Storycorps Persuasive Techniques

The StoryCorps’ 476th podcast episode titled “Mrs. Yetta Bronstein for President”, is about pranking the media and causing a bit on mayhem in an otherwise often very serious business. Jeanne and Alan Abel are the prankster masterminds behind the 1964 and 1968 presidential campaign of Yetta Bronstein, the fictional write-in candidate for “The Best Party”. The ruse was set up to prank and mislead the media with Jeanne voicing the single New York mother who stood for values such as putting guns in every household but decreasing the bullet velocity by 95% and taking Congress of salary to put them on strict commission. The way the interview and story is told helps solidify the impression that Jeanne and Alan made pranking the media and embarrassing

By relating this campaign to the campaign of Donald Trump, StoryCorps adds more weight to the issues being presented because all of a sudden, the jokes of Yetta’s platform hit home because of their outrageousness being similar to that of the Republican Nominee. Within the slogans in Yetta’s campaign, there is rhetoric which makes them catchier although they are still ridiculous. “Vote for Yetta and things’ll get betta” has the rhyming structure while appealing to emotions rather than facts, much like the saying “Make America great again”. The simulates in these words, though not explicitly expressed in the podcast allow the listener to make their own connections and see the comparison. Structurally, the episode itself cuts between sound reels from Yetta’s original radio broadcasts, modern day interviews with the couple, and commentary from the reporters. By presenting it this way, the podcast feels more like a conversation than a standard interview. Since this is pretty standard for reporting on political campaigns as well, the actual structure of the interview feels very much like a presidential candidate interview except with more random details. Overall, the structure of the Bronstein campaign as well as the structure of the episode itself lend itself to a comparison between this fictitious campaign and the current election

The language of this story, because so much of the pranks very verbal jokes rather than physical skits really are in themselves the performative aspects of the