Alrighty, so this time we have an article from the Burnt Orange Report with the chuckle inducing title, "Why Is Dan Patrick Such a Pussy?" Instead of featuring a video of the Lieutenant Governor refusing to wrestle an alligator, the article questions his manhood for opting to publish an out of the way tweet in which he briefly condemns Donal Trump's words on women before turning attention to a similar controversy regarding Hillary Clinton.
Written for a liberal blog, the author holds no reservations as she thoroughly grills Patrick with ardent sarcasm and ad-hominems for seasoning fit to serve a casual liberal audience. The author raises the question as to why our "fearless dear leader" is unable to shell out a full bodied, fully public condemnation of Trump's words and actions regarding women, ending the article with a summary "Why is Dan Patrick such a pussy? What is he so fucking afraid of?" Though the author does a great job in conveying raw emotion through her diction, she fails to really elaborate upon her point in relation to a political context. Written as an inflammatory piece meant to rally supporters against a particular figure, it serves the author's purpose to charge the subject with a particular accusation instead of explaining the political considerations in Patrick's statement.
As mentioned in the article, Dan Patrick is Trump's Texas campaign chair (not to mention Lieutenant Governor of Texas) and as such faced a dilemma regarding his approach to Trump's words and actions regarding women; by openly and wholly condemning Trump, Patrick would risk an external show of division in the Trump campaign as well as further party division by voters and politicians who follow suit in his actions, essentially tossing a wrench into the Republican campaign. By not addressing the issue he himself would face ridicule and risk in-state political stability. These challenges resulted in the tweet that represented the best political move for his interests while attempting to redirect fire towards Hillary's own controversies.
Of course the author and audience don't care about his interests and as it would have in the liberal interest for Patrick to burn Trump, therefore the resulting (effective) rhetoric is to criticize the politically savvy decision as a function of fear, lack of genuine indignation (which may be true), executed by rallying around women's rights and capping it off with concrete criticism of Patrick's attempt to redraw fire.
Overall, pretty fun article.
