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pseudo-personal aside: the capitalization choice is a personal/aethetic one. it is associated with email--at one point there was a long justification, now it seems mostly habit.
i think it helps keep types of writing, types of voice apart.
i am not operating or writing in an academic mode here, so i write like it is informal for me, like it is email.
less punctuation as well. writing quickly, like talking.
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let me try it this way:
when you read an article, how do you evaluate it?
what do you understand by the "facts"?
i understand the whole article to be fair game, that you can't see articles as simply transparent, something you look through to get access to a world of "facts".
maybe it is a reflex on my part to be suspicious (given certain triggers) as a function of being a historian by training.
so it is possible that i do not read texts with the same set of assumptions about validity (which is a rhteorical effect more often than not) as you do.
so it is possible that i read for different things, in a different way.
in this case, the claim "fraud" in the opening paragraph gives an indication of what will follow. the term is excessive, and the writer uses the disjuncture between that term and what the "factual" elements of her piece to shift from a simple critique of a single documentary to something bigger.
it turns out that the entire premise of the piece is taken from burkett's book.
she acts as though she saw the film in 1988 and was bothered byu it all this time, but in fact she is recapitulating the book.
the "facts" here are a problem (have you read burkett's book? if not, why do you believe it is accurate? because you are predisposed for some reason to dislike dan rather? why would you bother disliking a talking head? or is the book's title persuasive on its own? why would that be? clearly, the title functions to position the entire article in a particular field of "debate"--which is what i reacted to at the outset, by calling the whole thing right revisionist bullshit on vietnam)
the mixing of agendas gets clearer when she shifts into rheotircal questions over teh last 4-5 paragraphs.
she even cites the swift boat vets--now discredited from all sides--as a model. which is kind of funny, given burkett's involvement with them. maybe that is what she sees her article as being--a kind of sbvt-style advert.
in any event, the article is really problematic.
the national review is really problematic, in general. i read it from time to time. it is a pretty shabby operation.
i am reaching the point however where this piece is not longer really worth the engagement--however i dont mind carrying on to try to show how the piece works and why i think it a hatchet job--
through it there is some chance laying a basis for conversation that gets past my email fonts choices.
it'd be good to have more possibilities for debate/discussion in general.
so there we are.
it's argument is not limited to such "facts" as she presents (what she cites the burkett book to legitimate)---
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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