Original Blog for Justice and Mercy

So I just found the original article "American Justice and Divine Mercy" by Patrick Clark ( http://catholicmoraltheology.com/justice-mercy-and-solidarity/ )that I am writing on. It's really interesting to see what other people thought about the celebration at bin Laden's Death. The blog also linked to other forums ( http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?p=7825229 ) That show that Clark was not the only one to draw the parallels he did.

Thesis Proposal

                In Patrick Clark’s article American Justice and Divine Mercy he effectively accomplishes his goal to persuade his readers, predominantly Catholics like himself, that there should be some moral hesitation to celebrating at Osama bin Laden’s death.  Some of the major tactics that Clark uses are rhetorical questions, parrelellism, and repititon, and appeals to athority.

                This essay is full of rhetorical questions. One of Clark’s main purposes is to get his audience to deeply think about this issue, so the questions are extreamly effective. These questions also serve to highlight disparities between what the readers believe about Christ and his death, vs. what they believe about Osama bin Laden and his death. Clark uses it as an appeal to logos, revealing the logical fallacies in his reader’s own thinking, and also as ethos, defining the morality that he believes his audience should be living by.

                There is a lot of grammatical parallelism as well. This is effective because it highlights the comparisons that Clark is making. It is an appeal to logos, again serving to highlight the fallacies in his readers thinking, and to Pathos, because it makes us feel guilty and uncomfortable that we are feeling and thinking this way.

                The repetition in the essay highlights the important points and ideas; several words are repeated in almost every paragraph: mercy, justice, jubilation, solidarity, Divine Mercy Sunday. This is also an appeal to Pathos, because these are all words with a strong emotion attached to them, and sometimes different emotions in religious vs. political contexts and repeating them in both contexts brings all those emotions into the mix.

                There is also overstatement (in comparing bin Laden’s wounds to Christ’s- that’s a little extreme), strong appeals to authority, allusion to bible and saintly sources, and very religious diction.

God Bless America! Appeals to Ethos, Pathos, and Logos in Romney's speech

Purpose: To persuade listeners that Romney’s Mormon faith will not make him a bad president

Romney uses ethos very effectively in his speech considering that one of the main purposes of the speech is to establish his ethos: his credibility or his ability to govern despite him being a minority faith. Another way that he uses ethos is that he cites the example of John F Kennedy, and says that he, Romney, is just like him: an American running for president, not a religion running for president. What this does is it draws a parallel between him and a beloved president who was a religion that was not necessarily liked in America’s protestant culture, so if Kennedy could be a good president, so can Romney. One other appeal he made to Ethos was that he was raised on American/Christian values, which shows that he is a moral person and not different from other religious people in America.

Some appeals that Romney made to pathos include his statement that liberty is a gift from God and Americans have sacrificed more for liberty than any other nation, and that hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost to preserve freedom. What this does is that it evokes a sense of mourning for those America has lost, while at the same time uniting them in pride and patriotism. Another, very effective thing that Romney does is that he ends his speech with “God Bless America” which, as well as having religion as a closing comment, is a typical way for presidents to end speeches and it evokes a huge sense of unity and patriotism.  

Logos is the backbone of the argument, so many of the other appeals I’ve mentioned could also fall here under logos. Another one I noticed was that Romney makes the point that even though the specific beliefs of all the diverse creeds are different, there is still a common sense of morality that unites the people, the good old American values that are shared by every religion. Also, throughout the speech he makes appeals to different authorities mainly by quoting past presidents such as John Adams and Abraham Lincoln. This reminds listeners that our government has always been founded on faith, so Romney is really not that different after all.

Ethos in Mommy Blogger

     One thing that Matchar does to appeal to Ethos, as it pertains to her credibility, is that she mentions the comment thread that she saw on one of the blogs that reveals that she is not the only “closet non-Mormon reader of Mormon mommy blogs.” What this does for her ethos is show that her experience is more the norm than the exception. This makes her audience realize that what she is saying is applicable to a more general audience, to them.

     She also says that she reads more than one of these blogs. This helps establish her credibility because it shows that she is extremely familiar with her subject. She knows a good representative sample of these blogs, which makes her a good judge.

     Another thing Matchar does is add a rebuttal, bringing up the point that maybe this is just a front and these women’s lives really aren’t as happy as they make it seem on their blogs. What this shows her audience that she has thought about this issue from all perspectives and is a critical, unbiased judge of the situation. 

Reflection on Opinion Editorial

                When I heard that we were writing an opinion editorial, my first thought was that this was going to be really easy: a paragraph or two, just basically state my biased opinions, no research involved and be done! Then I read the sample editorials. Yeah, I realized I was thinking a Dear Abbey column, not an editorial.  This was going to be basically like a standard high school five paragraph essay, which was kind of depressing, because I always had felt so smothered by that form, it just felt like I was filling in the blanks. Then I started writing and reading others and I realized that I had been wrong yet again. In reality, the opinion editorial assignment was halfway between my two mistaken ideas; it was about the length of a standard five paragraph essay, but it was personal, more like a Dear Abbey column. It was really  fun and somewhat liberating to write in first person, using personal examples and talking directly to the audience; I felt like more of me, more of who I am, came out on the paper compared to my more academic style of work, where only my knowledge, or worse only my professor, ends up. I am excited to try to take the more personal aspect (putting more of me on paper) and transferring it to a more academic style.

                Part of the process that I really enjoyed was the freewriting and outlining and it was really fun to watch how my ideas changed throughout the process of writing, from my initial free write to my final draft. I wrote down all these ideas in my free write and outline that had something to do with my basic subject, and then it was basically like doing a puzzle, fitting all of my ideas into an essay that entertained and educated. It was a lot easier than starting from scratch on the first draft.

So, to sum up, the things I really liked about the Op Ed was that I outlined extensively and I was able to be a lot more personal in my writing.  

Final Draft

Amy McLean

Kaleigh Spooner

WRTG 150

September 29, 2014

The Flood of Immorality in the Media

            I am a student, and like all the other students out there, I have watched my fair share of Netflix while procrastinating homework. The struggle is familiar to all of us: you have finished the last season…what do you do now? Aimlessly browsing can lead to you finding your favorite show in the whole world, but most of the time its only fruits are boredom and frustration. So you start looking up the shows that are popular, you know the ones, The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, or Game of Thrones. It only takes a few seconds before you are accosted with images that stick in your head long after the episode is over. I’m talking about all the violence and sex that is portrayed in today’s movies and TV shows. Writers and producers today stuff the media to the brim with the “sensational,” crossing lines of traditional values that should not be crossed. This has been coming on since popular media was created; writers wanted to do something different, to make their name in the world, so they would go slightly beyond what society at large taught, blurring the hard lines of morality and trespassing into the gray area. Today it has gone beyond the grey area. The lines are no longer simply blurred; they are gone, erased for all time by the revenue that applying to these base instincts brings in. The media has gone too far in its willingness to portray things that were entirely taboo subjects fifty shades of gray ago. We need morality in the media. We as a society need to reaffirm the limits that once existed on what could and could not be shown on screen, and we as individuals need to reaffirm our limits of what we are willing to watch.

            First of all, what is morality? Websters dictionary defines it as beliefs about what is right behavior and what is wrong behavior; or the degree to which something is right and good. Some might argue that the first definition is all that morality is: a belief. It is nothing but an individual standard and that there is no overarching code of right or wrong that goes beyond one person’s opinion: morality is nothing but an opinion held by a person. George Washington said that “Religion and morality are the essential pillars of civil society.” If people cannot agree on what is right and wrong, crime rates increase and the society becomes less stable. When a society has a clear set of morals, it is more stable and produces a better quality of living for everyone involved.

Our society used to be more united on our morals; they are still reflected in our laws, such as that against murder.  But if we believe that killing is wrong, which is one of the few standards that it seems we can all still agree on, then why do we get such enjoyment out of watching people die? I cannot answer that question and I will not try to, but it is an observable fact that our society is now unable to agree on what is right and wrong, so, for the sake of the argument, I’m going to appeal to religion, which has traditionally been the foundation for common morality. It is recorded in the Bible that God gave ten unchangeable commandments to the children of Israel, two of which were, “thou shalt not kill” and “thou shalt not commit adultery.” In the meridian of time, Christ further emphasized and expanded these commandments to say that you should not be angry or lustful.  When producers choose to show gory violence, viewers are witnessing glorified murder, and is there any question that when TV shows use sex and nudity to attract viewers they are marketing to pure lust?

When you stop to think about it, what these shows appeal to is our basic animal instincts. Animals are driven by instinct to reproduce and hunt and eat. We as humans have been blessed with a higher intellect and should live more altruisticly, not being held captive to our natural instincts. “for the natural man is an enemy to God” if we ever hope to live in Joy as He does, we cannot be constantly catering to our basest instincts. But movies and TV are now constantly relying on these basic animal instincts to obtain viewers. Shows both use sex and violence as tools to obtain viewers, and unfortunately, yes, it works in many cases. However, this use of sensationalism has the potential to destroy creativity in the media. As long as a show has enough “excitement,” often in the form of sex and violence, writers don’t need to have a creative plot or three dimensional characters to keep viewers interested for the whole film or series. We can see this laziness of Hollywood creeping in in different respects as well: there always seems to be nothing but sequels and reboots on the menu of new releases. The media is getting lazy, substituting explosions for plot and love scenes for complex characters. Allowing writing and producers to use sex and violence to get viewers does not encourage writers to reach their artistic potential, instead it encourages them to exert the least amount of effort possible in their writing and creative process.

 I believe that we as a society have grown tired of the laziness that Hollywood is increasingly falling prey to. We hunger for works that entertain without offending, that feed our minds instead of just our carnal instincts. A few movies come to mind that, in the past few years, have had huge commercial and popular success in all age demographics, despite, or perhaps because of, that fact that they were squeaky clean: free of gory violence and overt sexual elements. Frozen, although originally geared toward children, was a success among adults, even those who do not have children to go watch it with. The Lego Movie, a financially successful and popular film, was marketed to young adults as well, even though young adults are the demographic that most of the immoral media we have been discussing is written for. There are also examples of films like The Princess Bride that have remained popular through the chaotic shifting of virtues that characterizes the time that we live in. The popularity of these movies and other clean media sources shows that society at least enjoys, if not craves, cleaner sources of entertainment.        

            In conclusion, the media has crossed lines of what should be shown in terms of sex and violence. These activities are immoral according to God’s laws and we should not be watching them depicted in increasingly vivid ways. I don’t know if we can turn back the tide of increasing immorality in the media, but we can chose not to let it drown us. Find the moral high ground. Rise above the floodwaters. And when the flood is gone, we will remain

GASCAP for OP ED

Here’s a GASCAP for my OpEd, it was actually really helpful to write it out and spend some time thinking about arguments that I could use.

G- generalization:

                I couldn’t really come up with a lot on this one, I could say that because I take offense to the moral degradation of today’s media, everyone does, but that’s not necessarily true, especially after reading forums discussing the subject.

A-Analogy:

This one was easier. I think. If I’m doing it right.

-genuinely creative works that use sex and violence and have high viewers, non-creative works use those devices to try to attract an audience.

-high acceptance rates of movies like frozen which, because they were originally geared toward a younger audience, are free from the objectionable material, but they have gained a large adult and young adult following as well, which could show that our society craves some of this simpler, cleaner entertainment.

-Princess bride. Uses some violence, but it’s not the gory violence in most Movies and TV shows today. It doesn’t really have a lot of dirty jokes, and it is still viewed today for entertainment, not just as a “classic”

S- Sign:

                If we allow violence and sex in the media, we as viewers will become desensitized to it. We already have. Things that are prevalent on screen now, would not have been allowed, or if they had been wouldn’t have been watched. In I Love Lucy, Lucy and her husband always were portrayed with twin beds. Now it is rare to find a movie geared toward adults that don’t have bedroom scenes.

C-Causality:

                If we become ok with these things being portrayed, how much of the same will we be willing to accept, or at least turn a blind eye to, in society at large? We already live a world with very different morals than when our parents grew up, how much is going to change?

A-Authority

                Some people obviously care because they have definitive movie ratings and boards to decide these things. There are statistics of how many movies each year have what ratings

                Also, we are at BYU, so we can quote Divine Authority, like the 10 commandments, two of which are thou shalt not kill and thou shalt not commit adultery. I can quote For the Strength of Youth and Apostles.

P-Principle

                This is a morally driven argument, that entertainment can survive, and should survive without  relying on cheap resources. Those things are wrong, and so are watching them.