Before I play along with the sound bite portion of our beloved Pullman text, I am (of course!) going to read against the grain and question the entire purpose of the passage to which I have actively chosen to respond.

I AM…AGAINST THE GRAIN

I chose to respond to the sound bite segment because, at least upon originally seeing the title of the section, I saw it as something that could spur a fun little activity that would differ from a typical read/analysis of a passage. I said “well, look there, I can find some recent headlines and compare them (and their companion soundbites) to the full text and see whether it improved, changed, or worsened the message of the original text.” And I still will do that — but once I kept reading on in our book, I started wondering just why exactly Pullman was talking about what he was talking about (“proverbs, maxims, and aphorisms”) and why he thought it a good idea to introduce the topic through discussion of sound bites.

Maybe this is a lazy “read against the grain”, but if it didn’t really immediately connect in my mind (which it didn’t — I was questioning the usefulness of the discussion the entire time I was reading it), then perhaps Pullman should have pulled it together in a more enticing way that made the connection between sound bits and proverbs, et. al., more immediate and compelling. It is obvious to see that they are connected (each is a short little catch phrase) but the connection seems shallow. He does tie it together in the end with advice to rhetors, but it all seems to me to be a bit thrown-together without that much thought. A lot of advice that seems hard to enact — a lot of “do this, but not that, and just be perfect but I won’t tell you how to be perfect.” The section might have worked if it was longer but given the length of the book as it is, I don’t think it was necessary at all.

As for that fun little exercise — just to find our seemingly most sound-bite-able president (as it seems would be necessary for a former reality star), I googled “headlines trump says” and found the headline “Trump says he feels ‘very badly’ for Flynn because lies to FBI have ‘ruined his life’”.

Here is the article’s elaboration on the headline:

Interestingly enough, Trump’s sound bites pretty accurately reflect what he really said. Perhaps he is, indeed, very, very good at them. Very good. The best. Very.

[I challenge you to do the same with articles going forward — what are their sound bites really accomplishing?]

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