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You can take the politician out of Washington, but you can’t take Washington out of the politician. It’s the hottest rhetorical device of campaign ’08 says Slate assistant editor Juliet Lapidos. And it’s called antimetabole.
Antimetabole? What a horrible word. I prefer chiasmus.
Chiasmus sounds better. Remember when Ben Stiller discussed this cheap rhetorical device in Mystery Men? (great movie moment)
According to the third paragraph of the Slate article linked to in the story synopsis above, chiasmus and antimetabole are not the same thing.
We're having a bit of fun with this on my blog:
http://matthewfreeman.blogspot.com
Thanks for the link to "Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric." It looks to be a very interesting resource.
The relevance of your comment is a comment on your relevance.
I'm sure I wasn't the only person who immediately thought of Mystery Men during this story, with The Sphinx having such great lines as "To learn my teachings, I must first teach you how to learn" and "He who questions training only trains himself at asking questions."
My favorite: "When you can balance a tack hammer on your head, you will head off your foes with a balanced attack."
The transcript on this is wrong - it says Gladstone says things that, actually, Lapidos said (the part critiquing Clinton's use of antimetabole)
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