The Conversation

Again and again, "the conversation" is talked about on TV, on the radio, and in the papers. The subject matter could be anything, from ebooks to the vagaries of the weather. "When publishers and booksellers meet, the conversation is shadowed by ebooks." "Last summer, tornadoes tore through the conversation in the Midwest."

But it's uncanny how much "the conversation" has seeped into Republican Party politics.

On the eve of the Republican presidential primary in South Carolina, a political blogger for the New York Times noted that Rick Santorum's endorsement by influential evangelicals "might tilt the conversation toward social issues." Two sentences later, the blogger said that "the Bain conversation" had seriously diverted attention from the Ron Paul campaign.

Last December, a Times reporter recounted how the Republican freshmen in the House of Representatives had "dominated the spending conversation" from the time they arrived.

During the grim farce that the struggle over the national debt ceiling became, John Boehner repeatedly called for an "adult conversation" about balancing the budget, stipulating that any increase in taxes would be "off the table." (Some things, evidently, can't be discussed by adults.)

What is a conversation? A somewhat informal, even genteel exchange of views?

When so many people compulsively communicate via social media, maybe brief bursts of cheery talk via Facebook and Twitter become the measure of what can be usefully said. This becomes the buzz, the conversation.

And if you want to neutralize an opposing political position, you might want to portray it as "just another point of view." Something to chat about.

A conversation, as rendered by Mary Mendell.