Blog Post #4 - Feeling unQUALIFIED for this one...

www.dailypress.com/news/opinion/dp-edit-phelps-editorial-0927-20110926,0,1281924.story

Here is the text of my chosen editorial. I included my selections of qualifiers and rebuttals.

From the Daily Press

Earlier in September on these pages, we urged Isle of Wight of voters to fire their embattled sheriff, Charlie Phelps on November 8 and elect one of his two opponents. But based on the bizarre and erratic behavior of Mr. Phelps in the last week, we no longer believe Isle of Wight residents have the luxury of time.

We call for the immediate resignation of Mr. Phelps.

[Possible qualifier - immediate]

Mr. Phelps' office has been under investigation by the state police since 2010. The Isle of Wight prosecutor has said he won't use testimony from the sheriff's lead investigator in prosecuting cases.

The straw that broke the camel's back occurred on Sept. 20. That's when Mr. Phelps abruptly walked off the job and told his staff he quit. He deposited his gun and badge on a desk, with the keys to his county vehicles, and hitched a ride home with a family member. This came without prior warning to his staff, consultation with other county or state law enforcement officials or sufficient notice to his second in command, Maj Joseph Willard.

His sudden departure left a void of leadership in the county's law enforcement office. It's a frightening dereliction of duty by an official with immense power over people's lives — who also happens to carry a firearm.

Phelps, apparently, second-guessed his decision. He made an about face the following day and returned to his job, took back his gun and badge, and resumed his role…as if nothing happened.

[Possible qualifier - apparently - casts doubt on his motives/suggests ambiguity of purpose]

It's one thing to have a bad day and go home early. We all have them.

[That is the only point of rebuttal]

It's entirely another to storm off in a huff and announce to your staff that you've quit when you're the county sheriff, potentially putting resident's safety at risk. Too many questions abound: what if something happened? Did warrants need to be issued? Were restraining orders not served? Did Maj. Willard have the proper authority vested in him to make command decisions in crisis?

Mr. Phelps' explanations for his actions are even more peculiar — and worrisome. He told a Daily Press reporter he was "irritated and frustrated" and informed a WAVY television reporter he had a "meltdown."

Those are not exactly words that inspire confidence in the county's top cop.

[Possible qualifier - not exactly]

Mr. Phelps troubles started to come to light about 18 months ago when one of his deputies, Sgt. Ronald Carwile, was arrested and charged with sodomy, indecent liberties and exposing himself to a juvenile. When executing a search warrant, police found crime scene paraphernalia in his car, raising credibility questions about how Phelps' office was handling its evidence gathering.

Next up was the Jonathan Burns fiasco. Burns, a 10-year volunteer, is a convicted felon. He's related to Mr. Phelps through his son, Capt. Paul Phelps. Burns was allegedly issued a stun gun by the younger Phelps, who was later charged with a felony for dispensing a weapon to an ex-con.

Another close associate of the Phelps family escaped prosecution when an arrest warrant fell through the cracks and was not issued for more than three years. The statute of limitations ran out.

Further embarrassing the sheriff's office, Isle of Wight County Commonwealth's Attorney Wayne Farmer issued a statement in August saying his office would no longer use testimony from the sheriff's lead investigator — Capt. Phelps — when prosecuting criminal suspects.

Last week, Deputy Matthew Lyons was forced to resign after state police launched an investigation of allegations he was involved with child pornography.

Law enforcement officials should be held to the highest standard of professional conduct and personal behavior. Unfortunately, Mr. Phelps has managed his office of late to the lowest common denominator.

[Possible qualifier - Highest standard]

Isle of Wight residents deserve better than what they are getting from Mr. Phelps. They deserve it now, not in three months.

I selected this editorial at random from the website of the Daily Press. Much to my dismay, it seems virtually devoid of clear qualifiers or rebuttals. Perhaps I misunderstand the use of qualifiers, but there are very few lukewarm descriptors for what boils down to one major point. The scarcity of qualifiers could be due to the straightforward style of the piece. It relies heavily on its list of facts, rather than rhetorical fireworks, to get its point across.

One apparent deficiency is the lack of rebuttals. The piece does little to actually build an argument or to challenge any opposing viewpoint.

The rest of the piece is a litany of the Sheriff's failings as a commander, each added point simply refers back to the original request/statement. Overall the piece is not particularly well designed, but the facts presented are compelling on their own.

Blog Post #3 - Dear John...

In some was the business letter has become anachronistic. As a person who is old enough to have collected stamps as a child, I bemoan the demise of the old-fashioned letter. I work in media, and I still drive to the post office in the morning to check the box and to cart handfuls of bills, checks and random correspondence to my tiny office. For the most part these days it is all email, direct deposit, or the occasional fax. Everything is digital, informal, immediate.

In some ways the format of the middle ages letter is antithetical to the modern email - it saves its questions and requests for the end. The arrangement of information allows the writer to build up to his point or purpose in much the same way a speaker does verbally. Email encourages us to be up front with the purpose of the message. It prizes simplicity and the requirements of the medium (the necessity of subject lines, or example) force the messages into a particular format.

Email has replaced many functions previously handled through traditional correspondence - bills, notices, purchase orders - have all gone digital.

What the digital revolution does not take into account is that emails do not fulfill the other essential purpose of a letter. They are impermanent, temporary and informal. Try taking a print out of an email to court and see if the judge accepts it as an official document. If you ever have a dispute with a credit card company or creditor of some kind send all your requests and correspondence through the mail. It leaves an official record of the correspondence that even the most accurate time stamp can not provide.

One of the great things about formal letters is that they show respect for their subject matter. There is something almost offensive about receiving an email about a sensitive topic. In personal matters, as well as many matters of business an email is insufficient. You would not send a text message Dear John would you? Perhaps the internet generations would at that.

A final thought - letters have long been a key way that historians reconstruct the events of the past. What will future scholars look to to understand our culture and history? Sure there will be movies, video, long-dead webpage ghost towns and scraps of Facebook. But none of these delve into or reveal thoughts and feelings in the same way that a personal letter to a friend can...

One of my favorite letters of all time was written by Neal Cassady and it begins:

Dear Jack:
I am sitting in a bar on Market St. I'm drunk, well, not quite, but I soon will be. I am here for 2 reasons; I must wait 5 hours for the bus to Denver & lastly but, most importantly, I'm here (drinking) because, of course, because of a woman & what a woman! To be chronological about it:

I was sitting on the bus when it took on more passengers at Indianapolis, Indiana -- a perfectly proportioned beautiful, intellectual, passionate, personification of Venus De Milo asked me if the seat beside me was taken!!! I gulped, (I'm drunk) gargled & stammered NO! (Paradox of expression, after all, how can one stammer No!!?) She sat -- I sweated -- She started to speak, I knew it would be generalities, so to tempt her I remained silent.

She (her name Patricia) got on the bus at 8 PM (Dark!) I didn't speak until 10 PM -- in the intervening 2 hours I not only of course, determined to make her, but, how to DO IT...

Better than a tweet if you ask me.

Blog Post #2 - 'Get a Job Hippie' - The President's Jobs Speech

The president recently gave a speech to a joint session of congress on the subject of jobs in America. Ostensibly the purpose of the speech was to outline his sweeping new plan to encourage job creation, however, the most interesting aspect of the speech may have been its apparent duel purposes.

Generally speaking, when politicians are not kissing babies they are stealing their lollipops.

Obama is very good at hiding the strings sometimes. He naturally comes off as competent and compelling, though he is very practiced. He seems to have two of Aristotle's characteristics of a great speaker. As a speaker, he generally easily displays the qualities of phronesis (wisdom) and arete (virtue,) but his measured and sometimes stiff style often does not lend itself well to building a sense of goodwill (eunoia.) He is a gifted speaker though, and the speech was typical of his style.

Structurally, the speech was fairly simple. Its language was direct and plain. He did not attempt to make the message towering or poetic, and he used frequent repetition to attempt to drill a series of "bullet points" home to the viewers. (Invention) It seemed at the outset that his plan for the speech was to convince (or more accurately to simply state) that there was virtually no reason to disagree with the point he was making.

"You should pass this right away." he repeated over and over again. Everything about the speech seemed designed to cut to the quick, to promote a sense of urgency. So much of the speech was dedicated to the idea of unity. He seemed to be castigating his live audience for the benefit of his extended one. The subject of the speech seemed to be "before we can create jobs we have to do the one we were sent here to do" everything in the speech's construction seems to suggest the phrase "just get it done." In many ways he seemed to be channeling popular frustration at the apparent ineffectiveness of the system. (On this level I felt the speech was very effective.)

"Pass this bill" is repeated so many times that it actually becomes something of a distraction. The introduction outlines the need for action and the main concept of the speech (stasis point) seems to be that the jobs plan is the best option, and that it is a patchwork of ideas designed to appeal to as many disparate philosophies as possible. He continually reminded the congress that the ideas laid out in the plan where their ideas. His proof seemed to be a cobbled series of associations to earlier plans. He attempted at every opportunity to bridge the divide between right and left. The subtext of the speech seemed to be "if you can't come together on this, you can't come together at all" and the entire speech may have been designed with the knowledge that no consensus will be met.

He attempted to cut the legs out from under his dissenters from the first sentence. The general arrangement of the body of the speech was to state a cause and effect relationship (if you pass this bill then something that everyone agrees is good will happen). This simple cause-and-effect design is repeated throughout the speech. It is an attempt, I think, to make an horrendously complicated issue seem like something that can be fixed easily with a few direct steps.

The style and delivery of the speech suggest the real audience of the speech was actually the voting public. The answers are simple, the language assured and direct. His delivery is downright paternal, everything about the speech feels informative, even when the rhetoric is light on support or suggestions.

Returning to the canons of rhetoric for a moment, I was left at the end of the speech with many questions, a talking point or two and a confident smile on my face. It seems he had told me what I wanted to hear and what I had to do to fix the problem. He had also blithely (for him) suggested that should the plan does not work, it will be because the others in the room could not herd the necessary cats to get the job done. Beyond my own recollections of the speech, memory is the most confusing canon for me to understand.

His command of the material made him seem competent and allowed him to stare forcefully out into his audience. It provided him with a physical directness that matched his words. All in all the speech was effective, though it did seem more concerned with its hidden warning and sabre rattling than laying out an effective analysis of our economic problems.

I give it a 8/10.
Rob Meisner 9/13/11

P.S. As a former art history major (and complete nerd) the included image made me laugh.

Blog Post #1: Introduction - You crazy kids...get off my blog!

What should I say about myself, the writer? I am not sure there is anything about me that would be of particular interest to a web full of strangers...

My name is Rob Meisner. First and foremost, I hate computers. I can't believe this internets thing actually caught on. I am something of a throwback, an e-curmudgeon. I like small, rectangular objects called books. Not e-readers or kindles or nooks...just plain old Gutenberg glue and paper. I don't care about smart phones, smart bombs or smart water. Just because something is more "advanced" doesn't make it more convenient - or better at all - for that matter. I like hiking in the woods, dark beer and sappy movies. I used to want to be an artist or a scientist, but I dropped out of school instead to hold down the family business.

Before I knew it, 10 years had passed and I had accidentally become a writer (of sorts.) Now I am back at school for the first time in years.

A few weeks ago my mother died and it has completely derailed my momentum. I had hoped to have a kick-ass-take-names sort of semester, but I have trouble summoning much creative energy lately. I worked with my mother for 11 years. We were a duo that put out a small, weekly newspaper in Yorktown. I made the work my whole life, and now it seems like that life is over.

I am now a creative writing major. Though I have all but completely given up any designs on a writing career of my own, I hope to be able to teach others how to avoid some of the pitfalls that I was not astute enough to avoid. I hope to become a teacher or information officer.

My writing has suffered tremendously in the past two years. I scarcely recognize my own voice on the page. I hope that if any of you have a talent or passion that you will not let the tedium and trials of life prevent you from its pursuit.

I have made this blog, and I am taking this class, in the hopes that I can search out my voice, re-work my rhetorical muscles and learn more about how to use this language. Off campus I am still plugging away at the small town news. I am not quite ready to give it up, even though staying with it has been difficult. I have little time for recreation, though I am fond of reading and playing games when I get the time. I collect old Sci Fi paperbacks from the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. I love camping and cooking too.

All-in-all I am pretty boring. Though I do hope to have fun in the class.