Outside Reading Set #3: Editorial

1/9/11

“I’m Running Too”

Patricia Marx

Editorial

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1582313,00.html

“I’m Running Too” is a comical parody of the presidential candidate speech. Using heavy verbal irony and rhetorical questions, Patricia Marx crafts a witty, sarcastic voice which thoroughly captures my attention. From the start, Marx establishes a strong point of view through: “My fellow Americans: I’m a follower, not a leader. That is why I am declaring my candidacy for President of the United States.” Simply by injecting mocking irony into her statements, Marx pointedly criticizes presidential elections. She asks questions like “What do I stand for?” and gives ludicrous answers: “Universal health care, definitely. Or if not universal, then at least darn good coverage for any and all female candidates from Manhattan who have straight, dark hair, because what if I get hit by a bus driven by someone else in the race?” She reiterates this question-answer format throughout the essay, particularly emphasizing the hypocrisy of the presidential race.

Diction is another technique Marx plays with to shape her comical voice. She often uses puns, such as “For instance, what if, at the end of the year, the government sends you a bill? Not a bill as in “The Senate passed the McCain-Marx bill,” but a bill as in ‘Excuse me, is the tip included in this bill?’” In order to point to the pettiness of the elections, Marx uses a method that is almost the opposite of using a hyperbole: she leads with a relatively important topic, but then immediately trivializes the topic. A good example of this is: “How else am I qualified? When I was a little girl, I dreamed of becoming President. Or maybe I just dreamed that I was president. When I’m President, you can depend on me to roll up my sleeves and do something about that.”

The mocking and satirizing are the main strengths of this piece. Marx uses her strong, opinionated voice to describe herself as a weak presidential candidate. This deliberate contrast sharpened my understanding of her criticisms and drew me into her argument: candidates are not leaders at all, but followers. In this piece, Marx assumes that readers can catch every political reference she makes. This may be a weakness because sometimes, her point is lost on the reader if the reader does not actually catch the reference. Although this essay has a clearly developed voice, it is not suitable for an AP exam because the language is informal and sentences are fragmented. Furthermore, organization is minimal, since the speaker erratically jumps from topic to topic.