Ben Daniel

Mrs. Amber Buckley

Writing 101

10 October 2016

A Handful of Skittles:

A Rhetorical Analysis of Roger Cohen’s “The Worst of the Trumps”

            The UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said, “I urge you to celebrate the extraordinary courage and contributions of refugees past and present”. The Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times, Roger Cohen, is a man who is fascinated with politics. The ethos of a columnist is the credibly of the author. When it comes to political affairs, Cohen this author is definitely more than credible. He has been writing for the New York Times since 1990, where he started as a foreign correspondent. It wasn’t until 2001 when he was promoted to the foreign editor of the newspaper. He then moved on to writing columns for the International New York Times and began writing a column for the New York Times in 2009. He has also written two books about wars, “Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas of Sarajevo” and “Soldiers and Slaves: American POWs Trapped by the Nazis’ Final Gamble”.

            This is an election year. And not just any election year, but probably what will go down as the most eccentric election in American history. The two candidates are very unconventional and are both under their fair share of scrutiny. Also, across the world there are millions of refugees fleeing Syria. These refugees are looking for a safe home and there is a large controversy as to whether the United States should house these people. In this specific article, “Worst of the Trumps”, Cohen writes about Donald Trump’s policies when it comes to housing Syrian refugees. Cohen uses pathos by making the reader feel guilty about the millions of refugees very effectively. He also utilizes logos when citing the large numbers of refugees in need and the small percentage allowed in the United States in order to persuade Americans to take action and actively help resolve this Syrian refugee crisis. Finally he reinforces his point to the reader by using rhetorical questions.

            In opinionated columns such as this one, the us of pathos is usually prominent. Cohen attempts to play on the reader’s emotions in order to prove his point and even persuade the reader to take his side. He does this consistently throughout the piece. In an interview, Donald Trump Jr. compared the Syrian refugees to “a bowl of skittles”. Cohen uses this somewhat cold analogy against not only Trump Jr., but the entire Trump family. He writes, “after more than five years of war 4.8 million Syrians are refugees and 6.1 million are internally displaced and Trump Jr., even with his coddled New York existence, can surely make the calculation that this amounts to almost 2.5 million more human beings than live in the five boroughs” (Cohen). He attempts to use Trump Jr.’s analogy to paint a cold and compassionless picture of the entire Trump family and presidential campaign. He then goes on to compare the analogy to one made by a Nazi propagandist of the 1930’s Julius Streicher. Streicher compared Jews to poisonous mushrooms in a children’s book. When it comes to how to deal with the poisonous mushrooms, the mother says to the son “Just as a single poisonous mushroom can kill a whole family, so a solitary Jew can destroy a whole village, a whole city, even an entire Volk” (Cohen). While the analogies are somewhat similar, Cohen clearly attempts to play on the reader’s negative associations with the holocaust by affiliating the Nazi’s with the Trump campaign. Although appealing to the reader’s pathos is a strong tool used by the author, he uses facts even more.

            Cohen’s use of logos throughout the column is debatably is strongest persuasion tool. His use of numbers and statistics in order to describe just how vast the number of people in need in Syria are. He writes that “The American response to the Syrian crisis has been paltry — almost 12,000 refugees admitted since the war began, or 0.25 percent of the total. Part of the slowness has come from the rigor of the vetting process. But what do the Trumps care? They are concerned with just one message: Muslim equals danger” (Cohen). He emphasizes the relatively minuscule amount of refugees permitted in the Unites States and even goes on to speculate the thought process of the Trumps. Cohen also uses facts in order to support his argument when citing the beneficial things that immigrants have done for the country and especially the economy. He notes that, of the country’s start-up companies valued at over $1 billion, at least 51 percent have at least one founder who is an immigrant. He also goes on to write that “in 2013 more than 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies, including seven of the world’s 10 most valuable brands, were started by immigrants or their children” (Cohen). He uses this staggering numbers to show how Trump’s refusal to allow any immigrants into the country may not only be a “safe” strategy, but may also be harmful to the economy of the United States (something Trump claims to know how to fix).

            Throughout the entire column, Cohen emphasizes his points several times with the use of rhetorical questions. In fact, Cohen asks a rhetorical question on seven separate occasions in order to reiterate a previous point. After bringing up the quotation from Trump Jr. where he relates the millions of homeless refugees to a handful of skittles, he writes “Where to begin? With the fact that human beings are not Skittles?” (Cohen). This is clearly a rhetorical question used to show how insensitive the analogy from Trump Jr. is. He also goes on to write an entire paragraph comprised only of three rhetorical questions with the sole purpose of reasserting his point that he does not believe Trump Jr. has a firm grasp on just how many human beings are in desperate need of aid.

            Roger Cohen is truly an expert on rhetorical devices. His entire column is essentially made up of either pathos, logos, or rhetorical questions. He uses these devices very well when attempting to persuade the reader and get his point across. He clearly feels very strongly about this election and this international crisis and is simply attempting to stir up similar emotions in anyone who reads his work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited
Cohen, Roger. “Worst of the Trumps.” The New York Times 23 Sept. 2016. Web. 26 Sept. 2016.

Have you ever given much thought to the Native American stereotypes? I haven’t. For my entire life I have only heard of Native American stories and how each and every one of them are “connected to the Earth” and possess some mystic “powers”. In Sherman Alexie’s “Search Engine”, the main character Corliss states that “White people, no matter how smart, were too romantic about Indians” (Alexie 11). However, upon searching some articles in the New York Times, I have found several examples of Native Americans somewhat playing into the stereotype, and that there is in fact some truth to it. In Tejal Rao’s “The Movement to Define Native American Cuisine”, a Native American chef somewhat validates what Alexie says when he creates dishes that are made from miscellaneous herbs, spices, and plants (much like a white man would imagine every Native American does). This shows that there is some truth to Alexie’s claim due to the fact that the chef became so popular, serving his dishes to a predominately white crowd who is fascinated with his methods of cooking.