Post Being Critiqued
This article initially caught my attention (embarrassingly) due to the title's use of the word "occupiers" and my lack of knowledge of what an "occupier" is. Turns out an occupier is just someone protesting on Wall Street. Leave it to me to have no idea that was going on. However upon realizing what an occupier is after reading the article, it all made very clear sense.
The audience for this article is relatively flexible in my opinion. Obviously members of the Republican Party, but I even think moderate Liberals, especially people in favor of bipartisan compromising are entirely thought of in the creation of this piece.
I'd say that this author is actually very credible on a multiple of levels. The author is Erick Erickson who went to Mercer University and Walter F George School of Law and is a columnist by profession. The article is featured on the website redstate.com, which is not only relatively renowned, but also just looks nice and new and updated frequently, which are telltale signs of website integrity.
The argument of the piece is plainly stated:
"The point is that we need to re-level the playing field and make it a fair competition between entrepreneur and corporation again." The article basically says it's not rich people that make the economy and market a harsh place for the little man, but that they're the only ones who had the capital to withstand the change over time, and that it's really government regulation and policies. "Abraham Lincoln said that in this country, unlike any other on earth, 'every man can make himself.' As government grows and creeps into every aspect of our lives, that is less and less true except of those who have the means to pay off government and cover the increasing costs of doing business." Not to forget: "The playing field does not need to be tipped back in favor of others. Just level it. An upright tower built on a slope will topple the moment the slope is laid flat."
First off I would like to congratulate you for picking an article with an important point of view. The point of view featured in the editorial you critiqued definitely takes an interesting twist on who to blame for all the economic trouble the common people have. Since a lot of homeless and weird hippies have shown up to the “Occupy Wall Street”, the movement has been downplayed by the media to the public. It has been thought of s another failed ideology, which is not true as emphasized by the article explaining that there are just people “who just think the deck is stacked against them” and think there is something that must be done about it, hence why the movement started.
ReplyDeleteFor the length of the article you decided to critique on your editorial was too short. The length of your editorial cannot cover the entire article well. You also seemed to not have focused on a specific area, which would then allow for a shorter editorial, until the end of your editorial. Even then it seemed rush. The quotes were crammed and not explained. A rule of thumb that could help out would be that for every quote there must be at least 3 sentences that precede the quote, explaining why the quote was chosen. I am specifically talking about the last sentence which is a quote. It’s a nice quote to end with because it does leave the reader thinking, which is the purpose of an editorial, but there is no explication why the quote is chosen. Therefore leaving the quote by itself makes the writer look immature as though they lost train of thought of what they were going to write about and decided to insert a random quote to cover it up. Also on that last paragraph I saw different ideas that could have amounted to at least another paragraph. You could’ve taken “"The point is that we…” to “…..regulation and policies” and made it its own paragraph. Adding length to the editorial by giving examples of when the “little man” gets run over by the regulations and policies while the wealthy don’t.
On middle paragraph when you write about the writer and why the article is legitimate, it could have been narrowed to no more than three sentences since it’s not relevant to the topic at hand. Instead of using a whole paragraph to explain why this article is legitimate, the space could have been used to write a short summary about what the article is about. To which the reader would appreciate, because when I first started reading the article I did not understand what you were trying to say until I read the article itself. Then you could have tied it in to why it’s a relevant article, when the author says that a republican should take stance and control the situation, since it contains some insight on how the public is starting to view the Grand Old Party.
Lastly, I enjoyed your opening paragraph. It shows intellectual curiosity about a relevant issue and why a person reads what it reads based on interest such as “what an occupier is”. The article definitely gave me a different opinion on what I was beginning to think about “Occupy Wall Street” and who to “blame”.