Spin The Media And Race Rhetorical Analysis

November 4, 2008 the date when the whole world fell silent in the anticipation of the result of the 2008 US presidential election. November 4, 2008 the date when Barack Hussein Obama became the first African- American who was elected the president of the United States. This critical analysis examines the article: “The Politics of Cognitive Dissonance: Spin, the Media, and Race (and Ethnicity) in the 2008 US Presidential Election”. The article was published by Marilyn Lashley, who is employed in Howard University, in December 2009. Marilyn Lashley’s main point is, first of all, that even in the contemporary era voters vote not for the candidate with strong attitude on the essential issues but the candidate with whom they have a similar cultural
The author continually returns to the point that the increase number of people vote for the candidate who has the same cultural integrity as they do. That is why one of the author’s arguments is that people are wary of the discrimination towards Barack Obama because of his race. In order to justify this argument, the author provides the comments written by people in the blogs. One of the comments was even written by an anonymous person. These people write that white privilege and discrimination against black people still exist and this benefits the Republican Candidate. First of all, blogs are not the credible and reliable source to use in order to support the arguments. It is difficult to identify the real situation by looking only at two comments that have been given by the author. It is not excluded that there have been people, from the same blogs that the author uses, who on the contrary comments that white privilege does not exist anymore and that race does not play an important role in the election, what matters is the stances of the candidate. This is indeed more logical because Barack Obama eventually has won the elections. Similarly, other people may write that they afraid of the discrimination by black people against white ones, but this would obviously
While reading the article it was difficult not to notice the tone which indicated the strong preference of the author for African-Americans. A substantial share of the article focuses on the negative role of race, the politics of cognitive dissonance and spin on the election. However, despite all the arguments that have been provided by the author, Barack Obama wins the election. This circumstance extremely contradicts the thesis statement and supporting claims of the article because it is stated there that there is a huge role of race, spin and cognitive dissonance in the voters’ decision. The winning of the election by Barack Obama leads to the conclusion that, first of all, race of Barack Obama haven’t played a negative role in the election and even though there have been the politics of cognitive dissonance and spin, people vote according to their own analysis. Probably, in order not to refute the author’s own arguments and personal opinion, she has decided not to give a formal conclusion and finishes the article by discussing the benefits Barack Obama’s election bring to the USA and Canada. This can also be considered as the subjectivity of the article, because objective article looks at the situation from different perspectives even if it contradicts the arguments in order not to be