Emotional Appeal: "Working Class Zero" by Timothy Egan

http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/working-class-zero/

In his NYT opinion article "Working Class Zero," Timothy Egan reflects on the results of the economic policies of the past decade. In lieu of the recent tea party demonstrations and Washington protests, Egan asks, "Where was the Tea Party movement when the tax burden was shifted from the high end to the middle?" in reference to the changes in income tax that occured during the Bush administration. He also asks, "Where were the angry “stiffs” when the banking industry rolled the 2005 Congress into rewriting bankruptcy law, making it easier to keep people in permanent credit card hock?" Egan is pointing out that the recession did not appear out of thin air; that certain policies led to the situation we are now faced with. He also provides a catchy quote from John Lennon: "A working class hero is something to be, keep you doped with religion and sex and T.V." Through his appeal to Lennon's poetic words, Egan
is exposing the political manipulation that working class people have submitted themselves to in the past decade. When people feel manipulated and used, it makes them feel angry. Egan is using what Augustine calls "the subdued style," of which he says, "It does not come forth armed or adorned but, as it were, nude, and in this way crushes the sinews and muscles of its adversary and overcomes and destroys resisting falsehood with its most powerful members" (163). The plainspokenness of Egan's article is what makes it the most appealing: he is just one of us, as he qualifies his Lennon quote by stating, "As someone who had a union card in my wallet before I owned a Mastercard, I don’t share Lennon’s dark view of blue collar workers." Egan is implying that, although he appears to be an intellectual because he is writing for the NYT, he has blue collar background and is thus can identify with working class people. Through this identification, Egan establishes his integrity as an author who genuinely cares about the political and economic position of his audience.

Egan is not overtly trying to persuade his audience towards action, and he does not explicitly call for a certain emotional reaction until the end of his article when he states, "Older southern whites — that’s who got hit hardest by the freewheeling decade now fading. They should be angry. But they’re five years too late." This sounds like more of a reproach than a call for action, but the piling up of historical facts from the economic policies of the Bush administration has already provoked the audience to anger before they reach the concluding paragraph.