Clinton goes for the “Heart-Touching” appeal...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/02/AR2008040203030.html

Anne E. Kornblut, a columnist for the Washington Post evaluates Hillary Clinton and her usage of heart touching stories as she pushes her way through the Presidential Primaries. Kornblut starts off her article with one of Clinton’s major homerun threats in the Medicare aspect of her campaign. While the author uses the first quarter of the article in referring back to the heart touching story (which is a good thing), she then put a very un-needed paragraph in the middle of the story about how past presidents have had many personal stories and they have used at least one of the stories to be a catalyst for the rest of that topic in their campaign, if not for the entire campaign. It seemed very unnecessary to have this paragraph inserted where it was, especially because right after that paragraph she starts in on another story that Clinton is also using, and using it often.

While for the most part, the article was portraying Candidate Clinton in a positive light, there were other parts of the article that just left you scratching your head as to why this author really thought it was necessary for them to try and put Clinton on such a high pedestal. It seemed like she was just trying to look past some of the real stories that Clinton talks about in her speeches, and add in other non-impact stories. It sort of seemed like Red Herring to me, but that’s just my opinion. She makes comment about how a police officer died while he was leading a motorcade that was protecting Hillary Clinton. Granted it is a heart touching story, it was unnecessary for this article and she is just trying to do whatever she can to portray Candidate Clinton in the best light she possibly can.

The last thing that I saw wrong with this article was towards the end of it when she recounted the story of the woman who died from complications with her baby, AKA, the “homerun” that was mentioned earlier on in this blog. The thing I have wrong with it is when she called the woman a “pregnant pizza worker”, now I know that maybe that was her actual job, but was it really necessary for Kornblut to mention this statement? If she is going to mention it, at least do it in the middle of a paragraph that might be describing the woman and her past life. But Kornblut thinks that it is a great time to make this statement in the beginning of one of the paragraphs that does not even have anything to do with the rest of the paragraph, or even the rest of the paper for that matter. Again, she presents Red Herring to her audience.

I ask you now, why do people feel Red Herring is ok to do? It obviously doesn’t get their point across better. So why do people do it?