Self-study
Critic: People today place an especially high value on respect for others; yet, in their comedy acts, many of today's most popular comedians display blatant disrespect for others. ███ ████ ██████ ████ ██ ████ ██ ██ ███ ████ ██████ ████ ████ ██ ███████ ███████ ████████████ ██ ████ ████████ █████ █████ ███ █████ ██ ██████████ ███████ ████ ███ ███████ ██████████ ██ █████████ ███ ███████ ██████████ ██ █████ ████ ██ ██████ ███████████
Summary
The critic concludes that it’s not surprising that disrespectful comedians are successful. This is because exaggerating people's failure to live up to their ideals makes for good comedy. And we know that people hold respect for others as an important ideal, so if people are failing to be respectful, it makes sense that disrespectful comedy would be popular.
Objective: Find a Necessary Assumption
Looking at the stimulus as a conditional argument, it makes it easier to see the missing piece. The critic's stated premise is effectively that if people fail to live up to an ideal, then exaggerating that failure is funny. A second premise, that people do in fact fail to live up to the ideal of respect, would logically lead to the critic's conclusion: that it makes sense that disrespectful comedy is popular. But the critic never states that second premise—instead it's left unstated, i.e. assumed.
Even though we can identify the missing piece of the critic's conditional argument, we should still stay open-minded when looking at the answer choices. Arguments frequently contain multiple necessary assumptions, not all of which are reasonable to predict. And even if the correct answer is the assumption we identified, it might be phrased in an unexpected way.
1.
The critic's argument depends on █████ ███ ██ ███ █████████ ████████████
a
People who enjoy █████████ ███ ███████ ██████████ ██ █████ ████ ██ ███ █████ █ ████ █████ ██ ███████ ███ ███████
The critic argues that disrespectful comedians are popular precisely because we currently value respect highly. But the argument doesn't depend on the traits of audience members who enjoy disrespectful comedy, making (A) unnecessary.
We can illustrate this using negation: if (A) is false, and people who enjoy disrespectful comedy still value respect highly, that doesn't harm the argument. Because negating (A) leaves the argument intact, it's not necessary.
b
Only comedians who ███████ ███████ ██████████ ██ █████ ████ ███ █████████ ███████████
Disrespect “often” makes for successful comedy, but the critic doesn't need to assume that disrespect is the only way for comedy to be successful. Other forms of comedy being successful wouldn’t undermine the conclusion, because that wouldn't take away from the critic's explanation of why disrespectful comedy is successful.
c
Many people disapprove ██ ███ █████████ ██ ███████ ██████████ ███ ██████ ██ ██████ █████
We already know from the stimulus that disrespectful comedians are generally popular, so there’s no need to assume that anyone disapproves of comedians’ disrespect. The nuance of exactly how popular these comedians are doesn't make a difference to the argument.
d
People who value ██ █████ ██████████ ██████ ██ ███ ██████ ███████ ██ ██████ ██ ██ ████ ██████
This must be true in order for the critic’s explanation to work, meaning (D) is necessary to assume. We can see this using negation: if people did always succeed in living up to their ideals, then there would be no “failings” to exaggerate, meaning the critic's explanation for why disrespectful comedy is popular falls apart.
e
People today fail ██ ████ ██ ██ █████ ███ ██████ ████ ██████████ ████ ███ ███ ████ ██ ███ █████
The conclusion is about the current popularity of disrespectful comedy, so nothing needs to be assumed about the past. We don't know whether disrespectful comedy is more or less popular than it used to be, and either way it wouldn't matter to the critic's argument.