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Lesson 1 (from Prologue; Chapter 1)

Objective

Christopher Buckley is a political animal, a speechwriter for the first President Bush and a former columnist for the National Review, He understands the importance of words as weapons, concealers, and instruments of power. The objective of this lesson is to understand words as things other than the vessels of meaning.

Lesson

1. For class discussion: As a class, read through some of Christopher Buckley's political writings, including his shocking 2008 column in which he endorsed Barack Obama http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-10/the-conservative-case-for-obama. How does Buckley use language to achieve a goal? What descriptors would the class use to characterize his writing? How are his style and tactics similar to Nick Naylor's?

2. Divide the class into two groups. Assign one group the first ten pages of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Ernest and one group the first ten pages of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming...

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