Response to GAMER881’s Obama Speech Reaction

I have questioned whether or not I should respond to this reaction of the Obama speech. I must say it angered me to read some of the comments and ideas in this reaction, and quite honestly I felt if I had responded to this quickly I would simply be jumping head first into a written war of words. My goal here is not to simply say things for the sake of saying them. Nor is it my goal to in a sense retaliate to an attack. You see, unlike like some people in the political arena, I don’t find it necessary to use scare tactics to get my audience to listen. No, instead, I am responding simply because you have given me no other choice. I will not be the appeaser of inadequate accusations. I will not simply stand by and let another person push the great lie. The Nazi’s believed that if you told a lie long enough people will start to believe it or at the very least comply with you. The Bush administration uses this tool constantly. From weapons of mass destruction to the fact that we must give up our freedom (Patriot Act) if we want to be free. It was wrong when the Nazi’s did it, it was wrong when the Bush administration did it, and it’s still wrong when you try to use it “harmlessly” in a class reaction. Now don’t get me wrong, it is not my intention to put you in the same company as Hitler or Bush, far from it. What I am saying, however, is do not let your emotions get the better of you. When you allow this, things start to suffer, such as your arguments and credibility.

Take your statement about Obama having the media in his back pocket. Are you actually trying to say that Obama, a young senator from Illinois, has more backing in the media than the Clintons and the Republican Party combined? It can’t be money or power that put Obama in this position because the Clintons alone have got him beat there. This is the same media that played the Rev. Wright tirades on a continuous loop for weeks, now which by your own accord put Obama in this position to deliver his speech on race.

Next you said the Senator loves Wright who is black and his Grandmother who is white and to denounce him would be like denouncing his grandmother for racial slurs she has said around him. First off, paraphrasing is not your strong suite my friend. I mean, really, “in essence”? I think if you looked at the speech again or read the transcript you might not feel the same way.

You then went on to say you actually cringed when you heard this. That he did not separate himself enough from Rev. Wright, which you believe, was the goal of the speech, a goal in which he failed to reach. Well once again this is simply not the case. It was not the intentions of the Senator to distance himself from Wright, but to show that he is not Wright. He did not make these claims, his Reverend did. Must we all be held accountable for the words of our religious advisors? Isn’t there a separation between church and state for a reason?

It’s funny how where you see something cringe worthy, I see something praise worthy. I think it says something about a man’s character when he doesn’t simply take the easy political way out and deny his involvement with a man who has shown his family compassion over the years. I don’t agree with many positions of my friends but this doesn’t mean I would ever deny my friendship just because of something my friend said. The words Wright said may not resonate well with most of the American public, but at the same time we must think about why a person would raise such radical claims. Why is there this frustration and hatred for the American government and ideology?

You say Obama tiptoed around the Wright issue, but in fact he delved deeper into the issue than one might notice at first glance. You see, in talking about what caused these outbursts of racial intolerance was deep seeded ideologies on the problems of a culture. Obama made it a speech about race because it was already an issue of race. Black peoples’ struggles, white people’ struggles, and every color and hue in between‘s struggles. It’s not black people who cause white problems or vice versa. We all struggle with different issues, but in the end we all struggle, and the only way to move forward as a nation is to come together as one. This is the message Obama was trying to convey, and he did so with eloquence and poise. I have waited to give this response because I know how much it stings when one’s political views are attacked. We do not always think with clear heads in times of anger. This is how wars are started, freedoms are lost, and lines of communication are severed. We must learn to use central processing as apposed to peripheral. We must take time and think before we act. "He only will succeed in attaining the eminence at which we aim . . . who shall learn to speak correctly before he learns to speak rapidly."
- Quintillian, Institutes of Oratory, Book 2, Ch.4

how AFRAID are YOU?

FEAR APPEALS


The fear appeals PSAs we saw in class were horrifying at the very least. When I went back and thought about how I was feeling when I was watching them for the first time, I could not remember, even though it was just minutes ago. All I remember is being horrified. I do not remember the content of what the person was saying before their “accident”, but could vividly remember the “accident” itself, not to mention the petrifying screams from the first PSA. An explanation for this is that I was processing what I watched peripherally, not centrally. A peripheral route is at the low end of the elaboration continuum which means processing requires much less information that central route.
In 1953, Hovland, Janis, and Kelley laid the foundation proposing that fear would increase the likelihood of persuasion because it reduces emotional tension. Hovland said fear is only effective if it is sufficiently intense to create a drive state that recipients believe can be effectively countered by the recommended action. But if the recipients do not effectively counter the recommended action, then this theory is disproved. If I watched the first PSA (the one with the hot oil) and get through it without it being sufficiently intense, it would not be fearful, which is called efficacy. This is the perception of a threat being handled. It also depends on the credibility on the person issuing the threat because that will result in a lower compliance. According to Janis and Feshback (1967), high levels of inducing fear will usually result in defensive avoidance and low levels of fear are not enough to stimulate attitude change. Therefore, they concluded that using moderate levels of fear produces the best results.
Other types of messages that are high effective in inducing fear are messages that are said which our brains have previously stored, bringing back our own memory in relation to that fear. You can send without creating greater perceptions on the danger of something and result in a higher effect. It is an easy observation to make that fear is one of the most common persuasive devices used today. The predicament is the ethics of using them, which, I think, needs more debate.

Reaction to Obama Speech

After watching Barack Obama’s speech from March 18 in Philadelphia, I will say outright that I continue to be impressed with his ability to dance around every issue with such rhetorical elegance that even I start to fall into the passion that fuels the movement of Obama ’08. The man is a political animal; he continues to brilliantly portray himself as a political outsider and not the calculating, maneuvering politician that I believe him to be.

Before entering into the substance of his speech, one must take a step back and look at what led to the need for this speech and the parameters around which it was delivered. First, there is the underlying reason as to why Obama joined this church. This church is the epicenter of Chicago society – religiously, politically, and socially – everybody who is anybody attends this church (Oprah, Common, etc.) and Obama realized that he had to become a figure there if he wanted to advance in Chicago politics.

Second, one must not overlook the time at which he gave his speech, 11 am. Most people don’t think much of this but I started thinking as to why he would not give the speech prime time so that everyone could see what his position truly was – the basis for which the speech was supposed to be held. And then I realized the motive behind this – he did not want everybody to see this address first hand…BRILLIANT. This was an absolutely brilliant political move. By giving his speech at 11 am, the only large group of people who were available to view the speech was the media. The majority of Americans were either at work or at school, not available to view the speech first hand. Their only exposure to it was that evening, and the days that followed, when the media – which is in Obama’s back pocket – were sitting there signing its praises to everyone. On MSNBC, Chris Matthews went so far as to say it was the “first honest” speech he had heard about race in his lifetime. Sally Quinn hailed the speech as one of the greatest in all human history. Andrew Sullivan expressed similar enthusiasm, and delivered the verdict that “this searing, nuanced, gut-wrenching, loyal and deeply, deeply Christian speech is the most honest speech on race in America in my adult lifetime. It is a speech we have all been waiting for a generation.” To allow the media to carry this story – the only perception of it that the public got was that it was “the greatest in all human history.” This was a brilliant political move on behalf of Obama and his campaign.

In regards to his speech, everything that was said about America and its history in its approach to racial issues was true. As I was watching the speech, I felt very much that I could be watching the next President of the United States, delivering his inaugural address in a desire to bring this nation into the future, a future that represents a post-racial society that has slowly been developing over the past 25 years.

Then I saw a caption at the bottom of the screen that read “Obama Speech Confronts Racial Division,” a thought that I have seen replayed by editorial columnists and media pundits throughout the past two days and reinforced as though he had just found the cure for cancer.

As I saw this, I started to think about what created the need for this speech in the first place. His need was not to outline the state of race relations in America but to address, and preferably denounce himself and his campaign from the hateful, anti-American rhetoric of Jeremiah Wright. In that regard, I feel he failed through his direct refusal to completely disconnect himself with Wright.

And then came the end of his speech, in which he talked about his white grandma and how he could not disconnect himself from her, despite her racist remarks that made him cringe, because of all the love and care she gave him. He reduced his grandmother to a rhetorical tool, invoking her love for him to manipulate our emotions and present it as a defense for his reluctance to denounce Wright. In essence he says, “I love Wright, who is black. I love my grandma, who is white. Would you have me damn my grandma by damning Wright, as he damned America?" It hurt me to watch it, and I sure hope it hurt him to say it.

Now, do I or any other American with half a brain believe that Obama agrees with such utter nonsense as was mentioned? Of course not! As Obama has said many times, he loves this country; as his story is one that is only written in the United States of America. The real issue that was not addressed was that Senator Obama sat for twenty years – nearly all of his adult life – and undoubtedly listened to such angry hate speech (that would certainly make his white, loving grandma cringe) and said, or more notably did, nothing about it. He did not leave the church, he did not protest the statements at the time they were made, he continued to be very close to a man that has a lot of favor with the community he needed to launch him into office. What troubles me, however, is that after twenty years of hearing these statements that he “disagrees with,” he brought this person into his family on some of the most intimate levels – Wright married the Obama and his wife and baptized both his daughters – and exposed his two daughters for their entire lives to what is, at the very least, a subtext of "anti-white vitriol. "

Who you surround yourself with says a lot about who you are. Though Obama may disagree with Wright’s statements, the fact that he was willing to associate himself with Wright for so long either showed either a severe lack of judgment or a willingness to look the other way for political gain, either way an explicit contradiction of his self-proclaimed need to run for President.

But we also must remember that Obama joined Wright’s church for a reason, just as he maintained a close relationship with political fixer Tony Rezko for a reason. Obama is a smart man, he understands how things happen and what the process is to get them done. So on Tuesday, he did was he always does. He treaded lightly, tiptoeing around the Wright issue and shifting the debate to what has been propelling his ascendancy to the Presidency - Race, American hopes, and good old America guilt.

Thank You For Watching

Thank You for Smoking may possibly be the greatest movie a student of speech, rhetoric, and public address could ever watch….with the possible exceptions being Wag The Dog and of course Dude Where’s My Car. This movie teaches so much about the power of words and debate it’s down right scary.
Take the scene in which Nick talks to his son about never being wrong and uses the ice cream analogy. This is taken right out of debate 101. It’s not my job to prove I’m right but rather that your argument is flawed. The whole idea of dictating an argument’s direction no matter what the circumstance is an extremely powerful tool and is tediously practiced in debate, courtrooms, politics, and even when trying to convince a parent to loan you the car Saturday night. That what’s so great about this movie: it transcends the lobbyist/political world and can be used in nearly every situation of discussion imaginable.
Another interesting dynamic of the movie is the struggle that Nick faces in teaching his son his philosophies about spin and persuasion, which are not the same thing contrary to popular belief, without destroying the ethical building blocks of his son’s young, innocent life. It’s easy to say that Nick is just a liar but that wouldn’t be accurate. Anybody can just flat out lie but in the end they will probably be proven wrong. The character of Nick on the other hand simply brings arguments to the table. Now some might say, well they are stupid arguments and shouldn’t even be dignified with answers, but if this where the case, then why is it that he connects with the audience, both in the movie and the viewers of the movie? Why is it that every time Nick makes a case for Big Tobacco, which the majority of people today believe is an evil, money grubbing, merchant of death, do we find ourselves smiling and laughing a little bit? We should be outraged like William H. Macy’s character is, yet, we aren’t really. No, actually whether we like to admit it or not, we are actually quite impressed at the quick wit and oratory skills of Nick even though we are completely against everything he stands for.
Even in the end when Nick testifies in front of the national committee about the dangers of smoking he turns the argument into that the real danger in this country is cheese. Good God Man, are you serious? Yet this claim makes a valid point. So on the one hand, you want to strangle this corrupt jerk, but on the other hand you are sitting back and wondering how he comes up with this stuff, and this, my friends, is the million dollar question. Now you may be asking yourselves, wait, what am I learning from this movie? Is the only lesson here that the only winners in life are corrupt manipulators? Nice guys must always finish last while the tricksters and flatterers control the huddled masses to agree with their evil ways of deceit? The answer to this is of course not. I’m not Plato; I don’t believe that rhetoric is the tool of the deceiver and manipulator. It is simply a tool, and it is one all should be well versed in. You see just being on the “right side” isn’t good enough. First of all who is to say without a shadow of a doubt that they are completely and undoubtedly right? If you believe in something, then take a stand for it. Don’t just sit there and rely on the fact that you believe you’re right. This simply doesn’t cut it. You must fight with every tool at your disposal; your case deserves to be fought for. It’s not Nick fault that he is good at what he does, it’s the fault of ours that we couldn’t come up with better arguments. It is our fault that we allowed him to flaw our argument. It is our fault that we did not have a better understanding of debate, persuasion, and most of all the study of rhetoric in general. We must not simply write off what our enemy does as evil or nonsense. We must learn from them because even though we may not agree with somebody that doesn’t mean we can’t learn something from them.

Thank You for Smoking

SO I just finished watching Thank You For Smoking, and I must say it was a pretty awesome movie. My favorite part was "The beauty of argument is that if you argue the right way, you're never wrong."

Midterm Review

The midterm review is posted at St. John's Central. Bring a copy to class if you can.

Chapter 7 - by MirO

The chapter supposedly presents a new theory, but it actually repeats much of the ELM and the Heuristics-Systematic Model (HSM). The appealing to emotions is the same approach that is expressed in the appeal to peripheral processing. The whole chapter is actually an elaboration on the topic and while it is quite comprehensive, some things are repeated or overlap within the chapter itself. Packard’s and Maslow’s models of needs are very similar and after that the second premise (emotion) lists pride, which overlaps to some extent with the esteem and ego gratification needs.

As a whole, the chapter is very appealing because it explains the approach of marketing companies. In today’s world people are offered too many products and services and it is not only inconvenient, but somewhat impossible to logically process all those advertisements and make a decision. The chapter reveals some of the techniques used to persuade people, or as the authors of the textbook state it – the hot buttons. I think it is essential that people are well-informed about the subject of psychographics, so that they can better defend to advertisements that target a weak spot of theirs. It is like with illusionists and magic tricks. People are entertained and awed by the trick, so their attention is easily attracted. However, when the audience is told how the trick is done, it is no longer that effective, and people might still enjoy the performance/entertainment, but the awe would disappear, so the audience is not influenced to such a great extent.

I like very much a quote that I think reflects my way of thinking - “Feelings are not supposed to be logical. Dangerous is the man who has rationalized his emotions.” I am a very rational individual and I am hardly influenced by advertisements that target the emotions. Yet, I have developed some brand loyalty and have certain images of some products/brands. That means that those marketing campaigns have had some success even with me. I am not saying that I fully control my emotions because I think it is very hard to achieve that. However, exactly one who gets close to such a state is a dangerous because that “hot button” is not there and it is much harder to persuade or manipulate this individual.

A Beacon of Hope

And it's not only Obama. Yet.

If you're feeling down about Professor Gowder's Law School Blows tirade, read this article. There is hope yet, my persuasive little goslings. :)

why you SHOULD GO TO LAW SCHOOL!!!!!!!!

REACTION TO “WHY YOU SHOULDN’T GO TO LAW SCHOOL”

This article by Paul Gowder was probably written to warn young students as I about the dangers of attending law school. At least that’s the view he wants his readers to think, but I sense a strong tone of animosity for someone who failed his dream of becoming a lawyer and was completely appalled on what law school is really about.
Not only did it seem like this article was written by a pissed off 12 year old kid who wanted to list a lot of excuses about something, but it was rather insulting to me as a reader for someone claiming they had all this experience they went through and speculate about how bad something might be for me. Maybe I like working long hours, reading stacks of paper, and playing psychological warfare games with my colleagues, as long as I get paid. You think this is the only profession people have difficulty in? What world are you living in? Sure, it’s a damn hard profession, and you have to work your ass off and come in top of your class, as you must do for any profession. Of course there will be risks, and debt, and maybe failure, but that’s the god damn name of the game; to challenge yourself. Gowder challenged himself, but obviously failed, which I guess I can feel bad about, but complaining and listing a bunch of reasons of why a particular profession is not worthy of trying is absolutely ludicrous and is just an entire excuse for Gowder’s failures. How juvenile is it go so out of your way to try to prove to people that this is a bad profession that you start listing divorce, suicide, and drug-use rates targeting lawyers?! I mean, is this how desperate this guy is to tell people how pissed off he is? I understand that he is trying to warn young students on double checking their decisions, but this is just straight out his own experience which Paul believes should apply to every student who aspires to go to law school. Look, most students who seriously have been considering going to law school are bright kids. They know the world is extremely competitive and it’s a very demanding career, but that doesn’t mean students should just give up just because it’s challenging. And I don’t know why, but it seems that Paul thinks that a career in law is the only hard and unworthy career. I can go on and on, typing pages and pages on negative views of almost any career, and most of them are just as challenging and demanding as a career in law, if not more.
So Mr. Paul Gowder, I say to you that after reading your article, you have in fact inspired me even more on becoming a (according to you because everything according to you MUST BE FACTUAL BECAUSE YOU SAID IT) slime ball, immoral, jerk, arrogant, petty, uninteresting, impatient, unhappy, divorced, druggie, alcoholic do-gooder corporate lawyer. And when I DO become a successful corporate lawyer, I will have done so without all those characteristics you mentioned, because it is possible to do just that, and I will be a living example of it, which will make you cringe to your stomach and may inspire you to write another stupid and ignorant article. But I will thank you anyway for trying to help me become a better student or even a better person, but I think I’ll pass and instead reach for the stars and achieve my dreams. Maybe one day I could give you some insight on how one can do that. One day.