Reading 33

“As for those Apollonian days of calm, rational, public debate: Caesar was murdered, not debated, that March day on the floor of the Roman Senate. In 1856, a pro-slavery member of the House of Representatives strode into the Senate chamber and caned the anti-slavery Republican senator from Massachusetts, Charles Sumner, nearly to death. In the British Parliament, jeers and booing are common from the back bench, and although an elegant riposte has often clinched an argument, gross insults sometimes erupt. Then–Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was called a ‘sex-starved boa constrictor’ on the floor of Parliament, a cut upon which any Twitter troll would cast a longing eye.

“Emotionally charged manipulations of the truth were present in our hallowed deliberative halls before Twitter. Covering the Senate confirmation hearings for Justice Samuel Alito in January 2006, I ran, along with a gaggle of journalists, after Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann Bomgardner, when she fled the chamber seemingly in tears following an aggressive question about her husband’s stance on abortion. When I reached her after she stopped running, standing a few inches away from her, I watched as she removed her hands from her face. Not only were her eyes dry, she was smiling. The theatrical scene had the desired effect of derailing an argument in progress.

“Argument is as Dionysian as it is Apollonian.”

- Lee Siegel, Why Argument Matters (2022)