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.
I decided to read and do a commentary post on my classmates blog "Football, Oil, and Guns- The Great State of Texas." Reading Juan's post on his blog was enjoyable because he has a great way of writing. He shows links and examples to the article he has chosen, while giving criticism in an intelligent way. He also chose a pretty interesting article that I was glad to read myself. Juan does a good job of presenting the reader with the overall message of the article, the authors core audience, and the authors attempted reasoning. He then ( and he gets brownie points for doing so) contributes a fair logic on the reasoning of the targeted Lieutenant Governor's lack of moral stance against the extremely sexist, misogynistic, and illegal acting Republican President Donald Trump. I agree with Juan's view points as well as the authors. The problem that the public and especially women have with Trump's words are not the use of "crude" diction. Women don't care that he used the word "pussy." This is 2016. We care that a presidential nominee and a citizen in our community has bragged about his past and future attempts at sexually assaulting women on the basis that he is wealthy and would get away with it. This coming from a candidate in a party that diligently attempts to override any constitutional rights with moral and "Christian" values. The hypocrisy is outstanding and disappointing. Dan Patrick is being labeled a "pussy" for not standing against those who violate them.
ReplyDeleteHowever Juan is intelligent enough to understand that in politics a sort of game must be played in order to stay in power or achieve certain power. So all though Dan Patrick may try to soothe certain backlash by tweeting (not acceptable in my opinion for an official if he or she wants to make a stance on an issue, by the way) instead of actively and formally expressing his disdain and withdrawal of support from such a morally incompetent ass-hat, he is doing it in a way that keeps his political career as a Republican safe. There is a reason why politicians have a stereotype of being liars. They have to sometimes hide from the truth. Abandoning his morals and values may be worth it to Dan Patrick in order to progress in his career. Or maybe as a man, he does not feel the same level of passion and anger as many of us who have pussies that don't need to be grabbed. Either way the original article brought to light the hypocrisy and lack of support in the whole scandal, and Juan's commentary on that did great in providing information, and the possible point of view of the other side.