West 1.
Cydne West
Mrs. Lahaise
AP English Language and Composition
13 November, 2008

Columnist Project 1

In Meghan Daum’s latest column, Gratitude with Attitude, she explains how recent winner of
the Nobel Prize, Toshihide Maskawa, ungraciously accepts the award. Maskawa, a particle theorist, had
labeled the Nobel Prize as “a rather mundane thing…” a moderately shocking acceptance quote.
Daum’s tone is, more or less, sarcastic as she uses parenthesis to reveal her true thoughts, as
well as carefully thought out allusions and metaphors, comparing Sarah Palin to the Prize itself. This
combination of rhetorical devices appeals to her audience’s sense of political humor. She also alludes t
the popular website YouTube.com, quoting yet another winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Doris Lessing,
saying she “couldn’t care less”, this should have the reader in an uproar. However, Lessing became
courteous, and labeled the prize committee as “a bunch of bloody Swedes.” Not very appropriate for
young readers.
Her use of metaphors in her closing paragraphs make the reader wonder, have we really
become so ungrateful? Daum explains that contest based reality TV. has taken over our profound nature
of creating stories on television, and subtly mentions that we have become quite manner-less and
believe everything is mundane; although to gain that right you’d actually have t become a particle
theorist. In my opinion no one should ever call such an award as mundane, no matter how mundane it
may be, even if they figured out that E not only equals mc squared, but mc cubed! If one had worked
that hard for the award wouldn’t their work been in vain? A simple thank you should suffice, but of course thank you has become mundane after all.