The New Rhetoric

WE HEARD IT from the cowboy's mouth, in the State of the Rhetoric address.

This mysterious "it" knows nothing of politesse and orderly political boundaries, turning up in our institutions, our policies, our proclamations; it's the rhetoric-reality gap.

Rhetoric: a nation composed of Reagan's teen heros.

Reality: millions of teenage mothers and fathers.

Reagan chose to honor four young teenagers in his address--a group that, despite their merits, seemed like a random Boy and Girl Scout honor list. There is another group of teenagers, much larger, and, as long as we're calling attention to what needs to be noticed, much more deserving. These are the one million teenagers who each year become mothers.

Teenage pregnancy is not just a problem; its a rallying point. Not a rallying point for this and that "special interest group," but an issue that proves that there is no such thing--that feminism, minority rights, and most recently gay and lesbian rights are not the domain of special interests. Women are not a minority; minorities are not a minority.

When Eleanor Smeal, the president of the National Organization of Women, spoke at the Kennedy School Monday night, she was not just talking about "women's issues." Though it may survive for strategic reasons, the term is outdated. What have traditionally been called women's issues have emerged as problems of the family, civil rights, gay rights, and abortion.

Rhetoric: the New Right exhorts a nation of heretics to emulate its quasi-religious idealization of the American family.

Reality: divorce, broken homes, unwed teen mothers, and a government that cuts the access of teenagers to family-planning services.

Feminism is not out to wreck the family. In fact, the family was breaking down long before feminism had any impact on American lifestyles. The New Right myth feeds on false images: the woman who suddenly finds herself with an option, a choice of whether to stay at home with the kid and the dishes or to pursue a career; the woman as lacking the stuff of real responsibility, of wondering with a flippant toss of the curls which option to choose.

In fact, choice has nothing to do with the situation; for many women necessity dictates that they work. The same is true of abortion. Being "pro-choice" does not imply that options, choices and consequently morality are all that is involved in the issue of abortion. Some upper-class women may have a choice. Many women do not: those who can't afford it; those who have little hope or opportunity and thus no reasons pulling them one way or another; those who are raped.

You don't have to be a historical materialist to see that preaching middle class values while denying many Americans middle class options simply dodges the problem. As Smeal pointed out, it takes a certain audacity for an all male "Face the Nation" panel and a CBS docu-drama to question the morals of young Blacks. Those who now preach about lax sexual mores are the same ones who not so long ago closed their eyes and ears to the problem.

THE prudish euphemism "teenage pregnancy" is symptomatic of the New Rhetoric. Nowhere--in speeches, in debate, in media--do we bring ourselves to say it. These are not 14-year-old women; they are pregnant girls. As Smeal put it, "the only time a woman is called a woman is when she's pregnant." Why is "pregnant girl" an unspeakable contradiction in terms for us? It belies what our culture sees as the essence of being a woman: getting pregnant.

Perhaps the most obvious rhetoric-reality gap emerges in the problems of sex education and contraception. Outspoken Phyllis Schlafly schlafts the whole idea of educating children about reproductive biology, claiming that such education is nothing but free advertising for abortion clinics. The three major TV networks have refused to show a public service announcement because it uses the word "contraceptives". The same networks regularly program thousands of hours of hardly concealed sex scenes.

Madonna may be sexier than Doris Day, but again it's all rhetoric; teenagers are just as ignorant about the biology of reproduction as they used to be.

We are an idolatrous culture, worshipping symbols and images: the space shuttle, NASA, Martin Luther King Day, and sexless adolescents. The New Rhetoric is an exercise in idolatry--no the old biblical kind, but the modern version--the version that sometimes leaves people broken behind the scenes.