I think that the first quote means that news is everywhere. “News expands and fills time and space…” is evidence of this belief. When news expands, this is when reporters go out and report it. I do agree with this quote because I think that news is everywhere in our lives. News is on television, Internet, and in newspapers. I disagree with Evelyn Waugh because I see the news every day, and when I read the New York Times I feel that it is important to understand what is going on in the world. Waugh states that when, after one reads a newspaper, one forgets what one has read. The first quote however, claims that news is never out of one’s life and always there, filling the expanse.
December 6, 2011
“News expands to fill the time and space allocated to its coverage.” William Safire
“News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read. And it’s only news until he’s read it. After that it’s dead.” Evelyn Waugh
Pick one of the above quotes to interpret and agree or disagree with. Then interpret the next quote and relate the two, following through with your interpretation. Try and refer to news that you read or watch.
In this quote, Lincoln is describing the weakness of one’s argument. By mentioning the “shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death”, Lincoln is describing the severe thinness of the argument. It lacks depth, profundity, and is not very rich in information. A type of a “thin” argument is one similar to an untested hypothesis. For example, whenever one of my friends tries to add salt to her lunch, people around her always exclaim that salt is “bad for you”, and they try to stop her from adding it. However, when she asks them why, they respond by saying, “it just is”, and she listens to their weak argument. This doesn’t only occur at school. Even throughout America, people continuously argue that salt is harmful to one’s health. As a result, people begin to add less salt to their meals and consume less salty foods, yet they don’t bother to look up the real facts. However, studies have shown that humans need salt, especially those who are very active, yet people continue to decrease their salt intake. Therefore, claiming that salt is “bad for you because it just it”, is a “thin” argument.
Lincoln, in this quote, is saying that Douglas’s argument is incredibly shallow and without substance. A type of argument that would qualify as one “as thin as homeopathic soup” is one that argues expectations over results, or theory over reality. Such was the argument held by American Socialists like Frances Fox Piven in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Socialists expected that an omnipotent federal government would be capable of reducing poverty and increasing the well-being of society. What they failed to see, however, was that such all-powerful governments had always failed to achieve equality in the past; indeed, in Socialist Russia and Communist China, what began as crusades for equity and equality turned into governments in which the disparity between the rich and the poor was far, far greater. As Thomas Sowell points out, any effort to ascribe to a group of people any social status, inferiority, equality, or even superiority, must necessarily take away freedoms from that group of people. For the same reason that Piven’s argument is irrelevant, Douglas’s argument for popular sovereignty is too. Douglas expected that popular sovereignty would reflect the will of the people, but in reality, the process faced problems such as border ruffians and squatting voters. Even more importantly, the desire of the slaves to be free could not be reflected in this popular sovereignty system because slaves could not yet vote.
For further inquiry, Robert chose:
November 22, 2011
“His argument is as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death.”
Lincoln extends a simile and thereby extends the possibility for nuance in his meaning. Please think of what type of argument would be so poor, and, after putting the above quote into your own words, please describe this argument. Use examples if you get too abstract. 8 sentence minimum.
