Rhetoric throughout the Penn State Scandal

For the past several months the media has attempted to defile Joe Paterno’s great legacy which he worked so hard to build over the years. They have described him as more than merely incompetent, actually attributing to him a degree of evil greater than that of Jerry Sandusky in this incident. It seems that the need to exaggerate, sensationalize, and exploit in order to sell papers has resulted in a grave decrease in the journalistic integrity of the media’s works. It is this sensationalism which has lead people, who have no idea who Paterno is or what he has done, to see Paterno as a man who is more at fault than Sandusky, the actual perpetrator of the heinous acts. As recently as this Monday, one of my high school acquaintances, who attends Auburn University, posted on Facebook, “Are they going to turn JoePa’s statue around during the funeral so that way he can’t see anything?” I tried to respond to this comment calmly, although it was tremendously hard. Since I could not possibly explain to him all of the impact that Joe had on the Penn State community, I contented myself with naming only a few by telling him about Joe’s part in building one of the best libraries in the nation, an entire wing of the hospital, and an interfaith center where kids and people of all religions can come together to practice their religion. Even in the ensuing months after the tragic revelations were made, Joe never uttered a word of reproach for how he was treated and even encouraged all to embrace the values of being a Penn Stater. Not surprisingly, my high school acquaintance had never heard about any of these things. After talking to him a little while longer, he decided he would no longer post anything about Joe Paterno, and eventually he completely deleted that comment. A key lesson that I have learned from this entire fiasco at Penn State is that when other people disagree with you, you can’t be angry with them for disagreeing. Although I have previously been angry at those who disagree with my ideas, Joe has taught me that cooler heads actually do prevail and that actions do speak louder than words. Even though all odds may be against you, it is better to remain calm and give the media nothing, rather than react to opposing views and give the media another story to write.

Rhetoric in Elections

Every four years during a presidential election, each nominee attempts to make the voters believe that they are just an average joe. A successful example of this is how the way Reagan talked allowed one to believe that he was just another one of the guys when the reality was that he was a wealthy movie star. As the presidential election is just around the corner, it means that it is time for another presidential primary. During these primaries, each candidate attempts to prove to the majority of the population that you should vote for him because he is an average American just like the voter. This is ever present as Mitt Romney, the front-runner in the Republican primary, is attempting to prove that he is one of the average Americans. But this is far from the truth, as he, as well as many other political candidates, has attained significant personal wealth. The only difference on this issue from other candidates is that Mitt has gained most of it through private business acumen. Nonetheless, Mitt is still trying to appeal to be one of the average Americans. Unfortunately, this is one point that the other candidates won’t let rest as they are trying to force Mitt to publically release his tax records. Although it may have been a problem if the records showed that he wasn’t an average American, it is an even bigger problem that Mitt still hasn’t released these records. It is the thought of, “He must be guilty of something if he wants to withhold them from public scrutiny”, which ultimately does more political damage than just making them public. In the end, most Americans know that these candidates live a completely different lifestyle than themselves, so it isn’t that much of a shock to see that the candidates make a tremendously larger amount of money than the average American. But it is those “what ifs” that can do major damage when it comes time to tally up the votes. Nonetheless, it seems that every time there is a presidential election, each candidate attempts to use rhetoric to make voters believe that the candidate is just one of them, and yet the reverse is usually true, and these attempts to recast themselves in the image of an all American joe almost always holds very little ultimate impact.