The Party of Roosevelt??

In his acceptance speech, Obama referred to Democrats as the party of Roosevelt. He was right…assuming he meant FDR and not distant cousin Teddy. This small mistake seems to have been easily overlooked by the press, but would someone who knows presidential history actually announce the democratic party as such. It isn’t the same as saying the party of Kennedy because the name is almost strictly associated with the Democratic party. The Republicans have just as much claim to the name Roosevelt as the Democrats.

Also, I wonder if anyone picked up on Obama’s direct reference to the work of MLK. The day of the speech being the 40th anniversary of King’s I Have A Dream speech, Obama paraphrased King in his line about Republicans forcing people to pick themeselves up by their own bootstraps, even though they might not have any.

Citing Fiction

Citing fiction is merely a round-a-bout process of citing non-fiction. That is, the reference to another person’s thoughts, which are real whether fact or opinion. It is certainly a mistake to believe fiction can give us statistics, but to assume information based on the fictional works of a number of authors is not really different from assuming something based on a yes/no poll. In fact, the former may be more useful in a number of situations since yes/no polls offer no explanations, no additional input, and no interpretation on part of the sample. Reality is much more complex than a simple yes or no, and fiction is deeply embedded in reality.

The idea of citing fiction often can easily be criticized as too abstract. One can only try to understand what an author was truly thinking or what a passage  truly meant. Yet, one reason for citing a literary work of fiction or non-fiction is to back up a statment or presented argument. Words and numbers have a strong history of being pulled out of context or twisted. Other proof, aside from the hard facts, other proof must be coupled to make the strongest argument possible. in this way, fiction can be just as effective. And depending on the audience maybe more so, considering the impact of the fictional styles on human emotion as compared to the raw language often used with words of fact.