Meta Post 2: Post Harder

Here we are: The end of the blogging year. It's sort of like the end of the fiscal year or the end of the Mayan calendar, in the sense that it's not really the end of anything (in fact, the Mayan calendar is literally a big circle); of course, I can revisit and further contribute to this blog at any time in the forseeable future, but it's always nice to impose a sense of finality upon things for dramatic effect. And what better time to do that than with the coming of our class' second meta post! Here, I'll try to review my semester in blogging, and look at how I've progressed as a writer in the blogging medium.

See? Literally just a big circle.

First, let's start with my favorite post from this semester. While I am generally pretty proud of the quality of my posts this semester- especially when compared with those of last semester, which I found in my first meta post to be a little too amateurish- my favorite recent post is "Stay Tuned for Tragedy!" To me, this post represents not only an exemplary analysis of themes we discussed in class being represented in a contemporary American context, but also a sufficiently accessible and engaging representation of my own personality within my writing.

In the post, I begin with some personal, narrative details which serve to explain the place of the post within the larger contexts of the American Studies year and my blog as a whole. This is something I have liked to do since my very first post, which Mr. o'Connor and Mr. Bolos noted for its accessibility to the reader (of course, sympathy for the reader is something that has always been an important part of writing to Mr. o'Connor and Mr. Bolos). However, where many of my posts (especially the earlier ones) tend to show weakness is in providing some sort of substantial, academic analysis to give the post any real purpose or merit. As Mr. Bolos wrote in response to my "The Story of Qaddafi's Death" post from first semester, "some more specific examples, rather than generalizations and impressions, might make this stronger." In fact, providing ample evidence in order to fully support and realize my claims is something that I have struggled with all year as a writer, and not just in my blog.

This is why I am all the more proud of this post, though, as it is also the post with more sources referenced and cited than any other post I have written this semester. In fact, at a point in the third and fourth paragraphs of the post, I reference no less than four sources within the span of three sentences; a strange quantifier, I know, but one that I think represents my increased awareness of- and dedication to- providing ample evidence to support my claims. Unlike many of my other posts, this one is not merely a long-winded rant with a single piece of evidence used as a springboard.

Yet it is not only the quantity, but the quality, too, of these sources which I feel makes this post so exemplary. Of the four sources I mentioned earlier, one is White Noise, a text that featured prominently in our American Studies curriculum; another is our "TV Tokenism" projects, which were also an essential part of our studies this year. The other two sources are the article I found that inspired the original idea for the post and another article I had found which connected this to my in-class sources. This is also, in my opinion, representative of the importance of this post to my blog as a whole, in that it is doing what I feel is part of the entire purpose of the American Studies blogging experience: Making connections between our curriculum and the themes we discuss in class, and the world we see around us. After all, a lesson in class (TV Tokenism) and a reading at home (White Noise) concerned with Americans' obsession with death are made all the more poignant when you see the same idea mirrored in our society in the present day.

Of course, one other thing I have found from looking through my backlog of blog posts (try saying that ten times fast) is that I will very easily start rambling on in my writing, so for now I will try to wrap this up. "Stay Tuned for Tragedy!" is my favorite blog post of the semester because it not only combines scholarly, analytical writing with my penchant for personal narrative, but it also connects the themes we discuss in class with contemporary American culture. In this way, I believe that it is both a great example of an American Studies blog post and a great example of a blog post in general.

Oh- and yes, the title of this post is a Die Hard reference.

A Buzzing In Your Ear

While perusing the New York Times' online counterpart today, I found an op-ed entitled "Spelling Out the End," in which author Tania James delves into her experience as a competitor (at age 14) in the Bee armed with her newfound insight as an observer of the annual event. After reading this piece, I am left with only with a feeling of puzzlement at - and resentment of - the principle values of an event such as the National Spelling Bee.

In the article, James writes that, while simply making it to the National level as a child-speller is tough enough, "Fewer will make it to the following day’s semifinals, where one mistake means elimination." James adds that "I’d wager that many of them will be silently praying, Not on the first word. " This account was startling to me at first read, as it highlights the immense amount of pressure and trauma that the children participating in the event are put through, even at such young ages. 

James continues to describe part of her personal experience - at an even younger age - of witnessing her phenomenally-talented older sister achieve consecutive victories in the Bee: "'Don’t worry,' a spelling bee official told me after one of her victories. 'Your turn’ll come too!' I thought, 'Does it have to?'" The phrase 'does it have to?' only further punctuates the fact that participation in the bee was, for James, something that she was pressured into by her family rather than something she wanted to do for herself.
The final message in the article that made me question the ethics and necessity of the bee is an account by James of the time she had to compete against her sister at her school's bee in order to qualify for the national event: "It came down to the two of us [James and her sister] at the mike, spelling word after word in an awkward duet, each waiting for the other to hit a false note." It's interesting to think what must have been going through James' head at that moment considering she must have held so many mixed emotions, spelling words in front of an audience and a panel of judges for reasons she most likely did not fully understand while both rooting for her older sister and hoping that she would fail. There's really no outcome to a competition like that which doesn't strain family relationships or leave someone unhappy.

Of course, this is not to discredit the contestants that legitimately love to spell and to participate in the bee, yet it seems as if many of the kids who are brought to attend can become very overwhelmed and traumatized by the whole experience, one which they most likely were pressured into undertaking in the first place.
And that's not to mention the apparent triviality of it all; memorizing sequences of letters matched to pronunciations within a very competitive atmosphere. It's all the kind of thing Mr. o'Connor and Mr. Bolos seek to avoid in our American Studies curriculum, which is part of what makes the class such a pleasure to be a part of. I would certainly hate to be put in that kind of situation, and I'm sure many of my peers feel the same way.
But what do you think of the concept of a national spelling bee and the effects it can have on its contestants? Maybe it isn't such a bad thing after all?

Stay Tuned for Tragedy!

    When we were first tasked with creating a blog in class, I was not quite sure what I would write for my first post: something more topical, or something that I was more passionate about (the two were mutually exclusive with the kinds of ideas I had at the time). In the wake of Hurricane Irene, I tossed around the idea of writing a post about America's obsession with tragedy, an issue that became apparent when outlets like the Weather Channel released their ratings from their coverage of the big storm. As it turns out, Americans have a strange fascination with watching disasters happen and seeing just how disastrous they can be (spoiler: they can be pretty disastrous). What, for many people, was a life-threatening tempest was, for millions of viewers, an epic, real-life drama. I ultimately decided to scrap the Irene post, though, and never found a good time or reason to go back to it.
    That is, until I started reading White Noise. The book explores, to a great extent, the relationship Americans have with mass media, including commentary on our obsession with death. Clearly, we love to witness destruction, whether it is in the form of a Weather Channel reporter being knocked to his feet by a gust of wind or an unmistakably horrific car crash on the side of the road that you just can't help but gawk at when you drive past. We've all been there, why can't we look away?
    Well, according to professor Emily Godbey, we've been gawking since the beginning of the industrial revolution. In an article on AlterNet called "Appetite for Destruction: Why Are Americans So Obsessed with Disaster?" Godbey claims that after the spread of industrialism gave birth to a working class all with very similar, mundane lives (the "flattening of experience" that O'Connor discussed in class earlier this week), "the unexpected, no matter what it is, brings a certain kind of excitement to people's lives." Yet this explanation does not fully explain why people, Americans especially, choose tragedy, disaster and destruction to satisfy this need for excitment. To this, Godbey argues that "it's a safe way to get a thrill. We're able to confront a common underlying fear - the fear of dying - without having to live through it ourselves." In the same way that DeLillo's Jack Gladney faces death by immersing himself in the study of the world's greatest villain and murderer, Adolf Hitler, many Americans tune into the Weather Channel each year to study the next great killer hurricane.
    This love of death and danger is apparent in the television shows we love to watch as well, many of which were analyzed as part of our TV Tokenism project. Shows like 24, a wildly popular drama focused on a man who kills people who try to kill lots of people, is built upon the premise that the entire world is in imminent danger and bathed in an atmosphere of looming death. Even in fiction TV entertainment, people have shown that they prefer a sense of danger over comfort. The new film Act of Valor (starring active duty Navy SEALs!), too, depicts a world on the brink of total nuclear apocalypse to provide its thrills. If nothing else, it's definitely an interesting cultural phenomenon that devastation and destruction become topics which, when depicted with enough dramatic flair, bring us so much joy.
    What do you think? Is it a dangerous habit to derive joy and entertainment from tragedy? How do these cultural preferences affect us as a society and as a country?
    For now, I'll leave you with this. It is a six-minute video entitled "Nascar Crashes Compilation." Pay close attention to the music as well as the visuals, though I really hope you do not find it so entertaining as to watch all six minutes. While watching, try to keep in mind that there is a person inside each one of those cars.

TV Tokenism: Community

The show I chose to analyze is Community. It runs on NBC Thursdays at 8:00 PM. It is in its third season, but is currently on hiatus. In 2009, Community was nominated for an NAACP Image Award.

    Community is a sitcom which has a relatively diverse cast for a Network TV show (and also relatively low ratings for a network TV show); the main cast consists of two black characters, one asian character, one muslim polish-palestinian character and four white characters, one of whom is Jewish. The young white woman on the far right was going to be cast as a latina or asian woman, which would have made the cast predominantly nonwhite, but the producers could not find anyone to fit the role. In my opinion, Community does not adhere to Mr. Bolos' thesis regarding TV tokenism, yet still exhibits racism in perpetuating racial stereotypes (mainly between the white and black characters and perhaps for satirical purposes).
    The main character, an attractive, disheveled white man, is shown front and center right next to his blonde, white love interest and to the left of his other white love interest (in the show, this character only dates white women). Upfront next to him is the token "mystic minority," a black mother who is portrayed as severely religious. The other black character is simply a dumb jock with the behavioral patterns and mental capacity of a ten year-old, given the same kind of brutishness as is seen portrayed in Spike Lee's Bamboozled. Of course, this blatant stereotype is pushed to the back of the photo. It is also worth noting that all of the white characters on the show are relatively rich, the old white character played by Chevy Chase is unabashedly racist and the young white female character in the center  is forcedly and uncomfortably politically correct (see: racist).
At the same time, though, each main character in the cast is equally complex and fleshed-out, with no one character being morally or behaviorally one-dimensional. In addition, the two best-dressed characters are arguably the two white male characters, and only because their socioeconomic statuses in the context of the show demands it. This is, in my opinion, the perfect evidence for the show's lack of tokenism and perpetuation of stereotypes- after all, why do the white characters have to be so much richer than the minority characters?
    The thing I found most interesting about this picture, though, is how it is literally split down the middle between the white cast members and the minority cast members, yet the white cast members take up markedly more space (notice how the main character is leaning into the middle of the frame and Chevy Chase is towering over the black character to his right).

The Price of Power

    After our recent class discussion regarding political campaigns and, more specifically, super PACs, I left with the feeling that our country's democracy favors the rich far more than it should. I was particularly appalled to hear that Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary election after a flood of donations to the super PAC that was supporting his campaign. This was the first proof I had heard of a direct correlation between the amount of money thrown at a political campaign and its success, and that just didn't sit right with me. Surely, in a nation where anyone can become president regardless of their social or economic background, the better candidate should triumph over the wealthier, worse candidate, right?
    Then I noticed this picture (shown above) on the cover of a January edition of the Chicago Reader and I realized the true extent to which America's capitalist ideals have permeated our political system.
    The focal point of the picture is the sign being held up by a patriotic pumpkin person which reads "Need $$$ to buy a Congressman," followed by the words "Please Help!" I felt that this really mirrored the sentiments expressed during our class discussion, especially the idea that political power is bought rather than earned in this country (at least earned separately from a paycheck). The poor pumpkin-faced figure feels that the only way to have his voice heard in our democracy is to pay a congressman to speak for him, similar to how many ultra-rich businessmen and politicians contribute millions of dollars to super PACs in order to have their ideas present in Washington or to put a candidate whom they believe in into the White House.
    The idea that those with the most money in this country have the most influence over our political landscape is a scary thing, especially when you consider the implications of such a power structure on the rest of the nation, the people without enough money to compete in a race where wealth wins votes. In such a race, the "99%" characterized by the Occupy Movement wouldn't really have any say at all in the direction of our government and our democracy would no longer be a democracy but a plutocracy (yes, I looked up "plutocracy" on Wikipedia). In such a race, the relatively poor senator Barack Obama, a man from remarkably humble beginnings, would have had no chance of winning presidency over the far richer senator John McCain. To me, this is not at all what America stands for, though I am fascinated by how our capitalistic democracy has produced something so wholly un-democratic.
    But what can we do? How did our country get to this point? These are the questions that were brought to my mind while writing this post and I hope that you have some thoughts on them after reading it. If you do, please feel free to leave a comment below.

The Megapost: Not Just Your Average Meta-post

DISCLAIMER: Okay, I may have exaggerated a bit there with the title. I do actually plan on delivering a wholly average meta-post, a blog post in which I reflect on my semester of blogging and nothing else. So let's get started, shall we?

When I initially looked back upon my first-ever blog post for the semester, it rekindled in me a burning desire to pour out my views, ideas and feelings on whatever subject I may choose for all the world to see. As I reread through my blogging portfolio, however, I found that this burning desire had often become my biggest pitfall, as from that first post onward it had led me to make the same mistakes again and again throughout the semester.

The most aggregious offense I found in my posts as I revisited my old writing was a distinct lack of direct evidence; I did not quote a single source in that first post, and I seemed to believe that copious linking to other sites and articles was some sort of substitute for direct evidence and thoughtful analysis. Rather, this post now comes off as the emotionally-charged ravings of a madman, a rant about a personal topic that should have by no means been interesting to anyone but myself. This is most evident in my use of the words "reliable" and "unreliable," which I used freely- and unfairly- to describe various news outlets. As a first post on a new blog, it was a bold and ultimately senseless move to start deciding for the reader which news sources were reliable and which were not. Unfortunately, this exclusion of direct evidence became a trend, as I only included evidence in three other posts since then.

Yet that first post has been, by far, the most successful post on my blog overall, largely in part to another mistake I have made frequently in my posts since then: lack of conciseness. Most of my blog posts have been exceedingly long, even without direct evidence. This has led to posts like this unfortunate follow-up to my first post, in which I managed to write four paragraphs without quoting a single source. The post was essentially just an observation that I had made one day and, because of that burning desire I mentioned earlier, had to share with the world. At the end of the post, I wrote in summation that "this is just one example of a story archetype," freely admitting that everything I had written in that post was simply "an example." Not an argument, not an analysis, but an example. Even worse, it was an example of something that proved interesting to very few people, something I never took into consideration while writing it.

Yet while I have repeatedly made some of these mistakes in my posts over the semester, I am proud to see that I have still been improving in my posts as a whole, as is clear in my post ...With a Little Bit of Luck. I regard this post as an evolution of that weak second post, as it is similarly lengthy and not very conducive to discussion, yet it is no where near as uninteresting and rambling as that post and it is actually based around a source that I had found (a New York Times article). In this post, I wrote that "to me, this article reads more like a 'what to do if you are a genius' advice column." I am glad to see that in this one sentence, I am both analyzing the source I chose and personalizing the topic by expressing that this is, in fact, purely my opinion- what the source means "to me." The former is an important aspect that I was missing in my second post and the latter is one that I was missing in my first post, showing that, while I had taken a few steps back in some areas, I was showing signs of overall improvement in my blog.

Another thing I am proud of in my blog as a whole is that over the course of the entire semester, nearly every one of my posts has connected to a discussion or lesson we had in class. Whether it was our lesson on textbook impartiality or one of our many discussions on socioeconomics and education, I have been consistent with ensuring that every post I write has a purpose, that everything on my blog has a right to be there, even being so explicit as to write "hot on the heels of our civil liberties unit" in my post No Hope For the Unseen to ensure that the reader never wondered why the post's topic was relevant.

After reviewing and analyzing my blogging portfolio, it seems that my blog may be turning a new leaf. So far, I have made only incremental improvements while often repeating old mistakes, yet the very fact that I am now aware of this progression is a step in the right direction. I believe this meta-post may be my best blog post yet, as creating it has helped me see what kind of writer I am and, in writing this, I have already started trying to improve my form and correct my mistakes. While our blogging assignment in American Studies has always been about improving our craft as writers, this post has been a huge leap to that end, and for that I am truly grateful to have participated in this assignment and to have had the privilege of becoming an American Studies blogger.

SOPA

Late last year- that is, October of 2011- a bill was introduced to Congress that would effectively eradicate online piracy and digital copyright infringement. The bill was known as SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, and was designed to help copyright holders protect their properties by enabling them to seek legal action against any websites that are "facilitating copyright infringement." This means that websites that host unauthorized use of copyrighted materials would be liable to be sued and/or shut down by the owners of those copyrights. Unfortunately for many, this legislation would have directly affected websites such as Youtube and Imgur, which freely host videos and images uploaded by millions of users. Websites like these would have been liable for every single piece of copyrighted material uploaded by their users, meaning that, when this bill passed, Youtube could have been immediately sued for its hosting of this adorable clip from UP. As a result of SOPA, media-hosting websites like Youtube and Imgur would thus have to have started censoring user-uploaded content and limiting the ability of their users to freely share and access the media on their sites. This is still not as bad, though, as the effect this bill would have on social networking websites. Places like Facebook and Twitter would no longer be free spaces for sharing information and media, as if any one of their hundreds of millions of users chose to share a single piece of copyrighted material, they could be shut down. A good analogy I heard for the affect of this bill is that if a customer at a bank chose to store something he/she had stolen from someone else inside a safe deposit box at the bank, the bank could be sued or shut down by the owner of the stolen material. Clearly, the bank in this situation should not be at fault for this, nor should it be considered to be enabling theft. It just seems ridiculous to me, and the result would be that Facebook and Twitter would have to start strictly censoring the content uploaded by its users or be prepared to face legal action for it. Of course, for these websites, that would severely affect their ability to serve their only purpose, which is to allow people to freely share information. In this sense, SOPA could have rendered Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and essentially every other social networking website defunct.

At this point, you may be thinking "Boy, this sound terrible! I'm sure glad this bill never made it past congress!" Or you may not be thinking that. Assuming, though, that you're thinking that, I've got quite a surprise for you. The bill is still up for a vote, and the topic is still being debated hotly in congress. In fact, frighteningly enough, there is a significant chance that this bill could be passed when the house judiciary committee reconvenes to discuss it later this month. Fortunately, legions of online rights activists and web afficionados have come together to lobby against the bill, creating various online petitions (including an official whitehouse.gov petition which managed to garner the site's required 25,000 signatures in a matter of two days) and generally making it abundantly clear that a large number of people are not happy about SOPA. As you can probably already tell, I believe that this bill has clear, negative affects on our first amendment rights and I am all for quashing this thing as soon as possible. I'd love to hear what you think, though. Does this bill go too far, or is it important in the fight against online piracy? Feel free to leave a comment below.