Unless Atwood had previously been against MLK's Birmingham Campaign, why would he use "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" as an example of a persuasive essay? I suppose there's the historical evidence that the letter is persuasive, but it sounds a lot more like Atwood is saying that he is judging the letter based on how persuasive it felt to him, which is silly since he already agreed with the premise. Much better to cite an essay which effectively persuades to a claim that most (modern) readers do not already accept.
Maybe I'm just not up on my history, but is it well-established that this letter changed anyone's mind? Or was it just very inspiring for people who already agreed with him? (The latter is, after all, the purpose of most political oration.) In any case, when Atwood says "It is remarkably persuasive without ever resorting to anger, incivility, or invective" he really seems to base that on reading the letter rather than an historical data.
Also, who would ever think that anger, incivility, or invectiveness would persuade?
This was only 3 sentences in Atwood's post, though, so it's not that big of a deal.
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Unless Atwood had previously been against MLK's Birmingham Campaign, why would he use "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" as an example of a persuasive essay? I suppose there's the historical evidence that the letter is persuasive, but it sounds a lot more like Atwood is saying that he is judging the letter based on how persuasive it felt to him, which is silly since he already agreed with the premise. Much better to cite an essay which effectively persuades to a claim that most (modern) readers do not already accept.
I think he accepts it a priori as a historically persuasive letter, and he reverse engineers techniques from it.
Maybe I'm just not up on my history, but is it well-established that this letter changed anyone's mind? Or was it just very inspiring for people who already agreed with him? (The latter is, after all, the purpose of most political oration.) In any case, when Atwood says "It is remarkably persuasive without ever resorting to anger, incivility, or invective" he really seems to base that on reading the letter rather than an historical data.
Also, who would ever think that anger, incivility, or invectiveness would persuade?
This was only 3 sentences in Atwood's post, though, so it's not that big of a deal.