Navigating Genres response

This was an odd essay, which at times seemed to be at odds with itself, almost as if Kerry didn't know what they really wanted to say about Genre. They talk about how there's more to genre than filling in a form, but then talks about how genre is kind of like filling in a form, because you have to conform to audience expectations:

As such, we can see how a genre like the State of the Union Address helps for more effective communication between the president and citizens because the president already has a genre with which to work; he/she doesn’t have to create a new one, and citizens know what to ex- pect from such an address.

That's kind of a "fill in the blanks" way  of explaining genre. I'm also not sure I agree about the strain of creating a genre given his use of it here. The State of the Union Address was only "new" as it applied to the United States. But that basic type of political writing/speech was not completely unknown throughout the world. Washington was a person of learning in his time, he was not ignorant of how different countries' governments worked. He didn't "invent" a genre here, just a specific application, and that application has changed significantly over time.

Dirk also makes more than a few assumptions:

I imagine that you would probably not share a risqué joke with your mom, send a “Hey Buddy” email to your pro- fessor, or update your Facebook status as “X has a huge wart on his foot.” We can see that more than form matters here, as knowing what is appropriate in these situations obviously requires more rhetorical knowledge than does filling out a credit card form.

 Would I have told my mom a "risqué" joke as a child? (Honestly, if you really mean "dirty" as in joke, just say so. Don't dance about.) Probably not. Would I have as a 30-year-old adult? Yes, and I frequently did, my mom had a marvelous sense of humor as dry as it was dirty. The above example, and this one:

We treat texts that we encounter as rhetorical objects; we choose between horror movies and chick flicks not only because we are familiar with their forms but because we know what response they will elicit from us (nail-biting fear and dreamy sighs, respectively) 

makes me wonder just how Dirk defines genre at all. "Chick flick" can cover a wide range of things, including historical dramas. (Setting aside "chick flick" when he most likely meant "romance). THere are other examples of this throughout the essay, but I'm running out of space

I really think Dirk needs to spend some time thinking about what their definition of "genre" really is before they start writing essays about how they work.