What rhetoric do you remember being employed during and in the aftermath of 9/11? Perhaps make connections to rhetors we've been reading. Also, which of the introductions to rhetoric did you find the most useful, and why?

I was only fourteen at the time of the September 11^th attacks, but such an event tends to stick with you even if at the time you don’t quite know why.  Although no one had time to coordinate what message to convey to a group of teenagers, each teacher seemed to have the same objective.  Each teacher wanted calm.  Each teacher took advantage of a kairotic moment to achieve this objective, but the objective was met in every classroom that day.  I’ll never forget going to jazz band that day and seeing the shock on Mr. Walker’s face.  Instead of the usual routine of pulling out our instruments and setting up to practice, he had us all sit down and he just started playing Louie Armstrong’s “It’s a Wonderful World.”  He didn’t try to explain what was happening nor did he even acknowledge that it had happened.  He just said that whenever things were looking dark for him, he always put this song on and it made life seem simpler somehow.   We just sat there for the entire class period listening to this song.

Now, I don’t think that anyone would doubt that Mr. Walker was using rhetoric to ease a tension that he most likely saw on our faces.  Taking this a step further, Mr. Walker took advantage of a kairotic window to ease our tension, so he was practicing false rhetoric according to Plato.  However, I then must ask: Is his use of false rhetoric as negative as Plato implied?  I think we’d all agree that, no, this is not a negative use of rhetoric, but this does serve as an interesting example of how rhetorical studies have evolved over time.  We tend now to avoid distinguishing between a true and false rhetoric and instead emphasize that all rhetoric is necessary in our day to day decision making. 

I bring up true and false rhetoric because I must say that I preferred the Bizzel and Herzberg introduction to the other pieces we read this week.  This preference stems from the level of detail that Bizzel and Herzberg maintain throughout their text.  For example, before reading this week I was unfamiliar with Plato’s dichotomy of true and false rhetoric.   My previous knowledge about Plato had been that he was staunchly opposed to the idea of rhetoric, but according to Bizzel and Herzberg, Plato was not opposed to all rhetoric.  He was only opposed to rhetoric that did not seek to remove any encumberances that obscured our ability to see absolute truth.  In addition to these conceptual details Bizzel and Herzberg also included information regarding the historical contexts that undoubtedly influenced the rhetorical theories of rhetoricians whom we have all become familiar with.   Borcher’s introduction summarized how emphasis on specific aspects of rhetoric evolved over time, but Bizzel and Herzberg touch on the impetuses for these shifts.