Abstract
This essay claims that Richard Nixon, Edward Kennedy, and their apologists drew upon popular meanings of tragedy and other related terms of fiction to obscure moral responsibility for behavior connected with Watergate and Chappaquiddick. In general, the media uncritically accepted and imitated this misappropriation of fictional language and thereby contributed to a dubious rhetorical strategy of exculpation. The unstated arguments derived from the morally positive and formally satisfying suggestions of tragedy are explored and rhetorical critics are advised to be alert to similar confusion in public discourse.
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