False Dichotomy

Gentle Reader

There's also the painstaking business of getting to know the language from all angles, of using it effectively, of matching words to things, and of learning to read closely. There was none of this, because rhetoric in this play is Irwin, is spin, TV, polish, cynicism, shallowness, etc. On the other side of this false dichotomy we get the boys' reenactments of love scenes from classic films (shallowness?), and Hector's self-involved ruminations. Of course there's such a thing as neat rhetoric that masks an intellectual vacuum, but that's just a higher stage in the battle for clarity and eloquence. It's not a short-circuit, and good teachers and students are not powerless against demagogic rhetoric. In fact, that may be what annoyed me most: the suggestion that good teachers are by definition helpless mumblers, insightful by the fireside (so to speak), but unable to defend themselves against fast talkers from the hard and shiny real world.