Category Archives: Rhetorical Mastery

Letting ‘Fred’ Do Some of the Proofing

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As the eyes strain with the load, it can be a relief to sit back and let Fred have a go at your mangled prose. 

If you do any amount of writing as a routine part of your work, you might want to check out what I only recently noticed on my home version of Microsoft Word. The program will read back to you what you have written, not with any great finesse, but with a degree of verbal accuracy. And that’s quite a plus.  I’m told that some other programs have this feature as well. And I am surprised at how useful it is.

Most of us aren’t very good proofreaders. If you are like me, your brain fills in missing words as a passage is scanned. It’s a good habit for speedreading, but a bad one for accurate writing. So turning on the “Read Aloud” function available under the “review” heading at the top of Word will put a male or female voice to work reading back exactly what you wrote.  And it turns out that hearing your prose immediately picks up missed and overused words.  My reader, who I call Fred, also will plow on if no punctuation exists: an immediate red flag. To be sure, Fred hasn’t a clue what he is saying.  There is no interpretation of the words, no useful intonation.  Even so, he is good enough at pausing at periods and comas, or reminding me that maybe three adjectives in a row might be too many.  And he will certainly trip over missing articles or–in my case–a whole collection of them that were never deleted as my editing evolved.

Fred can also speed-read, which is good for a laugh. You get to decide the pacing.

I write most days, and sometimes all day.  As the eyes strain with the load, it can be a relief to sit back and let Fred have a go at my mangled prose.  If you try it, you might be pleasantly surprised.  If you are not completely happy with the result, you will still know where your writing needs some work.

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Otherwise Engaged

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We know we’re in trouble when the best he can do is incite more anger, which is about 180 degrees off course from the long-established presidential path of expressing condolences and promising hope. 

One of the benchmark functions of the Presidency practiced by all modern occupants is the fulfillment of the role of “interpreter in chief.” We owe the phrase to Mary Stuckey, a presidential scholar, who reminded us a while ago that presidents function in part to explain crises to the American public and suggest ways forward.  This rhetoric always speaks to our better selves and emphasizes widely shared beliefs. Somehow this President sees no need to manage crises by reassuring the public. Indeed, he appears to be among the relatively small percentage of humans who lack the capacity for empathy. He seems to not notice when the nation is grieving.

There is no shortage of good models for this vital presidential function. Think of Ronald Reagan after the Challenger disaster, Bill Clinton after the Oklahoma bombing, George W. Bush in the ruins of the World Trade Center and Barack Obama after the school shootings in Newtown Connecticut.  F.D.R. was famous for his fireside chats, talking the country through the worst days of the depression and World War II. And then there was a grim John Kennedy reminding us of the choices he and the nation faced with the installation of missile bases in Cuba.

Why is Mr. Trump so unspeakably bad at this? 

We have sensed the emotional wounds of presidents who have comforted survivors and understood the need to rise above partisanship. The interpreter function is fundamentally about empathy, sympathy, regret, and compassion. It may ask for sacrifice in the name of the greater good. It seeks to unify rather than divide. It asks for patience and tolerance. It projects calm rather than turmoil. It never threatens force against other Americans.

Why is Mr. Trump so unspeakably bad at this?  We know we’re in trouble when the best he can do is incite anger: an impulse that is 180 degrees off course from the long-established presidential norm of promising hope.  Aren’t more than 100,000 American deaths from a badly managed pandemic enough? How many small businesses need to be in dire straits? And doesn’t a history of the murder of unarmed African American men count for something?

Instead, the President passes up presidential eloquence and the bully pulpit, preferring a pathetic Twitter account misapplied as a tool of presidential leadership. He uses it like just like any another emotionally vacant troll looking for a cheap taunt.  Meanwhile, one of the most admired traditions of presidential leadership remains out of sight.