South Park: Social Commentary at It's Finest

Since its debut on Comedy Central in 1997, South Park has often used political topics as a subject for its episodes. It has covered topics such as global warming, deforestation, and immigration over the years, usually exposing just how ridiculous the debates on each subject actually are. Basically, if you can think of a topic that made national news over the past thirteen years, South Park has probably referenced it in some way. I feel that South Park reached a new level of political relevance when they released an episode entitled “About Last Night” only one day after the 2008 presidential election. This episode, which has become my personal favorite, contains quotes from speeches that were given by both Obama and McCain following Obama’s win despite airing less than 24 hours after the election was decided. The main plot is the fairly ridiculous premise that the only reason McCain and Obama ran for president was so they could break into the Smithsonian and steal a precious diamond. However, although this it in itself would probably make for a great episode, the main plot was not the reason that “About Last Night” was so phenomenal. The subplot dealt with the incredibly over the top reactions by both McCain and Obama supporters after the election. Here’s a small taste:



Throughout the episode, Obama supporters are seen partying in the streets and celebrating because of the new world order that they are sure is coming. Meanwhile, McCain supporters are overcome with fear and depression, with some attempting to lock themselves in an underground bunker and other turning to suicide. From what I experienced immediately following Obama’s election, South Park hit the nail on the head with their portrayal of both sides. People that I knew were hardcore McCain supporters seemed to be convinced that the world was coming to an end. Obama supporters meanwhile seemed to think that Obama’s election was the greatest day in the history of mankind. This left me, someone who voted for McCain but didn’t fear an oncoming apocalypse, wondering why the whole country had gone insane.

“About Last Night” concludes with McCain supporters coming out of their bunker after realizing that the world had not ended, while Randy Marsh (seen above celebrating Obama’s win) realized that his life was still exactly the same. Over the past few months, I feel like both McCain and Obama supporters have started coming back down to earth, realizing that no matter what slight changes that the new administration brings about, the country will still remain pretty much the same place it is today after Obama’s tenure as president is over.

The Local News at 11:00

I tuned in to the 4 NY News at 11 on NBC tonight to see if it was any different from the 6:30 edition of the CBS News I watched earlier this evening. Similar to the 6:30 program, the 11:00 news started off with an unnecessarily long segment about the Swine Flu hysteria. Immediately following this there was a short segment about a new illness called Raccoon Ringworm disease that has affected a teen and a newborn baby, leaving the former blind in one eye and the latter brain damaged. (I seem to remember Jon Stewart saying that Raccoon Flu was going to be the next big illness on his latest show. I guess he wasn’t that far off.) The remainder of the opening part of the program dealt with other depressing news such as the fire that left people homeless in Newark and a list of funerals scheduled to take place tomorrow.

The only news story that could be considered “political” was a segment about the current investigation that John Edwards is facing regarding the over $100,000 that his campaign supposedly paid the firm of a woman whom Edwards had an affair with. Personally, I wouldn’t even really consider this a political story, since it deals with a person who is no longer holding any public office. This is all right though because I do not think it is necessary for a local news program to have an excess of political content. The purpose of this type of news broadcast is to inform the public about issues that they can personally relate to. If people want to know about the day to day activities of politicians, then there are plenty of other places that they can go to get this information.

As far as news programs are concerned, I would have to say that the 4 NY News 11 was fairly entertaining. It had enough interesting content to make me want to keep watching and the anchors did a good job of making everything relatable to the average viewer. Even though I would not recommend it as a primary source of news intake, the 11:00 news is a great way to get a quick injection of local news stories.

Re: Taking Colbert Too Seriously?

Recently a classmate of mine blogged about an article on the Huffington Post entitled, "Colbert Study: Conservatives Don't Know He's Joking". The article references a study conducted at the Ohio State University which found that many conservatives seem to think that Stephen Colbert is actually an extreme right-wing conservative, and not just playing one on television. My first impression upon seeing this article was that those being surveyed must have been truly stupid people to not immediately recognize the over the top antics of Colbert as an act. Besides the fact the Colbert Report is on a network called Comedy Central, some of the things that Colbert says cannot possibly be taking seriously. (For instance, on the clip posted on my classmate’s blog, Colbert mentions that we should have seen Swine Flu coming because of Porky the Pig’s catchphrase, “That’s All Folks!”)

In her response, my classmate expresses some minor concerns that those who think Colbert is serious will take his message seriously, thus provoking them to take some kind of extreme action. Although Colbert in the past has been very successful in getting his audience to do stupid things, such as voting for his name to adorn a new module on the International Space Station, I do not think that anything said on the Colbert Report will lead to people doing anything that could cause actual harm to society. My classmate also suggests that Comedy Central make it clearer that Colbert is not serious about the things he says. Although this would not do any harm, I do not think it is necessary because, as my classmate also points out, anyone who is unsophisticated enough to think that Colbert’s show is serious probably won’t be able to have any real impact on American society.

A Rant about the Two-Party System

If I had to pick one thing about American politics that makes me the angriest, it would without a doubt be the concept of a two-party system. Except for a few exceptions, it has become almost impossible to win an election on any level in this country unless one allies him or herself with either the Republican or Democratic Party. Though this is also true of state and local elections, for the purposes of this rant, I’ll be focusing on elections for federal positions, especially the presidency. First of all, let’s start by saying that if someone is liberal on social issues but conservative on fiscal issues, he or she can basically forget about winning any kind of election. For whatever reason it has been driven into the minds of the American public that social and fiscal issues are somehow intertwined, which is completely ridiculous. The two-party system only exacerbates this problem by lumping fiscal and social conservatives in the Republican Party and their liberal counterparts in the Democratic Party.

Let’s say that somehow I was in a position where I had a legitimate shot at making a run for President of the United States. I consider myself a fiscal and civil libertarian, which basically means I want the government to stay out of both economic and social issues as much as possible. There is no way the Democratic Party would accept a fiscal conservative as a candidate, so this would just leave me with the Republicans. In order for a Republican to have a shot in hell of winning a presidential election, particularly the primaries, he has to cater to the social conservatives that seem to make up the majority of the southern United States. This means that I would have to pretend to be a social conservative myself in order to even contend. I would very much like to know when thinking the government should leave the economy alone automatically started meaning that I also had to be anti-gay rights.

Now I’m not saying that having political parties is necessarily a bad thing. Without having some kind of party system, there would just be non-stop chaos in the government. Nothing would ever get done because no one would ever be able to agree on anything. What I am saying is that there should be more than two parties that have a chance of winning elections. Probably the best way to sum up my feelings towards the two-party system would be to compare it to flavors of ice cream. (I do this partly because it’s easy to understand and partly because I’m really hungry right now.) Let’s say the only two flavors available are chocolate and vanilla, but I really like strawberry ice cream. Am I supposed to pick which flavor is closest to strawberry? Neither of them is close to strawberry! This is the same way I feel when I’m forced to pick a party during an election. Neither of them is ever close to what I want. That's all for my rant, it's time to go eat some ice cream.

CBS News at 6:30

I watched the 6:30 edition of the CBS 2 News just now, and I made a note of each story in the order that it was presented in. The stories were as follows:

1. An update on the Swine Flu Epidemic: school districts throughout the country are being closed throughout the country including the Deer Park district in Suffolk County. Even though the three students there that were diagnosed with the disease have made a full recovery, the schools are going to remain closed for 3 weeks.

2. A brief summary of the kind of action being taken throughout the world to combat the Swine Flu: Examples included the government mandated slaughter of animals suspected to be infected in Egypt and the quarantine of Mexicans that are suspected of having the disease.

3. A report about a 25 year-old woman named Laura Garza that has gone missing and was last seen with a known sex-offender.

4. 30 people are homeless thanks to a 4 alarm fire in Newark

5. The drowning deaths of a New Jersey man and his niece have been ruled a murder-suicide. The man evidently jumped off a bridge while holding his niece.

6. Senator Arlen Specter commented on why he switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party.

7. Jack Kemp died yesterday of cancer at age 73. He was a former NFL player that translated his athletic career into a successful political career. He was a member of the House of Representatives for a long time, and was chosen as Bob Dole’s running mate during the 1996 presidential election.

8. A high school star student-athlete collapsed during track practice before dying shortly thereafter. He was only 17 years old.

9. The former Archbishop of New York City, Cardinal Egan, sat down for an interview to respond to the criticism he faced during his tenure.

10. 30,000 people participated in the annual 5 Borough Bike Tour despite the rainy weather.

11. Weather Report: It’s going to rain a lot over the next few days.

12. Sports Report: Yankees and Mets were rained out today, the Atlanta Hawks defeated the Miami Heat in a game 7, and Tiger Woods finished 4^th in whatever golf tournament was this weekend.

Watching the CBS News simply reaffirmed what I already knew about evening news programs: they are all extremely depressing! The first five stories were about global pandemics, murders, fires, and missing people. These were followed by a brief respite during which the relatively neutral story of Arlen Specter’s party switch was discussed. After this, it was right back to the upsetting news with stories about Jack Kemp’s passing and the tragic death of a seventeen year old student-athlete. Watching these kinds of stories is bound to make people wonder if anything good ever happens in the Tri-State area. Not that this is their fault, but even the weather and sports reports were upsetting. It’s going to rain all week apparently, and since both the Yankees and Mets had their games rained out today, the main focus of the local news story was on an upcoming biography about Alex Rodriguez that supposedly shows how he cheated and used steroids since he was in high school.

That being said, the stories that were shown were more or less ordered correctly according to importance. The lead story was obviously going to be the Swine Flu because that’s the topic that is most on people’s minds right now. From there the first minor story was about the 25 year old woman gone missing, which was shown earlier in the program because it is an issue that viewers might actually be able to help out with. Finally, after all the other bad news was shown, the news concluded with a human interest story about bikers and the sports and weather reports. Other than the general gloominess of the news stories, I have no other problems with how CBS News sets up its 6:30 edition.

Don't Worry about the Economy. Look Over Here!

In mid-April, the Justice Department released memos that detailed the harsh interrogation techniques used by the C.I.A. under the Bush Administration. This has got to be one of the most obvious uses of distraction tactics that I have ever seen. With the country’s economy still in shambles and not giving any signs that it was getting any better, Obama and his administration knew that it would not be long before the media started giving him a hard time for not immediately turning things around. What’s a better way to take some of the pressure off yourself then by pointing out the failures of predecessor? Until the recent Swine Flu debacle the only thing the media had to talk about was the economy, so Obama had to go out of his way to give them something else.


There are two reasons why I’m completely convinced that this was nothing more than a diversionary device by the Obama Administration. First of all, these memos have not told the American public anything that they were not already well aware of. We’ve all known for the last two years or so that these interrogations went on. We all know that waterboarding and other techniques that could be considered “torture” were frequently used to get people to talk. This is old news, and Obama just wanted the media to start talking about it again. The second reason is that immediately after these memos were released, it was made clear that none of the people responsible for these interrogations would be prosecuted or reprimanded in any way. If the Obama Administration was really on a crusade to right the past wrongs of this country, wouldn’t they want to start by making some effort to punish those responsible? All signs point to the fact that these memos were released solely to give the press something to talk about for awhile.

Waterboarding

Rush Limbaugh: Giving Conservatives a Bad Name Since 1951

Rush Limbaugh is a pundit on the extreme right side of the political spectrum and in my humble opinion, he is completely out of his mind. Recently on his radio show he responded to the ongoing crisis facing the newspaper industry.

I guess if you look hard enough, you can blame anyone for anything. I’m not the biggest fan of Mr. Obama myself, but to say that he’s responsible for the newspaper collapse is just absurd. His rant about “Obama Suck-up Disease” does not really make any sense. Every president has positive articles printed about him during the first few months that he’s in office. Even Bush wasn’t widely criticized until well into his tenure. But, for the sake of argument, let’s pretend for a second that the entire country really has gone crazy with Suck-Up Fever. Wouldn’t this mean that people want to hear more positive stories about Obama, thus increasing the sales of newspapers? Anyway, none of that matters because the decline of newspapers has nothing to do with the administration or even the economy. Newspapers are going out of business because there are more convenient places that people can get their news these days. It’s as simple as that. Why would I wait until the next day’s paper to see what’s going on when I can just turn on my computer and find out now?

As a quick side note, I mentioned in a previous post that I didn’t think anyone could put a political spin on the recent Swine Flu epidemic. Well thanks to Mr. Limbaugh I stand corrected because I’m pretty sure he implied that Obama’s visit to Mexico caused the outbreak. Someone should let this guy know that saying stuff like that just gives his opponents an easy target to attack. Besides, it gives all of us non-insane fiscal conservatives a bad name.

Environmentalists Watch Movies Too!

I’ll admit, when I went searching for an environmentalist blog post, I expected to find a series of whiny tree huggers complaining about how awful humans are, and how we should all renounce civilization as we know it and live amongst nature. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that this was not the case. Ironically, the environmentalist blog I enjoyed the most was called Treehugger. The site is very good about being informative about environmental issues without getting preachy, something I feel is unfortunately very rare. It took me awhile to find an article I liked enough to respond to, but I finally landed on an article by Josh Peterson reviewing five environmentally themed movies from 2008.

What I liked the most about this article is that the ratings that Peterson gave for each movie were based primarily on whether or not the movie was actually any good. This was refreshing because, let’s be serious, no one wants to sit through a terrible movie no matter how good its message might be. I also enjoyed the fact that he took some movies with no apparent environmental issues and found some way to spin them like they did; presumably just so he could review them. For instance, he reviews The Hulk by saying that it advocates the proper control of science and Twilight by saying that vampires that do not eat humans represent vegetarians. His favorite movie listed is Wall-E because in addition to just being an all-around good movie, it has a solid anti-pollution message without getting too preachy. My personal favorite though, was his review of The Happening, which I had the misfortune of seeing in theaters this summer. The premise of the movie is that the trees are pissed off at humans for pollution so they decide to kill us all with a poisonous cloud or something. The movie has its message to be sure. For instance everyone who was riding in an SUV dies, while everyone who was using public transportation survives (uplifting, right?). Peterson sums up the movie perfectly when he references a particular scene where a man goes insane and runs himself over with a lawnmower followed by a pan to a giant sign that says “YOU DESERVE THIS.”

“The Happening really seems to hate its audience. Who is going to want to watch a movie that thinks you deserve to get run over by a lawnmower?”

Never, ever watch this movie

Dear Parents Television Council: Go Away

It seems every day, the organization that calls itself the Parents Television Council is up in arms about a television program that it deems to be too offensive to be on television. Basically, these guys comb through hours of television until they find something they do not like, and then they go nuts about it on their website. They complain about things ranging from partial cartoon nudity on Family Guy, their most hated of all shows, to (…gasp…) an uncensored utterance of the word “shit” on The Today Show circa 7:30 A.M (and we all know how much kids love their Today Show). Now if this were the extent of the PTC’s activity, then I probably would not even be taking the time to voice my disgust. In addition to being some of the biggest whiners in the business, they are also actively campaigning to get all of the shows that they have a problem with off the air. To give you an idea of just how high their standards really are, the only shows currently on prime time network television that they don’t have a problem with are Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and Deal or No Deal (What!?! Those models holding the cases give such an unfair standard of beauty for our young girls). This would leave television fairly boring to say the least.

To make matters worse, the PTC has also taken it upon itself to make sure that their most hated shows on cable TV get removed as soon as possible. Perhaps someone should inform these kind folks that whatever indecency laws do apply to network television hold no bearing whatsoever on privately owned cable networks.

If the PTC was a group that simply went around and pointed out to parents which shows had content that might be deemed offensive, then I would not have the slightest problem with them. I mean, I’d almost definitely still make fun of them, but I wouldn’t have to dedicate a whole post to it. The fact is, saying that the network or the government have a duty to protect us from inappropriate material is completely ignorant. I would like to see where in the United States Constitution it says that we have a right to not be offended. On the other hand, I’ll be happy to point out where it says that we have the right to freedom of speech.

Family Guy: Arch Nemesis of the Parents Television Council

Hannity and Colmes

Since Hannity and Colmes doesn’t technically exist anymore, I had to go hunting around YouTube for clips from when it was still on. I probably watched around twenty clips from the show, and I think that my sentiments towards it can be best summed up by this short parody I found.

Basically, the show pretends to be a fair and balanced debate program when in reality the heavy conservative viewpoints of Hannity far out way the semi-liberal viewpoints of Colmes. I say semi-liberal because to be honest, Colmes doesn’t even seem that liberal to me. He’s closer to moderate than anything else, and it’s only when placed next to Hannity that he seems left-leaning at all. After rummaging around the net some more, I also found a survey that was done by Media Matters for America that compared the number of liberal guests versus conservative guests on the show, as well as the amount of Democratic officials that appeared compared to the amount of Republican officials. It found, perhaps not surprisingly, that 64% of all guests were identified as conservatives including a staggering 73% of elected officials. Now this might just say that liberal politicians and pundits simply knew better than to go on a program on the traditionally conservative Fox News Network, but it does not change the fact that there was a much greater conservative influence on Hannity and Colmes.

After the departure of Colmes last year, the show simply became "Hannity", and any semblance of a balanced commentary was completely eliminated, as seen in this clip.

Stupid YouTube clips aside though, I definitely have less of a problem with "Hannity" than I did with "Hannity and Colmes", and it’s not because I agree with Hannity’s viewpoints (generally speaking, I don’t). As the show exists now, it is exactly what it advertises itself as. It’s a conservative social commentary and there’s nothing wrong with that. The only issue I have is when a program claims to be unbiased, and instead is Hannity and Colmes.

The First 100 Days Hysteria

A new president’s first 100 days in office has been used for generations as a time frame to assess whether or not the new leader is off to a good start. What I would like to know is, who decided on this arbitrary time period and why did they think that any changes brought on by a new administration would start to produce results in only three months? Over the last few days, every major news organization has had hours of coverage on Obama’s first 100 days, but what has really changed since Obama took office? The reports on Obama’s first days in office focused on basic changes made by the new administration in the government, but did not really have any real way to judge whether our country is better off now than it was four months ago. The reason for this is simple: not enough time has passed to say if Obama’s new programs and policies are having a positive or negative effect on the economy or on any other aspect of American society.

It seems as if the entire fixation on a president’s first 100 days is simply an excuse for the media to take a day or two off from reporting on actual news. They know they can fill plenty of television time just by assigning arbitrary ranks to the president or by commenting repeatedly on the various things that the president has said over the first few months, even though most of the things they mention have little to do with the president’s actual performance. If the media absolutely has to rate the president based on an arbitrary timescale, they should at least make sure enough time has passed so that there is actually something worthwhile to report on.

Protests for Women's Right

When I think about feminism, I generally divide it into two different categories. There’s the insane “men all the source of all evil” section that gives all feminists a bad name, and then there’s the level headed majority of feminists that simply wish for women to be treated equally to men. With a few exceptions, the blog Feministe is written by women from the latter camp. Most of their articles deal with women’s rights issues throughout the world or voice legitimate concerns about misogynist behavior in America.

The one entry that I found particularly interesting was entitled 300 Women March for Rights in Afghanistan. The post deals with the recent protests in Afghanistan over a new law that states that Shia women cannot leave or work outside of their home unless given permission by their husband. The same law also states that rape is legal if it is within a marriage. In protest of this law, 300 Afghani women marched in the streets holding banners before they were met by 1,000 counter-protesters that hurled obscenities and stones at the women. Despite this seemingly overwhelming adversity, the march continued with the protesters refusing to back down.

I agree with the blogger in applauding the efforts of these brave women in standing up for their rights. I would have to imagine that it would be extremely difficult to find anyone in America that is in agreement with this unjust law, and I’m happy to see this issue being brought to the attention of the readers of Feministe. In addition to simply being an informative piece, this post also provided a link to donate to The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan to support these women. This kind of proactive approach goes a lot farther towards dealing with a problem then just complaining about an issue.

The Girls Next Door... The Epitome of Stupid Television

The E! reality show, The Girls Next Door, shows the lives of Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends, probably the dumbest girls I’ve ever seen, and chronicles their adventures and crazy antics. Though I’ve only seen one episode (and that was a painful experience), from what I gather the basic formula of the show is that the girls get to do something cool, scuba diving in this case, and a camera crew follows them around while their doing it. Meanwhile, there’s all the usual fake drama and pointless subplots that we’ve come to expect from any good reality show. The question being posed about this show and shows like it is simple: Do they in any way effect the socialization of girls? Personally, I think that the impact is minimal. If these shows were the only influence in a girl’s life, then obviously it would have a negative effect. Who wouldn’t want to do all the cool things the Girls Next Door do without having to work for a living? However, there are plenty more factors that go into a girl’s socialization besides television. The kind of person a girl turns out to be is affected much more by environment than by anything else. Influences from family and friends far outweigh anything a television could do. Even as kids are growing up, they realize that things they see on TV are not how life really is. It’s the same reason that kids who grew up watching Loony Tunes didn’t make a habit of dropping heavy objects on each other.

That being said, as long as parents do a satisfactory job of explaining to their kids that these shows are not as “real” as they are made out to be (or better yet not letting them watch at all), any minimal influence that programs like this may have can be negated. Furthermore, some of these organizations like the Parents Television Council that seem to think that it’s the network’s responsibility to keep shows like The Girls Next Door off the air are completely out of their minds. E! is a privately owned network with no obligation to do anything for anyone, and if they think they can make more profit off of stupid reality shows than anything else then so be it.

Finally, I just want to say that if I go my entire life without seeing another episode of the Girls Next Door then I can probably die happy. Man, how do people watch this garbage?!

Network News vs. the Daily Show

Yesterday I watched Eyewitness News at 6:00 on ABC, and then the Daily Show at 11:00 on Comedy Central so that I could compare how both programs covered the same news stories. On this particular day there were two key top stories that each show discussed, both of which I have already talked about in previous posts. These were the hysteria over the outbreak of the Swine Flu and the botched photo-op that resulted in an Air-Force One look-alike flying over Lower Manhattan and terrifying its people. I thought that both programs did an excellent job of covering all of the key points from each story, although there were some key differences in the way each presented the material. The most obvious difference between these two programs is that the Daily Show not only gives a general overview of each story, but it also adds a comedic touch to it as seen here:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Mistakes on a Plane
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis First 100 Days

Besides this, the other main difference between the shows is that while the Daily Show generally picks two or three main stories and spends the entire show talking about them, Eyewitness News starts the program with the major issues and then continues on with a bunch of minor stories (usually upsetting things such as murder or other crimes). Overall, I would say that both programs do about an equal job on informing the viewer about the major stories of the day. However, Eyewitness News does a much better job of informing the viewer on the smaller, more local stories. All things considered though, I would not recommend either as a primary source of news. Simply put, too much happens every day for everything to be condensed into a half an hour show (fifteen minutes in the case of the Daily Show if you account for the daily interview). Although either of these options is a good way to get a quick burst of information, they should only be treated as news supplements. I would encourage people to look elsewhere such as an online newspaper or a 24-hour news network for their main diet of daily news.

Fox News and CNN: Both Equally Terrifying

When I first heard about the outbreak of the “Swine Flu,” I have to say that I did not think anything of it, but after seeing a few headlines here and there about it I said to myself, “Hey, I have to do this blog post where I compare how Fox News and CNN cover the same news story.” This seemed like a big enough story, so I turned on the television to see what all the hubbub was about. Over the next hour or so, I was convinced by both Fox and CNN that the cold that I had was some sort of mutant pathogen that was going to kill me and half of the world’s population. Thanks guys, I was looking for something else to stress out about.

Although this probably was not the best news story to look at for this situation, I did not really see any political bias one way or the other on either network. The only noticeable difference was that CNN had a lot more references to Obama’s upcoming 100th day in office. All things considered though, I’m going to go ahead and assume that if I had watched these networks on some other day, there might have been a little more bias present. I guess a pandemic is not really something that you can put a political spin on (even though I’m sure those sneaky Democrats have something to do with it).

Luckily for me, I was able to use this handy thing called the internet to do a little research of my own about the disease that supposedly is going to kill us all. Everything that I read pointed to the fact that the Swine Flu is basically no more dangerous than a regular flu. All the symptoms are the same, and it can be easily treated just by using antibiotics. As I am writing this, there have been around 150 deaths from this “outbreak” thus far. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, there are approximately 36,000 deaths from flu every year in just the United States. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this does not sound like a reason to start preparing for the apocalypse. All I can say for sure is that liberal or conservative, the one thing that news networks can agree on is that they love scaring the living hell out of people.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Snoutbreak '09 - The Last 100 Days
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis First 100 Days

Always makes my day when Jon Stewart agrees with me

Flyover Causes a Panic in New York City

This morning between 10:00 and 10:30 A.M. an Air Force One lookalike accompanied by two F-16 fighter jets made a flyover of Lower Manhattan. Although this was a scheduled exercise so that the Air Force could take pictures, the lack of public awareness regarding the situation resulted in the mass evacuations of several buildings throughout Manhattan and Jersey City. With the recent attacks of September 11th still extremely fresh in their minds, people wasted no time in leaving the buildings as soon as they saw the plane over the city. Within minutes, 911 operators were flooded with calls from concerned citizens, and even the markets seem to have been effected with the Dow Jones dropping 40 points during the flyover before rebounding 50 points after it became apparent that all was well. Although the New York City and New Jersey State police forces were notified about the flyover, they were given strict instructions not to inform the public. Additionally, Notify NYC, a system designed to send out text messages to New Yorkers in case of an emergency situation, sent out messages explaining the circumstances at 10:38, which was after the flyover was already completed.

The complete failure of officials to even attempt to notify the public of this situation is absolutely unacceptable. For a city that has been attacked so recently, it is completely ridiculous to think that an unannounced flyover of Lower Manhattan would not be met by a panic. The lack of coordination led to a complete shutdown of several buildings for almost half an hour, and put an unnecessary strain on police and 911 operators, who could have been using the time to deal with actual problems. Worst of all, following today, people may be much more reluctant to evacuate in case of a real threat. It would have been extremely simple to send out a memo or even an e-mail to office buildings and have them announce the message over their PA systems before the flyover was scheduled to commence, but for whatever reason no efforts were made until after the panic had already begun.

Despite the gross negligence of officials, I applaud the individual citizens and businesses who recognized a potential threat and took it upon themselves to extricate themselves from harm. Perhaps if people had this mindset back on September 11th, the loss of life would have been lessened dramatically.

Obama's Weekly Address

Since taking office back in January, President Barack Obama has issued a weekly address to the nation every Saturday on the internet. Each address is around five minutes long, and they consist of Obama explaining an issue that his administration is currently focused on. I watched the April 25th address, which dealt with the Obama Administration’s quest to decrease government spending and to try and put a dent in the massive budget deficit in the U.S. government.

A president addressing the nation on a weekly basis like this is something that is unprecedented in the history of the United States. Granted, a huge part of that is the fact that modern technology has made it infinitely easier for someone to talk to the entire country no matter where in the world he might be. Still, Obama seems to be much more eager to talk to the country then previous presidents, especially his direct predecessor George W. Bush. Used properly, I think that this kind of thing can be a great tool for educating the general population about what the current administration is actually doing to solve this country’s problems.

Unfortunately from what I have seen so far, these weekly addresses have generally been less about actually informing the public and more about giving the illusion of informing the public. This particular address was four and a half minutes long, and about three minutes of it was Obama basically just repeating in different ways that the government needs to start using money more responsibly. The only semi-useful part of the address was a short list of generic steps that Obama and his administration plan to take:

1. Adhere to the basic principle that new tax or entitlement policies should be paid for.
2. Create new incentives to eliminate wasteful spending and promote what works
3. Look for ideas from the bottom up. (Talk to low-level workers, not just management)
4. Reach beyond the halls of government. (Ask businesses for help)

These steps are all extremely vague, and do not give the slightest bit of insight as to the specific things that the Obama administration may or may not be doing to eliminate our country’s massive debt. If Obama really wants to give these addresses, and personally I do not think they are necessary at all, he should at least come to the table with something useful to say, and not just say things like “wasteful spending is bad.” I suspect that all these addresses are just a way for Obama to keep his face in the public view for when re-election time comes along, but that’s another story entirely…

Good Night, and Good Luck

Good Night, and Good Luck is an Academy Award nominated film released in 2005 that centers around the standoff between journalist Edward R. Murrow and United States Senator Joseph McCarthy during the 1950s. The film was written and directed by George Clooney, and it stars David Strathairn as Murrow, Clooney as Fred Friendly (co-producer of Murrow’s show), and Robert Downey Jr. as Joseph Wershba (a correspondent for CBS News). The movie begins and ends with a speech given by Murrow warning his audience not to let the potential of television to inform and educate the public go to waste, and the bulk of the film chronicles the day to day operations of the See It Now program. This program dealt with a variety of controversial issues during its run in the 1950s, but it was most famous for its criticism of McCarthyism during the Red Scare.

The main plot of Good Night, and Good Luck begins with Murrow defending a lieutenant in the Air Force Reserve named Milo Radulovich, who was discharged from the service because he maintained close ties with his father and sister who were supposedly communist sympathizers. By bringing the ridiculousness of this case to the public on his program, Murrow invoked the wrath of McCarthy, who quickly came out and accused Murrow himself of sympathizing with communists. Even though this was at a time when such an accusation often met the immediate end to someone’s career, Murrow refused to fold. He quickly responded to McCarthy by denying the charges and then launching a counterattack, saying that the real danger to America was the Communist witch hunt and not the danger of Communist infiltration. After a series of back and forths between Murrow and McCarthy, Murrow and the See It Now team finally managed to convince enough people that McCarthy was the source of the problem, and this ultimately resulted in a Senate investigation of the senator. Unfortunately for Murrow, despite this success his show was moved to an unfavorable time slot and ultimately canceled due to its lack of ratings and the popularity of the new quiz show genre.

I feel that this film was very well written and put together, and from what I have read it is very historically accurate with only minor liberties taken for dramatic effect. The use of black and white film add to the historical feel of the movie, and the use of actual stock footage of Senator Joseph McCarthy give it an added realism. In addition, many of the film’s major themes are still extremely relevant today. Most prevalently, the struggle of Edward Murrow to remain on the air despite doing a great public service is something that can easily be related to in the present day. Networks are very reluctant to show programs similar to See It Now because they know that they can get much better ratings by showing mindless reality shows or other non-informational programs. Unfortunately, this seems to be an inescapable part of the American media, and we will just have to hope that journalists like Murrow keep coming around to show us that the media can be used to inform and educate just as easily as it can be used to entertain.

The Huffington Post

The Huffington Post is a massive blog and news website that was founded in May 2005 by Ariana Huffington and Kenneth Lerer. In addition to posting news stories, the Post offers a social commentary from a liberal perspective. The articles and blog entries throughout the site are written by a variety of different authors, all with a relatively similar position on the political spectrum. The front page includes all of the top stories and popular articles from that day, and from there the site is organized by several categories including politics, media, business, and entertainment. Clicking on one of these categories will give the reader an array of articles on that particular subject.

Although it obviously should not be taken as a reliable news source, The Huffington Post is what it is, and it serves its purpose well. Though I personally would not consider myself liberal by any means, the writing throughout the site is good enough that one can enjoy reading it without agreeing with what is being said. The site is also extremely organized, allowing readers to quickly find blog entries on any subject that they want. All and all, the Huffington Post is one of the better blogs that I’ve come across, and though I probably will not make a habit of visiting it, I would certainly recommend it to people that are looking for liberal social commentary on world events.

RE: Nuclear Advice

Milan Vodicka, a Czech national living in Prague, was present at a speech given by President Barack Obama during his tour of Europe earlier this month. Amongst all the things said by the president, the one item that stuck out the most to Vodicka was his call for the complete eradication of all nuclear weapons in the entire world. In his article, Nuclear Advice, Vodicka points out all of the flaws with this particular proposal. For starters, these weapons are the only things keeping countries such as Great Britain, France, and Russia from losing their status as world powers, thus making it virtually impossible to get them to go along with Obama’s proposal. In addition, supposing that by some miracle all nations agreed to dismantle their weapons, all it would take is a single rouge state or organization or even a group of rouge scientists to plunge the world into chaos if they managed to acquire a nuke. All in all, despite living in the Czech Republic, a country with no nuclear weapons, Vodicka feels much safer in a world where many countries have nuclear weapon capability than he would if all nations decided to completely eliminate their nuke supplies

I agree strongly with Vodicka on this matter, and find it very hard to comprehend those who think the elimination of nukes is a plausible idea, including Mr. Obama. Without a doubt there is a strong danger stemming from the absurd amount of nuclear weapons in existence, and I have absolutely no problem with countries working together to reduce their stockpiles because lets face it, there really isn’t any good reason for countries to have enough weapons to destroy the entire world more than a thousand times (barring an alien invasion or something). However, to suggest that nations get rid of all of their nuclear weapons is just ignorant and naïve. Even in the extremely unlikely case that every single nuke in the world is eliminated, what would prevent them from being built again sometime down the road? Just because we get rid of the weapons won’t mean we’ll have forgotten how to make them, and if one country decides sometime that they don’t feel like cooperating anymore, then they could build a few nukes and assert themselves as the world’s leading power.

For the sake of argument, lets go one step further and say that by some act of God, no one builds a nuclear weapon ever again. I would still say that the world is better off and safer with a good balance of nuclear powers. The existence of nuclear weapons is the single greatest deterrent against war that the world has ever seen, as well as the greatest contributing factor of the general stability the world has seen since World War II. During the years of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union were bitter enemies and during any other period in human history, they very likely would have went to war with each other over something eventually. Both sides were terrified of conflict with the other due to the fear of nuclear escalation, and thus World War III was prevented. Vodicka brings up a perfect example of nukes as a deterrent and a stabilizer when he mentions the situation in Israel. Israel's nuclear weapons are, and have always been, the only thing preventing the slew of neighboring Islamic states from overrunning and conquering them. I strongly believe the elimination of nukes would be a grave mistake on any level, and it was refreshing to read an article by a citizen of a non-nuclear power who agrees with me.

Introduction

Hi guys, my name's Andy and I'm writing this blog for my Media and Politics class at Ramapo College. Enjoy!