Blog 27, Week 4, (visual), 3-19-12

SIDE NOTE: Since I usually do a four week rotation with the fourth week being an IRB post..... I wanted to do a BIG IRB that I will do as my "fifth" week cycle blog post next weekend.  Therefore I can get a lot of reading done... and analyze it in the same post instead of doing two IRB blogs next to each other. (Thought this would be best for such a large book).
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SOURCE: http://bleachedbrain.wordpress.com/tag/political-cartoon/

For this AOW I decided to do a political cartoon, and I chose this one because I feel it is really prevalent... especially among the young people recently.  Joseph Kony and his leadership in the Lord's Resistance Army has become an apparent "popular" issue in American ever since the youtube video of the current event went viral over night on march 5, 2012.  The video has currently 82.5 million views and explains in detail about Kony's group and about how an American group is planning to stop him by the end of this year.  Now, Kony's group is pursuing to create a world where children live in hell.  He is kidnapping all children from their parents.  He forces the boys to become soldiers, killing their own parents and purposefully mutilating people's faces.  He kidnaps the girls and he makes them sex slaves.  It is devastating and unreal, but most of the world has no idea what the issue is or who Joseph Kony is.

The point of this political cartoon is to show that everyone all of sudden knows the term "Kony 2012" and wears the propaganda and fights for the cause... Yet most people have no idea what they are advocating.  In this cartoon it is showing a person wearing a shirt supporting to the current advocation to stop Kony by the end of 2012, but the person wearing the shirt in the picture does not know what the issue is and is only supporting it because of the popularity it has gained. It is a cartoon showing the ignorance of people towards an issue that really does need knowledge in order to help the cause.

Out of the few rhetorical devices evident the most important one is logos.  The cartoon promotes the idea of logic because I believe the author's purpose was to show that in order to support a cause, one must know and understand what the issue is and how they can help.  It is only logical that it shows ignorance and rudeness to support a cause for popularity reasons rather then for the greater good of the people involved.  The audience for this political cartoon is all ignorant people who are blind to the real reason for the "kony 2012" slogan.   The people in the cartoon look young, which means the people that are targeted for this issue could be as young as teenagers or younger or even a little bit older.  In my opinion, the author's purpose to promote knowledge on the issue has been achieved because when I came across this photo I looked into the issue because I always saw the slogan but did not know what it was for.  Now I do know what it is for and I can support a cause I understand and believe in, instead of blindly following a crowd only following a cause for popularity reasons. 

- Ali Mason

Youtube video of "Kony 2012" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc