[Tyr Zalo Hawk]: 712.Essays.Meatheads vs Kairos

The aspect of proper timing and the order of presented information are all vastly important when you want to present your idea effectively to a reader. Molly Ivins doesn’t seem to understand this concept, or at least her writing doesn’t show that she does.
First off, she doesn’t even mention the meat contamination until halfway through the article. Her topics are all about government decisions on terrorism, “enemy combatant” detaining, and several other bashing of the Bush Administration, all presented with an air of complete sarcasm. One could assume that all she was doing was attacking the political system currently in place over their lack of approved reasoning and decisions involved in out ‘War on Terror’. She moves around the topic, mentioning it for only two paragraphs before moving onto to other things – including self advertising – and then finishing off with the fact that she came from a ranching community, something which probably should’ve been mentioned a lot earlier because it could’ve given her article the added boost that might’ve connected readers earlier to why she even cares. This, right off, places her article outside of what we come to expect in terms of kairos because her organizational skills leave something to truly be desired.
Her sense of timing in writing and publishing the article is decisive, but this does not necessarily make it opportunistic. The new year has just started on an election year, giving us the sense that Ivins wants to get a jump on attacking the President’s reelection in the upcoming year. While it might seem like a good idea at first, preemptive political strikes simply aren’t as effective when the election is still months away, and people don’t have to consider all the issues for that long expanse of time. She already states her assumption that her readers are lazy (reminding them of supposed put off diets and not having taken down their Christmas trees) and yet she still expects them to take a political stand and attempt to incite change at such an early point in time. This lack of proper timing only furthers the gap between kairos and her supposed ‘use’ of it in her article.
Quite frankly, it seems that Molly Ivins has done a bit of research on the incorrect regulations and usage of power that has led our country down a disease ridden path from our very own food, but that she probably never researched the correct way to present these things to the world.

© Tyr Hawkaluk (2004-Present)