Blog Post 4 Group A: It's An Honor by: Alan Donoho

Perspective has always been a major aspect within communicating a message. Whether it is a movie, a novel, or an article in a newspaper, perspective takes on one of the most important roles for making a message understood. It’s an Honor by Jimmy Breslin is no different. Within the story, Breslin uses Clifton Pollard to represent the common people. However, “in the past, journalists have always focused on just a small range of sources when gathering information for their stories. Most attention went to elite actors, while ordinary citizens were judged of minor importance resulting in only a few common people being mentioned in news output” (Keyser). The focus on the elite makes it harder for a common person to be able to relate to the issue trying to be presented, especially if it is an issue of great importance that revolves around a select few elite. Breslin’s use of perspective takes a major issue such as John F. Kennedy’s death and makes it more personable and relatable to the common people. This article not only conveyed the people’s distraught for John F. Kennedy’s death, but also illustrated their love for the man through the reverence of the dirt in which he was to be buried in and the honor that it was to for Clifton Pollard to dig his grave. Usually one of the few times that the common man is used as a source of information is “when an ordinary citizen serves as a spokesperson for a civic movement consisting of his peers. Especially when such a group of citizens is critical of an elite’s decisions or behavior, the person voicing dissatisfaction is a welcome source” (Keyser). Through the basic use of the common man, journalist can manipulate the view point to tell the story that they wish to be shared while satisfying the need that could be perceived by common people to have their voices heard. Breslin gives another perspective that the audience receives is that of Jackie Kennedy, the wife of John F Kennedy. 

It would have been most popular to write about Jackie Kennedy, her reaction, and how strong and sad she must be to have lost her husband. However, she took up but a small part of the article. A small excerpt from the article shows this, “Everybody watched her while she walked. She is the mother of two fatherless children and she was walking in to the history of this country because she was showing everybody who felt old and helpless and without hope that she had this terrible strength that everybody needed so badly. Even though they had killed her husband and his blood ran onto her lap while he died, she could walk through the streets and to his grave and help us all while she walked” (Breslin 468). Within this article her importance is shown, along with her strength and her duty. Nevertheless, the main perspective from the story was that of Clifton Pollard. Through Breslin’s writing the audience can see that “the demand to contact an elite source in every case is weakening (Brennen, 2009), decreasing the elites’ power to control the news agenda (Bivens, 2008), but the basic societal structures remain unchanged in substance (Fuchs, 2009). As a result, citizens may have gained more importance in the news output, but they remain rather unimportant as actors even in the current context (Dimitrova and Stro¨mba¨ck, 2009)” (Keyser). Rather than being important, being strong, and having a duty to the people, Pollard was characterized as being nothing more important than your common man. He was shown as a simple worker that had to work an extra day, but from his perspective the audience, of which the majority would be common people like Pollard, can see the honor felt by the man towards being involved in the burial of the fallen President. From the article the audience is shown that “Clifton Pollard wasn’t at the funeral. He was over behind the hill, digging graves for $3.01 an hour in another section of the cemetery. He didn’t know who the graves were for. He was just digging them and then covering them with boards. ‘They’ll be used,’ he said. ‘We just don’t know when”’ (Breslin). Pollard was not allowed at the funeral as he was not important enough. That did not change the love and respect that Pollard felt for the dead President, rather it showed the situation that most common people were in. Their world could not stop to grieve for the fallen man despite their love and honor felt for John F Kennedy. They had to continue to do their jobs even if they were like Pollard and had no idea or control.

Perspective has been and shall always be a major influence on the understanding of ones writing. By forming the connection with the common people from writing from the point of view of a common man, Breslin was about to relate back to his target audience. By not writing from the view point of a person from the elite, Breslin was able to communicate the grief, love, and respect that common people like Clifton Pollard felt when mourning John F Kennedy. If he had written the story from the point of a person of the elite, then the affect would have felt almost forced because of the duty and strength that the elite are generally assumed to have.

Sources:
Breslin, Jimmy, and New York Herald Tribune. “Read Breslin's Signature 1963 Column about           
          JFK's Gravedigger.” Newsday, Newsday, 20 Mar. 2017, www.newsday.com/opinion/digging-  
          jfk-grave-was-his-honor-jimmy-breslin-1.6481560. 
De Keyser, Jeroen and Karin Raeymaeckers. "The Printed Rise of the Common Man." Journalism 
           Studies, vol. 13, no. 5/6, Oct. 2012, pp. 825-835. EBSCOhost,
           doi:10.1080/1461670X.2012.667993.
Kerrane, Kevin, and Ben Yagoda. The Art of Fact: a Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism.                  Simon and Schuster, 1998. It's an Honor By: Jimmy Breslin