Ellen Goodman Columnist Essay

Ellen Goodman, a Pulitzer prize winning columnist, author, speaker, and commentator who refuses to call herself a pundit. Ellen has long been a chronicler of social change in America, especially the women’s movement and effects on our public, private lives, and has spent most of her life chronicling social change and its impact on American life. As a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist she was one of the first women to open up the pages to women’s voices and became, according to Media Watch, the most widely syndicated progressive columnist in the country.

Proof of her strong passion for impacts on an average American life, her column titled “Dispensing Morality” shows just that. In her column, she expresses how those in professions and careers should reserve the right to distribute drugs or anything that has the ability to harm someone, even if it’s intentions is to aid, if the decision on handing it out conflicts with their ethics, morals, and values. She uses scenarios of situation like those and rhetorical questions to prove a point based on ethos with a tad bit of pathos; while she uses statistics of a considerable amount of claims, facts, expert opinions to appeal to the reader’s logos.

She ends of this column saying: “.. last time I looked, the pharmacist’s license did not include the right to dispense morality. ” Matching the last word with exact title of her column gives it a serious conclusion displaying how serious she is about the subject. In another column of Goodman’s, “Those Poor College Conservatives” she boldly evinces how politics does not only have a monumental spotlight as the nation as its theatre, but it also has a college level arena where students can take the initial stand of having grand debates as would senators and other officials perform when running for office of any kind.

Here she uses statistics of how much Democrats there is for one Republican in the universities of Stanford and Berkeley to indicate how much national politics is effected by students who, as we know, are the next generation – the future. She also uses ExxonMobil; The Independent Women’s Forum; and a quote of Harvey Mansfield, a Harvard conservative, to add on to her use logos in addition with her statistics. However, as much as logical this column may be, she uses her strong opinions to include pathos to approve to reader’s emotions, morals, and beliefs.

This column demonstrates how much of a determination Goodman has toward the inclusiveness of American lives. One column of hers clearly exhibits her drive for righting wrongs of America. In Goodman’s column, “Will Her Voice Ever Be Heard? ” she stands up for foreign writers to be able to have published books in the United States. This column mainly surrounds Iranian writer, Shirin Ebadi, who was the first Iranian woman to become a judge and the first to receive a Nobel Prize, who’s been eschewed by the government because she’s Iranian and the American government will not allow people who the country fears and is currently in war with.

Goodman uses the background and story of Ebadi to convey the difficulties she has had in order to have her books published, those trails are an example of pathos because it is attempting to attract the reader’s emotional state. The author also uses facts revealing discrimination, such as: “A law written in 1917 allows the president to bar transactions during times of war or national emergency. It was amended twice to exempt publishers.

Nevertheless, the Treasury Department in its wisdom has ruled that it’s illegal even to enhance the value of anything created in Iran without permission. ” To appeal to the audience’s logos state. The purpose of this article is to strike up people’s ethos so they will also stand up for those like Ebadi and hopefully let them have a share of this “country of freedom. ” Ellen Goodman, currently does not write columns, however, as stated earlier, she is considered one of the most advanced columnist in the country.

Her passionate columns of justifying the unjust in America truly exemplifies her love for this nation and how much she wants to make it an ideal land for not only its citizens but for those seeking liberty and freedom. Through her use of pathos, ethos, and logos she desires to please everyone’s emotions, value, and intellectual mind-sets, thus spreading her drive and motivation toward others. Her goal for composing such column makes her an astounding writer – not for money, not for fame, not for glory, but to touch reader’s hearts for good.