Wise Guy Nation

It's been about three weeks and we’ve finally been assigned our first essay; we’ll be evaluating the effectiveness of an argument in a written text. It’s taken me a while but I’ve finally decided to analyze “Hip Unchecked” by Steve Rushin. This is an article from a 1999 issue of Sports Illustrated in which he argues that American conversation has become satirical. He claims we’ve exchanged sincerity and compassion for sarcasm and cynicism. Rushin’s argument is an example of an epideictic argument in that he is trying to convince his readers that America is currently sarcastic; he doesn’t mention the past or what will happen in the future.

Rushin provides quite a bit of evidence throughout the rather short article; however, something seems to be missing. All of his evidence is of the male population even though he is trying to prove that both men and women have become increasingly sarcastic. There are ways that Rushin could have made his argument more effective providing not more but better evidence and I intend to explore those ideas in my essay.