Crazy Kwame

The two rhetorical stratgies most prevalent in Mr. Kilpatrick's speech were definatly pathos and diction. He begins by addressing the issue in which threats are being made to him and to his family. It seems like he's playing the old "You can take me , but don't hurt my family" trick. This sneaky use of pathos pulls people away from all the bad he has actually done. Its like he's making the people the bad guys even though he's the reason people are even saying these threatening things in the first place. "I've heard these words before but I've never heard people say them about my wife and children." This line right here is key to his distraction. By saying this people forget what the real problem at hand is and he can then use their own guilt against them. This is just another attempt at wriggling out of the major issue and bringing up another.

The other strategy that pops up in his speech is diction. The best example, also used by my fellow blogger (Mena) is his use of the words "I humbly ask" (By the way Mena, he uses this phrase six not five times). Again, this strategy is used to his advantage by shifting the blame for all the problems from him, to the people. He may have even done this on accident or it may have been on purpose, but either way it leads people astray and makes innocent people look mean. The point trying to be made here is that Kwame needs to first worry about what he did to the people of Detroit before he worryies about what the people of Detroit are going to do with him.