#4 Responding to ANY five questions on P. 232

I have to admit that I read this through almost five times and I still don't quite get it, but I'll do my best...

2. "It's easy to raise an eyebrow at liposuction, but hard to be censorious." I had to look that word up, it means to be highly critical. I think this means that we can look at each other and question the way they do things and why they do them, but we cannot really criticize them because we do the same things, everyone just does it differently and changes other aspects when they talk about themselves.

4. Murphy's examples deal with the removal of privilege because people tend to relate to that. "I could've done that, but because of (blank), I never ended up doing it." Yeah, we've all said that. We place blame on outside forces because it makes us seem like we're really doing our best, but we've been dealt a bad hand.

2. The tone seems highly critically sarcastic to me because the writer gave examples but didn't give them a benefit of the doubt. He just said the facts and gave the people's responses to the situation in a negative way. He made it clear that the audience knows that Bill O'Reilly wasn't as lower middle class as he liked people to believe.

4. Paragraphs 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 9 start with a topic sentence to lead the reader into what the speaker will be trying to convince us of. They were helpful to me because when I started asking myself, "What is this guy talking about?" I could just look back up at the topic sentence, relate it to whichever part I was reading and then say, "Right..." although there may have been a few times when I still struggled to get through it. 

1. Lifosuction isn't hard to break apart. Liposuction is a procedure done to rid the body of excess fat-the part that we don't want people to see. Lifosuction is just the same, but it's not physical. People perform "lifosuction" to make themselves seem like someone anyone can relate to, but still respect and look up to. People who do this do it because they want others to see what they want the others to see. (Confusing sentence, I know.) By controlling what outsiders see, we can be whoever or whatever we want.

I really hope this was the right assignment, I was confused all weekend but finally decided to just sit down and do what I thought was correct.