In my opinion public discourse has, without a doubt become too pathetic. While some of the issues in today's media are emotional at their core, pundits have looked to pathetic fallacies as a way to get their message across.
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has almost become a show about the pathetic fallacies on the cable news networks. 10-15 minutes of every show are devoted to making fun of clips from Fox News, CNN, and the NBC family of networks. Most of this time is spent looking at political pundits using blatant scare tactics or slippery slopes.
And while I understand that issues such as health care reform or taxes affect peoples lives a great deal, that is not an excuse to take advantage of viewers emotions. The problem with this is that progress becomes more difficult to make as emotion gets more involved, and if the country as a whole ever wants to make real progress issues need to be approached with logic as well as emotion. So until people can realize that emotion should not be abused politics will be slow in getting major issues resolved.
The Start of Things
15 years ago
Although you have mentioned that our current public discourse has become too pathetic, I believe that the use of emotional appeal is sometimes very effective in current society. We have so many social problems to be resolved, and none of these problems are settled without employing a strong emotional appeal. I think the overuse of scare tactics is something to be questioned, but decent amount of it is sometimes necessary to make a change. The reason why the public discourse (especially media) has become so emotional is that people are not aware of the significance of the civic responsibilities. We are going through so many problems as a whole in society, such as health care reform, economic recession, this up-coming Census. People do not pay enough attention to these kinds of issues until they seriously experience these problems by themselves, and the use of emotion in getting through to the public is very effective in these cases. People by nature are not totally conceived by logic, as they also require an emotional stance on the issue. The reason why we become more aware of these kinds of problems is because it is often discussed in the public media with an emphasis on the emotional aspect of the matter at hand. Of course, if a topic is discussed in the public, it gets to the point where many people have all kinds of opinions about it. I believe this is how public discourse has changed to something more pathetic from some people’s perspective. As an example, the 2010 US Census is going to be somewhat different from the previous ones. The media commands that we all need to participate in this upcoming census, by the use of scare tactics. If the Census cannot get all the information of each household, it will greatly affect their plan for economical development. Because of this reason, the government is forced to use pathetic fallacies in the quest to get public input for the census database. As many might believe that the uses of pathetic fallacies are inappropriate, in some situations a strong emotional appeal has been proven effective in stimulating public discourse.
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