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Chapter 12 Ontology in the Clinton Era Andrew D. Weiner It depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is. If “is” means “is and never has been,” that is not—that is one thing. If it means “there is none,” that was a completely true statement.1 If you were writing a book about cynicism, the sentence, “it depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is” would make an excellent epigraph.2 Even though I’m not writing a book about cynicism, but only a response to the memory of things past, I find this quotation from Louis Menand’s essay an even better epigraph, for the cynicism that interests me here is the cynicism of the press and, even more, the news media that most of us tend to turn to in moments of perceived national crisis. One of the most interesting developments in the whole impeachment process was the casualness with which precision in language became something to be mocked, to be dismissed as a cynical attempt to manipulate not reality but the discourse allowed on the public stage. When the President’s lawyers tried to make the case that what the President did does not fit the legal definition of perjury, editorials in major newspapers mockingly dismissed their arguments as merely “legalisms,” apparently on the theory that since we all “knew” that he had lied, these attempts to draw meaningless distinctions could only be meant to confuse us. The only “kiss” commentators today do not regard with disdain is an acronym, “Keep it simple, stupid”; it signifies their contempt for those who would try to 179 confuse the public with complicated language or suggest that language needs to be complex because reality is complex. This insistence that “is” must be “is” marks the distance we have come since the revival of rhetoric as an art of persuasion in the Renaissance. The rhetorical culture of earlier centuries believed that language could help us come to agreement about complex issues; our media culture seems not to want agreement (what would they spend their time endlessly discussing if consensus were ever reached?) but rather tries to reduce reality to twenty-second sound bites accompanied by striking visuals . To judge by what we see on television, we live in a society where “balance ” is to be achieved in the crossfire between totally opposed positions upheld by dogmatic partisans chosen because they would never disrupt that balance by acknowledging that the other side could make a persuasive argument or even make them change their minds (an act once the mark of a mind capable of learning new things but which is now labeled a flip-flop in sign of its new place as an indicator of political weakness). As one who regularly spends a considerable amount of time talking about the wonders of the universes that Shakespeare’s plays reveal to us, Menand’s statement immediately made me think of Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night, a play about the adventures of twins separated by a shipwreck , each fearing the other drowned. Viola, the one whose situation receives the most consideration in the play, disguises herself as a man, dresses as her brother was when their ship sank, and seeks service with a Duke, Orsino, who is in love with a Countess, Olivia, who has vowed seven years of mourning for the deaths of her father and brother. Orsino takes Viola, now called Cesario, into his service, thinking her a man, and makes her his ambassador to Olivia, who, after being made wise about the foolishness of excessive grief by Feste, her wise fool, proceeds to fall in love with Cesario, who has, naturally, fallen in love with Orsino. Into this simple situation eventually comes Viola’s twin brother Sebastian, who again, naturally, is immediately assumed to be Cesario by Feste, who has been sent by Olivia to seek Cesario. When Feste finds “Cesario” (Sebastian , of course), he is rebuffed: Feste: Will you make me believe that I am not sent for you? Sebastian: Go to, go to, thou art a foolish fellow, Let me be clear of thee. Feste: Well held out, i’ faith! No, I do not know you, nor I am not sent to you by my lady to bid you come speak with her, nor your name is not Master Cesario, nor this is not my nose, neither. Nothing that is so, is so. (Twelfth Night, IV.i.1–8)3 180 a n d r e...

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