rhetoric paper

George Bush: President of the United States, some may wonder how this man actually became the leader of the greatest country on earth. Even though in 2000 he received fewer votes then Al Gore, but is in office, thanks to his brother in Florida. He has the lowest approval rating of any president in United States history, and has made many decisions that have made him look down right silly. Many people have taken making fun of the president to another level, take for instance a video that Will Ferrell made, it is him dressed up as George Bush, on a ranch and he is basically just doing stupid things that makes the President look like a fool. But some look at what he has done and applauded him, saying everything he is doing is right. Many people think that it is a good thing we are over in Iraq because they want justice brought to the people responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Centers (even though it has never been proven Iraq had any thing to do with that.







As you can see in the cartoon above, it shows Bush holding a blown out match in one hand, and the world with a lit fuse on top of it in the other, with a caption that says “The lunatics take over the asylum.” This cartoon shows the year 2000 on it so it is obviously from when Bush was elected for the first time, but how did the artist know that Bush would do many things that some consider to ruin the world. The author may have been a little harsh on Bush at this point, because obviously he hadn’t done anything at this time to deserve saying that he was going to blow up the world.

The Author contradicts him self in a way because he is using two different metaphors saying that the “lunatics take over the asylum” but the picture has nothing to do with an asylum at all. If you had only seen the caption and not the picture, most likely you wouldn’t picture the president holding a bomb, you would picture him in a straight jacket, perhaps in a room with padded walls.

The way the artist draws Bush, it makes him seem extra funny looking, I know that many people like to poke fun at the way our President looks, but this artist makes his head very small at the top, I take this as the artist is saying that he has a small brain. He is wearing a suit in the picture, but it seems that every political cartoon has who ever their subject is, be in a suit.

Although some may be critical against Bush, the artist probably used a scare tactic in this picture. No one ever thought that Bush was literally going to blow up the world, or even completely ruin it. Sure he has made himself unpopular with many people, but think about what he has really done. One of the biggest problems people have with Bush is that he started this war in Iraq, but if after the attacks on the World Trade Centers had he not taken any sort of action, (even though Iraq and Al-Qaeda have no correction), people would have turned it around on him and say he is a bad president because he didn’t retaliate.

This cartoon also uses hasty generalization to attack Bush because how could the artist have known what kind of president he would become. It has kairos in it too because if this would have been drawn recently, then it would just be speaking the truth, but since it was before he ever even took office then at the time it had a certain aspect to it that says “wow what if our country elected the wrong man, what if he destroys our country.” He was pre-judging Bush and had no idea what he would do. This also shows ethos because the character of Bush is being attacked by the artist. The artist uses ethos through parody, because he is deliberately mocking our president, and deliberately saying that he will destroy this world, and making him look funny in the drawing instead of a normal picture of him.

The artist uses a scare tactic approach to this cartoon also. He is making everyone who sees this cartoon afraid that George Bush really will ruin this world. How possibly could one may single handedly ruin the world, well I hope we will never know because Bush has not done that……yet. The drawing also uses a slippery slope perspective, saying that now that we have elected George Bush as our president, we are all doomed.