Joel_Stein

Sterling Miller Eng 140 Bring On the Elites! When it comes to Joel Stein controversy is his middle name. For many what Stein writes is appalling and edgy, which sheds a message that isn’t common in today’s media. Though even these readers may hate his guts, in the end they’re still reading his articles and giving him an audience. This type of black or white emotion that comes with his articles is a part of the ethos when he is making his arguments. For example in the Bring On the Elite he in a few instances is in a way establishing his credibility in writing this article in the first place. From the opening sentence he says “I went to a better college than you did. That does not make me a better person than you. It does, however, make me smarter, more knowledgeable, more curious, and more ambitious. So, in a lot of ways, better.” This type of gloating statement you wouldn’t expect from someone who went to a prestigious school such as Stanford as he did. Instead though this shocking statement does work to establish his creditability and bring the reader agreeing or disagreeing to continue on to the rest of the article. Secondly, as important as making the reader interested in your article and having emotion behind it, is the importance of supporting your argument with logos facts or reason. I’d say the majority of his article of supporting the argument of formal education and why the elites are the elites is made through his use of common sense reasoning. The example that I believe even the worst of readers can relate to is his example of the brain surgeon. “If I have brain surgery, I want it done by a doctor who went to an amazing medical school.” This example I believed to be the best even though he gave others was because the fact was that if you’re having brain surgery your life is on the line and when it comes down to it do you really want to accept mediocrity in this situation' As this point may seem valid to the majority of readers I also sort of saw a sense of distaste towards other forms of information including Wikipedia which he mentioned. So the bias I believe is quite evident in his argument which he is trying to argue. Stein throughout the article highlights the importance of formal school education as the means to gain what he describes as this intellectual superiority, and through the democratization of information through the internet more and more people he argues believe they have this intellectual superiority. Coupled with this blatant bias and lack of even mentioning informal means of educating yourself as a viable means of education I see a writer who is purely for entertainment purposes. In the end the argument he is presenting is one that should be discussed in a way where common sense should have no play and where cold hard examples should be presented on both sides. Lastly the effectiveness of reaching his audience cannot be denied for he is highly effective and the context and situation in which readers are reading his articles is quite different from the seriousness of the topics he’s presented. For his articles aren’t being read to the Joint Chiefs of Staff to justify going to war they’re being read my a middle age man about to get a colonoscopy in the doctor’s office. In sum, he is an effective writer and a true master of his art.