Virtuoso Rhetorical Performance by John Guy
I should qualify before I say this: for many people "rhetoric" is a bad word, or means something bad, the opposite of "truth." Not for me. For me, rhetoric is the end all and be all, the way we make sense of the world for ourselves and each other, the way we move together. So, when I say "rhetorical performance," I mean something good, an act of making meaning of the world, or producing a force of connection with words or other materials, how to do things with word, as a bright man once said.
John Guy's rebuttal was brilliant, a brilliant rhetorical performance. And here was the moment in John Guy's rebuttal - regardless of outcome - that cemented it:
Your verdict is not going to bring Trayvon Benjamin Martin back to life. Your verdict is not going to change the past, but it will forever define it. So, what is that? What is that, when a grown man, frustrated, angry, with hate in his heart, gets out of his car with a loaded gun and follows a child—a stranger—in the dark, and shoots him through his heart? What is that? Is that nothing? That’s not anything? Is that where we are? That’s nothing? Well, that’s not his call, and that’s not my call. It’s your call. And I submit to you, the oath you took requires it, Trayvon Martin is entitled to it, and that defendant deserves it. (36:03-37:33)
Whatever the outcome, nobody listening to Guy's rebuttal can say that the prosecutors threw the case. This was the good man speaking well, in the old style.
What is that? Is that nothing? That’s not anything? Is that where we are?. You see Zimmerman himself take a long breath at the end of that section. He seemed himself persuaded, for a brief moment. Ninety second that may have sealed George Zimmerman's next several years.
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