The Great Antimetabole Debate Drinking Game

The NPR show On The Media had a piece on antimetaboles as the great rhetorical debate device of '08. Antimetaboles are not new and have been around for a long time, but really seem to be in vogue right now.

Antimetabole is "the repetition of words in successive clauses in reverse grammatical order." One of the most famous quotes in history by JFK is an antimetabole: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country".

In this campaign we have both Obama* and McCain using variation on bringing change to Washington and Washington changing people.

A few more examples from the NPR piece.

Hillary Clinton: "In the end, the true test is not the speeches a president delivers, it’s whether the president delivers on the speeches."

Sarah Palin: "In politics there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers, and then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change."

Jesus Christ: "The first will be last and the last will be first."

Yeah, it's that old of a device. And I never had a name for it before hearing this piece.

And now I hear them frakkin' EVERYWHERE! Kind of like how you never see a purple PT Cruiser until you hear a bank robber made a getaway in a purple PT Cruiser and then you see purple PT Cruisers EVERYWHERE! That's kind of how I feel about antimetaboles right now.

So the rule for tomorrow night when Biden and Palin tee it up: do a shot every time you hear an antimetabole. A pretty geeky drinking game!

*I would like to accuse this blogger tool of conservative bias as McCain is a recognized word while Obama is marked as misspelled. Even Palin is not marked as misspelled and she just joined the race...or is that becuase they like Michael Palin and put it in there for him?