Friday, February 20, 1998
Lies and cover-ups:
RHETORIC: Student leaders have
a lot of experience using rhetoric to cloud issues, shift
attention away from themselves
By Mike Daugherty
A few quarters ago, one of my artsy-fartsy North Campus-type
classes was, for reasons beyond my grasp, conducted in a decidedly
humanities-unfriendly classroom somewhere in the bowels of Young
Hall – home to UCLA’s department of chemistry. If memory serves,
the class was a seminar on Goethe, Carew, Proust, Nabokov and Donne
titled "Surname Mayhem," but that’s not important. The most
challenging aspect of the seminar was getting there and back alive.
I would navigate through a labyrinth of seedy corridors where upon
each door was plastered a warning of the imminent risk and mortal
danger to which one entering would be automatically exposed.
Passing that rare open door, I would see a lone, nutty
professor-type trying to turn the pages of his lab notebook while
wearing armpit-length oven mitts, guzzling some smoking,
foul-looking solution straight from the beaker or just lying
unconscious on the floor. As I wended my way down and back and
forth for 10 weeks through that hellish complex, two thoughts were
constantly in my mind: a) I didn’t belong there, and b) a bunch of
teenagers did.
And so it goes in the little big league or big little league
(depending on your perspective) that is higher education. We’re not
there yet. But we will be. Chemistry students will go on to be
chemists, engineering students will go on to be engineers, and we
English students will fantasize on finding Hemingway’s missing
valise at one of the garage sales we frequent in search of a foxed
and buckled but legible copy of the OED. Meanwhile, we will
continue to be responsible for dipping slices of frozen potato into
vats of boiling oil for an adventurous clientele that prefers
dining behind the wheel of a moving vehicle.
And what about our "student leaders" (an oxymoron if I’ve ever
seen one)? Will the student politicians at USAC go on to become
officials at some other acronym? It seems, based on what I’ve read
lately, that they are certainly well qualified for positions in
government. The "Career Objective" line of their collective resume
would put a smile of Huey Long’s corpse and reads like a Kenneth
Starr wet dream: "I deny ever taking part in violating campaign
regulations, obfuscating, making blanket denials, slinging mud,
avoiding the issue, self-aggrandizing, character assassinating,
lying through my teeth, making reprisals, and taking credit for
that which I have played no part." You’re hired!
Good news: Unlike so many other (more noble) fields of endeavor
suffering from an overabundance of new initiates and a dearth of
positions for them to fill, politics is (and will always be) ripe
for the taking. In fact, there will never be a shortage of
positions, postings, appointments and seats for newcomers to the
elective sciences – that is, until the Earth runs out of the rocks
under which they must, by necessity, retreat and reside.
If you’ve been following USAC’s most recent in a long list of
shortcomings and controversies – the one some hebetudinous wannabe
pundit has bothered to name "Campaigngate" – you have been bothered
to know that one guy quit and accused the rest of doing bad things.
The Bruin reported it. Some folks at USAC responded by saying bad
things about the guy. The Bruin reported it. The guy responded with
some convincing (not bulletproof, but convincing) evidence
supporting his initial accusations. The Bruin reported it. Then one
of the USAC folks got all mad at the nasty Bruin for attempting to
keep its readership up to speed on the smear-fest.
Before I go any further, I should, in fairness, admit
(unabashedly) that I don’t know very much about USAC or Students
First!. I don’t know who they are, and I don’t know what they do.
But then, I have no idea what effect niacin or thiamin has on my
metabolism; maybe I should. Kendra Fox-Davis, paid USAC
functionary, wrote that our current Students First! mutation of
USAC has affected programs that "benefit all students." As I am
loathe to be an ungrateful beneficiary of others’ good works,
please, someone, let me know what USAC has done for me so I can
express my gratitude. I must have been absent on the day that the
Campus Guide to Student Government was distributed. I must have
missed the lecture on USAC’s influence on my education. Am I the
only one? I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that 99 percent of the
people who read this don’t know enough about USAC to tell you what
the letters U-S-A-C stand for. Side note: I’ve come up with some
amusing alternatives. Until now, it had never occurred to me how
many unkind words start with the letter "C." I digress.
So, I don’t know jack about USAC or Students First!; but being
an English major and all, I have developed a fairly sensitive ear
to malarkey. There’s this really neat book I have called "A
Handbook of Rhetorical Terms" by Richard Lanham, a professor of
English at UCLA. It’s not exactly bathroom reading, unless, I
suppose, you have a dying need to know the meaning of
"amphidiorthosis" while you are indisposed for reasons of a
personal nature. It’s a useful aid in giving a proper name to some
common rhetorical techniques we more generally refer to as "B.S."
My intent here is to snatch a few quotes from recent Daily Bruin
articles on "Campaigngate" (or "Weaselgate" as I will prefer to
call it from this point forward), to demonstrate the rhetorical
spilth that emanates from some members of our student government.
By this measure, we will be well served in assessing how ready they
are to enter big-league politics.
We’ll start with Max Espinoza. In an interview ("Chair resigns,
citing ‘corrupt’ government," Jan. 23), USAC Finance Committee
Chair Robert Rhoan (the guy who resigned) "claims that Academic
Affairs Commissioner Max Espinoza approached him and asked him to
resign after Rhoan abstained from voting on a funding request.
Espinoza denied this. ‘It’s not in my authority to ask anyone to
resign,’ he said."
This technique is called "apoplanesis" which means, more or
less, "answering a different question." Apoplanesis is to a
politician what a hammer is to a carpenter. Jeffrey Dahmer could
say "It’s not in my authority to eat people." True statement. But
whether or not he did is a different question. Did Espinoza ask
Rhoan to resign? In computer science they’d say this question has a
binary solution set; the answer is one of two things: "Yes" or
"No." The bottom line is: somebody’s telling a fib. What nice
company they keep.
Here’s another one: Fox-Davis, in response to Rhoan’s
accusations, said, "I am personally disturbed by his allegations
because he has never indicated to our council that he has had any
concerns regarding the authenticity of our expense accounts."
This is called "peristrophe," which means "converting an
opponent’s argument to one’s own use." She’s basically saying that
she’s bothered by the accusations because he didn’t mention them
sooner. Should we infer that she would not have been "personally
disturbed" if he had mentioned the accusations immediately? She
apparently wants us to think that because he waited, his
accusations are therefore somehow less valid. Rhoan ends up getting
beaten over the head by his own cudgel. Tricky stuff and a mainstay
of modern political rhetoric.
I have saved the best for last. In her letter to the Daily Bruin
("Time to investigate the investigators," Feb. 17), Fox-Davis
poorly projects an "argumentum ad misericordiam" (an appeal to the
mercy of the hearers) on behalf of Daily Bruin contributing
reporter Dennis Lim. She seems to apologize for the fact that some
Bruin reporters have no "formal journalistic training beyond
writing for a high-school paper." And what formal training, might I
ask, does Fox-Davis have for being "chief of staff"? (Now I’m the
one using peristrophe.) She mentions twice in 14 words that Lim is
a "freshman" (isn’t that word sexist and out of vogue?), thereby
insinuating a lack of ability on his part. She says that whatever
"prompted" the "attack" on Students First! "does not really
matter." If so, why does she spend over 150 words hypothesizing on
the issue? She attributes the parts of his reportage she doesn’t
like to his eagerness, stress, scrambling and a "desire for the
spotlight."
Lanham might call this "indignatio" (arousing the audience’s
scorn) or "argumentum ad hominem" (disparaging one’s opponent’s
character), but let’s skip the frou-frou Latinate labels and
describe it in terms we all know: it’s arrogant, it’s condescending
and it obscures the real issues.
If Fox-Davis knows what goes on in Lim’s mind, she must be
clairvoyant. Well then, let’s ask her to peer into her scry and
tell us who made all those telephone calls on our dime? (She steers
far clear of that issue in her letter.) Let’s ask her why random
students received campaign calls from Students First!? Let’s ask
her why the "second invoice" looks like it’s been fussed with? (See
for yourself. The invoices are posted in the Bruin Archives web
page.) What a pity that someone’s need to cover her fellow Students
First! pals would supersede their obligation to the people who put
her there in the first place.
The fact that she is willing to disparage an earnest, hard
working (unpaid, I might add) reporter to suit the needs of her
party is further testament to her suitability for future employment
in the offices of other self-serving public servants. I could go on
for days with other examples, but I think we get the point. Perhaps
they should start calling themselves Student Leaders First!
For what it’s worth, I have scoured all the articles associated
with Weaselgate (the scandal formerly known as "Campaigngate"), and
as far as I can tell, the Daily Bruin’s news department didn’t go
outside of the nominal bounds of journalist integrity. Lest you
think my opinion on the matter is invalid because I am a Daily
Bruin Viewpoint columnist, let me assure you otherwise: I have
written against The Bruin before and I wouldn’t hesitate to do it
again if I saw any such indiscretion or opportunity.
I know you’re very busy, but if any of this interests you at
all, go to The Bruin’s web page and read the articles yourself.
Then read Fox-Davis’s letter. Find the contradictions, suss out the
manipulative phrases, cheese-ball rhetorical trickery and innuendo.
It’s kinda’ slick, in a sophomoric kinda’ way. See for yourself how
our student leadership scurries around damning allegations.
In closing, you might be asking where I get off disparaging our
fine young crop of student leaders and their entourage. I’ll tell
you where. Right here. Right here in The Bruin. Love it or hate it,
it’s the community voice of this campus. It’s exceptionally
accessible to anyone in our community who has a point to make and
needs a place to make it. It may be just a throwaway, but it’s our
throwaway.
Perhaps, I have been naive in thinking that all the evil crud
associated with politics doesn’t happen until the stakes get a lot
higher. I stand corrected. Maybe that odd stench wasn’t coming from
Young Hall after all.