{"id":5465,"date":"2018-10-13T20:52:11","date_gmt":"2018-10-14T01:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=5465"},"modified":"2018-10-13T20:57:51","modified_gmt":"2018-10-14T01:57:51","slug":"when-they-say-anything-metaphorical-straw-man-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=5465","title":{"rendered":"When they say anything metaphorical, straw man them"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Eric Holder, the former Attorney General, recently put a new spin on the familiar Michelle Obama quip, “When they go low, we go high.”\u00c2\u00a0 Holder’s is that “When they go low, we kick them.”\u00c2\u00a0 Here’s the video<\/a> with the relevant pieces at the Washington Post.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/em>Importantly, Holder, after the quip, clarifies what he means by ‘kick’ them:<\/p>\n

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When I say we, you know, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWe kick \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcem,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean we do anything inappropriate<\/strong>. We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do anything illegal,… But we got to be tough, and we have to fight for the very things that [civil rights leaders] John Lewis, Martin Luther King, Whitney Young \u00e2\u20ac\u201c you know, all those folks gave to us.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He means give it back with confrontational rhetoric, not actual violence.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, but is that what Sean Hannity will have as part of his clip of the quip?\u00c2\u00a0 Nope.\u00c2\u00a0 Just the part about the kicking.\u00c2\u00a0 And here’s how he cuts the tape and explains it to his audience. (Video of Hannity’s show HERE<\/a>, start at 6:19) He frames and restates Holder’s quip:<\/p>\n

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Just look at the number of democratic leaders encouraging mob violence against their political opponents…\u00c2\u00a0 When they go low, ditch civility. Kick Republicans, when they are on the ground, kick ’em<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He just plays the quip, not the clarification, note.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s the key.\u00c2\u00a0 Holder’s expressing the view that political argument is high-stakes and hard-charging, so he’s willing to sacrifice the high road these days, precisely because he thinks it’s clear his opponents have done so.\u00c2\u00a0 So the metaphor of the ‘kick’ is the response to their ‘going low’ — invoking the way the battle would go.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s all metaphorical about the rhetorical exchange.\u00c2\u00a0 Imagine someone saying,\u00c2\u00a0 after hearing another describing a coming debate as a ‘bare knuckle boxing match,’ they are worried for their physical safety.\u00c2\u00a0 For sure, this would be some willful ignorance of how metaphorical language works.<\/p>\n

Trevor Noah’s Daily Show<\/em><\/a> review of the selective quotation also revealed the additional irony: “Can we just acknowledge that by saying they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re gonna get kicked, Sean Hannity and his friends are accepting that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going low?”<\/p>\n

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Eric Holder, the former Attorney General, recently put a new spin on the familiar Michelle Obama quip, “When they go low, we go high.”\u00c2\u00a0 Holder’s is that “When they go low, we kick them.”\u00c2\u00a0 Here’s the video with the relevant pieces at the Washington Post.\u00c2\u00a0 Importantly, Holder, after the quip, clarifies what he means by … Continue reading When they say anything metaphorical, straw man them<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[1964],"class_list":["post-5465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-straw-man","tag-straw-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5465"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5469,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5465\/revisions\/5469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}