Assignment 4

          I feel that Sedaris may have written this article to express to people that how they act is grotesque. People generally judge one another at face value without even trying to get to know them.

          Obama was elected as president right before this article was written, gay rights was and still is an ongoing and controversial issue, teenage pregnancy is an ever going battle between morals and mistakes. During this article Sedaris hits on some of these topics. I feel that he did this to make the reader think about how they look at other people and judge them on such moot things. He wants the readers to actually look at the person. Not the color of their skin, what they wear, who they voted for, or what God they pray (or don't) to.

         The airport is a very diverse place to be with all kinds of people coming and going. I feel that may have been Sedaris' reasoning behind writing the article at an airport. In the article some men are discussing their own views and their distaste for the new president. Sedaris sits quietly and listens. This gives readers an example of how people can be judged based on their political views. He also draws the comparison between the "well-dressed" grandmother and her grandchildren versus the teenaged parents, the father having obscenities on his shirt really stands out.

         A diverse group of people read magazines. By publishing it in a magazine Sedaris would probably have had the ability to reach more people than just putting it online. He also wrote his article for The New Yorker, which is online and in paper print. Not to mention a highly respected magazine. So I think that Sedaris chose a magazine that puts its articles online as well so that he could reach as many people as possible. People in college tend to read magazines a lot as well. This could have been another strategy for Sedaris. College students like to learn about the world and are highly impressionable. By reaching out to them people could change a lot of things. I know that this article spoke to me and really reinforced my thoughts about not judging a book by its cover.