Our Speech

We chose to do a humorous version of a McCain speech. We decided on this because McCain is an easy target for humor because you can play on his age, and we thought it would be easier and more fun to write a humorous speech. Not only is our speech humorous, but it is very satirical and pretty much the opposite of what McCain said in his actual speech. We made him really upset about the decision which gave us a lot of material and made it easy to write. We pretty much made it a speech that shows what losing candidates are probably thinking during their speech but would never actually say.

John McCain's Concession Speech

I think that John McCain's concession speech was effective in how he did not dwell on the campaign and the election, but looked forward to the future for America. McCain spends a lot of time at the beginning of his speech congratulating Obama and talking about what a historic and important event his election to president is for America. He encourages Republicans to put aside their differences with Democrats in order to make America a better place. His main focus of the speech is about his love for the country and how he wants to see it become an even better country than it is now. McCain uses a lot of pathos throughout his speech, not only talking about his love for the country, but also about the families of all the candidates and the great feeling that the African-American community must have because of Obama's election. He encourages everyone to put the country first, just like he said throughout his campaign, and support Obama in his presidency. I think one of the most effective parts of the speech is at the very end where he states "Americans never quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We make history." These four short sentences are effective in their ability to get his point across without being wordy. They are short and to the point and easy to remember. They also add to McCain's ideas of putting the country first and how great America is.

Bush's 2000 Victory Speech

In his 2000 victory speech, Bush focuses on bipartisan cooperation and what he plans to work on while in office. He repeatedly mentions that despite 2 parties, America needs to work together to solve its problems and that he was elected the president of the whole country, not just the Republicans. He is not boastful and is very respectful of Gore and the campaign that he ran. He also uses war language by saying that he will now work on healing our country after the election and that he salutes Gore and his efforts throughout the campaign. He uses pathos in his talk about his family, his faith and God, and asking for prayer not only for him and his family but also for Gore and his family. He does not use any quotes except for one from Thomas Jefferson when he talks about the close election of 1800 where Jefferson was elected six days after the election because of a tie in the electoral college vote. Bush lays out his plans to work on education, social security, medicare, taxes, military and problems in the society. He uses repetition of the word together when he talks about these plans saying that America needs to work on these problems as a united country. He does not use much humor, but simply thanks Americans for their vote and states what he plans to work on while in office. I think it is effective in promoting unity throughout America and asking for bipartisan cooperation in solving problems.

Unit 2 Research

In my primary research for Unit 2, I did searches through the three Lexis Nexis databases and the Gale databases shown in class. I was able to find some good articles from Lexis Nexis Academic. In the Congressional database, I wasn't able to find much about my topic, even changing my search terms. The Gale databases were also a good source for many different articles. I still need to do some more narrow research, and look more into the articles that I found, but I have been able to find some interesting information so far.

Unit 2 Topic

For my topic, I chose whether schools should teach other theories along with evolution. People who have experience with the topic would be school districts and teachers, politicians that have worked with the issue, and scientists. People that are talking about the topic are parents, school districts and teachers, politicians, and scientists. Some possible primary sources are speeches by candidates, statements and decisions by school districts and teachers, and any laws passed.

My Argument Using Humor

My argument that uses humor is a cartoon. Since my topic is gender, I decided focus in on how people question if Sarah Palin can handle raising 5 kids and possibly being the vice president. I show how women are usually better at handling and organizing many different situations at once by multi-tasking, whereas men usually need to focus on one thing at a time. I use humor to point out a flaw in other people's arguments about Palin. My argument is simple by focusing on one aspect of my topic and timely because people are questioning this right now.

Humorous Argument

My example of a humorous argument is a political cartoon from politicalcartoons.com. Here is the cartoon:













This cartoon is using humor to show how Barack Obama tends to focus on the past regarding the war in Iraq, especially in the presidential debate from Friday. When asked questions about the war he usually talks about how it was a bad idea and he opposed it instead of talking about the present and what needs to be done. In this case, humor is being used to point out a flaw. The author also parodies the popular movie "Back to the Future." This is an effective way to make their point because it is more light-hearted and is not neccessarily attacking Obama, so it should not offend his supporters.