fwiw, rhetoric is still taught in good literature classes as well as in law schools. but your mails appear to contain enough rhetoric, too - the article made a straightforward claim, that the kashmir government's information department was effectively stamping out critical reporting through the use of advertising. this is hardly flowery rhetoric; nor is this a particularly terrible or uncommon thing to accuse a government of doing. such behaviour is common among many (especially local) govt authorities around the world, and common too in several industries.
focussing on the messenger rather than the message is the first step on the path of illogic and bigotry, even if this is justified by superficially sophisticated rhetoric. -rishab On Fri, Dec 22, 2006 at 08:47:53AM +0530, shiv sastry wrote: > On Thursday 21 Dec 2006 10:17 pm, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh wrote: > > but does it matter who owns/funds the site? if it is pakistan owned, it > > may make one more sceptical of its views, but the article looked > > reasonable enough, so countering it would require facts to the contrary. > > If an article is embellished with rhetoric that is used to support a few > facts, countering those facts with other facts tends to require powerful > counter-rhetoric. Mere facts are nowhere near as convincing as facts > buttressed by rhetoric. The best writers rarely tell outright lies, they > merely buttress a facts with powerful rhetoric.
