Grad
student finds opinion columnist selfish,
immature
Wow.
I might use Molly Stewart’s column
on Samuel Alito as an example to my students
on how not to write persuasively.
I read the piece hoping for an actual argument. What I read instead was mere
name calling. According to Stewart, Alito should be opposed because he’s
an “old, rich white guy” who is an “upper middle-class, married
Catholic Republican judge who knows nothing about what it’s like to be
a woman.” He’s a “loaded, bloated bureaucrat” with “right-wing,
close-minded beliefs.”
Name-calling is not an argument. All bark, no bite. If she wants people to
listen to her, throwing mud with a shrill and angry tone is not the way to
go. Those in her inner ring will chuckle in smug agreement. Everyone else will
turn to more reasonable authors.
The
closest she comes to offering an actual
argument is the ol’ worn out slogan:
it’s a woman’s body.
The father had a role in creating that child. Doesn’t he deserve a say?
What’s more, what about the child? Who will fight for his or her rights?
Second, no, it’s not a woman’s body — it’s a child.
Stewart even admitted that when she disdainfully referred to the child growing
inside a woman as a “needy, smelly, self-absorbed mistake...I’m
talking about a baby.” The baby’s location in the womb does nothing
to change his or her value.
Also, this says more about Stewart than it does about Alito and the unborn.
It says she’d rather kill a child rather than do what’s necessary
to take care of the baby that her decision brings into existence.
Stewart puts her finger on the crux of the problem near the end of her column: “The
truth is, I am way too selfish and immature to be having a baby at 19.” Selfish
and immature indeed.
— Rich Bordner
Single subject credential
graduate student
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