the same mistake Howard Dean made: taking the extremist part as a representative of the moderate whole. For Dean, it was the confusion of confederate flag flyers win southerners.
It's the discourse of synecdoche! Nicholas Lemann made the observation (in the New Yorker profile of Bush published during the presidential campaign) that Al Gore seems to think in metaphor, Bush in metonymy (of which synecdoche is a subset) . Represent the South by a very visible subset of it: it's a trick that won't play well to those who don't naturally think in terms of metonymies -- but it plays better than metaphors, which just confuse many people. It plays better than representing the South by, say, Catholics.
That's right. I think I called it metonymy in my post on Dean, but decided to spell it out a bit in this one.
It's an easy way to think about things, and particularly easy in politics, with its tendency toward demonization of one's opponents. It's what Andrew Sullivan (and also Insty) use so often to attack the "Left."
the same mistake Howard Dean made: taking the extremist part as a representative of the moderate whole. For Dean, it was the confusion of confederate flag flyers win southerners.
It's the discourse of synecdoche! Nicholas Lemann made the observation (in the New Yorker profile of Bush published during the presidential campaign) that Al Gore seems to think in metaphor, Bush in metonymy (of which synecdoche is a subset) . Represent the South by a very visible subset of it: it's a trick that won't play well to those who don't naturally think in terms of metonymies -- but it plays better than metaphors, which just confuse many people. It plays better than representing the South by, say, Catholics.
Posted by Bob | Link to this comment | 11-12-03 10:37 AM
That's right. I think I called it metonymy in my post on Dean, but decided to spell it out a bit in this one.
It's an easy way to think about things, and particularly easy in politics, with its tendency toward demonization of one's opponents. It's what Andrew Sullivan (and also Insty) use so often to attack the "Left."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 11-12-03 10:42 AM