TOW #3 The Mormon in Mitt

               An article recently published in Time Magazine, titled “The Mormon in Mitt”, not only attempts to dispel certain rumors surrounding the Mormon religion, but also attempts to highlight the influence of the religion on presidential candidate Mitt Romney.  The author of the article, Jon Meacham, is the executive editor at Random House Publishing and is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.  Time Magazine is the world’s most widely circulated weekly news magazine.  Due to the fact that the republican challenger for the White House is a follower of the Church of Latter-day Saints, Mormonism has gained a considerable amount of media attention.  Yet despite this, many Americans feel as if they know little about the faith beyond the extreme examples of polygamy and communal living presented in the news.  In addition they know even less about how the faith might impact a President Romney.   The author uses rhetorical strategies such as anecdotes and comparison and contrast in order to communicate to his audience both the central tenets of the religion and their relation to Mitt Romney’s campaign.  This audience includes readers of Time and particularly those who are unsure about the beliefs of the Mormon faith.  I believe that Meacham was successful in describing the core beliefs of Mormonism, such as American exceptionalism and charity, yet he was unable to draw clear parallels between the characteristics of the faith and Romney’s behavior during his campaign.  For example, he describes how Mitt Romney’s adaptability (or “flip-flopping” abilities as some see them) might have come as a result of the fact that Mormons were constantly persecuted and uprooted when the religion first began.  Yet without word from Romney himself, many of these speculations seem unsubstantiated and unreliable. 

October Surprise

              Political analysts have noted that in campaigning for the presidential election this year, both candidates have made a variety of outlandish claims that are supported by little to no evidence.  It is for this reason that the election has been the subject of much satire, including the political cartoon recently published in the New Yorker titled "October Surprise", by Zachary Kanin.  Kanin regularly contributes cartoons to the New Yorker and is also the author and illustrator of The Short Book.  The New Yorker is a  magazine read nationwide that was created in 1925 and is published on a weekly basis.  In this particular cartoon, Kanin illustrates multiple scenarios in which bizarre facts are revealed about the two presidential candidates.  For example, in one scenario Mitt Romney releases his birth certificate and it is discovered that he is actually a forty-six-year-old woman from Des Moines, Iowa.  In another instance, Barack Obama's "all-nude" issue of the Harvard Law Review surfaces.  By creating these satirical scenarios, Kanin attempts to poke fun at the ridiculous nature of some of the claims made about the presidential candidates.  While the readers of the New Yorker are primarily liberal, the cartoonist decided to take a neutral stance by including both candidates in the cartoon.  Both satire and allusions to popular culture are used to make the cartoon more appealing to readers, such as the reference to a Weekend at Bernie's.  I believe the cartoonist effectively conveyed his message to viewers of the cartoon because it connected with a sense of exasperation among voters over the childish nature of the current election.  In addition, the satire remained light-hearted due to the humorous illustrations and so people who might otherwise have ignored another analysis of the presidential election were drawn into viewing it.

The Kalamazoo Promise

             One of the most pressing problems faced by the American education system is getting children to not only graduate high school, but to attend college as well.  The article, “The Tuition Jackpot”, featured in the New York Times Magazine and written by Ted C. Fishman, describes how one community attempted to tackle this particular problem.  Ted Fishman is a veteran journalist who has written pieces for publications such as National Geographic and USA Today.  The New York Times Magazine is published weekly as a supplement to The New York Times.  In 2005, a group of anonymous donors declared that they had create a fund known as the Kalamazoo Promise, in which every student who graduated from high school in Kalamazoo, Michigan would be given a free college education.  By requiring that students remain in the district in order to receive funding, the Promise hopes to create a generation of innovative workers to rebuild a town that has lost 16,000 jobs since 2007.  This article was written in order to emphasize the importance of secondary education in America and to report on how certain strategies to improve college enrollment rates have fared.  The author conveyed this message to the readers of The New York Times Magazine primarily through the use of logos.  For example, he includes the statistic that 90% of Kalamazoo students who graduated in 2012 are now enrolled in college in order to indicate the success of the program.  Ultimately, I believe the author accomplished his purpose because the text was easily accessible for the average reader, yet it was well supported with statistical evidence.