さようなら (goodbye)

In this, his most divided chapter yet, Ramage surges forward with one foot into the murky depths of rhetorical confusion, while the other steps firmly on readability and sensibility. The more he writes, the more muddled his "message" becomes--lost in the glop that is his "medium."

Then he introduces his asides dealing with the 2003 State of the Union Address. All of a sudden his style changes from Erudite Prick to Educated Malcontent. Why? God, who knows. But while I'm almost indescribably happy that Ramage proves he is indeed human under all that brain, I'm also really pissed that he didn't just write like this in the first place. Yeah, he's obviously got a particular audience in mind while writing (probably all wearing navy ascots and pristine deck shoes), but he also must be a special shade of retarded to think they'd be the only ones reading his work. If any one thing is sure in communication, it's that your message WILL reach unintended audiences. I know that, and I'm not even half as smart as Ramage. So why on earth, outside of the distinct possibility that he's an incurable wannabe snob, would he essentially alienate 90% of his potential audiences? Is there some trick here I'm not getting? If he has the ability to write reasonably and understandably, why did he decide to write pompously and incoherently, thereby lopping off most of the last shaky leg he was standing on?

Maybe someday I'll be as smart as Ramage. But I sure as shit hope not.

So this bleak Saturday-noon I raise my glass for a toast: here's to "The Language War" being readable, digestible, and at least twice as funny as the first 101 pages of "Rhetoric: A Users Guide," or at the very least, here's to adequate libations for getting through another twisted rhetorical trip.

Minimum Wrage