Bill McKibben’s liberal use of humor in The Only Way to Have a Cow disarms the reader and suggests a friendly-but-informative approach about vegetarian eating. Unfortunately, beyond appeals to emotion and worn-out clichés, he doesn’t deliver on the promise of that humor: instead, the essay is a trivial addition to the ongoing debate. Worse, his approach makes assumptions about a reader’s background that may or may not actually be correct. Ultimately, in terms of calories, this essay is like sugar candy: delightful, but empty.
In the very next paragraph, in fact, he further dismisses many of the ethical arguments supporting meat eating as “indefensible” and “lame,” but does so without explanation instead of addressing them head-on. His effective use of humor through the first two paragraphs makes it quite easy for the reader not to realize his intent, as he also uses wordplay to dismiss the use of higher registers of language along with his dismissal of less-loaded language. As a writing strategy, this is likely rather effective, but as a rhetorical technique it is relatively lacking.
The majority of the essay (four of the remaining seven paragraphs) is an extended description of an idealized “way things used to be,” without any sources to show that his vision is rooted in facts or reality. It appeals to the reader’s ethos and pathos by evoking an emotional sense of nostalgia and playing on the oft-expressed tendency of many people to believe that the world, in general, is progressively getting worse. This is a somewhat risky ploy, because the assumption that a reader is familiar enough with United States history to even feel such a sense of nostalgia and wistfulness is not necessarily correct. The magazine in which this article appears is aimed at an American audience, which suggests his risk was calculated, but it still ignores the fact that many Americans believe that things have improved during recent times.
At the end of this risky trip into nostalgia, McKibben begins his summation by again appealing to humor when he states that the minor impact of rotational grazing — the food technique described in that long description — could help a reader “get the car exhaust you emitted in high school out of the atmosphere.” This is an admission that this particular argument doesn’t strongly support the vegetarian lifestyle, but again, his technique of couching the comment in humor defuses any objections by diverting the reader’s attention.
The remainder of the summation relies on “facts” that are actually opinions, such as an assertion that making meat more expensive is good for society, and an assumption that mimicking the meat-eating habits of other parts of the world is an ideal. Neither of these statements are supported, and, in fact, in his final paragraph, McKibben states his most significant reason for being vegetarian himself: the “essential dilemma of killing something and then putting it in your mouth.” This argument is entirely unrelated to the main point of the essay and makes it clear that his intent is to appeal to the reader’s emotions instead of their logic.
Regardless of the rhetorical problems, that use of humor makes the essay a quick and, frequently, even enjoyable read. Its effectiveness only fails when it is subjected to a critical rhetorical analysis, when a reader realizes that the essay contributes little, if anything, to the ongoing debate about vegetarian diets. While “The Only Way to Have a Cow” is a pleasant snack in terms of reading, its central argument does not carry much — if any — real nutritional value in terms of new information or insight for the reader.
