The Faces of the State of the Union

Jackie Bray stands with Michelle Obama at the State of the Union address.

As you probably know, on January 24, President Obama delivered his third State of the Union address to Congress. And whether you're a Republican, a Democrat, or a die-hard Ralph Nader supporter, you were subjected to the rhetoric in his speech (assuming that you were, in fact, listening to what he said and not just staring at the orange hue of John Boehner's face for over an hour). Maybe what stuck was his repeated use of the phrase, "built to last", or his delightfully tacky joke about spilled milk. Perhaps it was just his unique speaking style that made the entire country feel infallible for 70 minutes.

Personally, I absorbed how often he brought up the stories of ordinary American citizens. Yet that alone would not have stayed with me for long; it was the surprise of settling in for a story about the perhaps-fabricated struggles of *insert name here* from Middle of Nowhere, USA, and then BAM! I was looking right into their surprised face. It was unsettling initially, to say the least, because I actually felt guilty for doubting the truth of Obama's words when I saw that these people were not just rhetorical devices.

For this reason, I would argue that the use of Jackie Bray, Bryan Ritterby, and Warren Buffet's secretary, Debbie Bosanek, were the strongest rhetoric in his speech last week, in the same way that "Joe the Plumber" redefined John McCain's 2008 political campaign.

The strategy is not unique to politics. Everyone has seen the long commercials for UNICEF that present the name and dirt-streaked face of a weeping African orphan left to raise his five siblings, infected by malaria and HIV and without hope. While this example takes on a decidedly more depressing spin than those in a political campaign, the basic idea is the same: choose a person to represent a larger group, give them a name, give them a story, and give them a face to prove that they're not hypothetical. A play on pathos, if you will.

Thus the questions remain: why does this strategy work? Why have such diverse organizations been able to exploit this rhetorical strategy when everyone has seen it before? And why does it continue to surprise me?

The truth of the matter is that as a world, we've become unaccustomed to having to look at people. With the ease of telephone and online communication, face-to-face interaction is less important than ever and eye contact is becoming a memory of a bygone era.

I always thought I was immune to this loss on interpersonal interaction; after all, I speak competitively every weekend, where connection with the audience is essential. But I realized that while I can dish it out, I can't take it. Sure, I am able to express my point while locking eyes with my listeners and appealing to every sensitive bone in their body, but I can no longer sit comfortably as someone uses those strategies on me. I am a citizen of this changing world like anyone else, speech team or not. So to see the people who were being referenced, to put a face to the symbol, unsettled me. And if this is the case, this rhetorical strategy's power will grow as we continue to become a faceless society.

Capote's Masterpiece: In Cold Blood

Written by Truman Capote and published in 1966, In Cold Blood follows the true story of the murders of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas on November 15, 1959: After hearing about this quadruple homicide and before any killers were implicated, Capote and his friend Harper Lee traveled to Kansas and took thousands of pages of interview notes, which he then synthesized into a true-but-somewhat-fictionalized account of the people involved and events leading up to this tragic event.

Let me start out by saying that I loved this book. I think the most apt word to describe it is "page turner", for that it truly what it was. Yet it's not a mystery as many murder novels are, because from the beginning, you are introduced to the entire Clutter family, as well as the two murderers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. The plot thus unfolds as the events start to make sense: it's not "whodunit?", but rather "whytheydunit?".

In a literary sense, one of the main things I noticed is that the story is characterized by juxtaposition. Starting with the recreated last day of the Clutter family, the events are juxtaposed against the musings and plannings of the two murderers, who often delve back into their pasts to justify their actions and give the reader a sense of why they were doing what they were doing. After the Clutters were murdered, the focus switched to the fleeing murderers and their continued crime spree juxtaposed with the agony of the evidence-less investigation. Everything came together to make one stellar novel for a blogger exploring interpersonal relations.

Basically, this book is pregnant with people relating to people: the Clutter family relating to themselves, Herb Clutter's kindness to his employees (one of whom told Dick about the Clutter's whereabouts initially, which ultimately ended in their deaths), Nancy's gentle nature that caused her to be revered among the other youths in the town, Perry's rough relationship with his dysfunctional or dead family, Dick's abuse of the trust of his simple-minded his parents, the town postmistress' hatred of the gossiping neighbors... Pick any character, and a complex web can be drawn relating them to everyone else mentioned in the novel.

But the most poignant relationship between people in In Cold Blood concerns the residents of this sleepy town (population 270) and how the murder changed their lives. Neighbors who knew each other for thirty years began gossiping and speculating that the killer was among them; the crime was as mentally harmful to random townsfolk as it was to the remaining members of the Clutter family. Truman Capote puts it best when, on page 5, he says,

"At the time, not a soul in sleeping Holcomb heard them-- four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives. But afterward, the townspeople, theretofore sufficiently unfearful of each other to seldom trouble to lock their doors, found fantasy re-creating them over and again-- those somber explosions that stimulated fires of mistrust in the glare of which many neighbors viewed each other strangely, and as strangers".

I give this book 5 stars out of 5. From what I understand, the film version is gruesome (though I've never actually seen it). But this book is tasteful when addressing the violence of this crime, getting into the mentality of the act rather than the gory details. It's simply fascinating.