Assignment #2

							                               HOUSTON COMMUNITY COLLEGE
                                     Department of English



English 1302                                                                 Professor Schweitzer
Composition II                                                               Distance Education


                 Assignment #2: Synthesizing Conflicting Arguments

Due: By midnight on the date indicated on the syllabus, uploaded to Eagle Online. No late
assignments will be accepted.

Specifications: Assignment must be typed, double-spaced, with one-inch margins, using a 12 pt. serif
font such as Times New Roman. See the “Assignment Formatting Sheet” in the Course Appendices,
under “Formatting/Style Sheets,” for more detailed instructions. (See example on page two of this
assignment sheet.) Assignment can only be one of the following three formats: .doc, .odt, or .rtf.

Instructions: Write a well-developed paragraph (200-300 words) in which you compare and contrast
Malcolm Gladwell’s thesis explaining declining crime rates offered in The Tipping Point to the one
Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner offer in Freakonomics. Are their explanations completely at odds
or can they be reconciled to agree with one another somehow? Use at least one quotation to
support your analysis. You will need to have a Works Cited at the end of the paragraph.

Research Com ponent: Malcolm Gladwell published comments on the internet critiquing Levitt and
Dubner’s arguments about crime in New York City. Levitt and Dubner wrote a response back to
Gladwell. Using the internet, find these comments and write bibliographical entries for them. Put
these bibliographical entries under a heading reading “Works Consulted” and place these Works
Consulted under the Works Cited. (Again, see next page for an example.) You do not have to write
any additional information about these two sources: you are just locating them and writing the
bibliographical data for them.
Sally Muchinfuch
Composition II
Professor Schweitzer
January 19, 2013


                       Unique Title for Your Assignment Paragraph
       The book The Merchants of Cool explores the heavy marketing campaigns aimed at today’s

teenagers, focusing in particular on what the author term “the cool hunt” (Rushkoff 29). Today’s

teenagers move quickly from one fad to another and corporations are eager to latch onto those fads

and exploit them to increase product sales. Marketing executive Sharon Lee says corporate

sponsors target youth because they have millions of dollars of “guilt money” to spend, that is,

money parents give children because they feel guilty when they cannot spend time with them (22).

Rob Stone, founder of Cornerstone ad agency, argues that if advertisers ignore or do not connect

with teens, “they are going to lose—they’re absolutely going to lose” (36). To communicate (and

thus sell products) to youths, corporations hire consultants such as Dee Dee Gordon to go out and

find fads that are just beginning to make their way into teen culture. But, according to Gordon,

there is the rub: “that’s when the mass consumer picks up on it [the fad], runs with it, and

eventually kills it” (42). The book’s author, Douglas Ruskoff, argues that that is the “paradox of the

cool hunt — it kills what it find. Once you find cool, it is no longer being cool” (43). The attempt

to find cool has permeated every aspect of our culture, so much so that New York University

professor Mark Cripsin-Glover suggests that corporations and media outlets will “look for whatever

works the fastest and they will drag standards down” (45).


                                             Work Cited

Rushkoff, Douglas. The Merchants of Cool. New York: University Press of America, 2000.


                                          Work Consulted
Crispin-Glover, Mark. A Fake Book. New York: Fake Press of America, 2001.