Pffft!

We need to get serious about Pffft.

It’s interesting when a new activity appears, or when you decide to attack a new activity, which would be about the same thing. You know what it is that you know, and how to do that known thing, and now you’ve got to figure what this new thing is, and how to do it. Most likely, you begin by comparing the new thing to the old thing. How does this new activity that I know nothing about compare to the old activity that I do know about? And then, what can I bring that will work from the old activity, and what do I have to find elsewhere?

Because Pffft is debate, I have come to it with a feeling that there are some standard ideas—such as what comprises an argument, case writing, oral presentation, research—that are strategically close to LD (or, for that matter, policy), and a grounding in any one is a good starting place, and then you can polish for your particular activity after you’ve mastered the cross-cultural basics. So what I’ve been saying is that all novices must do LD, and after that, it’s dealer’s choice. I could be convinced to do otherwise, but a team activity has those complex pairing problems—needing two people to work together, to show up together, to parse one another’s strengths and weaknesses—that seem better to me to postpone rather than throwing into the mix from day one. There’s enough stuff to learn without confronting a partner. So, if you’re a Sailor, at the moment you won’t start doing Pffft until your second debate year. (If I were somehow acquiring experienced extempers or congressfolk, it would be a similar story, as these activities do provide a comparable take on the basics, and seem to me a fine starting point for a potential Pfffter. In fact, to me, the well-rounded current-event-oriented forensician does Pffft and Extemp alternately, as opportunities present, with the odd foray into Congress on those rare occasions where it’s a meaningful possibility, and I only rank Congress lower because, around here, there just isn’t that much of it.)

What we need to do, on the ship of Hud, is figure out what makes a good Pfffter after we’ve mastered those initial skills of arguing, researching, case writing and presenting in our LD basic training. How do we take what we know and modify it correctly for the Pfffft universe? (And, at the same time, how do we remember when we’re writing our blogs how many Fs there are in Pffffft? As Nero Wolfe might say, “Pfui!”)

The arguing part doesn’t change much. An argument with support (a warrant) in the form of evidence trumps an argument off the top of your head. You don’t have V/C concerns as a focus, though, or as an impact, so you need to have clear winning/losing arguments to which your evidence relates. (“My opponent says such-and-such but these statistics prove otherwise, which is why Bush should attack Canada.”) This seems like the easiest part, but it does require that your evidence is at hand. Once again I am reminded of my wasted debate youth, when we traveled with eight tubs of evidence a shoebox half-filled with index cards, carefully arranged by category. I maintain that Pfffters need that analog of the shoebox, an accordion folder, maybe, that makes them look like they’ve come prepared. The difference between winning and losing, however, may be the difference between being prepared, and merely looking like you’re prepared, but that’s true of any activity. What we will do is coordinate evidence gathering, which we only do haphazardly for LD. Building up a library of evidence should be a move in the right direction. And backtracking a step, we will work out clearer lines of argumentation. Given that the topics come and go quickly, we need to 1) get them; 2) meditate on them; 3) research them; 4) brainstorm them, in that order, in the interval between the first and fifteenth of the month prior to arguing them. More specific attention to Pffft per se, then, rather than Pffft thrown in as an LD afterthought, is required. The literal writing of cases and researching is about the same in Pfffft and LD. You might write a different kind of case, but the approach is similar. And running a Baudrillard K against an opponent’s plan to attack Iran (i.e., claiming that since the Gulf War never happened, neither did the Iraq War or 9/11, so no doubt Iran is roughly like Cape Cod, without the gays) isn’t going to go far when your judge is a raw parent. (My team asked me if I deliberately put the non-English speaking ones into Pffft. I looked heavenward, but realistically, as Pfffters get better, and the activity gets more traction, even the rawest judges will rise with the tide.) Presentation, of course, is radically different between LD and Pffft, and one thing I’m thinking is that if you can think of your Pffft presentation as a conversation, rather than a speech, you may be able to shake off some of the LD dust, with all its speech and framework issues. I talk differently when I’m sitting down than when I’m behind a podium, and it may make sense if you’re not literally sitting down (although often Pfffters do agreeably stay on their butts), that you imagine you’re sitting down. Same effect, in the long run.

We’ll be going whole pig into this kind of thing starting now. There’s too many Pfffters among the Sailors not to give them the attention they deserve. Pffft is still young, and still growing, and often we can’t get the numbers up much at tournaments, but I think its inherent value to the participants is high, plus it gives our parents something useful they can do comfortably. Whether we’ll still be doing it much in 5 years remains to be seen, but I’d put my money on it being, if not as big as LD, then certainly viable on its own. I, for one, would like to see it work.