That's no way to treat responsible residents

In this column the author uses contrast to create pathos. He contrasts the Quaide's house with the surroning neighborhood, and how their house is a oasis in a run down part of town. He says, "Let's start with the fact that their house and block are an oasis in an area that is just a disaster.
Just south of the Quades on West Parkway near McNichols, squatters roam from one empty house to another, destroying their innards and setting fires. I counted no fewer than 10 burned-out heaps between Fenkell and McNichols, many with garbage piled high on their porches and behind their wide-open doorways." He does a good job contrating the Quaid's with the rest of the neighborhood and the contrasting strenghtns his point by showing how Detroit has more things to worry about than an elderly couple's trash cans. By contrasting this, he creates pathos tfor the Quaides. The pathos comes when he says, ""That's as much as my utilities for the month," said Waldemar Quade, a retired tool and die maker for Ford Motor Co., who lives on a fixed income. He owns his house outright, and pays his bills on time. He hates owing anybody.
"I never have been so humiliated in my life as I have been with this stupid thing with the garbage container," " This passage comes after he contrasts their house with the rest of the neighborhood and then he comes with pathos to make the reader feel for the Quades. The readers feel an emotional response because he shows how this ticket impacts the Quade's life. That pathos only comes from the contrasting that he uses to show how the Quaide's should be the least of Detroit's worries, and then pathos come to make the reader feel like the Quades were unfairly treated and invoke an emotional response to this story.

Kwame a River

Wayne County prosecutor Kym Worthy finally brought the hammer down on the mayor. She gave very strong speech and made the point that this is not an issue about lying about sex, but about deceptively using city money. She came out and said what many citizens have been saying throughout the entire scandal, Kwame was wrong.



She uses pathos when talking about the three fired police officers. "Gary Brown’s, Harold Nelthorpe’s and Walter Harris’s lives and careers were forever changed. They were ruined financially and their reputations were completely destroyed because they chose to be dutiful police officers. The public trust was violated. This investigation is about whether public dollars were used unlawfully -and more." She points out that more people than just Kwame and his family were hurt in this situation. These three police officers who tried to do the right thing had their lives forever changed because of the corrupt mayor of Detroit. She does a good job using pathos to have the reader have a emotional response because they feel for those police officers who were the only people in this case trying to be moral, but instead their lives and careers were devastated.



She also uses logos when she talks about how oaths are always important, no matter what the situation. "Oaths mean something. They are critically important. They matter. They matter
when jurors take their oaths; they matter when lawyers, judges, and elected
officials take their oaths; they matter when new citizens take the oath of
citizenship; they matter when doctors take the Hippocratic Oath; they matter
when anyone swears before a notary public. They must matter and that is why
witnesses take them – every witness in every case. And it is so important; it is
perjury if there is lying and perjury is a crime." This is a very logical argument, and she is saying that no one is exempt under oath, even the mayor of Detroit. Kwame took a oath, and he lied under oath, which is the definition of perjury. It does not matter to Worthy if it is a juror, doctor, citizens, witnesses, or the mayor of the city. Worthy has shown in this case that the law applies to everyone, and no one is above the law. She appeals to the audiences logic by showing how oaths are important in all situations.



Worthy's speech was a very powerful one because she appealed to the emotions and logic of the audience to give her reasoning of why Kwame Kilpatrick should be charge.

Kwame's rant

After Kwame Kilpatrick had finished his hour long state of the city speech, he went off the script and ranted about his current situation. He used pathos and diction to strengthen his point. He used diction when he says, "This unethical, illegal lynch mob mentality has to stop." The diction is when he uses unethical and illegal. He takes his point further because all lynch mobs are unethical and illegal. He chooses these words because it makes him seem like the victim in this situation. He tries to shift the blame to the media who has covered this by calling them an unethical and illegal lynch mob. However, the media is just doing their job, and he brought this upon himself.

He also uses pathos to make the audience sympathize with his situation. He appeals to emotion by saying, "In the past three days I've received more death threats than I have in my entire administration." He is attempting to manipulate the audience to feel sorry for him and try to understand that he is under extreme pressure and stress. He also brings his family into it by saying, "I've heard these words before but I've never heard people say them about my wife and children." He brings his wife and children into it because whenever people bring their families into an argument it usually provokes an emotional response from the audience. The pathos that Kawme uses is there for the purpose of bringing emotion into the audience and because of that emotion, feel sorry for Kawme. But, if he didn't want his family to be receiving death threats, then he should have been loyal to his wife in the first place.

The Age of Technology

In this cartoon the boss is firing the worker because he had software that can do the job 20% better and for the half the cost than the employee.

Trough this illustration the artist is saying that we live in a technological age and that technology is taking too many people's jobs because it is cheaper and more efficient.

I agree with the artist's point in this cartoon. People lose their job everyday because a machine can do the same job more efficiently.

The negative message in this cartoon is that technology has too much of an influence in our society. People should do jobs, not computers. New technology eliminates people's jobs, from the self-checkout lines at the grocery store, to automated telephone operators, to software that can perform the same job as a human faster and cheaper. There is a subtle message in this cartoon and that is that technology should not take people's jobs. This is evident in the cartoon by the sulking posture of the employee being fired. This same line could have been used to advocate technology, but the grim appearance, and the employee sulking and the boss not being real happy either leads me to believe that the author is against technology taking over peoples jobs.

"That Friend"

Scoop Jackson writes on ESPN.com about that one friend that everyone has, "You know, the one we love to argue with about all things sports? Your boy, your BF4L. The one you can't stand to lose to." He had an argument with him about which Final Four is better NCAA basketball or NFL. His friend, who is a die hard college basketball fan, said that the NFL is better.
I completely disagree, anyone who has read my other blog knows that I am a huge college basketball fan, because the Final Four is so big. Final Four weekend is "the most dramatic, pulse-racing, nerve-racking, exciting sports day in America." He says that in the NFL there is no luck, you deserve to be there. That's what makes the NCAA so exciting, its unpredictable. Anyone could have picked that NFL's final four, but it is very difficult to pick the NCAA's. James Brown, host for NFL on CBS says, "The enthusiasm, the excitement, the passion, the anticipation, that umph -- the NCAA Final Four has all of that to a degree I don't think the NFL can match... The umph factor trumps in all sports."
This column is obviously written for the male sports fan. He compares this decision to choosing between Beyonce and Eva Mendes. Its not easy, but whatever you choose its still good. If this column had been written for a different target audience, say an English teacher, that section could have been changed into choosing between a brand new 2008 Honda Civic and a brand new Orca racing bike. Its a though choice but you'll be happy either way. If this was being written for a English teacher who just happens to be a cycling fan, instead of asking James Brown his opinion, he could have asked someone else like Merckx, Armstrong, or Landis. James Brown may not be known by someone who is not an avid sports watcher and someone else of more relevance to the target audience could be asked. This column was written for the male sports fan, but if it had been written for another target audience Jackson would have made references to people more recognizable to them.

The Spirit of Giving

In this editorial cartoon, the artist is trying to convey the fact that Christmas gifts are not about receiving, but rather the spirit of giving in the givers heart. Now, we all know that the true meaning of Christmas is the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ, but Americans have turned Christmas into a secular day of exchanging gifts. The customer in the store hears the message on the tv, and realizes that she doesn't need to be buying all these material possessions, Christmas means more than just exchanging gifts. The employee at the store, who has been using a holy day of the church to exploit money from customers, is shocked when he hears this saying that Christmas does not come from a store.
I agree with this cartoon, Americans have gotten so far from the true meaning of Christmas that when we hear a message contrary to that Christmas is all about presents, we are surprised.
The fact that this is a visual cartoon, and not just black words on a white screen really help strength the point of this cartoon. The Grinch is given as a visual on the screen, and everyone knows the story of the Grinch. They can see the Grinch on the tv and immediately relate him to the "scrooge" Christmas. He thought that he would ruin Christmas by stealing all the presents, but then he realized that "Christmas doesn't come from a store, maybe perhaps Christmas needs a little bit more." Because you can see the Grinch saying this, it brings more meaning to the saying because of the visual of the Grinch. The VISA card also is a visual symbol of the American way of viewing Christmas. The customer just hands over the credit card to pay for all these meaningless things that she is buying for other people for Christmas. The credit card is a visual reminder of the way Americans think. You just hand over a piece of plastic and you get everything you ever wanted. These two visuals help us to incur the purpose of this cartoon. The real meaning of Christmas is the virgin birth of Christ. The tradition that we have of exchanging gifts is not about the material possessions that are exchange, but rather of the spirit of giving.

R.I.P. Sean Taylor

Jason Whitlock believes that the death of football player Sean Taylor was a result of the black KKK. He believes that black people target black people.

His main point is that the black KKK "wants to keep black men in their place — uneducated, outside the mainstream and six feet deep."

I have to disagree with Whilock in this case. I know we have different vantage points because I am white , while he is black. I believe that Sean Taylor was not targeted because of his race, but because of his social status. Several athletes have been murdered in the last year, and I do not believe that it is coincidence. I do agree that hip hop music does encourage this type of behavior, however black people are not targeted because of their skin color, but rather poor members of society, white or black, living a rough life in the innercity will target rich people like athletes.

Whitlock does use parallelism in this article, he says, "I blame hip hop for playing a role in the genocide of American black men. When your leading causes of death and dysfunction are murder, ignorance and incarceration, there's no reason to give a free pass to a culture that celebrates murder, ignorance and incarceration." Hip hop and rap music definitely celebrates murder, ignorance, and incarceration and he does a good job paralleling the rap music to the social order of the typical urban black man. He uses parallelism to give a reason of why he believes that the black KKK targets other black men. Without this parallelism, it would just be his thought of why murder rates are high among black men is abnormally high. But by blaming rap music, he shows the readers an example of a factor that increases murder. However, the murder rate is not a product of black people targeting black people, but rather a consequence of hard economic times and a bad situation, a factor that is independent of race.