Greywolf: Prose Stylist

Mo:08:11:07:05:48

As Lakoff and Johnson have pointed out, argument is war in that a lot of the same vocabulary is applied to both activities. Whether they meet on the battlefield or the debate floor, contestants attack, defend and pound away at each others positions or points, employ strategies and tactics, exploit weaknesses and mistakes, and practice faints or other deceptions in order to gain an advantage.

Subtle introduction be damned! Canis Lupus lunges from his lair, fangs bared, dripping with the blood of Neocons, and rips and tears through the thin mask debaters wear, exposing all. In a New Stand on Grammer, practice faints and falls to the ground before our eyes, no doubt completely overcome by The Howler’s mastery of the sentence. How clear now, the ruse of rhetoric. Onward, to the Popinjay!

Using words as weapons, debaters fight to destroy or demolish their opponents’ arguments and force them to concede defeat. Hitch is the sort of chap who treats his debates as duels.

“The sort of chap.” That kills us. After a volley of terrifying military lingo, making us quiver in our armchairs (are we brave enough to rush to battle, or even to send our sons in our stead?), too brush off Hitchens so smoothly, so completely, as if he were just dried blood on an old soldier’s bayonet (yes, we are aware it’s a Sonician metaphor, but we stand on the shoulders of hedgehogs).

But you may have noticed that his favorite weapon is the verbal equivalent not of the rapier or the pistol, but of the 12-bore shotgun.

Is their no honour among the Neocohens of the Jingosphere?

Rather than scoring a nice clean hit on a single spot, he prefers to let rip with both barrels, spraying volleys of shot over a wide arc and peppering his opponent and anybody else standing close by.

And who, who is brave enough to man a defensive position in the face of such a horrific onslaught, armed only with words? Greywolf, Devourer of Canis Lupus Zionwatchus! Protect us and those who stand close by!

So much collateral damage for so little gain. What’s going on here? Or, as Obiwan might have put it, why use a blaster when a light sabre does a much cleaner job? Could it be that the effect Hitch is really aiming at isn’t necessarily the effect a casual observer might think he was going for.

Not what we were led to believe! Conspiracy!

And yet, time too for reflection, for a look into the mind of Hitchens. We can venture thus far only by the side of The Grey Wolf.

And lest we forget, so much erudition in one post. No snob, Greywolf. In His world, Obiwan resides among Lakoff and Johnson, comfortable side by side as if they were Jeeves and Wooster and Mark G. But neither wise Obiwan nor patient Jeeves could never have found, on the blank page before him, such an inspired way to express such a conclusion: Why use a blaster when a light sabre does a much cleaner job? This howler could indeed only have been said by The Howler.

A clean job, Canis Lupus, a clean slice through heart of Hitchens.

Life would be easier for Greywolf if He ignored us, but He works on, helping us develop our relationships with Him. He is the The Howler who works perfection in us, in our prose.