“Thank You for Smoking…?” Peter Brimelow brings to light an interesting idea in his essay “Thank You for Smoking…?” Brimelow’s purpose of his essay is to defend smoking. He provides the audience with information that is worthy of their consideration and valid enough to make them think twice about how they stand on the issue of smoking. Unfortunately, some flaws in Brimelow’s technique distract the audience from his message that smoking is not as unhealthy as it appears. A few mistakes transform his work from a well-written argumentative essay to an unsuccessful attempt to spread his beliefs. What started as an essay to rouse new views on the issue of smoking swiftly lost all merit and became a means to assail the people in opposition of the author’s views. Brimelow makes a gallant effort to prove his major claim, or main idea (McFadden). He wants to get the audience to concur with him that smoking is not an altogether unhealthy habit (Brimelow 141). However, mistakes in his essay begin with his major claim statement. When Brimelow writes that “smoking might be, in some ways, good for you” (141), he already puts doubts in the minds of the audience. Instead of feeling that the author is confident about his position on the subject, the audience picks up on the skepticism hidden in the words “might” and “some small ways.” Those qualifiers, or words and phrases that exclude some situations from his major claim (McFadden), leave the audience questioning who it is beneficial for and in what situations. Brimelow uses warrants, or peoples’ values (McFadden), to get them to coincide with his beliefs. Because Brimelow’s main claim is very disputable, he needs to find some way to catch the attention of the audience a... ... middle of paper ... ... the mistakes he has made. When his audience looks back on the essay they have just read, his examples and facts about smoking that have been so keenly expressed will be unseen, because the focus will be on the unprofessional fallacies present in his work. In future works, it would be advantageous for Brimelow to be aware of these fallacies and to find a different means of approaching his rebuttal so that another strenuous effort will not be diminished into an unsuccessful attempt to disperse his beliefs. Works Cited Brimelow, Peter. “Thank You for Smoking…?” The Genre of Argument. Ed. Irene L. Clark. Boston: Thomson Heinle, 1998. 141-143. Clark, Irene L. The Genre of Argument. Boston: Thomson Heinle, 1998. McFadden, James. Introduction to Toulmin Method. Lecture. Sept. 13 & 14, 2003. Buena Vista University. Storm Lake, IA.
In the 1990 article "I’d Rather Kiss than Smoke" in the National Review, Florence King tries to persuade her readers to look through a smoker’s eyes in a smokist world. King has been around people smoking even before she was born. Her mother started smoking when she was twelve and she started this habit when she was twenty-six. Since she started smoking, she has been analyzing how non-smokers discriminate against them. Florence King expects everyone to be okay with smoking because it is what she was brought up in and it was okay in her family.
The smoking issue is very complicated and some of the arguments are beyond the scope of this essay. Still, we can obtain a balanced outlook if we consider the following: the facts of smoking, individual right, societal responsibility, and the stigma of smoking. Haviland and King write essays which contain very important points, but seem to contain a bias which may alienate some people. To truly reach a consensus on the smoking issue, we must be willing to meet each other halfway. We must strike equilibrium between individual right and societal responsibility.
Brimelow compares smoking to driving cars because driving also has risks and can be a cause of death. Would you consider that a wise comparison? If he were going to compare smoking to driving, he would be better off comparing it to something along the same lines such as drinking and chewing tobacco. At least these are also optional habits like smoking, where people chose to do it. Very little, if any, good can come from these, whereas driving is a common action in which accidents can happen.
Merriam-Webster defines smoking as; to inhale and exhale the fumes of burning plant material and especially tobacco; especially: to smoke tobacco habitually. The key word in that definition would be habitually. One who smokes generally is addicted or formed a habit of smoking. Although distasteful to most people, those who smoke are generally willing to quit smoking yet they're unable to "kick the habit." Smokers understand how hard it is to quit. They admire those who were able to quit. We realize the risk of smoking and the obvious side effects that could result to death. Although all the studies show the death effect of smoking many of us are still unable to quit. In the essay, Phillip brought his girlfriend to a social gathering of which she pulled out a cigarette and started to smoke. The hostess apparently was not fond of smoking when she asked her to put it out or go outside. This started a big debate over smoking of which the smokers went outside and the non-smokers stayed inside. Phillip stayed inside although he should have gone with his girlfriend. He was unsure whose side he was on. He wasn't a smoker but he wasn't fully against it. Throughout the essay he was unsure of which side he should have been on. He discussed his opinion and stories that support both arguments.
Tobacco companies started making collection cards, with photographs of models and baseball players, in cigarette packages to encourage new smokers. In 1964, the United States Surgeon General released a report stating that cigarette smoking was causing health hazards. As to American people that abused of cigarettes thought that consuming it wouldn’t cause any harm even when medical statistics were coming out to light. Smoking cigarettes has been part of American Culture for centuries and no body is about to stop this consumption because of several statistics. Many people that knew about this controversy didn’t know a way to stop it, only that it would continue to be part of an american’s life.
Similarly, Nick Naylor, a lobbyist for the Academy of Tobacco Studies, takes on the topic of “morality disguises facts” (Kinsey). To plenty, advocating for cigarette companies is immoral since there is plausible cause, but to Naylor he enjoyed making people think critically by basing himself with prior knowledge of a topic and using symbolism th...
In the essay “Letting Go” by David Sedaris, he writes about his experiences with smoking. Throughout the essay Sedaris expresses his views and experiences with smoking. Sedaris grew up in the 1960’s and 70’s when smoking was a common thing to do, so much so that grade school students in his native North Carolina, would have field trips to tobacco factories where they were given packs of cigarettes to give to their parents. Sedaris describes views about smoking that changed throughout his life-time. At one stage in his life he was against smoking, and was even bothered by the smell of cigarettes. Then Sedaris himself, in a different stage of his life became a smoker. Smoking caused Sedaris’s mother to gain some health problems due to her smoking
The author’s purpose in this essay is to show how smoking can be beneficial in some ways. Brimelow presents his credibility with studies from the International Journal of Epidemiology, New England Journal of Medicine, and Journal of the American Medical Association (Brimelow 142). He notes that smoking can both calm and stimulate people. Smoking has been shown to calm people while driving if they take long puffs. Smoking has also been shown to stimulate if taken in quick, short puffs. Brimelow reiterates this by telling us that “Current understanding is that nicotine is ‘amphoteric’ –that is, it can act to counter both conditions, depending on how it is consumed” (142). This is a reason how smoking can be beneficial.
The central point the author drives home is that at the turn of the twentieth century, cigarette smoking was not deemed an acceptable practice for middle or upper class men in the United States. The author states that there were numerous factors, each seemingly more extreme than the last, that lead to the acceptance
In the film Thank you for smoking, Nick Naylor- the main character of the film employs rhetorical devices such as re-framing, hyperbole and numerous logical fallacies to win his argument
Thesis: It is imperative for smokers to quit, benefiting society as a whole a well as themselves.
Thank you for smoking is a satirical comedy about a lobbyist whose job is to promote tobacco use at a time when the disease burden secondary to smoking threatens to cripple the nation. The film presents how industries, media and the government interact to influence the consumers’ decision. While the use of rhetoric, such as fallacies and twisted truths, is evident throughout the film, it is most evident midway when the chief spokesman, Nick Naylor, assists his son with his assignment. The son, Joey Naylor, enquires why the American government is the best and in response, the father argues it is because of America’s ‘endless appeals system’ (Thank you for smoking). His response seamlessly captures the tone of the movie as much as it represents the extensive use of a combination of fallacious arguments and twisted truths. This essay attempts to analyse the use of fallacies and twisted truths to appeal to the emotion of the
Cigarette advertisements give the feeling that smokers are "bursting at the seams with joy" and that smoking is useful to you. Shockingly, nothing could be further from reality. The U.S. government has marked cigarettes as an unsafe medication that causes lung malignancy, coronary illness, and numerous different genuine sicknesses and conditions. Numerous individuals everywhere throughout the nation are discussing whether tobacco organizations ought to be permitted to publicize cigarettes or even to make cigarettes in today 's general public ("Analyzing Assorted Tobacco Advertisements").
e. I intend to explain why Americans today should either stop smoking or should not start at all by examining these main points:
The protagonists in the films Kinsey by Bill Condon and Thank You for Smoking by Jason Reitman are two men who are cut from very different styles of cloth. In Kinsey, the titular character uses logical discourse and gathered statistics in an attempt to remove the shackles of moral prudery from the subject of human sexuality for the betterment of humanity. On the other hand, the central character in Thank You for Smoking is a lobbyist for the tobacco industry who uses logical fallacy and rhetoric to obscure the health risks of tobacco use because he is extraordinarily good at it, and additionally he gets paid handsomely. As divergent as these two men are in their intentions, they both show passionate skill in asserting their claims against tough opposition. Moreover, both characters argumentative styles reveal their mutual apprehension of the power that morality and rhetoric hold in shaping public opinion.