Rhetoric and Issue

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/opinion/16cross.html?_r=1&n=Top/Opinion/Editorials%20and%20Op-Ed/Op-Ed/Contributors&oref=slogin

The speaker is talking about toy companies such as Mattel and Hasbro, being a bad influence for their customers, which are little kids in the most.

For them to have consumers in the first place, the companies must use one of the types of rhetoric, and it would be ethos. Ethos, because as company workers they are persuading and giving off a good image of what they are selling, and because their working area might affect their character.

It contains, as well, the persuasion of Logos, because once society discovered that Mattel products were painted with leaded paint, it was decided that for the children to not have contact with some sort of lead, all the toys were removed. This would be considered too, to be solved with the issue of choice, for the better future of the children; it is all about making the right decision to have a better performance.

Though the article is not exactly blaming the creators and factories of the physical objects (toys), the speaker is blaming the society and media for affecting the customers of these products in a psychological way. “They serve little positive purpose other than to teach children to be good consumers and want all the Dora the Explorer toys.”


Not only are they convincing them of buying all the “collections” but customers, mostly toddlers are exposed to adults’ daily life, such as money-wasting and the importance of jobs and business-running. It is good to give the kids a representation of what they are up to be living, but a child should have childhood as well.
So therefore, the article is dealing with the issue of blame as well; it talks about a certain thing that happened in the past, or that has been happening from the past, and that it is affecting us today gravely, why we are blaming it in the first place.