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Tinky Winwell Rhetorical Analysis

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Zumwalt exploits a sardonic tone in order to demolish Farewell´s credibility and spoof his defective reasoning. Utilizing rhetorical questions and litany of children´s characters - she proves that the television show ¨Teletubbies¨, despite Farewells commentary, does not encourage children to become gay. If anything, children are most influenced by their family and their actions.
The litany of children idols embedded in the satirical argument against Falwell jeopardizes his credibility as a televangelist. He claims that Tinky Winky (from ¨Teletubbies¨), tends to trespass into the female sphere too often - causing children who watch it to become gay. Tinky Winky is a character that is ¨purple¨, vacuums, gardens, and is often caught ¨carrying a purse¨. Additionally, the famous children's character has a triangle on top of its head and a rainbow television in place of the stomach - both representing gay pride. Moreover, none of the ¨Teletubbies¨ characters are assigned genders. Falwell assumed that Tinky Winky was a male; when ¨he(she?)¨ might be a female. By implementing a rhetorical question of the fictional character sexuality, Zumwalt is able to mock one of the numerous defects in Falwell's accusation: Tinky Winky is a homosexual male. Allowing Zumwalt to disprove his claim, she both logically and comedically gives several examples of beloved children characters and picks out their flaws (physically and mentally) - all having a negative impact on the child. For example,

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