Let's begin with a review, partly because a review is the next assignment due in one of my online writing classes, and partly because the plain truth of reviewing is that negative arguments are usually way more entertaining than positive ones. Far be it from me to recommend teaching kids to be snarky, but the reason "bad" reviews are more compelling and fun to write is similar to our often-noted truth that most news = bad news.
From Ron Charles in his Washington Post Book Club newsletter, on the same-day releases of new memoirs by Mike Pence (So Help Me God) and Michelle Obama (The Light We Carry). “It hardly feels like a fair contest,” Charles wrote. “Michelle Obama is one of the most popular and dynamic public figures in the world. Mike Pence once lulled a fly to sleep on his own head.”
For our students, we might point out the use of hyperbole (that last jab at how boring Pence is, even if students may not have seen that weird video of a fly settling on Pence's forehead). It is also a good example of how to "bury" the attribution (Charles wrote.) Our default is to place the attribution at the very start or very end of the quotation, but this tactic (by Bruni, in this case) is more sophisticated. Leaving readers with the neutral verb "said" is not a strong way to wrap up a quote or a paragraph... or at least we can remind young writers that there are options to avoid that effect.
The review finishes with: “Despite protecting the Union from its greatest threat in 160 years, Pence describes that calamity with all the verve and insight of a man telling us how he loads the dishwasher. It’s a peculiar act of historical revisionism — as though the paragraphs have been sprayed with a mixture of fire retardant and Ambien.”
Of course, we might need to quickly refresh student memories about Jan. 6 for them to understand the reference. More importantly for writers: he never plainly states that Pence's prose is boring... but we get it.
Also in The Washington Post, Joel Achenbach explored doomsday scenarios of the cosmological rather than political kind, recounting: “A few days before NASA tried to crash a spacecraft into an asteroid as part of what it called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, I talked to Lindley Johnson, the agency’s planetary defense officer. I think we can all agree that this sounds like an important job.”
This pairs nicely with the hyperbole of the review, demonstrating the concept of "understatement."
In The New Yorker, Jelani Cobb surveyed recent history: “In the seven years since Trump took his ride down the gold-colored escalator in Trump Tower to declare his candidacy for president of the United States, the movement that coalesced around him has died a thousand deaths, only to climb out of its shallow grave before the first trowel of dirt hit the casket.”
This metaphor that compares a candidate to one of those impossible-to-kill monsters we have all seen in so many movies does a nice job of avoiding direct criticism of Trump or anyone else. The writer is simply pointing out the resilience of the guy... though we are all free to read into that sentence any political stances we wish.
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