Rhetorical Activity 1 pg.63

I read three articles concerning President Obama and the direction that our country is headed in. These three articles were from Time Magazine, Black Enterprise, and National Review and they were all from the month of March.

The article from Time Magazine was written by Barack Obama himself and the issue that he was discussing was a national expansion of community service. Little had to be said to explain the purpose behind his article; it was clear throughout that he was speaking to the American people about lending a hand in their country. He created his kairos mainly through epideictic rhetoric; by stating how people could change their own communities through their own work. There was a little deliberative rhetoric in which he discussed his own plans for change. This was when he tactfully changed the subject to the greater issue of how he plans to lead the country.

The article from Black Enterprise was written by Derek T. Dingle and it addressed the changes that the country has already gone through, and what to expect from the new administration. Dingle created kairos by talking about how the people were affected and moved by the inauguration of our first black president, and his promises of growth and change. Very little had to be done in this article to explain the articles relevance because it was more based on opinions about the new president than political facts. You either agree with this writer or you don't, on this particular issue.

The article from National Review, written by Mark Steyn, was about President Obama and the horrible consequences of his election. Steyn used deliberative and forensic rhetorics to create his kairos. He brought up other countries and the terrible state that they are in due to their choice of politics, and he voiced his opinion about the President and his changes in policy. There had to be alot of explanation in his article because he went back and forth between American policy and European policy, comparing the two and listing differences, but other than that, the point and relevance of the article was very clear.