipartisan basis by Congress.”

Watch it:

Obama’s proposal — which includes $1.6 trillion in increased taxes on the rich over the next decade, $400 billion in savings in Medicare and other social programs, $50 billion in stimulus spending to begin next year, and an end to current debt ceiling rules — is not new or radical: it reflects the very same same policies Obama advanced for years and promoted extensively on the campaign trail.

For instance, Obama’s FY 2013 budget — released in February 2012 — raised “an additional $1.7 trillion in revenue” and proposed $360 billion in savings from entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid. (Comparatively, Simpson-Bowles called for $2.7 trillion revenue over 10 years, more than what Obama requested). Obama advocated for additional stimulative spending throughout the campaign, calling for a path “forward” that will “continue investing in education and infrastructure.”

Republicans are feigning shock that Obama is proposing to implement the very same policies that Americans voted for in November, as they seek to define his second term agenda and bolster their own negotiating position. Meanwhile, they have yet to offer their own detailed proposal to avert the cliff.

Update

Much of President Obama’s current proposal appeared in his 20-page plan, released in October. Hatch apparently missed these explicit mentions of tax cuts for the middle class (but not the wealthiest Americans), small business tax breaks to stimulate the economy, and entitlement savings — then and now. In a Politco op/ed following the plan’s original release, Hatch mocked it as a “glossy 20-page brochure” but not a “plan,” and dismissed it as “nothing but a rehash of the same failed ideas of the past four years.”

Climate Progress

Negotiations Over The Kyoto Protocol Continue At The Doha Climate Talks

By Climate Guest Blogger on Dec 1, 2012 at 11:12 am

by Gwynne Taraska

The UN climate talks currently taking place in Doha will decide the future of the Kyoto Protocol, which is the world’s only legally binding climate treaty.  Although the protocol’s impact on global emissions has been limited, it is still necessary to keep the policy infrastructure associated with it intact.  CAP has been following the future of the protocol at Doha and outlines below the key issues and probable outcomes at the meeting.

First and second periods
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change aims to effect emissions reductions that will keep global warming within a 2°C increase over pre-industrial levels.  The Kyoto Protocol is among its tools.  The first period of the Kyoto Protocol (KP1), which set binding targets for emissions reductions for 37 industrialized nations and the EU, will end this year.  A main goal of the current meeting of the parties to the UNFCCC is therefore to implement a second period of the Kyoto Protocol (KP2), which will serve as a bridge between KP1 and the international treaty that will emerge from the Durban Platform and take effect in 2020.

Participants and bystanders
Countries including Australia, Norway, Liechtenstein, Croatia, Ukraine, Iceland, and Switzerland have committed to binding targets in a second period of the protocol.  The EU has committed as well.  Australia, for example, has pledged to reduce its emissions at least .5% by 2020, and the EU has pledged to reduce its emissions at least 20% by 2020 (both from the base year 1990).  Although Japan, Russia, Canada, and New Zealand were signatories of KP1 (Canada later announced that it would never attempt to meet its agreed upon target), they are declining to participate in KP2.  In addition, KP2 will not include the US, which signed but never sought to ratify the treaty in the Senate.

Issues
A number of questions about KP2 need to be addressed during the meeting, such as a) whether the duration of KP2 should be five or eight years, b) whether developed countries that are not signatories should be permitted to participate in the protocol’s market-based mechanisms, and c) whether countries should be permitted to transfer emissions credits from the first to the second period.  Blocs of countries including the Alliance of Small Island States, Least Developed Countries, and the African Group, which represent “100 countries and 1.4 billion people who are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change,” released a statement on 26 November arguing that the duration of KP2 should be five years, so as to make the targets more ambitious.  It also argued that credit carryover should be curtailed and that only parties to the protocol should be permitted to participate in the carbon market it creates.  Artur Runge-Metzger, representing the EU in a press briefing on 28 November, summarized the position of developing countries on the last point:   “You cannot just enjoy the nice things from the Kyoto Protocol but not commit with the legally binding emission reduction budget for the period 2013-2020.”

For and against KP2
The Kyoto Protocol is of course inadequate in isolation as a defense against climate change.

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Health

On World AIDS Day, Here Are Five Huge Advances We’ve Made To Combat The Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Dec 1, 2012 at 11:00 am

Today marks World AIDS Day, an annual public health initiative to raise awareness about and mobilize support for combating the HIV/AIDS epidemic around the globe. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pointed out in a speech earlier this week, significant advances in HIV research and treatment suggest that an “AIDS-free generation” may be in sight.

Clinton’s optimism is shared by the United Nations, whose officials recently noted they believe eradicating AIDS is “entirely feasible” thanks to the global community’s dedicated efforts against the epidemic. Here are five important advancements we’ve made toward that goal over the past year:

1. Increased access to HIV testing. Thanks to medical experts’ recommendation that Americans between the ages of 15 and 65 get regularly screened for the virus, annual HIV testing will now be covered under Obamacare. And in addition to removing some of the cost barriers to getting tested, this past year also included advances in the ease and availability of HIV testing. The FDA approved the first over-the-counter test that can be taken at home, and the CDC rolled out a pilot program to allow Americans in low-income areas to get tested for HIV at their local pharmacy. Since the CDC estimates that as many as 20 percent of the 1.1 million Americans who have HIV aren’t aware they’re infected with the virus, taking steps to ensure that testing is affordable and accessible is more important than ever.

2. Improved coverage under Obamacare. Before Obamacare, HIV-positive Americans often struggled to enroll in private insurance plans — but since insurers will no longer be able to discriminate against people with HIV based on their pre-existing condition, Obamacare will ensure that more HIV-positive individuals can access health care. Furthermore, the health law eliminates lifetime caps on coverage, so people with the virus won’t reach limits on the amount of HIV treatment their insurance companies are willing to cover for them. Obamacare also stipulates that HIV-positive Americans don’t have to have AIDS before accessing Medicaid coverage — an old requirement for participating in the program — so those with HIV won’t have to wait until they’re sicker before getting the health insurance they need.

3. Better, simpler treatments for the virus. In July, the World Health Organization noted that future HIV infections could be totally eliminated with the help of the current “arsenal of drugs” developed to combat the virus. And that same month, the FDA officially approved Stribild, an oral pill that combines four medications in one to treat HIV-positive individuals. Continued advancements in highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) medications — which public health researchers credit with significantly reducing HIV/AIDS-related deaths since 1996, when HAART treatments were first introduced — are helping to ease the treatment process, although gains in this area continue to be stratified along racial and economic lines.

4. Breakthroughs in HIV research. Obamacare allocates more funding for HIV research and prevention, including $30 million from a new preventative health fund that is specifically designated for HIV education programs, public health initiatives, and scientific investments. And scientists continue to make important progress in developing new treatments and vaccines for the HIV virus, including a potential vaccine that could eventually prevent HIV infection by producing disease-fighting cells. Scientists also continue to advance toward eradicating latent HIV, which has posed a challenge because the virus is not impacted by other types of treatment when it is dormant in the body.

5. Raised life expectancy for HIV-positive individuals. The CDC estimates just in just a few years, half of HIV-positive Americans will be over the age of 50. Described as the “graying” of the HIV-positive community, the shifting demographics point to the fact that people with HIV are now living longer and healthier lives. Thanks to effective treatment methods for the virus, as well as recent scientific innovation that allows more HIV-positive individuals to receive organ transplants, a positive diagnosis for the virus is no longer a death sentence. In fact, according to a recent study, the life expectancy for HIV-positive people in Britain is fast approaching the national average.

Climate Progress

Open Thread Plus Cartoon Of The Week

By Joe Romm on Dec 1, 2012 at 9:35 am

Opine Away.

Ocean acidification is killing sea life, and we are the culprits

Horsey provides his own sobering commentary on his cartoon, which I excerpt below:

If the prospect of coastal cities sinking into the sea 100 years from now does not motivate Americans to do something dramatic to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, there is something happening at this very moment that should be setting off sirens. Rising CO2 levels are making the oceans more acidic and that change in the chemistry of the seas is disrupting the food chain that ends with you and me….

Researchers are finding that, in several locales, the shells of tiny creatures called pteropods are being thinned and broken down by acidity. People do not eat pteropods, but plenty of fish do. They supply 50% of the diet of pink salmon, and people do eat salmon. It is not hard to understand the biology: If pteropods disappear, salmon and other fish get scarce….

The threat is global. A report by the United Nations Environment Program said, “Fish, including shellfish, contribute 15% of animal protein for three billion people worldwide. A further one billion people rely on fisheries for their primary source of protein…. Fish stocks, already declining in many areas due to over-fishing and habitat destruction now face the new threats posed by ocean acidification.”

Each and every day, humans loft 70 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, and the seas absorb a fourth of that. Unless we are feeling suicidal, it is time to change our way of doing business. This is not a matter of finding empathy for our grandchildren who will be stuck living on a simmering, stormy planet because we refuse to end our carbon-burning ways, this is a matter of killing off species that feed us today.

Global warming is the foreboding thunder in the distance. Ocean acidification is the lightning strike in our frontyard, right here, right now.

Related Post:

Justice

Dying Federal Prisoners Rarely Granted ‘Compassionate Release,’ Study Finds

By Nicole Flatow on Dec 1, 2012 at 9:00 am

Because a short-term criminal sentence is not necessarily a sentence to suffer with a terminal illness in prison, both the federal government and the states have a process by which those prisoners who have been diagnosed with a fatal illness – or who have some other change of situation such as a dying family member — can apply for release. But the chance of federal prisoners being granted release is exceedingly low, according to a new study by Human Rights Watch and Families Against Mandatory Minimums. While even tough states like Texas let out about 100 people per year on medical parole, the federal system releases on average around two dozen people, out of a population of more than 218,000 inmates. One such inmate highlighted by the report died while in prison for gun possession, despite a plea for release from the judge who sentenced him:

Michael Mahoney was sentenced in 1994 to a mandatory minimum term of 15 years as an “armed career criminal.” The “career criminal” designation derived from three drug sales totaling less than $300 to an undercover agent over a three-week period in the late 1970. Felons, like Mahoney, may not legally possess firearms. Erroneously believing that enough time had lapsed since his prior convictions to allow him to carry a gun, Mahoney had purchased one to protect himself when making night deposits from his small business. When the gun was stolen, he duly reported it to authorities, his error was discovered, and he was prosecuted. Years later, in 2004, Mahoney was dying in prison from lymphoma and asked for compassionate release. The warden at the Lexington Federal Medical Center thought the BOP should file a motion on his behalf, and the regional director agreed.

In late July, BOP Director Harley Lappin denied Mahoney’s request, even though the regional director had approved the request and it was unopposed by the US attorney. Lappin’s decision was based on “the totality of the circumstances” and Mahoney’s “multiple felony convictions.”

On July 26, 2004, Judge James D. Todd, who had sentenced Mahoney, hearing of the director’s denial, wrote to Lappin, stating that in 20 years on the bench he had never before written to a corrections official on behalf of a prisoner he had sentenced. Describing the circumstances of Mahoney’s conviction, he said that “Mr. Mahoney’s case has troubled me since I sentenced him in 1994 … [as] one of those cases in which a well-intentioned and sound law resulted in an injustice.” He said he was aware that Mahoney was bedridden, suffering great pain, and considered near death. He suggested “that … a motion [for compassionate release] is the only way to mitigate in a very small way the harshness which [the Armed Career Criminal Act] has caused in this unusual and unfortunate case.” Lappin did not reply. Mahoney died a few days later.

What’s more, the report documents the extraordinary financial and societal savings that would result from more compassionate releases:

Increasing the number of dying or debilitated prisoners who are granted compassionate release … but would free the BOP from the unnecessary security costs of confining prisoners who pose scant risk of harm to anyone and from their medical costs. The per capita cost of caring for a prisoner in one of the BOP’s medical centers was $40,760 in FY 2010, compared to an overall per capita cost of $25,627. Releasing prisoners who are not suffering from grave medical conditions but who face other compelling circumstances—such as those whose children are destined for the foster care system or who are desperately needed at home to care for dying family members—would advance other important societal goals, such as preservation of the family.

Human Rights Watch senior adviser Jamie Fellner told NPR that she believes it’s the federal prison culture that fosters the alarmingly low rate of release. “They’re in the business of keeping people in prison,” Fellner said.

A similar phenomenon is occurring in the federal process for granting pardons (which revoke convictions) and commutations (which shorten sentences), handled by another arm of the DOJ, the Office of the Pardon Attorney. Some people, including former White House Counsel Greg Craig, have suggested the abysmally low rate of both forms of relief is reason to remove this function from the Department of Justice, and similar measures might prove effective in the “compassionate release” context. The Human Rights Watch report instead suggests reform within both the DOJ and the BOP, which it says is misconstruing its role as a vehicle for recommending motions to the courts.

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