In Appreciation

The U of A's Legal Writing department is darn creative. Our big memo project last semester was based on a claim by Guy A whose friend, Guy B, posted a picture on Facebook of Guy A smoking pot. Our professors even made fake Facebook profiles for Guys A and B, complete with a wide-eyed picture of Guy A "smoking the reefer." It was almost fun when we had to use a thesaurus to find different ways to say "smoke marijuana."

Yesterday we were talking about how to be persuasive when we're writing, and our professor made a handout with quotes from the news coverage of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force publicity campaign that triggered a bomb scare in Boston last summer. A marketing firm paid some kids to put little Lite Bright-resembling boxes around cities, and each box depicted a character from the cartoon. We used the news quotes to talk about the strategy of "anchoring," which just means starting and ending sections of writing with the favorable parts of the narrative. Anything unfavorable to your case, you try to "bury" in the middle.

I represented the Cartoon Network's side, and I picked this quote to anchor my ending. From a Seattle police commissioner (the boxes were also found in Seattle, but public hysteria did not ensue in Seattle like it did in Boston):

"This was not something that people should be concerned about. These were cartoon characters, and they were giving the finger."