Defending 'Spin' as Rhetoric

Crowley suggests that today people identify rhetoric as spin, but she challenges this idea and posits that spin is not rhetoric.  Instead she states that

“spin is what people spout when they want to cloud the issue rather than clarify it, or when they have nothing of consequence to impart but are expected to speak nonetheless. Spin interprets facts in a light favorable to the interpreter, and its practice implies that facts may be unintelligible  or even dangerous if encountered unspun.” (Crowley, p. 26). 

She then gives an example of how Al Sharptons had spoke at the 2004 Democratic convention reminding  his audience of the “price African Americans have paid for the right to vote” (Crowley, p. 26) and how  reporters “spun Sharpton’s artful and moving rhetoric into irrelevance” (p. 26). She suggests that this example justifies her claim that spin isn't rhetoric.

I have to say that I don’t agree with her on this idea that spin is not rhetoric, that it can’t at times be rhetorical, and that it is inherently not rhetorical. Additionally, I don’t believe she makes a compelling argument here either and I believe that things she says later possibly discredit what she claims about spin. 

First, if spin is not rhetorical- ever- then what is its purpose? If its purpose is not persuasion, if its purpose is not to reframe rhetorical acts of speech, events, and action, what is its purpose? And if its purpose is persuasion, how could it never be considered rhetorical? And if its purpose is to reframe rhetorical acts, how is that not rhetorical?

It seems to me that spin itself is highly rhetorical. The purpose of spin is to persuade the audience that ones interpretation of acts & events is superior to another’s. Additionally, to spin something is to compete with others over interpretation and at that point there is acknowledged stasis and clash.

What I also find interesting is further in her readings, when talking about the abortion debate between pro-lifers and pro-choicers, she states that each side is not engaging in argument because they are ultimately talking about different things and not finding a direct moment of clash, or stasis. To explain the lack of argument she claims that partisans, people, “may not know that it is possible to frame propositions in such a way that a disagreement can achieve stasis and hence open the possibility of exchange. Or perhaps no party is willing to do the hard intellectual work that is necessary to construct refutations of the premises put forward by another” (p. 30)

This last passage is interesting to me because it seems to challenge her own assertions about spin. Let me see if I can be clear here. She claims that spin is not rhetoric, but that it is something else that complicates, blurs, has bias, and may leave things unintelligible- but why does this have to be? Can’t spin also be interpreted as rhetoric? Can’t spin be seen as one persons way of (as she states) framing propositions in such a way that a disagreement can achieve stasis and hence open the possibility of exchange? Can’t spin be an example of this intellectual hard work that is necessary to construct refutations of the premises put forward by another? Can’t spinning in itself become arguments and debates over acts and events?

I guess, for me,I need her to do some more explaining here in order for me to dismiss the art of spinning. To spin something, is to me, a rhetorical act. To spin something is to rhetorically and purposefully interpret with the intent to persuade. To spin is to create a new frame, it is to posit a position, it is rhetorical and able to be engaged. Whether or not the intentions are desirable at all times, whether or not spinning is the ideal form of rhetoric, whether or not we want to acknowledge this as rhetoric because of its stigmas- I think we may not want to dismiss spin so easy as something that isn’t rhetorical. And if we did, if we let Crowley tell us that spin isn’t rhetorical, doesn’t this invite us to not engage it? To not be literate in its use and understanding it? What then would be the impacts of dismissing spin as something that isn’t rhetorical?