The Rhetoric of War

1991

The first time I was a guest expert on a TV news show the topic was the Rhetoric of War. The hiccup was I didn't know what the word rhetoric meant.

It was going to be a learning experience.

The invitation came early in 1991, days after the first gulf war started. That was the war to recapture Kuwait from Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi army.

At the time my friend Edward Trapunski was the Executive Producer of a show called NEWS: Not Exactly What it Seems on the Vision TV station. Another friend David Schatzky was the usual host but Edward's wife, another friend, Ellen Roseman was the guest host for the show I was invited to.

My only previous TV exposure was in the late 1960s. A bunch of us from my fraternity were invited to do a stunt on an episode of Laugh In. It had something to do with with melting a block of ice with our body heat. We were paid with a new pool table for the frat house. Worth the trouble. 

I was not the least bit reluctant to do the NEWS show. The idea of being on TV was on my subconscious bucket list. Maybe someone would see it. A little notoriety. 

I was one of three invited guest commentators.

The first was a PhD student from York University studying semiotics. Another word I didn't know. I soon learned it was the study of the meaning of signs and words. So, for example, the phrase Collateral Damage was in the news. It was a short form way of saying that a lot of women and children were being killed and maimed without actually saying that.

He thought the USA was in the war for the oil. That was a new thought to me. He also said the media kept saying Collateral Damage to cover up the human cost of the war. And that was a good example of how the rhetoric, the spoken words, covered up what was really going on and that led to the war being more popular than it should have been.

The second guest was a University of Toronto  professor of Aristotelian thought. I think his role was to comment on the rhetoric of war with a nod to Aristotle's thinking about ethics. I never knew what this man was talking about or maybe I just didn't understand. 

Edward invited me on the show because he thought my advertising background, with its heavy reliance on words, would deliver an important perspective. A nice compliment.

At the time I was naive politically. I was in favour of the war. I saw it simply as good vs. evil just as CNN portrayed it. 

I had about a week to prepare for the show. The web was still in its infancy then so I went to the library to do my research. First I did a dictionary search to find out what rhetoric meant. That was only slightly helpful. I got a rough idea but needed to dig deeper to develop opinions. My advertising background was useless.

I asked the librarian to help me find some books which got me part of the way there. I learned rhetoric was very complicated as people could use words like statistics, that is, to shape the facts any way they preferred. 

I found this quote which helped me develop a point of view I could bring to the show. 

"It's good to keep wide-open ears and listen to what everybody else has to say, but when you come to make a decision, you have to weigh all of what you've heard on its own, and place it where it belongs, and come to a decision for yourself; you"ll never regret it. But if you form the habit of taking what someone else says about a thing without checking it out for yourself, you"ll find that other people will have you hating your friends and loving your enemies"

Think that sounds wise? Malcom X said that in an advice for children book. 

The show went off pretty well. I was totally surprised by the PhD student. I didn't know anyone who was against the war and the idea that the USA was involved to steal oil was beyond me. The U of T professor said nothing memorable. 

I acquitted myself reasonably well. The highlight, of course, was quoting Malcolm X on national tv.  One client let me know he saw the show. A little notoriety.