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Abstract
This essay examines the public memorial for the late Senator Paul Wellstone arguing that it is a site of contestation over standards of political propriety. Assessing the Wellstone memorial as a complex rhetorical text, the authors contend that within the experiential landscape of the memorial, discourses that were alternately secular, political, sacred, and ceremonial clashed, violating the generic tenets of eulogistic discourse and casting the memorial as an impious civic event. This unresolved dissonance between politics and piety allowed Wellstone's Republican opposition to strategically deploy a rhetoric of political propriety, triggering a backlash that ultimately fostered Republican campaign goals.
Notes
In death, Wellstone joined a handful of famous Americans who have met untimely ends as the result of an airplane crash. Don McLean's song, “American Pie,” invokes the tragic accident that killed rock musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and Jiles “The Big Bopper” Perry Richardson, Jr. in 1959. Since then, and perhaps, in part, because of the popularity of McLean's song, plane crashes that result in the deaths of famous individuals achieve an emotional resonance with one another, and may linger in the American imagination in ways that other deaths do not. The following victims of airplane accidents received significant coverage in national media during the 1990s and 2000s: Senator Paul Wellstone and his wife, Sheila Wellstone; R&B singer Aaliyah; Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan; professional golfer Payne Stewart; and John F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife, Carolyn Kennedy. See “Celebrity Crashes,” Check-Six.com, May 8, 2008, online at http://www.check-six.com/lib/Famous_Missing/Celebrity_Plane_Crashes.htm, May 28, 2009.
Bob Von Sternberg, “High Stakes, High Drama,” Star Tribune, November 3, 2002, Sec. 1A.
Kavita Kumar, Dane Smith, and Patricia Lopez, “Memorial Service; One Last Rally; Victims Remembered With Cheers and Tears, Republicans Decry Service as Political,” Star Tribune, October 30, 2002, 1S.
See, for example, “Awkward Memories: With the Race for Wellstone's Seat a Dead Heat, Minnesota Can't Move Beyond the Senator's Memorial Service,” Newsweek Web Exclusive, 2002, online at http://www.newsweek.com/id/66145, May 28, 2009; Chuck Haga, Patricia Lopez, and Bill McAuliffe, “20,000 Strong, They Came to Remember Wellstone,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, October 30, 2002, online at http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1030-07.htm, May 28, 2009; Jodi Wilgoren, “The 2002 Campaign: Mourning in Minnesota; Memorial for Wellstone Assumes the Spirit of a Rally,” The New York Times, October 30, 2002, A23; Mark Zdechlik, “Rick Kahn Says He Has No Regrets About Wellstone Eulogy,” Minnesota Public Radio: News and Features, June 8, 2003, online at http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2003/06/04_zdechlikm_kahn/, May 28, 2009; and Bill Lofy, Paul Wellstone: The Life of a Passionate Progressive (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2005).
The authors assessed this text both from first-hand experience (one author attended the memorial) and from a videocassette recording: Wellstone Memorial, videocassette, KARE11, NBC affiliate (Minneapolis, MN: PR Newswire), 2002. All quoted remarks were transcribed from the recorded source. An audio recording of Rick Kahn's speech is available through Minnesota Public Radio's Web site (see http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2003/06/04_zdechlikm_kahn/). An audio recording of Tom Harkin's speech is available on Minnesota Public Radio's Web site (see http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/news_cut/archive/2008/10/revisiting_the_wellstone_memor.shtml).
Greg Dickinson, Brian L. Ott, and Eric Aoki, “Spaces of Remembering and Forgetting: The Reverential Eye/I at the Plains Indian Museum,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 3 (2006): 29–30. doi: 10.1080/14791420500505619.
Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), 74.
See Thomas Rosteck and Michael Leff, “Piety, Propriety, and Perspective: An Interpretation and Application of Key Terms in Kenneth Burke's Permanence and Change,” Western Journal of Speech Communication, 53 (1989): 329.
Daniel C. Brouwer, “Privacy, Publicity, and Propriety in Congressional Eulogies for Representative Stewart B. McKinney (Republican–Connecticut),” Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 7 (2004): 191.
Jane Blankenship and Janette Kenner Muir, “On Imaging the Future: The Secular Search for ‘Piety’,” Communication Quarterly, 35 (1987): 7.
Brouwer, “Privacy, Publicity, and Propriety in Congressional Eulogies … ,” 208.
Brouwer, “Privacy, Publicity, and Propriety in Congressional Eulogies … ,” 208.
Thomas Rosteck and Michael Leff, “Piety, Propriety, and Perspective: An Interpretation and Application of Key Terms in Kenneth Burke's Permanence and Change,” Western Journal of Speech Communication, 53 (Fall 1989): 328.
Robert Hariman, Political Style: The Artistry of Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 106.
Rosteck and Leff, “Piety, Propriety, and Perspective,” 328.
Rod Hart, The Political Pulpit (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1977), 44.
Hart, The Political Pulpit, 44.
Martin J. Medhurst, “Forging a Civil–Religious Construct for the 21st Century: Should Hart's ‘Contract’ Be Renewed?” Journal of Communication and Religion, 25 (2002): 91.
See, for example, Medhurst, “Forging a Civil–Religious Construct for the 21st Century,” 86–101; and Carolyn Marvin, “A New Scholarly Dispensation for Civil Religion,” Journal of Communication and Religion, 25 (2002): 21–33.
Robert Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,” Daedalus (1967), 1–21, online at www.robertbellah.com/, August 25, 2006.
Bellah, “Civil Religion in America.”
Bellah, “Civil Religion in America.”
Leroy Dorsey, “Preaching Conservation: Theodore Roosevelt and the Rhetoric of Civil Religion,” Green Talk in the White House, ed. Tarla Rai Peterson (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2004), 38. For example, when addressing the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, IL, Abraham Lincoln urged that “reverence for the laws … be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges … be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs … be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And … let it become the political religion of the nation” (see Roy P. Basler, ed., Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings [New York: De Capo Press, 1990], 81).
Hart, The Political Pulpit; Stephen R. Goldzwig, “Official and Unofficial Civil Religious Discourse,” Journal of Communication and Religion, 25 (2002): 102–114.
Marvin, “A New Scholarly Dispensation for Civil Religion,” 30.
Carole Blair, “Contemporary U.S. Memorial Sites as Exemplars of Rhetoric's Materiality,” in Rhetorical Bodies, eds. Jack Selzer and Sharon Crowley (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), 16.
In Landmark Essays on Rhetorical Criticism, Thomas Benson explained that “rhetorical theory—and especially rhetorical criticism—has been interested in the ways in which rhetoric acts in the world, always seeing rhetoric as an action with potential consequences, and as meaningful because of its context” (see Thomas W. Bensen, ed., Landmark Essays on Rhetorical Criticism [Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 1993], xiv).
Dickinson, Ott, and Aoki, “Spaces of Remembering and Forgetting,” 29–30. Also see Carole Blair, “Reflections on Criticism and Bodies: Parables From Public Places,” Western Journal of Communication, 65 (2001): 271–294; Barry Brummet, Rhetoric in Popular Culture (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994); and Henri Lefebvre, The Social Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford, England: Blackwell, 1991).
We make the distinction between political individuals and political candidates to highlight the differences between eulogies given for political candidates and those given for political individuals outside of the constraints of a political campaign. Senator John Heinz, III, for instance, died while in office, but not during a campaign. Governor Mel Carnahan of Missouri, like Senator Paul Wellstone, died in the midst of a closely contested election in 2000. The similarity between the tragedies was noted in a number of newspaper articles including the following: Jo Mannies and Kim Bell, “Crash Brings Carnahan Memories of Another Loss; Images from Death of Her Husband ‘Just Came Rolling Back’,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, October 27, 2002, A14; Deirdre Shesgreen, “Posthumous Election Isn't An Option in Minnesota Vote; Unlike After Carnahan's Death, Democrats Must Pick Stand-In or Leave Ballot Blank,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, October 27, 2002, A1; Bob Von Sternberg, “Death Stirs Eerie Memories of Missouri Race,” Star Tribune, October 30, 2002, 9A; Jodi Wilgoren and Adam Nagourney, “The 2002 Campaign: The Outlook; Friends Say Mondale is Likely to Join Race,” The New York Times, October 27, 2002, 32; and Wilgoren, “The 2002 Campaign: Mourning in Minnesota,” A23.
Michael Beach, “Voters Cold on Race,” Melbourne Australia Herald Sun, October 30, 2002, 38.
Von Sternberg, “High Stakes, High Drama,” 1A.
Liz Ruskin, “Political ‘Perfect Storm’ Could Create Power Flip-Flop in Senate; What if? A Combination of Laws and Election Results Could Shift Control Several Times Before Jan. 1,” Star Tribune, November 1, 2002, 20A.
Dana Milbank, “In Tight Races, Bush is The Man of the House, President Stumps to Save GOP Majority,” The Washington Post, November 2, 2002, A4.
Deirdre Shesgreen, “Posthumous Election Isn't An Option in Minnesota Vote; Unlike After Carnahan's Death, Democrats Must Pick Stand-In or Leave Ballot Blank,” St. Louis Dispatch, October 27, 2002, A1.
Von Sternberg, “High Stakes, High Drama,” 1A.
Von Sternberg, “High Stakes, High Drama,” 1A.
Laura Billings, “A Campaign That has Lost Its Passion,” The Washington Post, October 27, 2002, B1.
See, for example, Eric Black, “A Senator's Death: The Aftermath; Mondale Close to Yes; Wellston's Son, Aides Make Case in Emotional Private Meeting,” Star Tribune, October 27, 2002, 1A; Deirdre Shesgreen, “Posthumous Election Isn't An Option in Minnesota Vote,” A1; Andrea Stone, “Memorial For Wellstone Is Also a Rally,” USA Today, October 30, 2002, 5A; Patricia Lopez, Mark Brunswick, and Dane Smith, “Fragile Campaign Truce Unraveling; Each Party Accuses the Other of Breaking Its Vow to Suspend Politicking.”
Lopez, Brunswick, and Smith, “Fragile Campaign Truce Unraveling,” 1A.
Howard Sinker, “More Than 20,000 Honor Wellstone; In a Service That Was Alternately Somber and Celebratory, Dignitaries and Common Folk Alike Gathered in Remembrance,” Star Tribune, October 30, 2002, 1A. Additionally, parts of the live coverage were incorporated into previously scheduled programming, including Fox News's Hannity and Colmes and On the Record With Greta Van Susteren, October 29, 2002.
For example, the public memorial service for pop star Michael Jackson was held at The Staples Center in Los Angeles, CA in July, 2009.
Scott Charton, “In Missouri Senate Race, Turning Grief into Election Victory,” Philadelphia Enquirer, November 3, 2000, online at http://www.philly.com/, May 28, 2009.
Marvin, “A New Scholarly Dispensation for Civil Religion,” 29.
Greg Siegel, “Double Vision: Large-Screen Video Display and the Live Sports Spectacle.” In Television: The Critical View, ed. Horace Newcomb (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 186.
Katherine Lee Bates, “America the Beautiful,” October 8, 2008, National Institutes of Health, Office of Management, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Department of Health and Human Services, www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/america.htm, February 25, 2009.
While thousands of people tuned into the memorial on television, we focus on the immediate audience due to their physical presence within the arena walls and their ability to actively engage with and alter the memorial text.
Much of the controversy surrounded the Wellstone family's decision to reject the offer for Vice President Dick Cheney's attendance at the memorial. Called a “snub” by conservative analysts, the family cited the heavy security issues required for the Vice President's visit as the reason for their decision. The Republicans instead sent Tommy Thompson as a representative for the administration. See Hume, Brit, and Steve Brown, “Wellstone Funeral Held,” Fox Special Report With Brit Hume, October 29, 2002; Kelly O'Donnell, “Memorial Service for Senator Wellstone Held,” NBC Nightly News, October 29, 2002.
The anticipated and eventual replacement candidate for Wellstone, Walter Mondale, was known in Minnesota by his nickname “Fritz.”
Wilgoren, “The 2002 Campaign: Mourning In Minnesota,” A23. The issue of audience booing has been contested throughout the years following the memorial event. Despite Republican political and media source claims that the entire audience booed Lott and other Republican Congress members, liberals such as current U.S. Senator Al Franken (Democrat–Minnesota) have argued that only a handful of boos and jeers occurred, citing the CSPAN audio feed as evidence. Al Franken, “Reflections on the Wellstone Memorial and the King Funeral,” The Huffington Post, February 11, 2006, online at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-franken/reflections-on-the-wellst_b_15459.html/
Aristotle, On Rhetoric, trans. George A. Kennedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 48–49.
Campbell and Jamieson, “Form and Genre in Rhetorical Criticism,” 20.
Lawrence W. Rosenfield, “The Practical Celebration of Epideictic.” In Rhetoric in Transition: Studies in the Nature and Uses of Rhetoric, ed. Eugene E. White (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980), 133–134.
Richard J. Jensen, Thomas R. Burkholder, and John C. Hammerback, “Martyrs for a Just Cause: The Eulogies of Cesar Chavez,” Western Journal of Communication, 67 (2003): 340.
Rosenfield, “The Practical Celebration of Epideictic,” 134.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, “Rhetorical Hybrids: Fusions of Generic Elements,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 68 (1982): 148. For additional discussion of eulogistic discourse, see Roger Cook, “‘To Tame the Savageness of Man': Robert Kennedy's Eulogy of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” Lloyd Roeler and Roger Cook, eds. Great Speeches for Criticism and Analysis, 3rd ed. (Greenwood, IN: Alaistair Press, 1998), 263–273; Thomas R. Burkholder, “Symbolic Martyrdom: The Ultimate Apology,” Southern Communication Journal, 56 (1991): 289–297; and George Kennedy, The Art of Persuasion in Ancient Greece (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963).
Jensen, Burkholder, and Hammerback, “Martyrs for a Just Cause,” 340.
Jamieson and Campbell, “Rhetorical Hybrids,“149.
Jamieson and Campbell, “Rhetorical Hybrids,” 149.
Celeste Michelle Condit, “The Functions of Epideictic: The Boston Massacre Orations as Exemplar,” Communication Quarterly, 33 (Fall 1985): 289.
See, for example, Earl Warren, “Eulogy for John F. Kennedy,” November 24, 1963, online at www.AmericanRhetoric.com, May 29, 2009; Robert F. Kennedy, “Remarks on the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” April 4, 1968, online at www.AmericanRhetoric.com, May 29, 2009; and Edward M. Kennedy, “Address at the Public Memorial Service for Robert F. Kennedy,” June 8, 1968, online at www.AmericanRhetoric.com, May 29, 2009.
Kennedy, “Address at the Public Memorial Service for Robert F. Kennedy.”
“Memorial Service,” 4S.
Sinker, “More Than 20,000 Honor Wellstone,” 1A.
For research on the language frames for campaign rhetoric see, for example, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Thomas E. Patterson, Out of Order (New York: Knopf, 1993); Joseph N. Capella and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Spiral of Cynicism: The Press and the Public Good (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); and James Fallows, Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy (New York: Vintage, 1997).
Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, “Form and Genre in Rhetorical Criticism: An Introduction,” Form and Genre: Shaping Rhetorical Action, eds. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson (Falls Church, VA: Speech Communication Association, n.d.), 20.
Rachel Olson and Bob Von Sternberg, “GOP Demands Equal Time as Aide Apologizes; Gov. Ventura is So Upset that the Service Turned Into A Political Rally that He May Appoint an Independent to Fill the Seat Temporarily,” Star Tribune, October 31, 2002, A1.
Lawrence W. Rosenfield, “The Practical Celebration of Epideictic,” Rhetoric in Transition: Studies in the Nature and Uses of Rhetoric, ed. Eugene E. White (University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 1980), 133–134.
Shesgreen, “Posthumous Election Isn't An Option in Minnesota Vote,” A1.
Shesgreen, “Posthumous Election Isn't An Option in Minnesota Vote,” A1.
Wilgoren, “The 2002 Campaign: Mourning In Minnesota,” A23.
Lopez, Brunswick, and Smith, “Fragile Campaign Truce Unraveling,” 1A.
Lopez, Brunswick, and Smith, “Fragile Campaign Truce Unraveling,” 1A.
Lopez, Brunswick, and Smith, “Fragile Campaign Truce Unraveling,” 1A.
Shesgreen, “Posthumous Election Isn't An Option in Minnesota Vote,” A1.
Howard Sinker, “More Than 20,000 Honor Wellstone; In a Service That Was Alternately Somber and Celebratory, Dignitaries and Common Folk Alike Gathered in Remembrance,” Star Tribune, October 30, 2002, 1A.
Robert E. Pierre, “For Wellstone, Cheers and Tears; Memorial Service Draws Thousands to Honor Senator's Politics and Personality,” The Washington Post, October 30, 2002, A11.
Sinker, “More Than 20,000 Honor Wellstone,” 1A.
Kumer, Smith, and Lopez, “Memorial Service,” 1S.
Jodi Wilgoren, “The 2002 Campaign: The Senate; Mondale Accepts Party Call To Run in Minnesota Race,” The New York Times, October 31, 2002, A1.
Black, “A Senator's Death,” 14A.
“Mondale's Defeat is Blamed on Memorial,” St. Petersburg Times, November 7, 2002, 10A.
“Mondale's Defeat is Blamed on Memorial,” 10A.
“Mondale's Defeat is Blamed on Memorial,” 10A.
Gilbert Craig, “Election 2002; Mondale Conceded; Wellstone service Seen as Key in Senate Race,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 7, 2002, 14A.
Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), 74.
Brouwer, “Privacy, Publicity, and Propriety in Congressional Eulogies … ,” 208.
Takis Poulakos, “Historiographies of the Tradition of Rhetoric: A Brief History of Classical Funeral Orations,” Western Journal of Speech Communication, 54 (Spring 1990): 176.
For examples of how the rhetoric of “post partisanship” has been valorized in mainstream political commentary, see Jonathan Rauch, “Post-Partisanship,” The Atlantic, July/August 2008, online at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/partisanship-rauch; Donna Brazile, “What is Post-Partisanship?” The Washington Times, November 24, 2008, online at http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov/24/what-is-post-partisanship/; and John Dickerson, “From Détente to Taunts: Obama's Promise of Post-Partisanship is Almost Completely Gone,” Slate, March 30, 2009, online at http://www.slate.com/id/2214963/
M. W., “Conservative Media Invoke Wellstone Smear in Anticipation of Kennedy's Service,” Media Matters, August 27, 2009, online at http://mediamatters.org/research/200908270005/
Sean Hannity, “Interview With Rush Limbaugh,” Real Clear Politics, January 22, 2009, online at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/01/interview_with_rush_limbaugh_p.html/. The phrase was used again after Kennedy's death in August by a blogger called Jammiewearingfool, a blog made more prominent by its appearance on Instapundit (see http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/84094/); and “Rip Ted Kennedy,” JammieWearingFool Blog, August 26, 2009, online at http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2009/08/rip-ted-kennedy.html; and Paul Schmelzer, “Right-Wing Bloggers: Kennedy Funeral Will be ‘Wellstone Memorial on Steroids’,” The Minnesota Independent, August 28, 2009, online at http://minnesotaindependent.com/42841/rightwing-bloggers-kennedy-funeral-will-be-wellstone-memorial-on-steroids/
Bob Salsberg and Denise Lavoie, “Political Luminaries to Pay Tribute to Kennedy,” The Associated Press Online, August 28, 2009.
Ben Smith, “Conservatives Warn of ‘Wellstone Effect’,” Politico, August 27, 2009, online at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/26514_Page2.html/
Dan Perrin, “Watch for the Wellstone Effect,” The HSA Coalition, August 26, 2009, online at http://www.hsacoalition.org/2009/08/26/watch-for-the-wellstone-effect/
Gary Langer, “Post-Partisanship? Let's See,” The Numbers, January 20, 2009, online at http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenumbers/2009/01/post-partianshi.html
See, for example, Scott Welsh, “Deliberative Democracy and the Rhetorical Production of Political Culture,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 5 (2002): 679–708. doi: 10.1353/rap.2003.0020; and Robert L. Ivie, “Rhetorical Deliberation and Democratic Politics in the Here and Now,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 5 (2002): 277–285. doi: 10.1353/rap.2002.0033.