Evaluation of New York Times Stories

Haxor, Joe. "File:Nytimes hq.jpg." 12/23/07 via wikimedia commons. Creative Commons Attribution.

Today I'll be evaluating two vastly different articles in both nature and importance. The first is about the brave story of a woman who was shot in the head by her father as an honor killing and survived to act in an Oscar nominated movie where she plays herself in her own story. The second is a list of Donald Trump's twitter insults.

1. The protagonist of the first story is Saba, the 19-year-old Pakistani woman shot in the head by her father because she married her boyfriend against her families wishes. Other important characters include her father, and her uncle who assisted her father in shooting her. Because she is now the main character of a movie she's brought the problem of honor killings to light and saved potential lives. She brings the bravery into this bleak story.

I suppose the second story has a main character although I would hardly call him a protagonist. It's none other than Donald Trump (or maybe his assistant), sitting behind a keyboard yelling at everything and everyone from the United States Government to Amazon to a podium in the oval office. The whole article is a ridiculous testament to the man's hatred for anything he encounters. Additionally, I personally thought this would be hilarious in word cloud form (which I think I was right about) so I turned his insults to current and former presidential candidates into one for my own amusement, which cannot unfortunately be linked due to the nature of the document but I am more than willing to share with anyone who is interested.

2. Our story with Saba takes place in Pakistan, which is a very important detail because the culture there is entirely different. According to the statistic in the article, honor killings take place there every 90 minutes. In the US this is basically unheard of, and I believe that if we as a culture were more aware of the problem, we would have done more to stop it. Saba was very pressured to pardon her father and uncle so they walked free, which is something that never would have happened in the United States.

Donald Trump's insults however take place on Twitter, which I would argue is also important. Although everyone knows who Trump is, on the internet you have a sort of anonymity, and even if your identity is apparent, a detachment from what you are writing. It's not as though Trump is speaking to a large crowd and saying these rude things. Even though that would not be out of character for him, I still think the setting caters to a lack of responsibility.

3. The only disagreement in Saba's story is that her father believes he's done the right thing, and the conflict that arose before Saba pardoned him. Now, there seems to be none but the residual tension from Saba's unwanted marriage. But on a larger scale, there is no disagreement. Saba is seen as a hero, which in my humble opinion is the way it should be.

Technically, there is no disagreement in Trump's story either. Yes, Trump disagrees with just about everything and everyone he sees, but nobody is disagreeing with him. It's just Trump, screaming pointlessly into a faceless void- which is honestly no different than an actual Trump rally.