Shannon Green

Blog 2

               The specific artifact that I selected is an article titled “Two Last Obama- Era Rules Worth Saving from the G.O.P. This article in particular talks about how President Trump has signed 13 repeal measures passed by congress. It also talks about the two important protections where the Senate must decide to follow the lead of the House to vote and repeal them. One of the important protections that remain threatened, according to this article, is the allowance of states to establish payroll- deduction retirement accounts for private- sector workers who do not have retirement coverage at work. The second is forcing energy companies to limit harmful emissions of methane, the main component of natural gas. According to The Times News, the retirement regulation is consistent with Republicans traditions. This would mean that repealing the retirement rule would violate both the interest of the people and Republicans’ own “professed ideology.” The vote will come as soon as Wednesday, putting the Vice President, Mike Pence, in a possible tiebreaking decision – “a dubious victory,” The Times News expresses. The second rule, the rule to limit methane, is opposed by oil and gas interest and by some in Congress who have received offerings from those interests. The article explains how industries benefit from this, since methane can be sold. Making the decision to preserve these rules would allow Senate Republicans to show some concern for needs of people.

               The way this article is written and by the way I summarized it above, left – sided. Just by the title of the article, you can assume this is going to be a one sided view and that view would go with left – sided liberals. It is also easy to assume that because the article is from The Times News, a more liberal based writing style. Because this calls for a specific type of rhetoric, I will be using generic criticism as my method to explain this particular artifact. According to Foss, generic criticism is “rooted in the assumption that certain types of situations provoke similar needs and expectations in audiences and thus call for particular kinds of rhetoric.” If this article and company are known for having more left- sided views, they are going to use a specific rhetoric in their title of the article and throughout the article. The title is what catches the intended audience’s attention. If someone who has more right- sided view on politics, they’re not going to stop and waste time even looking at a Times News article. Even if the articles heading does not use left- sided rhetoric, if it is from the Times News or CNN, it is more likely than not that a person with right- sided views is not going to pick that article up. Generic criticism explains this. This method states that it seeks to discover commonalities in rhetorical patterns across occurring situations. This can relate to politics because in any situation in politics, specific rhetoric is used towards political parties. It is extremely consistent.