Fisking as a rhetorical construct examines "fisking" as a cultural construct.
Dennis_Jerz gives a great definition of fisking in rhetorical terms, describing it as:
point-by-point critical annotation of another text. It is a mode of criticism well-suited to the WWW, since it begins by copying the full text of the target text, and proceeds to point out logical flaws and raise doubts. Since the fiskee's fixed text cannot respond to the challenges, the fisker can without too much trouble make the fiskee look ridiculous. While the term seems to have originated in conservative attacks against liberal positions, I recently came across a postmodern blogger who fisks an anti-postmodernist.
While it sounds somewhat benign, and it can be when it is done in the spirit of discussion rather then diatribe, the word "fisking" brings with it the contentious baggage of Fisk's experience and the one-sidedness that it implies. Fisking denies dialogue.
This is something increasingly common in our culture, and blogging reflects that at times.
Perhaps providing people with broader tools to help them develop an argument would mean fewer people resorting to Crossfire-like ambush. I think blogs can be one tool of many to address the decline of dialogue and the rise of the rant.
Aristotle characterized ethos as something vital for any public speaker's effectiveness.
When we are online, all our audience has to judge us by is our words. Over time, those words build up, crystalizing an impression of who we are and what we mean, and what we will mean in the future. Unlike speech, which careens off into the ozone and disappears, our words online linger and color what we say later. Who among us hasn't sent a piece of mail that we wish we hadn't, only to have it come back later?
Being online means we need to consider our words in terms of reputation management. What we say online will remain. For years. That may make us more careful, but is that really a bad thing? When our words are our only currency, is it bad to want to spend wisely?
(the Aristotle/Ethos stuff is via Charles Paine)
What are the warrants that link MetaFilter members?
The stated warrants begin on the About page. The owner states that the purpose of this weblog is to "break down the barriers between people, to extend a weblog beyond just one person, and to foster discussion among its members." That statement affirms the values of community and dialogue. This warrant is reinforced in the sheer number of spin-off pages on member's personal sites such as "MusicFilter" and "MoJo" (online journalism discussion) and MeatFilter (vegetarian list)
The owner also positions those values as integral to the site by requiring that before one can become a member of MetaFilter, a potential member lurk for quite some time, taking in types of posts that appeal to the group. Only by observing the group in action can a potential member observe the common values of the group. The owner then also includes a guide to posting. Those posting guidlines also include two of the "cardinal sins."
1. Self-promotion ("Self-promotion isn't what this site is about. Self promotion can be "earned.")
2. "Trolling" ("posting purposely inflammatory things for the sole purpose of baiting others to argue the points until blue in the face - basically people do this for kicks, to destroy conversations and communites, for the hell of it")
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:lr8jCHTEwuQC:www.foresight.net.au/dg/stuff/mefitag.html+%2B%22mefi+taglines%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 (taglines)
MetaTalk http://metatalk.metafilter.com/
category list: http://metatalk.metafilter.com/category_list.cfm
wiki:
So you've got the three amigos of argument; Plato, Aristotle, and Ramus. We'll start with them as the beginnings of argument of inquiry, as Crosswhite does in Chapter 9 of "The Rhetoric of Reason."
PLATO
Plato believed that the "completeness" of argument included both rhetorical/dialectical elements and scientific elements as part of a whole. These elements served the goal of "soul-leading," persuading the unknowing minions towards the "right" conclusion. In order to persuade others of the "right" conclusion, one needed to know people in order to persuade them and one needed to speak since writing did not lead men's souls the way speech does. Argument was then a moral and ethical responsibility to persuade rather then a way to gather knowledge.
ARISTOTLE
Aristotle used argument as a truth-seeking mechanism as well, though he de-emphasized the whole "soul-leading" thing. Aristotle separated rhetoric from dialectic/science, claiming that each type demanded different things. He viewed rhetoric both as an analysis of audience ("rhetorical situation") and as an element of "performance," and therefore not as concrete as the other parts, but still important.
For Aristotle, the ultimate truth is science. The seekers of that truth are single solitary souls in a school setting demonstrating knowledge and discovering truth. To discover truth, the seeker goes from previously-known truth via demonstration to new "truth."
Dialectic also sought truth, but in a different way. The goal of dialectic was inquiry/experimentation via small group conversations with interlocutors. Dialectic truth-seeking goes from common opinions (sme's or "facts") using syllogisms and induction to achieve knowledge. Truth then arrives by consensus.
For Aristotle, the goal of rhetoric is persuasion, like when a single speaker addresses an audience in speech. Rhetoric goes from common opinions (via reasoning) to debate over those truths then to probable knowledge.
RAMUS
Science, dialectic, and rhetoric are all viewed in pedagogical terms. Each should be introduced to students according to their ability (in other words, there were "smart audiences" who would "get it" and less smart audiences (poets) who would need a watered-down version of truth)
For Ramus, All forms of invention and "reasoning" are dialectic, and dialectic therefore co-opts all rhetorical forms of reasoning. Dialectic reasoning governs all life and is best represented through quantitative information.
Inquiry becomes the "systemic transmission of knowledge," becoming a lecture rather then a dialogue. Inquiry becomes a directional path towards an intended conclusion rather then an investigation of truth and the generation of a conclusion.
Rhetoric is reduced to the performance elements of speech, to the elements of voice and interpersonal communication. You have "smart" audiences who will understand your reasoning and "less smart" audiences (poets) who you will need to use those rhetorical skills to persuade.
Laurie Garrett's (via a community member) response to this metafilter thread: (as seen on Metafilter)
Part of what allows for civil argument on blogs are the common values of the community. They assure that things stay sane and discussions provoke thoughtful response and not name-calling.
Metafilter's policies regarding posts and comments are not really anywhere in written form, but the community view becomes apparent after spending time lurking. Matter of fact, the listmaster recommends that new users lurk for quite awhile before they comment, and they must comment a few times before they are allowed to post to the main screen of the blog. This is done to assure that new members understand the common values of blogmembers and post in accordance with them.
When Laurie Garrett posted her response to the Mefi discussion (via a Mefi member), she clearly did not know the audience for whom she was writing.
have received the following further communication from Laurie Garrett, via e-mail:My name is Laurie Garrett.
I am astounded by what I?ve read here.A few days ago I received an e-mail from a stranger, who asked if I was the author of a letter from Davos, regarding the World Economic Forum. The e-mailer implied that the letter was a hoax, and directed me to this URL.
Though I did, indeed, attend the WEF and wrote a personal letter afterwards to a handful of friends, I never typed a word that was meant for public consumption.
That is what I told the stranger. And then I went back to work, covering the latest sad news from the trenches of the war on HIV.Yesterday, however, I opened this URL and?with considerable humiliation -- read the remarks, paranoid fantasies speculations, derisions, insults and Internet din herein.
Let me as clear as possible about this: The letter you are all clamoring over, parsing, deriding and fantasizing about was a personal note. It is a private letter that someone among my friends thoughtlessly, yet I am sure without any malice, forwarded to a couple of people who are strangers to me. And they, in turn, passed it on to more strangers, and so on. Now, to my deep embarrassment, and acute sense of invaded privacy, all of you? thousands of strangers?are dissecting my personal letter. I would never have written for public consumption in such a sloppy, candid, opinionated flip tone. This was never intended for your eyes.
I want you, please, to imagine something. It?s 1979. I penned, in longhand, a letter to a friend describing my rather individual, admittedly biased take on attending the SALT II talks between Carter and Brezhnev. I placed that letter in an enveloped, sealed it, stamped it and posted it to my pal. (So far, I am recounting an event that actually occurred when, in my post-adolescence, I covered the Vienna Summit.)
Now, imagine my recipient found the letter amusing or insightful and photocopied my handwritten note, posting it to ten friends. And so on. Snail mail hell? Doubtful. In those seemingly ancient days we all respected privacy, and the time and money required to photocopy and post missives prompted all of us to pause and question whether we had a right to forward a personal letter without the author?s permission.
But in 2003 few of us pen letters anymore, and the number of seconds it takes to forward an e-mail to a dozen people is too few for ethical reflection. We have erased privacy. And, remarkably, we have all come to believe that it is our right ? our privilege ? to read and analyze the personal musings of complete strangers. We don?t want the government reading our mail, but we se no problem with reading other citizens? letters.
This saddens me deeply, and I have learned a sorry lesson. I shall no longer deliver such personal musings to friends and confidantes via the Internet. No one can be trusted in this CLICK-FORWARD electronic world.
But well outstripping the angst I feel over the loss of my personal privacy is my despair over your responses to the note. As I scanned the correspondence on this URL I found myself imagining tens of thousands of reasonably intelligent, energetic souls wasting precious moments of their lives n collective brainpower over n extraordinarily silly exercise. I saw an enormous web of cross-referencing and communication herein?of wasted ?community?.
Ten years ago, before the Great Dot Com Crash, Silicon Valley pundits waxed eloquent about the great ?community? of the internet, and the ?new global democracy? it represented. But People, this is a fraud. Do you imagine for a moment that the participants in the WEF?whether they be the CEOs of Amoco an IBM of the leaders of Amnesty International and OXFAM?waste their time with Internet chat rooms and discussions such as this? Do you actually believe, as you type your random thoughts in such Internet settings, that you are participating in Civilization? In Democracy? In changing your world?
I beg of all of you?the Internet addicts of the world?to turn off your TVs and computers now and then and engage the world. Go have actual eye-to-eye conversations with your family, friends and neighbors. Read a great book. Argue politics over dinner with friends. Go to City Council meeting. Raise money for your local public library. Teach your 12-year-old algebra.
Climb a mountain.
Execute a dream.
Be a citizen of the real world.
As I read through the electronic conversation on this URL I was reminded of documentary I saw years ago about ?Star Trek? fans. In it, William Shatner (AKA Captain Kirk) stood before hundreds of people dressed as Klingons, Vulcans, Romulans and assorted other imagined aliens. Somewhat bemused, Shatner looked at the sea of masked and oddly dressed humans and said, ?People, I have only one thing to say to you: Get a life!?
Please.
Laurie Garrett (www.lauriegarrett.com)
Part V: The Metafilter thread changes course and erupts at the snotty comments from Ms. Garrett.
Someone links to an article about reputation management (implied snide remark to Ms. Garrett) at http://www.mindjack.com/feature/spin.html
quote from mefi: "she displays her ignorance and preconceived bias in the above para, as well as the one in which she references shatner. it enforces my suspicion that in her minds eye we are all the comic-book guy on the simpsons. well, in my minds eye, she is the classic neo-journalist: good looking yet clumsy, untrained and uncomfortable in the language she works in ("various insundry"??? her first language no less!), fearful of technology she doesn't understand and unmotivated to undertake it's understanding, overly awed by money and underendowed with principles and completely missing the boat on freedom of the press and her role in a constitutional republic. that's just for starters. her own missive to pals exposes her as a barely mature, giggly little power and wealth groupie." (quonar)
quote: "What she's really pissed off about is having written a factually incorrect and groaningly embarrassing email, Ms Garrett thinks that the best form of defence is attack. Eliding round the fact that when she clicks on 'send', she relinquishes her right to control reproduction, alteration, etc, - our heroine invokes the ghosts of the Cold War and the hot air of the early internet gold rush days. Clumsy ad hominem attacks about the internet community being analogous to Star Trek fans follows, followed by a third-string eco-activist's exhortation to "engage the world. Go have actual eye-to-eye conversations"
Your humiliation is right and deserved. Stand by what you've written or don't write it - as writer you should know better than to commit falsehoods (i.e. factual inaccuracies) to paper, regardless of their recipient. Protect what's yours. If you can't trust your friends, then don't put temptation in their way. And when you're in the wrong, don't come out fighting unless you're sure you can win. Time to go back to your trenches now.-( dmt)
Letter to Ms. Garrett from Community member:
A letter I just sent to Laurie Garrett:
I'm one of the members of Metafilter (in other words, a family-neglecting, Internet-addicted shut in who needs to get a life and abandon my pretensions of affecting a world run by 3,000 of your new best friends).
As a former newspaper journalist, I find it amazing that someone with your considerable record of accomplishments believes an e-mail she wrote about a major news event and broadcast to a group of people is a sacrosanct private conversation.
Because you've written numerous e-mails since Sept. 11 that were republished around the Internet, it stretches credulity to think you are dumbfounded by the notion that your comments about Davos might have been forwarded to others.
Instead of insulting a bunch of people for doing what you recommend -- talking politics with friends -- you should spend a little more time catching up to what the rest of us realize:
The world doesn't need to wait around for professional journalists to carefully predigest the news for us any more. We're capable of collecting and analyzing information from a thousand different sources and directions, even an injudicious e-mail by a chatty Pulitzer Prize winner to at least one loose-lipped friend.
Welcome to the 21st century. If you stopped pining for a mythical 1979 in which privacy was universally respected and photocopiers didn't exist, perhaps you'd come to recognize that the grass-roots journalism being practiced at weblogs like Metafilter really is changing the world.
If you don't believe me, ask Trent Lott. I hear you two know some of the same people.
posted by rcade at 9:18 PM PST on February 18
Part VI: other blogs comment on Laurie Garrett's performance on Metafilter
John Palu Davis at http://johnpauldavis.org/archives/000297.html
quote: "Garrett can be forgiven for being taken a bit aback by many of the posts (which attempted to prove her e-mail a fake by pointing to grammatical errors and what one poster called a "naive" tone), but she managed to set off a bit of controversy when she pointedly asked, "Do you actually believe, as you type your random thoughts in such Internet settings, that you are participating in Civilization? In Democracy? In changing your world?""
MY analysis: They believe exactly that. Sometimes they are right.
Viridian actually picks apart the mail for itself at : http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:JwTrZYNR8NUJ:www.viridiandesign.org/notes/351-400/00362_the_mood_at_davos.html+metafilter+%22Laurie+Garrett%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Lawmeme (from yale) at http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=938
Part VII (the last part): Mainstream media covers the event long after it started.
Here's UPI's article from http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030303-023031-9883r
The Trent Lott incidents showed mainstream media the power of blogs to generate groundswells of public opinion. It also underlined the already-known power of celebrity. The bloggers who targeted Mr. Lott like Andrew Sullivan were largely A-list bloggers; celebrities within the blogging community, able to gather huge traffic to their sites. They used their single-user personal blogs to carry out the distributed argument that ultimately led to Lott's downfall. They used primarily epideictic reasoning since they rely on their audience to share their values (or they wouldn't be there), and their goals were primarily persuasive.
Group blogs engage in argument constantly as well. When a group of people who have never met decide to form an online community, the common values that link them help create a place for argument in the best sense of the word. The kind of distributed argument that "Blogs as Arguments" describes as happening on many different websites together also happens on one thread when a blogging community turns their skill of inquiry on a question.
A great example of distributed inquiry is the Laurie Garrett string on Metafilter, a large and influential group blog (I am a member, albeit a rather quiet one).
(Read the summary and background on the Laurie Garrett story from house of hackers -more inside
Part II: Laurie's mail that made the rounds online
at http://www.topica.com/lists/psychohistory/read/message.html?mid=1711891071&sort=d&start=4389
Her letter is obviously not meant for public consumption and has a rather 'gee-whiz' tone to it that I'm sure Ms. Garret would never intend for her readership to see.
The link wanders around the web until it lands on Metafilter for discussion:
Part III: The discussion on Metafilter and Metatalk about the mail. This is where all the heavy lifting takes place. http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/23493
This Metafilter thread begins by appealing to the common values of its audience. It beings not by expressing an opinion but by soliciting inquiry, saying "Could this be true?" with a link to the letter.
As this thread progresses, the Metafilter community discuss, research, and generally talk about each other's findings.
One interesting thing to me is they analyze the rhetoric to decide initially if she has credibility. They link to articles that Ms. Garrett has written, to her personal site, and they find her credentials. They also discover that she did cover the Summitt, adding to the evidence in favor of this being her (it was confirmed by her later). They also posted to Garrett's online guestbook, alerting her that this story was making the rounds online. (this was on february 11th). They criticize her grammar and her writing style. They refute the claims that Ms. Garret make in regards to economics data and her arguement that the economy is bad and getting worse. There's a bit of economics theory from someone who apprears to know what they're talking about.
The thread then gets bogged down in economic theory until.....
Part IV: Laurie Garrett's posts (via a community member) a response to this metafilter thread: (as seen on Metafilter)
have received the following further communication from Laurie Garrett, via e-mail:
My name is Laurie Garrett.
I am astounded by what I?ve read here.
A few days ago I received an e-mail from a stranger, who asked if I was the author of a letter from Davos, regarding the World Economic Forum. The e-mailer implied that the letter was a hoax, and directed me to this URL.
Though I did, indeed, attend the WEF and wrote a personal letter afterwards to a handful of friends, I never typed a word that was meant for public consumption.
That is what I told the stranger. And then I went back to work, covering the latest sad news from the trenches of the war on HIV.
Yesterday, however, I opened this URL and?with considerable humiliation -- read the remarks, paranoid fantasies speculations, derisions, insults and Internet din herein.
Let me as clear as possible about this: The letter you are all clamoring over, parsing, deriding and fantasizing about was a personal note. It is a private letter that someone among my friends thoughtlessly, yet I am sure without any malice, forwarded to a couple of people who are strangers to me. And they, in turn, passed it on to more strangers, and so on. Now, to my deep embarrassment, and acute sense of invaded privacy, all of you? thousands of strangers?are dissecting my personal letter. I would never have written for public consumption in such a sloppy, candid, opinionated flip tone. This was never intended for your eyes.
I want you, please, to imagine something. It?s 1979. I penned, in longhand, a letter to a friend describing my rather individual, admittedly biased take on attending the SALT II talks between Carter and Brezhnev. I placed that letter in an enveloped, sealed it, stamped it and posted it to my pal. (So far, I am recounting an event that actually occurred when, in my post-adolescence, I covered the Vienna Summit.)
Now, imagine my recipient found the letter amusing or insightful and photocopied my handwritten note, posting it to ten friends. And so on. Snail mail hell? Doubtful. In those seemingly ancient days we all respected privacy, and the time and money required to photocopy and post missives prompted all of us to pause and question whether we had a right to forward a personal letter without the author?s permission.
But in 2003 few of us pen letters anymore, and the number of seconds it takes to forward an e-mail to a dozen people is too few for ethical reflection. We have erased privacy. And, remarkably, we have all come to believe that it is our right ? our privilege ? to read and analyze the personal musings of complete strangers. We don?t want the government reading our mail, but we se no problem with reading other citizens? letters.
This saddens me deeply, and I have learned a sorry lesson. I shall no longer deliver such personal musings to friends and confidantes via the Internet. No one can be trusted in this CLICK-FORWARD electronic world.
But well outstripping the angst I feel over the loss of my personal privacy is my despair over your responses to the note. As I scanned the correspondence on this URL I found myself imagining tens of thousands of reasonably intelligent, energetic souls wasting precious moments of their lives n collective brainpower over n extraordinarily silly exercise. I saw an enormous web of cross-referencing and communication herein?of wasted ?community?.
Ten years ago, before the Great Dot Com Crash, Silicon Valley pundits waxed eloquent about the great ?community? of the internet, and the ?new global democracy? it represented. But People, this is a fraud. Do you imagine for a moment that the participants in the WEF?whether they be the CEOs of Amoco an IBM of the leaders of Amnesty International and OXFAM?waste their time with Internet chat rooms and discussions such as this? Do you actually believe, as you type your random thoughts in such Internet settings, that you are participating in Civilization? In Democracy? In changing your world?
I beg of all of you?the Internet addicts of the world?to turn off your TVs and computers now and then and engage the world. Go have actual eye-to-eye conversations with your family, friends and neighbors. Read a great book. Argue politics over dinner with friends. Go to City Council meeting. Raise money for your local public library. Teach your 12-year-old algebra.
Climb a mountain.
Execute a dream.
Be a citizen of the real world.
As I read through the electronic conversation on this URL I was reminded of documentary I saw years ago about ?Star Trek? fans. In it, William Shatner (AKA Captain Kirk) stood before hundreds of people dressed as Klingons, Vulcans, Romulans and assorted other imagined aliens. Somewhat bemused, Shatner looked at the sea of masked and oddly dressed humans and said, ?People, I have only one thing to say to you: Get a life!?
Please.
Laurie Garrett (www.lauriegarrett.com)
Part V: The Metafilter thread changes course and erupts at the snotty comments from Ms. Garrett.
Someone links to an article about reputation management (implied snide remark to Ms. Garrett) at http://www.mindjack.com/feature/spin.html
quote from mefi: "she displays her ignorance and preconceived bias in the above para, as well as the one in which she references shatner. it enforces my suspicion that in her minds eye we are all the comic-book guy on the simpsons. well, in my minds eye, she is the classic neo-journalist: good looking yet clumsy, untrained and uncomfortable in the language she works in ("various insundry"??? her first language no less!), fearful of technology she doesn't understand and unmotivated to undertake it's understanding, overly awed by money and underendowed with principles and completely missing the boat on freedom of the press and her role in a constitutional republic. that's just for starters. her own missive to pals exposes her as a barely mature, giggly little power and wealth groupie." (quonar)
quote: "What she's really pissed off about is having written a factually incorrect and groaningly embarrassing email, Ms Garrett thinks that the best form of defence is attack. Eliding round the fact that when she clicks on 'send', she relinquishes her right to control reproduction, alteration, etc, - our heroine invokes the ghosts of the Cold War and the hot air of the early internet gold rush days. Clumsy ad hominem attacks about the internet community being analogous to Star Trek fans follows, followed by a third-string eco-activist's exhortation to "engage the world. Go have actual eye-to-eye conversations"
Your humiliation is right and deserved. Stand by what you've written or don't write it - as writer you should know better than to commit falsehoods (i.e. factual inaccuracies) to paper, regardless of their recipient. Protect what's yours. If you can't trust your friends, then don't put temptation in their way. And when you're in the wrong, don't come out fighting unless you're sure you can win. Time to go back to your trenches now.-( dmt)
Letter to Ms. Garrett from Community member:
A letter I just sent to Laurie Garrett:
I'm one of the members of Metafilter (in other words, a family-neglecting, Internet-addicted shut in who needs to get a life and abandon my pretensions of affecting a world run by 3,000 of your new best friends).
As a former newspaper journalist, I find it amazing that someone with your considerable record of accomplishments believes an e-mail she wrote about a major news event and broadcast to a group of people is a sacrosanct private conversation.
Because you've written numerous e-mails since Sept. 11 that were republished around the Internet, it stretches credulity to think you are dumbfounded by the notion that your comments about Davos might have been forwarded to others.
Instead of insulting a bunch of people for doing what you recommend -- talking politics with friends -- you should spend a little more time catching up to what the rest of us realize:
The world doesn't need to wait around for professional journalists to carefully predigest the news for us any more. We're capable of collecting and analyzing information from a thousand different sources and directions, even an injudicious e-mail by a chatty Pulitzer Prize winner to at least one loose-lipped friend.
Welcome to the 21st century. If you stopped pining for a mythical 1979 in which privacy was universally respected and photocopiers didn't exist, perhaps you'd come to recognize that the grass-roots journalism being practiced at weblogs like Metafilter really is changing the world.
If you don't believe me, ask Trent Lott. I hear you two know some of the same people.
posted by rcade at 9:18 PM PST on February 18
Part VI: other blogs comment on Laurie Garrett's performance on Metafilter
John Palu Davis at http://johnpauldavis.org/archives/000297.html
quote: "Garrett can be forgiven for being taken a bit aback by many of the posts (which attempted to prove her e-mail a fake by pointing to grammatical errors and what one poster called a "naive" tone), but she managed to set off a bit of controversy when she pointedly asked, "Do you actually believe, as you type your random thoughts in such Internet settings, that you are participating in Civilization? In Democracy? In changing your world?""
MY analysis: They believe exactly that. Sometimes they are right.
Viridian actually picks apart the mail for itself at : http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:JwTrZYNR8NUJ:www.viridiandesign.org/notes/351-400/00362_the_mood_at_davos.html+metafilter+%22Laurie+Garrett%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Lawmeme (from yale) at http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=938
Part VII (the last part): Mainstream media covers the event long after it started.
Here's UPI's article from http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030303-023031-9883r
Part I: the summary
I have a new phrase this week, courtesy of John Ruszkiewicz. In his paper, "Blogs as Arguments" he coins the phrase "distributed arguments." His paper uses the Trent Lott case as an example of a blogged argument.