{"id":1787,"date":"2009-06-22T00:01:50","date_gmt":"2009-06-22T07:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=1787"},"modified":"2009-06-22T00:01:50","modified_gmt":"2009-06-22T07:01:50","slug":"writing-room-the-rhetorician-in-the-white-house-how-i-learned-to-love-the-passive-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/writing-room-the-rhetorician-in-the-white-house-how-i-learned-to-love-the-passive-voice\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rhetorician in the White House \u2014 Or, How I Learned to Love the Passive Voice"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_11118\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11118\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"ttp:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2009\/06\/22\/writing-room-the-rhetorician-in-the-white-house-how-i-learned-to-love-the-passive-voice\/\" rel=\"ttp:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2009\/06\/22\/writing-room-the-rhetorician-in-the-white-house-how-i-learned-to-love-the-passive-voice\/\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11118 size-full\" title=\"obama-in-cairo_wh-photo-6-2009\" src=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/obama-in-cairo_wh-photo-6-2009.jpg\" alt=\"rhetorician barack obama at pyramids during 2009 cairo visit. \" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-11118\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rhetorician President Obama during his 2009 visit to Cairo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The passive voice gets a bad rap &#8212; it&#8217;s weak, it&#8217;s vague, it&#8217;s <em>passive<\/em>. But in the hands of a skilled rhetorician like President Obama, <a href=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2009\/05\/25\/writing-room-rhetoric-what-the-heck-is-it\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a neatly turned passive<\/a> sentence is just what our ever-shrinking world needs right now.<\/p>\n<p>But first, what&#8217;s a passive sentence?\u00a0I think of it as a\u00a0sentence\u00a0in which the subject &#8212; the doer or agent &#8212;\u00a0is obscured. (More on the <a href=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2009\/06\/19\/writing-room-the-passive-voice-and-its-cousins\/\">passive voice<\/a> and its passive cousins in my post of June 19.)<\/p>\n<p>Notice how Obama put the passive sentence to good use on June 4\u00a0during his\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=6BlqLwCKkeY&amp;eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ehuffingtonpost%2Ecom%2F2009%2F06%2F04%2Fobama%2Dcairo%2Dspeech%2Dvideo%5Fn%5F211210%2Ehtml&amp;feature=player_embedded\">Cairo speech\u00a0<\/a>to the Arab world. Of the war in Iraq, he says:\u00a0\u00a0&#8220;Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq was a war of choice that provoked strong differences in my country and around the world.&#8221;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Here, the President &#8211; tactfully &#8211; avoids placing blame for the Iraq war on George W. Bush and his followers. He declares the Iraq war &#8220;a war of choice&#8221; &#8212; but he does not name the &#8220;chosers.&#8221; Thus, Obama avoids offending Republicans as well as\u00a0any American voters out there who might have supported Bush\u00a0and his war.<\/li>\n<li>With the phrase, &#8220;strong differences,&#8221; Obama\u00a0puts his Arab listeners on notice that not all Americans supported the war &#8212; again, without painting its supporters as egregiously wrong-headed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<figure id=\"attachment_11120\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11120\" style=\"width: 176px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"ttp:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2009\/06\/22\/writing-room-the-rhetorician-in-the-white-house-how-i-learned-to-love-the-passive-voice\/\" rel=\"ttp:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2009\/06\/22\/writing-room-the-rhetorician-in-the-white-house-how-i-learned-to-love-the-passive-voice\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11120 size-full\" title=\"obamas-cairo-speech-2009-sentinel-photo\" src=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/obamas-cairo-speech-2009-sentinel-photo.jpg\" alt=\"rhetorician president barack obama giving speech in cairo, 2009. sentinel photo.\" width=\"176\" height=\"166\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-11120\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Obama in Cairo, 2009.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Later in\u00a0Obama&#8217;s Cairo\u00a0speech,\u00a0he directs his comments to the Muslim world:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Among some Muslims, there&#8217;s a disturbing tendency to measure one&#8217;s own faith by the rejection of somebody else&#8217;s faith.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Here again, Obama avoids an accusatory tone:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>He does not use &#8220;Muslims&#8221; as the subject of the sentence. He lets the noun &#8220;tendency&#8221; take the rap.<\/li>\n<li>He softens the verb &#8220;reject&#8221; by turning it into a noun &#8211; &#8220;rejection.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>He does not stir up old resentments by naming Jews and Christians as the object of Muslim censure. He simply says &#8220;somebody else.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The trouble with a passive sentence, of course, is\u00a0it lacks punch. It can put\u00a0a reader right to sleep. Obama knows this. He keeps his listeners awake by plugging in strong, precise verbs: Provoke. Remind. Resolve. Measure. Reject.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2009\/06\/23\/book-openers-barack-obama-how-he-got-so-smart\/\">How did Obama get so smart?<\/a> More on that next time.<\/p>\n<p><em>Grammar geeks might want to tune in to my post on . . . wait for it . . .\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2009\/08\/14\/noah-lukeman\/\"> the\u00a0 colon<\/a>! And,\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2009\/05\/25\/writing-room-rhetoric-what-the-heck-is-it\/\">Wondering what rhetoric is?<\/a> Let my two-year-old explain.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"ttp:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2009\/06\/22\/writing-room-the-rhetorician-in-the-white-house-how-i-learned-to-love-the-passive-voice\/\" rel=\"ttp:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2009\/06\/22\/writing-room-the-rhetorician-in-the-white-house-how-i-learned-to-love-the-passive-voice\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-11118 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/obama-in-cairo_wh-photo-6-2009-500x333.jpg\" alt=\"Barack Obama at pyramids during 2009 cairo visit.\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The passive sentence gets a bad rap &#8212; it&#8217;s weak, it&#8217;s vague, it&#8217;s passive. But sometimes a neatly turned passive sentence is just what our ever-shrinking world needs. Obama&#8217;s Cairo speech is an example. <a href=\"ttp:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/2009\/06\/22\/writing-room-the-rhetorician-in-the-white-house-how-i-learned-to-love-the-passive-voice\/\">Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,52],"tags":[34,271,82,281,282,227,69],"class_list":["post-1787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-on-writing-reading","category-the-writing-room","tag-dont-miss","tag-obama","tag-on-the-funny-side","tag-philosophy","tag-politics","tag-rhetoric","tag-writing-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}