Clare Boothe Luce reads an opening of a speech to journalists at the Women's National Press Club in 1960 to discuss how sometimes journalists sacrifice the truth for a story that meets with the public eye. She is trying to motivate all the journalists in the audience to bring out true stories into the light and not just stories that are entertaining. She uses this speech to criticize the audience full of journalists but also herself and tells them that they are the reason she is there. She hopes that after the speech, the journalists do their jobs in a truthful manner. Luce is a writer herself so in this article she uses paradox, flattery, and juxtaposition to get her point across.
In the very first statement of the first paragraph Luce uses a paradox to contradict her feelings about the event, she states, "I am happy and flattered to be a guest of honor on this always exciting and challenging occasion." Then later she flips her original statement because she claims she is, " ...less happy than you think and more challenged than you could know." She is very content being there to deliver the message, but she knows it will also not go in a direction of positivity or
…show more content…
She states, "You have asked me to tell you what's wrong with you—the American press." By saying this she is demonstrating how ironic it is that they as writers want an input from another writer. She compares how she feels that good journalism is all about telling the truth, which she feels her fellow journalists oppose. The purpose of their writing is to entertain the people, whereas she writes to be honest, no matter how brutal the truth is. She also goes off to mention this comparison in lines 55-56 when she says, “I ask you to accept some of the good with the bad…” Her purpose for using this technique is to get the journalists to do as she does, by being honest, showing how they are different from one