Frank Bruni is a New York Times Op-Ed Columnist who focuses on politics, social issues, education and culture. Before the New York Times Bruni was a White House Correspondent, a restaurant critic, worked for The Times Magazine and was the Rome bureau chief. He also has written three books on ranging topics from himself to Bush to college. He is gay and in his column writes about American life and all its facets whether it pertains to him as a gay man or just to the American people in general.

Bruni uses many rhetorical strategies in his columns but mainly uses rhetorical questions, sarcasm and satire to talk about issues many don’t want to talk about. He addresses things like gay marriage, gay rights, racism, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and what it means to be a gay republican.

Rhetorical questions make readers pause and think about what really is going on and makes them question why something happened and how they view it. In “Sex, Lies and Houston”, he makes everyone think about how they view transgender people and the law passed in Houston that cut back transgender people’s human rights through the repetition of rhetorical questions.

“Were some of the same citizens who thrice elected an openly lesbian mayor singling out and vilifying transgender people per se?”

“Or were they buying the idea that legal protections for transgender people would provide a ruse for rapists?”

“Lifestyles?”

The questions he poses makes the reader think about how wrong the law was and how as a country we’ve gotten so far in the area of human rights but how far we have to go to get to true equality.

His columns easily deal with issues people don’t want to talk about because he titles them in ways that bring people in and make them want to read because they of their humor and wit. In his article “Hillary Health Shocker!”, he very sarcastically subtitles it “Because Google and Twitter never lie. There’s something afoot with Clinton”. He uses exaggeration and sarcasm to get people to read an article about what they probably already saw on their social media feeds. In “The Republicans’ Gay Freakout”, Bruni sarcastically points out how Republicans view the gay community and their place in American life. “Let’s by all means worry about the gays! Let’s make sure they know their place”, by saying that he is pointing out that the Republicans think about the gays last because of the laws they pass and the dialect they use. He brings up a hard topic but uses humor as a way to go about it.

In other columns he just says how he feels and where it involves Americans. In his column “Michael Phelps Made Me Cry (Good Tears)” he uses exaggeration describing how everyone spoke about the Olympics and the negativity surrounding Rio but he shows everyone the good and why the Olympics are the epitome of athletics and hard work. He points out how Americans look at not just the Olympics but American life in general with exaggeration, “Somewhere between the Zika stories, the doping stories and the stories about what a fetid, toxic swamp Rio really is, I got the message: I was supposed to feel cynical about these Olympics, the way we feel cynical about pretty much everything these days”.

 

1. The author’s dog died last week and everyone gave condolence’s for her death. On the same day, he posted a column “calling for greater international efforts to end Syria’s suffering and civil war”. Everyone got mad at this article and didn’t care that children were dying in Syria. Syria’s civil war and America’s role in it is a blurred line that no one knows if or how they should cross it.
2. The author’s purpose is to emotionally attach the reader’s to the people in Syria by making them think of puppies and golden retrievers so that people stop “otherizing” Syria and start caring about the people there. Human lives are just as important as animal lives.
3. To help the Syrian refugees especially the children
4. Logos and Pathos- uses logic and plays on emotions
5. Not very formal because he’s appealing to everyone. Tone shift from sad to serious sad.
6. Juxtaposition, Repetition, Rhetorical Questions
7. Yes and they do compliment the article because they juxtapose each other just like the article
8. It is definitely biased because it is something he cares about deeply.