by John Lovas
About 20 years ago, when the school board seemed especially enamored of alternative schools, I proposed creating an alternative school known as the OK School, one not too structured, not too open, but just OK, a school focused on the unique characteristics and special needs of Ordinary Kids. Despite an outpouring of popular support (one letter, two postcards, and three or four phone calls), we still don't have an OK School in Palo Alto.
Almost a decade ago, in my first contribution to this column, I proposed that the city establish the position of City Wizard, to replace the myriad of commissions and committees that produce advice to the City Council. The Wizard would be selected annually by lottery from among citizens who had lived in Palo Alto at least 18 years and would decide all hard cases by fiat. I can't claim popular support for this proposal (it would have put hundreds of volunteers out of work), but I was told it was whispered about in City Hallways.
Though neither of the above proposals have yet found their audience, I will not shrink from civic responsibility. Here's my proposal for the '90s.
We need a City Rhetorician.
I know you don't need to be told, but just as a reminder, rhetoric is the art of written or spoken discourse intended to inform, persuade or move an audience. So a rhetorician is the person who analyzes and comments on rhetoric.
You probably have never heard of a City Rhetorician, but that's usually a recommendation in Palo Alto. But seriously, folks, the need for expert analysis and commentary on public rhetoric in Palo Alto has never been greater.
Recently, the City Council considered a proposal to purchase a piece of sound-monitoring equipment to prove whether or not sounds from Shoreline Amphitheatre come into Palo Alto at officially unacceptable levels. The spokesman for our NIMBY anti-noise group spoke strongly in behalf of this expenditure.
To prepare the Council for his remarks, he used overhead slides to evoke, first, Don Quixote and his "Impossible Dream" song and next Martin Luther King Jr., and his "I Have a Dream" speech. Then, in a rhetorical move both audacious and offensive, the speaker equated Dr. King's dream to his group's dream that, on six or eight selected summer evenings, he and his fellow residents would not hear concert residue for up to three or four hours an evening. At least four City Council members expressed their displeasure with this piece of rhetoric, but a City Rhetorician could have held it up to wide public scrutiny in analyses sent with your utilities bill.
When city efforts to close down the La Cumbre nightclub surfaced several months ago, a nearby resident was quoted in press reports that patrons from the club could be seen urinating and vomiting in public. Known as the Bodily Fluids Attack, this rhetorical move has a history of success in Palo Alto. When residents near Johnson Park complained that basketball players were urinating in their bushes, a public toilet was proposed for the park. But public acknowledgement of urination offends an important portion of the citizenry, who claimed the toilet would attract more than just weekend basketballers, perhaps people who find it necessary to urinate every day. Several years ago, similar complaints about volleyballers in Eleanor Park and Rinconada Park led to significant changes in park rules.
A City Rhetorician, an expert trained not only in ethical argumentation but also in understanding audience appeal, could also perform preventive services. For instance, were the city to organize a centennial celebration (something they do every 100 years or so), the City Rhetorician might review proposed scripts and offer expert opinion on whether those scripts had sufficient audience appeal to justify 5,000 people coming out to stand in the street on a Saturday night, anticipating spectacle, wit and theatrical delights.
I know our hard-working Council and our creative city staff would find a great deal of material for a City Rhetorician to deal with. Support me on this one, won't you?
John Lovas, a Palo Alto resident, is an English professor at De Anza College. He is a member of the Weekly's Board of Contributors.
At least four City Council members expressed their displeasure with this piece of rhetoric, but a City Rhetorician could have held it up to wide public scrutiny in analyses sent with your utilities bill.
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