Comparing Two Articles

“Is Jeb Bush a Republican Obama?” A headline I could not ignore. Researching the current presidential campaigns has taken up a lot of my time recently, and reading this article was no exception. A description of Jeb Bush as president Obama is unique; the Governor and President had different upbringings, hold different views, and appeal to different types of people. This article really drew me in by the title, but failed to keep my interest.

The writer of the article, David Frum, spent 80% of the article discussing Bush solely, and only 20% comparing the two politicians. Although the writer successfully uses anaphora in the paragraph in which he compares Bush and Obama, “Both chose wives who would more deeply connect them to their new chosen identity. Both derived from their new identity a sharp critique of their nation as it is. Both have built their campaign for president upon a deep commitment to fundamental transformation of their nation into what they believe it should be.” He uses these general examples to prove his point that Jeb Bush is similar to Obama, but it is not enough to convince me that Jeb Bush is a Republican Obama. While he does go into detail on Bush’s view, he rarely discusses Obama’s.

The strength of Frum’s article was the incorporation of videos. After he introduced one of Bush’s ideas, he had a video under it that revealed Bush specifically talking about his idea. It made the article come to life, but more specifically showed Bush as a physical human being. I didn’t just read about Jeb Bush, I was able to see him and analyze his character.

Nathaniel Rich’s, “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare” seemed like an article I’d fall asleep to reading. After reading the introduction, I gathered that the article was about chemicals in the environment and guessed that the author would try to urge me to “take action” to save the environment. I do love the earth and know that it is so important to save it, but reading articles on this topic is not something I would chose to do. The article ended up piquing my interest because these chemicals affected animals. I have a special place in my heart for the protection of animals, I have been a vegetarian for more than a year. The author efficiently reached out to me by adding statistics.
The writer kept repeating “70,000 people.” He said, “All 70,000 people were drinking poisoned water. Some had been doing so for decades.” And, “Bilott represented 70,000 people who had been drinking PFOA-laced drinking water for decades.” The writer even added a side bar that stated, “In total, 70,000 people were drinking poisoned water. Some had been doing so for decades.” He wanted to get his point across that many people had been drinking the poisoned water.

To further show the horrifying fact of poisoned water, he directed the readers’ attention towards this: “But if you are a sentient being reading this article in 2016, you already have PFOA in your blood. It is in your parents’ blood, your children’s blood, your lover’s blood. How did it get there? Through the air, through your diet, through your use of nonstick cookware, through your umbilical cord. Or you might have drunk tainted water.” He made it clear that it was important that anyone, yourself or your loved one, reading this article could be affected by bad water created by companies that did not care about polluting the environment.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/is-jeb-bush-a-republican-obama/385168/

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-became-duponts-worst-nightmare.html?_r=0