He’s not been a maverick on virtually anything that genuinely affects the things that people really talk about around their kitchen table.

 - Joe Biden, speaking of John McCain during the vice presidential debate

metonymy (meh-TON-y-my), the scale-changing trope.  From the Greek, meaning “name change.”

Candidate debates give Figaro the same ennui he feels watching most Super Bowls. Everybody is just so darn careful. Last night, the cliches flew like nobody’s business. The two candidates used the tired old “kitchen table” five times, for instance. 

Well, Figaro is so middle-class that his kitchen is too small for a table. Still, “kitchen table” makes a legitimate, if dusty, metonymy—a trope that takes a little thing and makes it represent big things (White House = presidency; rimless glasses = bubble-headed veep candidate). In this case “kitchen table” stands for the cherished middle-class home and its internal communications. 

Around the kitchen table, Sarah Palin didn’t make a complete ass of herself. Therefore, she won the debate. (The winking was creepy, though.) 

Snappy Answer: He’s not such a maverick around the conference table, either.

And I love America where we are more tolerant than other countries are. And are more accepting of some of these choices that sometimes people want to believe reflects solely on an individual’s values or not. Homosexuality, I am not gonna judge people.

Sarah Palin [disguised as Bush] in the Katie Couric interivew

You really can’t blame him. After 8 years as President, he probably figures he’s up for a promotion.

For a Figarovian analysis of Bushspeak—uh, Palinspeak—click here.

VP CANDIDATE SARAH PALIN

ennoia (en-NOY-a), the figure of faint praise. From the Greek, meaning “hidden intention.”

Oh, that saucy Sarah Palin!  With a smile like a dog’s before it bites you, she delivers her lines with an energy we haven’t seen politicians exhibit in some time.  We’re happy to see Governor Palin’s comfort with one of the finer figures. The ennoia damns the victim through faint praise, allowing you to seem agreeable  even when you’re on the attack. But Palin’s use of an it to imply the age of her hoary counterpart strikes us as a tad, well, schoolyardish. 

And why isn’t John McCain laughing?

Snappy Answer: “About the time you decided you were qualified for the vice presidency?”

Dear Fred,

“You know” serves as a figure called a parelcon (pa-REL-con, meaning “redundancy”), a place-filler that gives the speaker’s brain a few more milliseconds to think. “Like” is a more common parelcon these days, and it has its uses in moderation.

“You know” is actually a parelcon from my generation. As I say in my book, my generation was (rightly) uncertain about its ability to communicate. “You know” means “Are you with me? Do you get what I’m saying?” “Like,” on the other hand, reflects a group too timid to stand firmly on one side of anything.

So how do you stop the non-stop parelcon?

1. The Obnoxious Way:  Say “Yes, I know” or “No, I don’t” every time he says “You know.” You will make your point, and he will hate you.
2. The Supportive Way: Mention his problem and offer to help. Set up practice sessions where you beep a horn every time he says “You know.” This feedback method does work. Though he’ll probably end up hating you anyway.
3. The Fun Way: Make it a drinking game. Gulp every time he says it. If he participates, he’ll be too drunk to hate you.
   

Fig.

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds.

argumentum ad fortiori, the argument from strength. From the Latin, meaning “argument from strength.”

  New Paris Hilton video on Funny or Die! Responding to a McCain ad that likens Obama to celebrities like the airhead heiress, Paris appears in a leopard-spotted swimsuit. “I want America to know that I’m, like, totally ready to lead,” she says, announcing her candidacy to become president a mere eight years before the U.S. Constitution allows.

She does a nice mashup of her rivals’ energy policies: “We can do limited offshore drilling with strict environmental oversight while creating tax incentives to get Detroit making hybrid and electric cars,” she says.

The McCain campaign volleys back with a very nice argumentum ad fortiori. If something more-so is true, then it’s likely that something less-so will be true as well. Or vice versa. If Paris’s energy policy trumps Barack’s, then we all had better move to Jedda.

Snappy Answer: Plus, she’d be the only president to make energy policy seem dirty.

We’re also sorry for the long hiatus in journals.  We’ve been traveling almost constantly, and haven’t quite learned how to manipulate goofy images of politicians on our Blackberry.

 But Figaro will not abandon figures. He promises.

Quote: 

Figure of Speech:  cacosyntheton (cak-o-SIN-the-ton), the bad speech. From the Greek, meaning “badly composed.”

When the silver-tongued Obama speaks badly, it’s news.  He shows real discomfort in rebutting liberal accusations that he has flip-flopped on:

• Iraq  (he is slightly backing off his original pledge to withdraw troops),
• Gun control (he tepidly praised the Supreme court’s recent decision uphold the Second Amendment while ignoring the “well ordered militia” part), and
• The right to privacy (he supports expanding the feds’ wiretapping authority).

Dems have a reputation for their spinelessness, whether deserved or not, and a flip-flopping creature qualifies as an invertebrate.  (You may think that McCain has been flip-flopping like a large-mouth bass on a slippery dock. But he’s a war hero and a Republican, which by definition means he is not spineless but flexible.)

So Obama must show good posture by refuting the flip-flopping charges every time he flip-flops.  But here’s a rhetorical lesson:  Watch when a normally articulate politician speaks with awkward syntax.  It usually means he finds himself on shaky logical ground. Today’s quote uses a double negative, an isolated pronoun, and two pathetically dependent clauses to mean:  I’m not being political. You just don’t like what I say.

Then again, Figaro used to be anti-flip-flopping, but now he’s for it.  If only Bush had flip-flopped on Iraq a week before the invasion.

Snappy Answer:  “You’re just saying that to be political.”

Figure of Speech:  metallage (meh-TALL-uh-gee), the getting all medieval figure. From the Greek, meaning “making a swap.”

Are teens using oral sex to maintain their technical virginity? A recent study says no. Only 23 percent of teenagers who describe themselves as virgins say they have had oral sex in the last six months, while 82 percent of those who have had vaginal sex had also had oral sex.

The moral of that story, according to Sarah Brown, is for parents to “broaden the number of topics they discuss.”  You know, like birds, bees, fellatio…

Brown uses a currently popular idiom, “ick factor,” to describe the feeling that parents have when they hold a sexual discussion with the fruit of their loins. The expression qualifies as a metallage, a useful figure that takes parts of speech that aren’t nouns — such as verbs or adjectives — and uses them as the object of a sentence.

Samuel Jackson does this in the film Pulp Fiction, when he threatens “to get all medieval on your ass.”  Figaro assumes he was not referring to a sexual technique.

Snappy Answer:  “Do we have to embrace it? Can’t we, like, nod to it?”

Figure of Speech: dialogismus (dial-o-GIS-mus), the quoting figure.

It’s overtime again. Obama just can’t “close the deal,” as Clinton triumphantly puts it. Maureen Dowd, the feline columnist for the Times, sums up Hillary’s argument in a hyperbolic dialogismus, a figure that puts words in another person’s mouth — often in a way that the “quotee” wouldn’t exactly put herself.

Good point about the husband and the party leaders, though, Hill.

Snappy Answer:  Do we have to totally obliterate Iran? Can’t we just, like, obliterate it?