Keaton+R

3. Telling Grandma ‘No’ This article is, like many other articles in recent weeks, about the health care reform. However, this article is from the perspective of the older generation. The generation whose benefits are truly at stake here. Most of the older generation are holders of a medicare plan. The health care reform will almost completely eradicate medicare and leave the elderly only to the "public option". The author uses effective pathos throughout the article. He uses the dire needs and sad situation of the elderly to pull at the heart strings of the reader. "He’s in the White House brief ing room, presiding over a health care press conference. In the front row are the ancients of the D.C. media, and behind them is a sea of septuagenarians: some in wheelchairs, some clutching walkers, some dragging dialysis machines and the rest holding up Medicare cards like lighters at a Doors concert. And everybody has a question." (Douthat) Here the author vividly draws out an image of the elderly for the reader to reflect upon when formulating an opinion on the health care reform. He presents them as weak and helpless citizens clinging to what little bit of government aid they have left, medicare. - J. Keaton Rueter