Hillary takes responsibility for Libya but Obama's terror policy is real problem by K.T. McFarland
In this editorial, conservative K.T. McFarland attempts to persuade readers that President Obama’s foreign policy is not working and that the assassination of the ambassador in Benghazi is Obama’s fault, but is being covered up. K.T. primarily uses diction, syntax, and imagery to display her opinion effectively.
McFarland uses imagery to paint Obama as dishonest. An example of this is when she says, “Secretary Clinton says, there is such a “fog of war” that we’re not sure what happened, never mind that the fog was deliberately created by the Obama administration’s own fog machine.” Fog makes it harder to see what is in front of us. Through this creative metaphor McFarland is trying to show that that Obama’s administration is trying to cover up what truly happened in Benghazi. K.T. also says, “The mainstream media, like an overindulgent parent, believes the Obama administration’s excuses, and most people don’t care what happens half a world away when they don’t have jobs at home.” This simile portray’s president Obama as a child making excuses. This paints a picture in the reader’s mind of an immature little kid making excuses to his mother after he did something naughty. This simile makes the president seem irresponsible without directly stating this.
The author also uses syntax to put emphasis on certain aspects of the editorial. When K.T. wants to show how little information there is on a topic she uses questions that make the reader think. This emphasizes the said Obama cover-up. An example of this is when she says, “The president dodged the question with lots of references about how no one wants the answer to that question, or cares more than he does, but in the end he didn’t answer the question. Now you have to ask WHY?” Another way that the other emphasizes what she considers to be the most important details in the story is her use of paragraphs. If there is a main point she is trying to get across she will leave that sentence in a paragraph all by itself so that it seems more important. K.T. says “Looks like the Obama administration has gotten away with it.” The author placed this short statement in a paragraph all by itself to show its gravity and to give the reader a short pause in the flow of the editorial to think about the statement.
K.T. McFarland uses diction to show show the deceitfulness of the Obama Administration’s Benghazi “cover up”. She uses words such as “dodged” to show how Obama dodged difficult questions about the Benghazi assassination. The word dodged makes the reader think that President Obama has planned out how to evade the questions so that he doesn’t have to say the truth. Another example of this is when K.T. says that until Al Qaeda is defeated they will have an “escalating” series of attacks to put fear into the reader’s mind. Al Qaeda has already caused so much terror in our country and the word escalating makes it seems as though the attacks will get worse and worse without any real proof that they will.
McFarland created a very convincing and persuasive editorial using many literary techniques that attempt’s to show the deceitfulness and flaws of Obama’s foreign policy in general and with respect to the Benghazi assassination.
I thought this close reading was well done. I liked what you said about the fog and portraying the president as an irresponsible child, however, I think these are examples of figurative language and not really imagery. You mention both of these examples as metaphors and similes, which would be under figurative language. For instance, your example about the fog machine ("Obama administration’s own fog machine") is not talking about an actual fog machine that the Obama administration has, it is a metaphor for the Obama admistration's cover-up.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I liked your specific evidence, but I think they could be shorter. You probably don't need to include the whole entire sentence, just the important part.
I thought that you used a lot of good examples of the literary techniques the author used in this article. it was easy to understand the way that you elaborated on the techniques she used. For example, I liked the examples that you used for showing the diction that the author used, like when you talked about the word "dodged". One thing that you could have done would be to say what type of diction it was, like pejorative or honorific, when explaining what kind of effect that word had on the article and reader. This would incorporate some of the vocab that we learned and show the reader some different types of diction, which could help get the point across easier.
ReplyDeleteThis was a well-written close reading, Danny.
ReplyDeleteThis article was very interesting to read as well. I think you've covered all bases for the article.
The use of the images of "fog" points to the deceit that President Obama is (apparently) trying to use on the American people, and I'm glad that you addressed this point.
Your explanation for syntax was also good. But I think you might need to further explain how the sentence structure of "The president dodged the question with lots of references about how no one wants the answer to that question, or cares more than he does, but in the end he didn’t answer the question. Now you have to ask WHY?" points to K.T. MacFarland's points. Your point of how she separates certain lines like: "Now you have to ask WHY?" and "Looks like the Obama administration has gotten away with it." from the rest of the paragraphs is also a good point. To add more emphasis to her point, she singles out these "punchlines" that stick out of the article and push all the attention to that one sentence.
I also think you should shorten the excerpts of the sentences. Since there is no need to include the entire section.