California vs. Texas

In the Texas observer blog, Forest Wilder compares the radical state of California to that of Texas. Throughout this election season we’ve all seen the farfetched pitches against Barack Obama; everything from associating with terrorist to being a closet Muslim has been conjured and passed around through emails and blogs. In Wilder’s entry “California, you got nothin’” he compares how utterly radical it gets between these two polar opposite states, yet share equal passion when it comes to politics in general. He extracts from an article that is linked from the Hay’s county Republican website that compares Obama to infamous dictators like Hitler, Sadam Hussein, and Mao. The article claims that like them “‘his continuous struggle to find his identity make him a prime candidate for NPD (narcissistic personality disorder).’” It goes on to create several other less than positive comments against the candidate to make him as unattractive as possible. Throughout Wilder’s blog, it’s obvious that he’s simply trying to inform his readers how farfetched and vicious the opposing party can be. By pitching this onto his blog he is presenting a very unattractive side of the Republican Party, as it makes a fool of itself with fallacy. There is an underlying tone of sarcasm within his blog which attracts several kinds of readers, but the main one that he seems to pitch this article for are the “swing voters.” By presenting such an unattractive side of the Republican Party, he creates an argument within the argument. Such fallacy shown by a Party easily makes that Party unattractive, especially to a person that is uncertain about where he is devoting himself in such an important election. While it seems like he is aiming for Californians to read the blog with his ending statement ‘Take that California!’ it hides his real objective, and who he’s truly pitching the statement to.

While the author doesn’t seem very argumentative statement, he is attempting to be informative and showing little hostility. This is to show that he, along with his Party, will not stoop down to the level of the Republicans and create blasphemy as they have. As stated above, his argument is within the argument. He only wishes to prove how unreliable the Republicans and does so by exploiting a presentation made by their own. Wilder’s tactics were throughtout well as he pitched this blog, because her certainly did prove his point with saying very little words against the opposition.

The Texas Observer. 16 Oct 2008. The Texas Observer. 28 Oct 2008. [http://www.texasobserver.org/blog/index.php/2008/10/16/california-you-got-nothin/].