David Kupelian has quite a few things to say about this generation. I believe his passion for his studies and the love of his son are what stir such an emotional response through his writing. In the first few pages alone, Kupelian uses a number of rhetorical devices to prove his point and reach out to his audience. While I believe his opinion is slightly misguided and a little biased. The points he makes are no less valid.
In the first paragraph describes his situation with his son. The situation being the once independent boy scout falling victim to peer influence and current social trends. He uses this entire scenario to exemplify what he believes is happening to the vast majority of today's youth. He believes much of the blame lies in the media of today and rap music. Using cause and effect, he explains how the culture of rap music affected the kids and their "hard" attitudes were emulated, creating a "gangsta nation." While I agreed with his argument for the most part, there was no part that I agreed with more than the corporates trying to capture the spirit of the youth and reflect it back as paid advertising. I watched the Disney channel the other day and was disgusted at the amount of adverting and messages that were being thrown tossed around. I believe he illustrated his point beautifully buy using the exemplification of sprite.It was unpopular until it started funding hip hop shows and made itself to be the drink of that generation. Something Kupelian called a "Brilliant marketing Scheme"
In short, Kupelian uses several (if not all) listed rhetorical devices in his persuasive argument. While I don't agree with his ideals of a "home schooled" generation for several reasons, I believe he comes from a place of caring whose writing only furthers my trust in his argument. He may be misinformed about all of today's generation, and a little biased, but his examples and arguments are strong and give a good amount of information. The use of all of his rhetorical devices only strengthen his writing and the amount of persuasion in the information presented.
I enjoyed reading your RA. I am wondering if there is any aspect of this reading that you can connect with in regard to the topic of your formal paper. In other words, if you are going to write about gun control (great idea), then can you make further connections between how our society markets violence? Or how the need for gun control has grown out of a culture of guns? Since you are interested in how our culture is controlled by media, maybe you can make some further connections (in your annotations post) by exploring this idea a bit more by doing some research. Thanks for interesting reading here:)
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