Reply #58: Peerless?

[alcibiades_mystery]

OK. I'll go with the paradigmatic example: Joseph Welch sticking it to Joe McCarthy. Everyone, of course, remembers the "at long last, have you no sense of decency" line, but the work-up to it was remarkably skillful, and the line would have fallen flat without the work-up to it. Thomas Farrell does a wonderful analysis of Welch's rhetorical approach in Norms of Rhetorical Culture.

Good satire, in any case, is always audience directed. It should both make the audience laugh, and cause the audience to reflect on its own practices. Colbert maybe accomplished one of these yesterday. Maybe. Think how much better it would have been if he had managed to have the audience laughing at the same time that he excoriated them. That's rhetorical savvy.

Oh wait, I know. Litmus test. I'm not falling all over myself celebrating, so I must be a freeper. Yeah, I get it.