Three Green Ones, Red Herrings, and
Fascist Rhetoric ((0) (0))*
by Meg Curtis, PhD
In undergraduate student government
meetings, the future club women of America always loved to play their
jokes. To control discussions, they always yelled: "Three green
ones!" This strategy served as a prank, and those attending
broke out laughing. "Three green ones" served as the
classic demonstration of the red herring fallacy, defined as follows
to this day in Wikipedia:
"Red
herring–
argument
given in response to another argument, which is irrelevant and draws
attention away from the subject of argument"
Now, on the
national stage, we see this strategy playing out every day. While the
US budget, deficit, and jobs demand solutions, politicians keep
harping on a single subject, known to trigger lock-step reactions,
even though 2013 is not 1963, and the nation has gone from laughing
to growing frustration because "three green ones"--no
matter the trigger word—distract citizens from TCB.
The original prank
caused laughter since it provided a sure test of who had mastered
English Composition and who had not. The A caliber students hooted
at the hoodwinkers who tried to control discussion with
irrelevancies. Their purpose was just to interrupt, if they could,
and drive the D students, who never recognized what was happening,
out of their blinking minds.
This strategy,
requiring recognition of rhetorical errors, becomes a game of tag
when the population takes the study of English seriously. When they
don't, absolutely nothing is accomplished in government or anywhere
else. So, we are left to inquire: Why are politicians harping on
computers and body parts when the national debate proves that English
Studies are critical to democracy?
The latest prank of
this kind occurred on June 18 when an Assistant Professor of English
and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania threw
"whiteness" into the fray. Deficits accumulate, and the
clock is running down. Voters need to grab their English Composition
texts. English professors know how to use red herrings. Do voters
know how to get budgets moving?
For additional
information:
* A New Rolling
Eyes Column!
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