Essay Assignment 4: Due November 25
Option A
See Monica Lewinsky Ted Talk video “The Price of Shame” and John Oliver video on “Public Shaming” and develop an argumentative thesis about what type of shaming is good for society and what kind of shaming cannot be defended. Consult Conor Friedersdorf essay “John Oliver’s Weak Case for Callout Culture.”
Option B
Read Kajsa Elas Ekman’s essay “All surrogacy is exploitation” and write an argumentative thesis that supports or refutes her claim.
Option C
Develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the human inclination for staying within the tribe of sameness as explained in David Brooks’ “People Like Us.” Consult Vice video about social media and tribalism; also consult Brian Klaas video on how tribalism in social media is undermining democracy. Also consult the role of Backfire Effect and tribalism.
Option D
Develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the claim that community college should be free. Be sure to have a counterargument section. For research, use Rahm Emanuel’s “A Simple Proposition to Revive the American Dream” and Jay Mathews’ “Maybe tuition-free community college comes at too high a price” and any other credible sources.
Option E
Support, refute, or complicate Harlan Coben’s argument from “The Undercover Parent” that spyware is a legit and compelling safety measure that parents may need to use for their children’s computers.
Option F
In context of Alfie Kohn’s “From Degrading to De-Grading,” support, refute, or complicate Alfie Kohn’s assertion that grading is an inferior education tool that all conscientious teachers should abandon. In other words, will students benefit from an accountability-free education? Why? Explain.
Option G
Watch The Game Changers on Netflix and develop an argument that either supports the claim that the documentary makes a persuasive case for a plant-based vegan diet or the assertion that the documentary is a work of cheap propaganda.
October 21 Essay 3 Due on turnitin. See Monica Lewinsky Ted Talk video “The Price of Shame” and John Oliver video on “Public Shaming” and develop an argumentative thesis about what type of shaming is good for society and what kind of shaming cannot be defended. If we have time, we will go over Kajsa Elas Ekman’s essay “All surrogacy is exploitation” and address essay strategies. Homework #10 is to read David Brooks’ Atlantic essay “People Like Us” and explain why we gravitate people who share our values.
October 30 We will go over “People Like Us” and watch two videos about social media and tribalism from Vice News and Brian Klaas. If we have time, we will go over surrogacy essay topic. Homework #11: Write 200-word paragraph that explains the free community college debate covered by Rahm Emanuel’s “A Simple Proposition to Revive the American Dream” and Jay Mathews’ “Maybe tuition-free community college comes at too high a price.”
November 4 Go over free community college debate. Your homework #12 for next class is to read Harlan Coben’s argument from “The Undercover Parent” and in 200 words argue if spyware is a legit and compelling safety measure that parents may need to use for their children’s computers.
November 6 Go over “The Undercover Parent.” Homework #13 is to read Alfie Kohn’s “From Degrading to De-Grading” and explain in 200-word paragraph how Kohn supports his claim that grades are bad for education.
November 11 Veteran’s Day Holiday
November 13 Go over “From Degrading to De-Grading” and Alfie Kohn’s “Why Can’t Everyone Get A’s?”
November 18 Chromebook In-Class Writing Objective: Write an introduction, thesis, and two supporting paragraphs.
November 20 Chromebook In-Class Writing Objective: Write supporting paragraphs, counterargument-rebuttal paragraph, conclusion, Works Cited page.
November 25 Essay #4 due on turnitin.
Option D
Develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the claim that community college should be free. Be sure to have a counterargument section. For research, use Rahm Emanuel’s “A Simple Proposition to Revive the American Dream” and Jay Mathews’ “Maybe tuition-free community college comes at too high a price” and any other credible sources.
Review Comma Splice and Sentence Fragments
Identify the comma splices and fragments below:
I buy my pants on eBay. They are “gently used” from nonsmoking homes. I find this way of shopping superior to brick and mortar stores. Where the fitting room floors are filthy with dirt and rubbish. The fluorescent lighting in the mirrored room is so hideous my reflection looks more like an anemic nightmare. Nearby, babies scream. I feel like I’m not so much in a clothing store but more in an overcrowded county health clinic. In the fitting room, I feel cold and vulnerable, there may be hidden cameras. I become paranoid that I’m being filmed or that a nurse will enter the room and give me a vaccine shot in the rear.
This aversion to going to stores like Target, Costco, and other big chains is part of a larger personality problem. A revulsion toward crowds, as a result, I don’t like busy restaurants, amusement parks, loud birthday parties, and the like. Some people ascribe agoraphobia, a fear of crowds, as the culprit. But I take issue with this. I don’t have a fear of crowds, I have enough confidence in my physical presence. I am a former Olympic Weightlifting and bodybuilding champion during my teen years. Even as I navigated through my thirties, forties and fifties, I stayed in shape by avoiding sugar and flour and exercising regularly in my garage with kettlebells. At 58, I stand at six feet and weigh exactly 200 pounds, my high school “fighting weight.” I feel I can handle myself in a crowd, I fear no one. The problem isn’t fear, rather, I experience unpleasantness among large groups of people. The environment is too loud, too cacophonous, and too chaotic for me to process all the noise. I am anxious, unsettled, and unable to concentrate on anything so that I withdraw into my turtle shell and brood.
My disposition is highlighted because I am the father of twin nine-year-old girls, and they sometimes attend birthday parties, their school’s annual “Daddy-Daughter Dance,” carnivals, and other functions that I cannot tolerate. When there is a school dance or carnival my daughters want me to attend, I persuade them to go with their mother or to not go at all. As a consolation, I offer to take them to Yogurtland, afterwards, I will buy them whatever they want on Amazon. These bribes may sound ethically dubious, but they help preserve my sanity. Which is seriously threatened by large groups of people.
About ten years ago, I tried having social media accounts as a way of connecting with people, but I ended up deleting those accounts due to an anxiety and depression that was just as acute as being in a crowded amusement park. In some ways, social media was worse. I had a special problem with married couples curating their mutual affection, showing themselves kissing each other at the beach, at a restaurant, at some party or other. Their cloying praise of each other was so clearly a facade failing to conceal their misery underneath that I started getting turned off by love itself. I’d look at these curated lives on Facebook and want to shake a giant jar of Prozac over a bowl of mint chip ice cream.
Should Community College be Free?
One. Rahm Emanuel in The Atlantic argues that community college, like K through 12, should be free.
Rahm Emanuel's essay "A Simple Proposal to Revive the American Dream"
(parenthetical headings are mine)
(History compels us to pay for community college because CC is the equivalent of yesterday's high school.)
During the industrial age, when high school was the gateway to the American dream, public-school systems covered the costs of earning a diploma. Today, however, as associate’s degrees have replaced high-school diplomas as the indispensable ticket into the middle class, families are forced to cover the costs of tuition and more.
(Information Economy requires post-high school education.)
If the information-age economy demands a workforce with additional training, we need to begin cutting students and families the same deal: Anyone willing to work hard and earn the degree should be able to attend community college—for free.
(Free college requires 3.0 GPA. so that by free we mean merit-based)
Because Washington has yet to shed any real light on how best to do this, each state and city has taken a different tack. Under the terms of the Chicago Star Scholarship, a program that has already enrolled more than 6,000 students, we tied eligibility to academic achievement. If a student at a local public high school maintains a B average, the City will provide a free associate’s degree at a local community college, regardless of immigration status. Then, through a program we call Star Plus, students who have maintained that 3.0 GPA are eligible to receive subsidized tuition at 18 of the four-year colleges located in Chicago, enabling many to graduate debt-free.
At the outset, we chose to make our program merit-based for two reasons. First, we suspected that setting a rigorous academic standard would change attitudes inside Chicago’s high schools. If students in grades nine to 12 know that good grades will earn them a guaranteed free education, they’re further incentivized to run through the tape. (Chicago’s high-school graduation rate grew from 56.9 percent in 2011 to 78.2 percent in 2018.) Second, we theorized that making the scholarship merit-based would help the program avoid the plague of college dropouts—and that’s exactly what’s happened. Chicago Star’s retention rate is 86 percent, well above the national average of 62.7 percent.
(Free includes other costs to expand higher education access to those who are economically challenged.)
Next, we decided to institute a series of carrots and sticks. Unlike some of its sister programs, Chicago Star covers not only tuition, but books and public transportation as well. And we decided to require recipients to complete the program in three years, allowing students to earn their associate’s degree while working full-time, but precluding them from dragging the process out indefinitely. Our shot-clock approach works: 49.7 percent of Chicago Star recipients complete their degree, more than double the national average of 23.6 percent.
The demographic impact is remarkable. More than two-thirds of Chicago Star scholars are Hispanic (compared with 20 percent in Oregon)—and 80 percent are first-generation college students (compared with 43 percent in Tennessee). But proud as we are of these successes, there’s no substitute for rigorous data analysis, and Washington should get in the game of determining which approaches work best. Policy makers in Arkansas, Hawaii, Kentucky, Nevada, and other states working to shape similar programs should know how free community college affects high-school graduation rates, for example, and whether “use it or lose it” time limits drive completion rates. As cities and states serve as laboratories of democracy, our national leaders must look to these programs as models for modernizing and expanding access to higher education.
Counterargument
Two. We see that free community college is no panacea or cure-all in The Washington Post article.
Jay Mathews' "Maybe tuition-free community college comes at too high a price":
(parenthetical headings are mine)
How can that be? Many community college students don’t have much money. Why not make their struggles to get an education easier by making sure they don’t have to pay that bill?
“Providing tuition-free opportunities at public colleges and universities is far superior than the typical hodgepodge of aid packages and loans that are cobbled together by many students,” says the nonpartisan, nonprofit Campaign for Free College Tuition. Some polls show more than 80 percent support for that idea.
Mullane is not allowed to promote his views on state and federal education spending during his working hours at Gateway Community College in New Haven, Conn. His job is to help students negotiate the complicated pathways of learning so they can establish a career and a life. What does he know of legislative politics?
He knows community colleges. He has spent his personal and vacation time doing research and making convincing arguments that getting rid of tuition would make it harder for his students to earn the certificates and diplomas they need.
“States can make college as free as they want,” he told me, “but if they don’t have a system in place to help students get through these institutions and graduate on time, with a college degree that allows them to go directly into a good job or to fully transfer the credits to a bachelor’s degree, they are doing more harm than good.”
(Free college means less resources for other areas resulting in a compromised education.)
The free tuition idea, he said, “involves spending hundreds of billions of dollars and flooding public colleges and universities with new students.” Increased spending on tuition to make sure everyone gets a free ride would mean less money to hire more professors and less money to expand room in the most important classes so that students can get what they need to graduate, he said.
(Free college is no solution to abysmal completion rates.)
Mullane testified before the Connecticut legislature in favor of a bill that would have allowed students to transfer all community college credits to the University of Connecticut and the Connecticut State universities. The two big systems opposed that measure. They said their transfer systems were working fine, despite research showing that only 6 percent of Connecticut community college students are in a degree program that allows them to transfer all their credits to the state universities.
Sixty-one percent of community college students told the Center for Community College Student Engagement at the University of Texas in 2016 that they could get the certificates and degrees they sought. Yet only 39 percent of community college students get a certificate, an associate degree or a bachelor’s degree from a four-year college within six years.
Only 15 percent of students who begin in a community college ever earn a bachelor’s degree. Traditionally, colleges have fought for more students — something free tuition would give them — but have done little to ensure successful student outcomes because state funding has usually been based on enrollment.
Mullane endorses what many scholars of the community college system say: States need to tear down traditions that keep many students stuck in remedial courses and leave transfer paths to four-year schools that look like a Halloween season cornfield maze.
Mullane said he is pushing for “state laws that mandate statewide transfer pathways for students.” Then, they have to be enforced, he said — which could prove even more difficult. That is not happening with many such laws at the moment.
There is good news in some parts of the country. Florida has one of the best transfer systems in the country. But its reforms are complicated and hard to summarize in one slogan. How can it beat a movement with a banner as simple and compelling as “Free Tuition Now”?
Suggested Outline
Paragraph 1, your introduction, summarize Rahm Emanual's case for making free community college.
Paragraph 2, your claim, support or refute Emanual's argument by addressing Jay Mathews' objections.
Paragraphs 3-6 are your supporting paragraphs.
Paragraph 7 is your counterargument-rebuttal.
Paragraph 8 is your conclusion, a restatement of your thesis.
Option B
Read Kajsa Elas Ekman’s essay “All surrogacy is exploitation” and write an argumentative thesis that supports or refutes her claim.
Outline for Surrogacy Debate
Paragraph 1: Introduce the subject of surrogacy with an attention-getting surrogacy nightmare scenario. There are too many to count, so just choose one or two for your introduction.
Paragraph 2: Transition to your thesis in which you agree or disagree with Kajsa Ekis Ekman's essay "All Surrogacy Is Exploitation." Your thesis should include 4 reasons that support your thesis.
Paragraphs 3-6: Supporting paragraphs
Paragraph 7: Counterargument-rebuttal
Paragraph 8: powerful restatement of thesis for conclusion
Kajsa Elas Ekman’s essay “All surrogacy is exploitation” and address essay strategies.
That something is not quite right about surrogacy has been evident for some time. Ever since the commercial surrogacy industry kicked off in the late 1970s, it has been awash with scandals, exploitation and abuse. From the infamous “Baby M” case – in which the mother changed her mind and was forced, in tears, to hand over her baby – to the Japanese billionaire who ordered 16 children from different Thai clinics. There has been a total commodification of human life: click; choose race and eye colour; pay, then have your child delivered.
Then there’s the recent case of the American surrogate mother who died; or the intended parents who refused to accept a disabled child and tried to get their surrogate to abort; not to mention the baby factories in Asia.
This week, Sweden took a firm stand against surrogacy. The governmental inquiry on surrogacy published its conclusions, which the parliament is expected to approve later this year. These include banning all surrogacy, commercial as well as altruistic, and taking steps to prevent citizens from going to clinics abroad.
This is a ground-breaking decision, a true step forward for the women’s movement. Initially divided on the issue women came together and placed the issue higher up on the agenda. Earlier in February, feminist and human-rights activists from all over the world met in Paris to sign the charter against surrogacy, and the European Parliament has also called on states to ban it.
The major objections to the Swedish report have come from intended fathers, saying that if a woman wants to be a surrogate, surely it is wrong to prevent her from doing so. It is telling that few women cry over this missed opportunity. It is, after all, demand that fuels this industry.
Surrogacy may have been surrounded by an aura of Elton John-ish happiness, cute newborns and notions of the modern family, but behind that is an industry that buys and sells human life. Where babies are tailor-made to fit the desires of the world’s rich. Where a mother is nothing, deprived even of the right to be called “mum”, and the customer is everything. The west has started outsourcing reproduction to poorer nations, just as we outsourced industrial production previously. It is shocking to see how quickly the UN convention on the rights of the child can be completely ignored. No country allows the sale of human beings – yet, who cares, so long as we are served cute images of famous people and their newborns?
To save surrogacy from accusations like this, some resort to talking of so-called “altruistic” surrogacy. If the mother is not being paid, there is no exploitation going on. Maybe she is doing it out of generosity, for a friend, a daughter or a sister.
The Swedish inquiry refutes this argument. There is no proof, says the inquiry, that legalising “altruistic” surrogacy would do away with the commercial industry. International experience shows the opposite – citizens of countries such as the US or Britain, where the practice of surrogacy is widespread, tend to dominate among foreign buyers in India and Nepal. The inquiry also says that there is evidence that surrogates still get paid under the table, which is the case in Britain. One cannot, says the inquiry, expect a woman to sign away her rights to a baby she has not even seen nor got to know yet – this in itself denotes undue pressure.
In reality, “altruistic” surrogacy means that a woman goes through exactly the same thing as in commercial surrogacy, but gets nothing in return. It demands of the woman to carry a child for nine months and then give it away. She has to change her behaviour and risk infertility, a number of pregnancy-related problems, and even death. She is still used as a vessel, even if told she is an angel. The only thing she gets is the halo of altruism, which is a very low price for the effort and can only be attractive in a society where women are valued for how much they sacrifice, not what they achieve.
India and Thailand do not want their female citizens to become the baby factories of the world. Now it is time for Europe to take responsibility. We are the buyers, we need to show solidarity and stop this industry while we can.
Option F
Read Kajsa Elas Ekman’s essay “All surrogacy is exploitation” and write an argumentative thesis that supports or refutes her claim.
Typical Surrogate Dynamic
The Hill chronicles the heart-breaking case of Melissa Cook.
One. What is a typical surrogate mom situation?
A woman hits about 40 because she's worked during that time, she has a lot of financial resources, and she realizes she's too old to bear a child, so she seeks a younger, less financially endowed woman.
The dynamic of power is someone with money buying someone's body and that body belongs to a someone of modest financial means.
An aside: Just like the documentary we saw on temporary work, whenever we're short on financial resources we find ourselves vulnerable to sacrificing our bodies to survive.
I'd rather be a surrogate mother than work in a chicken farm.
The total cost is $80,000, and this includes psychological evaluations. However, in India, the total cost is $10,000.
Causes to be Alarmed About Surrogacy:
One. high-risk multiple pregnancies
Two. Tech is getting more advanced resulting in scenarios for which we have no legal precedent.
Three. Lack of screening parents
Four. Class disparity
Five. Lack of regulation and oversight
Netflix
Follow This: "Whose Embryos?"
As we read in "Who Becomes a Surrogate?":
In the United States, statistics show that surrogates fall into the average household income category of under $60,000. About 15 to 20 percent are military wives. Some are single women. Those who are married have husbands who support paid surrogacy; surrogacy is obviously not something you can hide, or withstand with a spouse who is not on board emotionally. They have health insurance. They get paid well—the surrogacy fee paid directly to surrogate mothers who work for CSP runs from $20,000 to $30,000 per pregnancy, tax-free. Experienced surrogates often command higher fees; as in any position, experience counts. Of the women who serve as surrogates for CSP, roughly 35 percent repeat the experience; in the U.S. there is no limit to the number of times a surrogate can carry for-profit babies.
Two. What are the typical steps at attempting pregnancy?
First, the husband and wife have a doctor implant their embryo in a surrogate's womb.
If step one doesn't work, step two is combining the husband's sperm with a surrogate's egg (a donor egg) and implanting into another surrogate's womb.
In the case of Dr. Patel, she increases the chances of success by implanting "about five embryos at at time, aborting fetuses if they numbered more than two."
Three. What common abuses exist in the surrogate market?
See "Surrogate Motherhood: A Violation of Human Rights"
See "Commercial Surrogacy Is a Rigged Market in Wombs for Rent"
See "Reject Commercial Surrogacy As Another Form of Human Trafficking"
See this essay about surrogacy and child abuse.
See this essay about allegations of an unfit father.
Four. What are some ways people might defend surrogacy?
Surrogacy provides a moral solution if safeguards are met. However, one may counter-argue that the legal safeguards are too vulnerable to be upheld.
Surrogacy is evil, but in poor countries it can be the lesser of two evils where families otherwise would make no income. Some may counter-argue that the monetary benefits are short-term and are cancelled by the long-term harm done to the surrogate mother who is often forced into surrogacy by her father.
Surrogacy is sometimes done by a loving family member, a sister, a cousin, for two examples, and the final result is joy for all concerned. Some may counter-argue that these cases are the exception, not the rule, and we shouldn't make policies based on rare occurrences.
"John Oliver's Weak Case for Callout Culture" in The Atlantic by Conor Friedsorf
Friedsorf begins with good introduction hook, clear argumentative thesis, and compelling arguments:
On the most recent episode of Last Week Tonight, an HBO show that often sounds as if The Daily Show and The Rachel Maddow Show had combined their writers’ rooms, John Oliver dedicated his monologue to public shaming.
After a brief survey of excesses culled from local television-news reports, the host said, “You may be expecting me to say that all public shaming is bad, but I don’t actually think that.” In his estimation, “misdirected internet pile-ons can completely destroy people’s lives.” But if public shaming is “well directed,” then “a lot of good can come out of it. If someone is caught doing something racist or a powerful person is behaving badly, it can increase accountability.”
The balance of the segment did not substantiate his thesis.
As an example of the phenomenon’s ostensible upside, he alighted on Tucker Carlson, shamed most recently for resurfaced remarks that he made while talking to a shock jock. “He publicly called Iraqis ‘semiliterate, primitive monkeys,’ compared women to dogs, and basically said that Warren Jeffs, who is serving a life sentence for the sexual assault of his underage brides, wasn’t that bad,” Oliver observed. “Tucker refused to apologize, and all week long there have been trending hashtags like #BoycottTuckerCarlson.”
The case is “a good example of an internet pile-on being merited,” Oliver continued, setting forth these standards: “He’s a public figure, he made his comments publicly, they are appalling, and he’s standing by them.” Those are relevant, defensible metrics. (My own assessments of Carlson are here, here, here, and here.)
Friedsorf's Argument #1: Shaming Doesn't Achieve Anything: It doesn't move the needle:
But it does not follow that public shaming achieves “a lot of good” or “accountability.”
In The Stranger, Katie Herzog argued that Carlson’s public shaming “may have made the public shamers feel good,” but that it “accomplished precisely nothing.” He did not apologize. He’s still on the air. His ratings aren’t lower.
What was accomplished?
It’s possible that the shaming’s overall societal effects were negative. Offensive remarks that would’ve been lost to memory were resurfaced in a way that perhaps upset some Iraqis, women, or victims of statutory rape, among others. The fact that Carlson declined to apologize while suffering no consequences perhaps undermined anti-bigotry taboos and surely did not strengthen them.
Counterargument to Argument #1: Sometimes shaming does work; sometimes it doesn't. CF is making an oversimplification. Shaming worked against Louis C.K. and Bill O'Reilly who worked at Fox News was ousted for his abusive behavior toward women.
Oliver next turned to the parents caught bribing their kids’ way into college. “I’ve got no problem making fun of the parents doing that or the guy who ran that service,” he said. I don’t have a problem with such jokes either—though some of the parents weren’t public figures and it isn’t clear if they’re standing by their actions, so the aforementioned standards weren’t all met.
“Where it gets more complicated is with the kids,” the host continued. “How much is it fair to make fun of them? Well, I would argue one of them, Olivia Jade, is a public figure. She has nearly one and a half million followers on Instagram and has worked with all these companies. She has actively made money off her brand as a fun, relatable college student.”
He proceeded to show a video in which Jade talks about her lack of interest in attending classes. “Even before what we learned this week, that was a little tone-deaf,” he said. “Though not quite as tone-deaf as this sponsored post that she made for Amazon, in which she’s decorated her dorm room at USC with the letters OJ. And if you don’t see the connection between the letters OJ and USC,” he concluded, “maybe it should cost half a million dollars to get you in there.”
OJ are her initials, and O. J. Simpson attended USC.
It isn’t clear that Jade knew about her parents’ objectionable actions or that she would stand by them. Oliver nonetheless thinks she’s a justifiable target, because she’s a “public figure,” based on Instagram followers, and because she’s “tone-deaf,” having put her initials in a USC dorm room without recognizing a second meaning to those letters, connected to an event that occurred years prior to her birth.
Argument #2: John Oliver doesn't have a consistent definition of what he considers "shame-worthy"; as a result, Oliver shames teenagers whose culpability in immoral behavior is somewhat dubious.
I’m not taking a position on whether Oliver’s jokes were out of bounds, only observing that he didn’t actually apply a consistent “shame-worthy” test. Calling a teenager dumb isn’t doing any good or adding any accountability to the world.
Counterargument #2: CF is using a Straw Man by saying Oliver called the teenage girl "dumb"; such a claim sounds worse than observing that Oliver pointed out the teen girl's inane behavior. Did Oliver call her "dumb" or did he simply point out how a girl of privilege abused that privilege by taking up a position at a high-tier college? Is such an observation out of bounds?
“Now, I’m comfortable making those jokes. Am I comfortable with the whole internet piling on her? Honestly, that kind of depends on how and for how long,” Oliver said. “If it’s death threats and vile comments, then of course not.”
But aren’t vile online comments, at the very least, inevitable when an HBO host marshals his writers’ room to heap scorn and contempt on a teenager for laughs?
“If it defines her forever, that seems unfair,” he said. “The window for making fun of her is probably closing.” But isn’t being mocked by a major television show a determinant of how long a scandal defines a person?
Argument #3: Oliver "sneaks in" (a sign of poor judgment) the short window standard that says during the open window (blood in the water for the sharks of the Twitter Outrage Machine) we have a license to be as mean as possible. Why? Because soon the window will close; however, after the window closes, the damage exacted upon the victim remains.
In any event, Oliver snuck in another shaming standard: a window for mockery that closes relatively quickly.
“That is the difficult thing here,” he continued. “When joining in a pile-on, there’s a lot to take into account. When millions of people all feel the need to weigh in and do it potentially for years, the punishment can be vastly disproportionate to the offense. And perhaps the best example of this is Monica Lewinsky.”
The host admitted that he participated in Lewinsky jokes that he now regrets. Then he resurfaced a series of old Jay Leno jokes about the sex scandal.
“Those jokes have not dated well in any sense of the word,” Oliver said. “And they’re pretty rough, especially coming from a guy who just this week complained about late-night TV, saying he’d ‘like to see a bit of civility come back.’”
At that point, the segment took a turn.
In the middle of a monologue acknowledging that he had engaged in unjustified shaming in the past and arguing that we all ought to do better now, Oliver proceeded to shame Jay Leno for hypocrisy.
“You know, like that time he did a bit with a fake book about Lewinsky titled The Slut in the Hat,” Oliver said, suddenly righteously indignant. “And if that’s what he means by civility, may I offer my new book, Oh the Places You Can Go Fuck Yourself, Jay Leno?! Look! Look how civil I’m being! Look how civil this is.”
One could argue that Oliver was holding Leno “accountable” for jokes he told in the 1990s that now seem cruel and unfunny. But Oliver could’ve criticized the old jokes while still treating Leno as he treats himself: as an imperfect but not malign comic who told jokes that are regrettable in hindsight.
Surely Leno ranks low on any list of evil forces in American society. He doesn’t warrant a “Go fuck yourself,” delivered here for the supposed hypocrisy of making uncivil jokes on a subject and then, a quarter century later, in a polarized moment, yearning for more civility.
And whether one feels love, disdain, or indifference toward The Tonight Show under Leno, it was arguably more civil on average than Last Week Tonight.
Indeed, Oliver regularly goes the “Go fuck yourself” route, and it isn’t because profane shaming does “a lot of good” for society—it’s because it’s popular. The conflict-hungry internet ate up the segment; it circulated with a telling headline that is often attached to viral Oliver clips: “John Oliver Destroys Jay Leno’s ‘Civility’ Plea With Clips of His Disgusting Monica Lewinsky Jokes.” Last Week Tonight depends on a formula that includes a villain, a punching bag, someone to “destroy,” so that audience members can feel that they’re part of a morally and cognitively superior in-group, perennially exasperated by malign idiots in the out-group. (The formula’s genius: Virtue-signal charmingly with mistake theory, then go viral with conflict theory.)
Counterargument to Argument #3: I concede CF's point that Oliver's satire is often vicious, unforgiving, and over the top, but that is the nature satire. Satire exists and is effective and entertaining because it has big and sharp teeth. CF wants to dull John Oliver's teeth, which in effect would take away Oliver's livelihood. Some might submit that CF is being a bit of a snowflake in his manufactured "offense" of Oliver's brutal satire.
Argument #4: Oliver's moral indignation and self-righteousness collapse under the hypocrisy of his "dubious" and "maximalist contempt."
The show excels when a subject warrants anomalous opprobrium. But the show sometimes tries to shoehorn dubious material into the template of righteous, indignant, maximalist contempt.
Giving Leno the indignant treatment is no unforgivable sin. Comedians have thick skin, and maybe they’re owed some of what they dish out. But Last Week Tonight does an awful lot of segments that begin as a nuanced look at a complex matter, only to devolve into finger-pointing. The show indulges the fantasy that what ails us would be fixed … if only we could take that malign, hypocritical idiot and “destroy” him.
The same self-serving fantasy causes millions to dramatically overestimate the amount of good that public shaming can do.
Counterargument to Argument #4: Indeed, I will concede CF's point that Oliver fails to meet any kind of moral purity test with his over-the-top "maximalist contempt" style satire; however, on a larger point, Friedsorf delivers a logical fallacy that fails to convince us of Argument #4, namely, the moral equivalency fallacy: The moral bankruptcy of the people lambasted by John Oliver is far more egregious than Oliver's smaller moral lapses.
We can be snowflakes and cry over the cruelty of satire, as Friedsorf would have us do, or we can look at brutal satire as a necessary tonic for the world's nonstop effluvium of BS that needs to be called out.
I'd rather live in a world with Oliver's caustic, sometimes morally inconsistent satire than Friedsorf's muted, defanged, timid, milquetoast, polite criticism.
Conventional Toulmin Structure Essay Outline
Paragraph 1: Outline John Oliver's argument for "callout culture."
Paragraph 2. Outline Friedsorf's critique of Oliver's argument.
Paragraph 3. Develop an argumentative thesis with 3 reasons to support your thesis.
Paragraphs 4-6: Your supporting paragraphs
Paragraph 7: Counterargument-Rebuttal
Paragraph 8: Conclusion, a powerful restatement of your thesis
Outline for Refutation Model Essay
Paragraph 1: Outline John Oliver's argument for "callout culture."
Paragraph 2. Outline Friedsorf's critique of Oliver's argument for "callout culture."
Paragraph 3: Develop a thesis that refutes either Oliver or Friedsort by refuting 4 flaws in their argument.
Paragraphs 4-7: You're taking a baseball bat and knocking down each flaw, one at a time.
Paragraph 8: Conclusion, a powerful restatement of your thesis.
Example of an Essay That Never Uses First, Second, Third, Fourth, Etc., for Transitions, But Relies on "Paragraph Links"
Stupid Reasons for Getting Married
People should get married because they are ready to do so, meaning they're mature and truly love one another, and most importantly are prepared to make the compromises and sacrifices a healthy marriage entails. However, most people get married for the wrong reasons, that is, for stupid, lame, and asinine reasons.
Alas, needy narcissists, hardly candidates for successful marriage, glom onto the most disastrous reasons for getting married and those reasons make it certain that their marriage will quickly terminate or waddle precariously along in an interminable domestic hell.
A common and compelling reason that fuels the needy into a misguided marriage is when these fragmented souls see that everyone their age has already married—their friends, brothers, sisters, and, yes, even their enemies. Overcome by what is known today as "FOMO," they feel compelled to “get with the program" so that they may not miss out on the lavish gifts bestowed upon bride and groom. Thus, the needy are rankled by envy and greed and allow their base impulses to be the driving motivation behind their marriage.
When greed is not impelling them to tie the knot, they are also chafed by a sense of being short-changed when they see their recently-married dunce of a co-worker promoted above them for presumably the added credibility that marriage afforded them. As singles, they know they will never be taken seriously at work.
If it's not a lame stab at credibility that's motivating them to get married, it's the fear that they as the years tick by they are becoming less and less attractive and their looks will no longer obscure their woeful character deficiencies as age scrunches them up into little pinch-faced, leathery imps.
A more egregious reason for marrying is to end the tormented, off-on again-off-on again relationship, which needs the official imprimatur of marriage, followed by divorce, to officially terminate the relationship. I spoke to a marriage counselor once who told me that some couples were so desperate to break-up for good that they actually got married, then divorced, for this purpose.
Other pathological reasons to marry are to find a loathsome spouse in order to spite one’s parents or to set a wedding date in order to hire a personal trainer and finally lose those thirty pounds one has been carrying for too long.
Envy, avarice, spite, and vanity fuel both needy men and women alike. However, there is a certain type of needy man, whom we'll call the Man-Child, who finds that it is easier to marry his girlfriend than it is to have to listen to her constant nagging about their need to get married. His girlfriend’s constant harping about the fact their relationship hasn’t taken the “next logical step” presents a burden so great that marriage in comparison seems benign. Even if the Man-Child has not developed the maturity to marry, even if he isn’t sure if he’s truly in love, even if he is still inextricably linked to some former girlfriend that his current girlfriend does not know about, even if he knows in his heart of hearts that he is not hard-wired for marriage, even if he harbors a secret defect that renders him a liability to any woman, he will dismiss all of these factors and rush into a marriage in order to alleviate his current source of anxiety and suffering, which is the incessant barrage of his girlfriend’s grievances about them not being married.
Indeed, some of needy man’s worst decisions have been made in order to quell a discontented woman. The Man-Child's eagerness to quiet a woman’s discontent points to a larger defect, namely, his spinelessness, which, if left unchecked, turns him into the Go-With-the-Flow-Guy. As the name suggests, this type of man offers no resistance, even in large-scale decisions that affect his destiny. Put this man in a situation where his girlfriend, his friends, and his family are all telling him that “it’s time to get married,” and he will, as his name suggests, simply “go with the flow.” He will allow everyone else to make the wedding plans, he’ll let someone fit him for a wedding suit, he’ll allow his mother to pick out the ring, he’ll allow his fiancé to pick out the look and flavor of the wedding cake and then on the day of the wedding, he simply “shows up” with all the passion of a turnip.
The Man-Child's turnip-like passivity and his aversion to argument ensure marital longevity. However, there are drawbacks. Most notably, he will over time become so silent that his wife won’t even be able to get a word out of him. Over the course of their fifty-year marriage, he’ll go with her to restaurants with a newspaper and read it, ignoring her. His impassivity is so great that she could tell him about the “other man” she is seeing and he wouldn’t blink an eye. At home he is equally reticent, watching TV or reading with an inexpressive, dull-eyed demeanor suggestive of a half-dead lizard.
Whatever this reptilian man lacks as a social animal is made up by the fact that he is docile and is therefore non-threatening, a condition that everyone, including his wife, prefers to the passionate male beast whose strong, irreverent opinions will invariably rock the boat and deem that individual a troublemaker. The Go-With-the-Flow-Guy, on the other hand, is reliably safe and as such makes for controlling women a very good catch in spite of his tendency to be as charismatic and flavorful as a cardboard wafer.
A desperate marriage motivation exclusively owned by needy, immature men is the belief that since they have pissed off just about every other woman on the planet, they need to find refuge by marrying the only woman whom they haven’t yet thoroughly alienated—their current girlfriend. According to sportswriter Rick Reilly, baseball slugger Barry Bonds’ short-lived reality show was a disgrace in part because for Reilly the reality show is “the last bastion of the scoundrel.” Likewise, for many men who have offended over 99% of the female race with their pestilent existence, marriage is the last sanctuary for the despised male who has stepped on so many women’s toes that he is, understandably, a marked man.
Therefore, these men aren’t so much getting married as much as they are enlisting in a “witness protection program.” They are after all despised and targeted by their past female enemies for all their lies and betrayals and running out of allies they see that marriage makes a good cover as they try to blend in with mainstream society and take on a role that is antithetical to their single days as lying, predatory scoundrels.
The analogy between marriage and a witness protection program is further developed when we see that for many men marriage is their final stab at earning public respectability because they are, as married men, proclaiming to the world that they have voluntarily shackled themselves with the chains of domesticity in order that they may be spared greater punishments, the bulk of which will be exacted upon by the women whom they used and manipulated for so many years.
Because it is assumed that their wives will keep them in check, their wives become, in a way, equivalent to the ankle bracelet transmitters worn by parolees who are only allowed to travel within certain parameters. Marriage anchors man close to the home and, combined with the wife’s reliable issuing of house chores and other domestic duties, the shackled man is rendered safely tethered to his “home base” where his wife can observe him sharply to make sure he doesn’t backslide into the abhorrent behavior of his past single life.
Many men will see the above analysis of marriage as proof that their fear of marriage as a prison was right all along, but what they should learn from the analogy between marriage and prison is that they are more productive, more socialized, more softened around his hard edges, and more protected, both from the outside world and from themselves by being shackled to their domestic duties. With these improvements in their lives, they have actually, within limits, attained a freedom they could never find in single life.