On Exhibit A Rhetorical, Political History of Washington, DC 1st Edition – PDF/EPUB Version Downloadable

On Exhibit relates, episode by episode, how political actors have portrayed the District of Columbia to achieve their political ends. These episodes feature selectivity, exaggeration, and outright distortion. They extend throughout the city’s history, beginning with pictures that, first, normalized slavery and, then, depicted the horrors of the slave trade and ending with pictures offered by Donald Trump and Congressional allies of the city as crime-infested and in need of a federal takeover. Although Aristotle and argumentation theorists talk about the example as a proof, they do not talk about the exhibit as described in this study; both how the exhibit works rhetorically and how ethical (or not) it is. The use of the exhibit in the case of Washington illustrates the technique—common in political communication. The book, then, has multiple audiences; those interested in American political history, especially that of the nation’s capital city; those interested in rhetorical theory; those interested in political communication.