Evaluating Evidence

The inspiration for the article I chose to evaluate came from our last class that was spent watching Southpark. I was quite curious as to exactly how crazy this "Catholic League" is, so I did some searching. Periodically, the Catholic League publishes posts on their opinion about certain current events. First of all, the website title is "For Religious and Civil Rights", which automatically is a turn off to anybody that does not love the league. However, I still trudged on to read this article.

The article is criticizes President Obama's choice to make Kevin Jennings the Director of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools. The article refers to Jennings as a "former drug user and irresponsible teen counselor" as well as a "Christian basher".

The graphic design of the article is presented as short and concise. This presents the evidence in a snippy, cut-and-dry manner. This shows that the author is disinterested in elaborating on support and either assumes the reader agrees with the subject, or does not care if they do not.

The tone of the article is very angry and narrow. The diction is very harsh and insulting towards the subject. There are many adjectives used, negative ones, to emphasize the point of Obama's poor decision.

Also, according to the article, because Jennings is a member of ACT UP, which is referred to as a "homosexual urban terrorist group", it is completely absurd to put him in a position of being in charge of anything.

Honestly, I did not know that a group of people could physically be this biased in anything. It must take talent. I am pretty impressed that they feel they can call a person a "morally challenged anti-Catholic homosexual" solely based on the fact that he is a member of an activist group. . .

This source basically has no credibility. Very few people could vouch for this site's credibilty because of the absurd way its "evidence" is presented. It resorts to a lot of name-calling and bashing of the man's past. Just because he was a drug-user in his youth, completely makes him too incompetent to hold this position. Wouldn't it make even more sense for a former drug user to be in charge of "Safe and Drug Free Schools"? The man obviously has a lot of experience in the field, and can honestly says he's "been there".

Reading this article, it is almost as if the Catholic wants people to disagree with them, as if they are coaxing people to disagree with them. I am curious as to how they have any followers with how irrational their arguments are presented.