Los Angeles riot in 1992

While as a reporter for the Times Rimer might be said to be relying on readers to recognize the credibility and integrity of her story, Rimer's essay has a good deal of straight reportage. It is an exercise in persuasion inasmuch as it argues that Los Angeles inner-city youth are not all delinquent but have high moral standards and ideals. Rimer's own reputation, however, is not what she relies on. Rather, she is engaged in building the reputation of her story's subjects.

The role of ethos surfaces strongly in paragraph 2, which cites the 600-plus dress-for-success South-Central youth who attended a Disneyland job fair; paragraph 3 cites the familiar idea of South-Central youth as gangs and thugs, thus contrasting the middle-class image of the second paragraph with the stereotyped image of the third. The message of the contrast is that South-Central youth are just as entitled to and just as serious about mainstream-corporate jobs as youth in any other neighborhood or demographic. It is reinforced by the comment from the Disneyland spokesman: "They were wonderf

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is an example of a red herring plus a suggestion of guilt by association. Whether homosexuals bode ill for the military has nothing to do with the identity of a spokesman. In other words the writer diverts attention away from gays in the military by focusing on an advocate, and he associates lack of military service (apparently a bad thing) with gay-presence advocacy (another bad thing), to legitimate his claim. Asserting the effeminate nature of homosexual men is also an example of guilt by association (with women this time) combined with ad hominem attack. The author intends to make points by raising an argument unworthy of serious discourse. The incendiary paragraph referring to Colin Powell's objections to homosexuality in the military is an ad populum argument. Colin Powell's views are enlisted to support special pleading for the integrity of "our rights" against a threat of "political correctness," though the writer has not proved that "we," so to speak, all uniformly adopt prejudices against gays. The paragraph likening great Rome's demise to "our" prospective fate combines false analogy with the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy, as if rampant homosexuality caused the empire to fall and as if America = Rome in all cult
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Declaration Independence, Miles Rimer, Gays Military, Mystery Train, Los Angeles, Reference Moskos', King's Rogerian, Lilies Field, Colin Powell's, I'll Fly, warrant tying, mass media, ethos pathos, gays military, central claim, tying evidence subclaim, tying evidence, evidence subclaim, false analogy, claim subclaim, tying central, central claim subclaim, warrant tying evidence, warrant tying central, tying central claim,
Approximate Word count = 3556
Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page)