Feminism Hell And Hilary Clinton Rhetorical Analysis

In the New York Times, “Feminism, Hell and Hilary Clinton”, by Frank Bruni discusses how ridiculous the mentality is that if you are a woman you need to vote for Hilary Clinton. He briefly discusses some statements that were made by some very influential women, Madeline Albright and Gloria Steinem. Bruni seems to almost mock their opinions that “women are more or less damned if they’re not on Hilary Clinton’s team”. Bruni makes it known that he doesn’t disagree with these statements because he doesn’t like Hilary Clinton based on her gender, but more so on her policies. Bruni is able to use some aspects of ethos and logos in this op-ed, and his relaxed tone throughout makes his writing not only easy to read, but easy to agree with; this all
Throughout, Bruni uses his personal experience as a gay man to showcase how un-logical the idea is that women need to vote for Hilary just because she is also a woman. Bruni used a very logical approach, the logos appeal, that just because he’s gay and if there was a presidential candidate that is gay, the candidate would not automatically get his vote. Bruni states that just because he belongs to the same minority group, gay men, as the hypothetical candidate, that he would only vote for the candidate if his beliefs aligned with those of the candidate’s. His example is logical and easy to agree with, which makes it easier to come to the same conclusion about Hilary Clinton’s situation. Bruni discusses very poignantly that if a candidate was gay, or in Hilary’s case a woman, that it is not the only thing that matters about a presidential candidate. He then made the logical statement that during the 2008 campaign Barrack Obama was consonantly identified by his race, just like how Hilary is being identified by her gender. Bringing up an example that is so closely related to Hilary’s made Bruni’s argument even more well rounded. “I’ll go to the barricades for that imagined gay candidate if he or she
Bruni’s casual tone walked a very thin line between being entertaining and intellectually stimulating and seeming like a run-of-the-mill blog post. His joke, “That’s right, “democratic socialism” is a known aphrodisiac: the oyster of politics” (Feminism, Hell and Hilary Clinton, Bruni), about how Gloria Steinem said that the young women backing Bernie Sanders are just looking to “score dates with young bucks in the Sanders Brigade” (Feminism, Hell and Hilary Clinton, Bruni) was funny enough that I was still interested in reading but not turned off by his lack of professionalism. These jokes could have very easily gone extremely wrong for Bruni. They could have very easily came off as contrived and ruined the natural flow of his argument and accidently contradict his tone throughout the rest of the piece. Bruni states very clearly at the end that Clinton’s gender does matter and that it would tarnish all of the great accomplishments she’s done for women if you completely try to take her gender out of the equation. This could be seen as a slight nod to the opposition, in that he thinks to an extent Clinton’s gender plays a role in her campaign, but that it’s not the only thing about her campaign. At the end of his Op-ed Bruni makes the strong statement that if he trusted the hypothetical gay candidate and trusted