Response to Christmas Cartoon

Mike Thompson's main point in this cartoon is that people have forgotten all about why Christmas began (to celebrate the birth of Jesus the Christ) and what it is, they have also attempted to turn the holiday into a pagan holiday about giving and receiving gifts. To some degree, the author is correct. The holiday has shifted away from its original purpose and now has taken on a new meaning, but many people still know the real meaning of the holiday.

The cartoonist drew the shopper with many bags, because he wanted to show that the man was just shopping and had no care about what the quote meant, he just liked it and wanted to fill another gift. Also the shopper holding out his credit card is used to show that people just throw their money to stores during the Christmas season, just trying to spend, spend, spend. The sales man in the picture has a very interesting expression. He seems to be thinking about how goofy this shopper is, he also seems to be looking at the TV to pretend like he has interest in the customer, although personally it seems he is very bored, anxiously waiting to take the man's credit card, check him out, and walk away. Neither one of these two men seem too interested in the real meaning of Christmas.

6. Parallelism is recurrent syntactical similarity. Several parts of a sentence or several sentences are expressed similarly to show that the ideas in the parts or sentences are equal in importance. Parallelism also adds balance and rhythm and, most importantly, clarity to the sentence.

The article speaks about the Sean Taylor death and how his death is the result of the "Black KKK." The article says black people should be outraged and to stop this by teaching there kids the proper way to act. The author concludes by saying that the “Black KKK” is holding black people back and the "Black KKK" is trying to keep black men in their place — uneducated and outside the mainstream.

The author's main point in the article is that black culture needs to change from having the main aspects of their culture focused on murder, ignorance, and incarceration, and have better values as the main points of their culture. They should be outraged at these murders and stop living with, tolerating, and rationalizing them. The author bring up a valid point because they have poor values in their culture, but then, when the values start to occur in reality and not just in video games, music, movies, TV, etc., they “shift the attention away from the uniquely African-American crisis” and criticize the white media for what they said about Sean Taylor.

The author uses parallelism in this quote "Blame drugs, blame Ronald Reagan, blame George Bush, blame it on the rain or whatever" to strengthen his point that black people need to change black culture and that no matter whom is to blame parents are the ones who need to teach their kids the correct way to act. By listing common sources people use to pass the blame to all in a row, the author uses parallelism to show that these are not really good excuses for the characteristics of black culture. He also shows the need to change it because it has resulted in so many tragic deaths. By using parallelism the author helps add clarity to the sentence because if the author would have said blame anything you want, readers would not have know that you shouldn't really blame anything you want but you should instead teach your child proper morals and help them learn the proper way to act.