I am one lucky guy. My birthday is November 22nd, which means that my birthday is always around one of the best days of the year to buy gifts: Black Friday. A day infamous for "door busters" which are sales that are so ridiculous that people will "bust down the doors" of a store to take advantage of them. If I was an alien coming to Earth on Black Friday, I would be horrified at the barbaric rituals before me. In 2008 a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death as 2,000 people tried to break into the Wal Mart for the sales. That may be the most extreme case, but look at this one of many riots formed outside of a store on Black Friday:
Is this the kind of behavior we promote with this "holiday"? The phrase "doorbusters" clearly implies that this kind of behavior is expected at these stores. I think fighting others for material goods is disgraceful to our society. America is founded on the fact we all have the right to Life, Liberty , and the Pursuit of Happiness. Pitting shoppers against each other for buying a cell phone goes against this idea, as the sale could probably have been organized in such a way that this sort of riot would never have happened.
How do you think Black Friday could become less barbaric? I think online sales are the future, since the only fighting is for who gets on the server for the store's website. Should Black Friday even be respected by Americans? Let me knoooooow!
Wherever you look, Chicago is littered with advertisements. Whether they are on benches, billboards, or pieces of paper rolling on the ground, advertisements are made to attract our attention. If I'm not mistaken, the word is a derivative of the latin words "ad" and "verto" which when put together mean "to turn towards". One issue that comes up is whether advertisements oppress the speech and thought of those that observe them. For instance:
This ad won an award from the Catholic Mass Media Awards in the Philippines. It is a print ad which shows a baby nailed to a board as if he was Jesus, showing that any abortion you have could have been Jesus. It is a very off-putting ad, especially from the blood on the child's arm. Would an ad like this be allowed in the United States? They are expressing the freedom of speech, after all, and there isn't anything that would cause violence from this picture. A similar example of an ad like this was shown in the US as a video. It was banned on Youtube, however it was constitutional for the images of late-term aborted fetuses to be aired on TV.
I think that advertisements like this may not incur violence or unrest, but they certainly incur unrest in my stomach, and I think that is reason enough that Americans shouldn't have to be subjected to graphic images like this. What do you think?
As many know, hurricane Sandy hit last week, and has caused billions and billions of dollars of damage to the east coast. This is the first time I've ever heard anybody use the term "Superstorm" in my life to describe a natural disaster. It surprised me that despite being one of the most developed countries in the world, this natural even caused unprecedented destruction and panic. Many fear of what is to come in terms of natural disasters, which is the subject of an article I read from the New York Times, called "Protecting New York City, Before Next Time". In the article it states:
"...climate experts say, sea levels in the region have not only gradually increased, but are also likely to get higher as time goes by..."
This means that it's only getting easier for places along the coast of the Atlantic ocean like New York City to be flooded in the future. The main reason for water levels rising is thought to be global warming, which many scientists have claimed is preventable. New York City, however, doesn't seem to be trying to prevent high water levels, it's preparing for them.
“Our goal was to design a more resilient city,” Mr. Cassell said. “We may not always be able to keep the water out, so we wanted to improve the edges and the streets of the city to deal with flooding in a more robust way.” Already, people's plans are turning away from conservation and more towards preparation. So what is the plan to save Manhattan from flood waters? "ringing Lower Manhattan with a grassy network of land-based parks accompanied by watery patches of wetlands and tidal salt marshes...through a series of breakwater islands made of geo-textile tubes and covered with marine plantings." While it's an interesting thought to see New York having preventative swamps, I think that the moment we saw Global Warming coming, we should have worked to prevent it, rather than riding it out and paying the price now. Not only will it be expensive to terraform New York, but the idea itself may or may not work. What do you think? Is there still time to cut back gas emissions and pollution so that we don't have to pay the price later?
As our class was talking about wars throughout the week, I kept on wondering why people from each side would for the most part blindly support their countries. While some nationalism has to do with propaganda and truncating free speech, I think it also has to do with simply being born. A country can bring back memories and emotions to its citizens that were born there, but should it cloud their judgement when criticizing their government? I love America because of our democratic process and the plethora of art we produce, but I have no qualms over criticizing the government. For some, critiquing the government is a sin, since they think it means you don't love your country. I think that it's the exact opposite. People freely expressing their opinions, positive or negative, is why I love being an American, not because I feel locked here by being born in Illinois. What's more appalling is when people have such a burning passion for their country that they will hurt those from other countries, like we saw during the WW1 and 2 presentations.
One non-war example of this blind patriotism was when Reagan played the song "Born in the USA" by Bruce Springsteen at one of his rallies. Not only did Reagan think it was a patriotic song, but the audience did to, simply because the repeating lyrics were "Born in the USA". Springsteen was furious about this, since his intention was to write a Vietnam protest song, not a 4th of July get-together song.
The lyrics aren't very ambiguous, as long as you listen to them.
Got in a little hometown jam So they put a rifle in my hand Sent me off to a foreign land To go and kill the yellow man
I think if anybody put thought into listening to this song they would think twice before playing it at a rally. Springsteen realized that simply being born in the USA does not make you blessed or set for life. He pointed out the underbelly of America, and how we forced our young men to go to Vietnam and kill. Is it our duty to love where we came from? I don't think so. But you can voice your opinion in the comments.
The main goal of a political campaign is to get people to side with you, and eventually vote for you. Political campaigning has been a hot topic ever since Super Pacs started forming. Campaigns inevitably involve one form of advertisement or another, but when does advertising cross the line into the territory of being a sellout? Here is a video of Mitt Romney in Jacksonville Florida:
I have never seen such an awkward encounter in my life. Keep in mind this is a Harvard graduate. When I go outside of the Northshore bubble on the CTA, I don't suddenly start speaking differently because I'm in a different neighborhood. This was 4 years ago, and Romney wasn't the nominee yet, so it was easy to make mistakes. But what about now, only a month before the election? Paul Ryan made a little mistake while campaigning in Ohio. From the New York Times:
"Afterward, Mr. Ryan stopped with his wife and children at a nearby soup kitchen. The family put on aprons and washed several large pans, though they did not appear to need washing, according to a pool reporter. There also was no one to serve at the soup kitchen, as breakfast had ended."
Here is a picture from the above event:
Why do candidates feel such a strong need to have embarrassing fake photo-ops and say slang which is clearly directed to a certain race or population? I know that the president isn't just in office to make decisions, he's also there to be a symbol for America. But what is the line between representing America and being just a shell that you sell to get votes? Is it okay to sell an image of themselves for campaigning, even though it doesn't represent who they truly are?
As many people know, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama went head to head in Denver this last week for a debate in Denver Colorado. Personally, I was more looking forward to another debate in Denver: Rumble 2012, between the political pundits Bill O'Reilly and Jon Stewart. I listened to both debates, and my consensus, as well as others' is that the debate between the candidates was boring and void of character, and the pundit battle was lively and entertaining. Here is the pundit debate...
And here is the Romney and Obama debate:
As I watched the presidential debate, a small globule of saliva dripped from my mouth. It was at this point I realized that this was the most boring live TV I had ever watched (even surpassing American Idol). Both candidates were repeating the same things they've said through their whole campaigns. All of their words homogenized into a single-toned rambling about various aspects of government. It's sad to see two aspiring presidents play it safe as millions of the people they will lead watch them. Part of a president's job is to emotionally represent the country. While Ronald Reagan's actual policies are debatable, the cowboy character he brought to the White House caused a boost of optimism in America. I believe America deserves a leader that is full of zeal and emotion. Here is Reagan during a presidential debate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi9y5-Vo61w. Although Jimmy Carter's point was well though out and important, the mere humor aspect of when Reagan says "There you go again" totally trumped his point. We had many more of these moments in the Stewart and O'reilly debate. Both candidates spoke with a lot of emotion and humor. Despite the the host constantly asking the audience to quiet down, they often responded to the debaters with laughs and cheers, opposed to the stoic audience of the other debate. We should be seeing more character from President Obama and Romney in the coming debates.
In class we started an interesting discussion on the topic of freedom of speech. The examples that we cited which had limitations on speech were ones that threatened the safety of others. One example was of a person screaming that there was a fire in the movie theater when there actually wasn't. The line between harming the safety of others and not with speech is sometimes hard to distinguish. What if you harm somebody emotionally, without putting their physical self in danger? That situation was played out by the Westboro Baptist Church and the Supreme Court. The Westboro Baptist Church is known for protesting the funerals of soldiers and gay people, since they believe that God hates America and "God Hates Fags"
One father of a soldier had had enough with the Church.When Westboro decided to protest his son's funeral with these signs, Albert Snyder sued them for causing emotional trauma to him and his family. The supreme court decided that the Westboro Baptist Church had the right to protest the funerals, with only one judge opposing the ruling. They declared that even though the language was offensive, it is protected by the first amendment as long as it doesn't put anybody in danger. (Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/02/westboro-baptist-church-w_n_830209.html)
I think that the judges were right in this decision. The signs were the opinion of the Westboro Baptist Church, and they were nonviolently protesting. However, there are certain exceptions to the idea that you can say anything that doesn't put anyone in danger. For instance, high school students can cause huge emotional trauma with some of the things they say. There are many instances of kids who commit suicide because of verbal abuse from fellow classmates. In these cases, the abusers should obviously be punished, since they caused violence with their words. What if the abusee didn't hurt themselves? What if they just lived emotionally damaged lives with newly developed social issues because of their ridicule? What do you think? Should the abusers be able to be sued for emotional damages?
