ABSTRACT
The good critic magnifies without distorting, focusing on rhetorical characteristics that may seem humble but are nonetheless important. Lawrence Rosenfield says that the critic is a kind of sports analyst who takes part in the swirl of life but who also has a perspective on it. The skeptical critic does not take life at face value. Skeptics treat life on their terms, not on life's terms, and, most assuredly, not on the persuader's terms. The skeptical critic is one who stands back and watches, who will not be drawn into the rhetoric under study until fundamental questions of motive have been resolved. Good critics develop an instinct for looking in improbable places. To understand the routines of social power, for example, Kari Whittenberger-Keith inspected neither economic charts nor voting patterns but manners books. Evaluation leaps out of a word like criticism. Everyday people are critics in this sense when they complain about the local transit system.
