Obama's Campaign: YES WE CAN

With Super Tuesday just two days away, Obama and Clinton are trying to get speeches in all around the nation so they can be the one to make American History. Although it is quite evident that Obama will win in Illinois on Tuesday, other states are not so confident.

Last night, my sister, who goes to college in St. Louis, spent her night at an Obama campaign. She is not very into politics herself, but her room mate is very big on politics and is a volunteer for Obama. My sister was convinced that Obama needed more help getting votes in Missouri than in Illinois, so she decided to change her voter registration to help out. So last night, the two of them went to a big sports arena in St. Louis, and stood for about two hours and with 20,000 other people waiting to hear Barack Obama speak.

When I talked to her this morning, I heard all about her experience. She told me how she could not see Obama because all of the cameras get to be in the front rows for advertisment. But, hearing the insperational words from Obama of YES WE CAN really told her that she made the right decision to go. She told me that from the people in the crowd, you would think that everyone was for Obama, which really is not true because Clinton is in the lead in Missouri.

I found this video this morning about an endorsment for Obama. I think it is very insperational, and it shows how many people and celebrities want the right kind of change in American and to truly say YES WE CAN? What do you think, and how please take my poll to see who our class thinks will win on Super Tuesday.

Where does the "N-Word" stand in the world today?

In class on Friday we talked a lot about the "N-word" and where it is destined to end up in the future. I found this discussion very interesting, especially after watching the movie about Huck Finn and looking at how the concerned parents of 1976 viewed the book. Is this kind of language okay to be used in Huck Finn? I think it is because it is history, and like Bolos said, teenaged students in our society know better than to go around repeating it in the hallways or to our friends. I agree with what the entire classed discussed, such as how it is almost getting whitewashed from history, but it is in history because it was offensive to be used during slavery.
In our world today, where does it stand? I think it stands in the history, or in the music in which some of us listen to. This does not mean it is okay, however because of cultural aspects, I don't think it should ever be used. It is kind of like how I make a lot of jokes about my religion with my friends of the same religion, but when someone of a different religion tries to make that joke, it is just insulting.
This weekend, I was watching The Longest Yard, the 2005 version of a classic movie made in the 70s. It is mainly about a prision relationship between the convicts and the guards. In one of the scenes, the convicts, who were mainly African American, were cleaning up the library, and when they were done, the Caucasian guards dropped more books on the ground. The guards were beating up on this one convict in particular, who is actually Nelly, and kept calling him the "N-word" along with "boy" and many other derrogatory names. I immediatley thought of our discussion when watching this scene. It really surprised me how much our history was coming through through that one scene.

White House e-mails missing

This political cartoon was my artifact for the final yesterday. I related it to many things like the Lessig Lecture on President Bush being pathological, the memory radiolab we listened to, Ellsberg and the pentagon papers, and more recent happenings like Guantanamo Bay and the Scooter Libby/Valerie Plame incident.
For those who don't know, Plame was a CIA operative who Libby disclosed in 2003. In this political cartoon, you see Bush and a CIA agent putting tapes into the fire. These tapes are documentation from the past seven years of Bush being in office.
I am writing this blog because today on the front page of the Chicago Tribune, a story caught my eye that was titled White House E-mails Missing. While reading the article, I realized that this cartoon is based off of what has been happening in the White House since 2003. E-mails are not being properly preserved like a law that President Clinton enacted in March 2000. The administration's emailing system has been under survaillence for quite some time now, and before 2003, all of the archieving tapes were recycled.
When I opened up the paper to read more of the article, Valerie Plame's picture was right next to the article. It is ironic that after such a long time of the tapes being hidden, this article comes out the day after our final.
Robert Dallek, a presidential historian is quoted in the article, saying "Given how secretive this administration has been, it of course fans the flames and suspicions about what has been destroyed here." He wants to get an investigation going to see what is actually going on. Could this be a scandal as big as Watergate?

What about Clinton?

On the front page of yesterday's Tribune, there was an article talking about what may have set Hillary Clinton more over the top than her conteders.

The first reason they addressed was her "rare display of emotion" on Monday. The paper called this the "Reverse Muskie Movement," commenting on Edmund Muskie who ran in 1972, won both the Iowa and New Hampshire caucuses, but because of his "display of emotion," did not go on to win the party nomination. Another reason is that she recieved about half of the woman's votes, where in Iowa, Obama recieved the majority of those votes.

So why all of a sudden did this happen? Since her display of emotion, which was no display at all, people have found Clinton much more personable. This artcile says that more people would rather have a personable President, because it would show that they actually care about what they are doing.

I think that this is not really the case. If someone wanted to succeed at their job, it is sure a lot useful to show that they care by showing some emotion. But, I think being President is in an entire different league. Not saying that it was terrible that she "choked up" on Monday, but just saying that many people would pull that off as being a more of a weak than personable measure, which is how I took it.

So, does it have to do with being so enthralled in her work, or was this "rare display of emotion" just a choke up?

Grizzly Man

We have been talking a lot in class about the similarities between Timothy Treadwell and Chris McCandless. I could sit here and write about what I think are huge similarities and differences between the book and the movie, but that is not why I am here. I am just going to focus on Treadwell and the movie for right now.

Overall, I think that the documentary was not as good as it could have been. What we see in this movie is a man that is living among bears in hope to educate children about how "harmless" these bears really are. One question I had when I heard that was, "How do you expect to educate children with all of the profanity you use?"

Another thing that I saw was a man who was not at all "in tune" with the world, which is why he went into the wild. But that is not at all the case. Treadwell, I believe, went into the wild for his own personal strength. Instead of being "in tune" with society, he wanted to be "in tune" with bears. The thing which troubles me is how he got to this conclusion, however. After years of struggling with drug addictions and overdoses, he finally decides to trade that in for life in the wild. Clearly, this man was in no shape to educate little children.

One thing I would like to know coming out of this movie, is what the intention of the documentary was really about, Timothy Treadwell, or the bears? In my opinion, it was more about Treadwell than the bears, but was that how the documentary was marketed? This is a review I found of the movie online. Apparently, a lot of people thought this movie was going to be a documentary of bears.

So was Timothy Treadwell in the right state of mind? To some, maybe. But for me, definitely no.

TV Tokenism

On Thursday and Friday in class, Mr. Bolos talked a lot about TV Tokenism. As we were watching the different clips and hearing about how this plays into our television dramas so much, I felt very naive. I have never ever looked at a TV show like through those kind of eyes before and I feel like I never will look at a TV show the same again. After Friday, however, I got home and was showing different TV websites to my sister, and I saw a very big contrast from the dramas today and those of the past. It really shows today that shows that have started in the past couple of years are getting better than those who started in the 90s.
Here is an example: ER, a hospital drama that started in the 90s had its season one dvd case as any other one before the turn of the century. But in Grey's Anatomy, which started after the turn of the century, all of the characters are intermixed.

Parallel Between Into the Wild and the outside world

During class today we talked a lot about the parallels and contrasts we see in the book. One that really stuck out to me today as we were discussing was the parallel between McCandless giving his real name and social security name while applying for the job at McDonalds, and suicide. We kept talking about this subject as I made more comparisons. One, for instance is how Chris left his car behind, or gave away his car, to the wild and then left and went off. The car was the one thing that Chris took with him when he left on his journey, and then he decided to give it away after it broke down. When someone is about to committ suicide, some consider giving away or leaving behind something that meant a lot to them to a specific person. Others, could take things with them when they take their life, and similarly, Chris took some of his belongings with him after abandoning his car. I could take this a little further and compare it to the tradgedies of the shooting that happened in Omaha yesterday. A nineteen year old boy who was said to be slightly ill-minded opened fire in a shopping mall and killed nine people, including himself. In this situation, he left behind questions for his family and the victim's family and everyone else in the shopping mall at the time. Instead of just committing suicide, he took with him the lives of nine other people. This tragedy his very unfortunate. So, there are comparisons all over the place relating to this book.