OU JMC 1013: Mr. Copper

Erin...These are all my old blogs! (Thank you!)

9-5-05
I think that Americans no longer look at Labor Day as it was intended. I think it is concieved as a last chance to find their merry little ways to the Lake, Beach, or nearest tourist attraction. It is not seen as a right that people strived for. People see it as the last chance to spend time with their children since school has just started. Americans simply don't view Labor Day as it was intended to be viewed. The only people who are allowed off are government employees and a few others who work for small business owners. All the money machines in LA and New York are to worried about the couple of thousands they'll lose in one day, so they force their employees to continue to work and only allow everyone off on Christmas if they're lucky!!! I think it's stupid that some things are allowed to be open and others are not. Let's make it one or the other folks!!! I just think this holiday should be spent with your family and not on trying to take one last vacation before winter sets in. I don't know maybe I'm just upset because I only got to ride 4 rides at Six Flags on Sunday because so many people were EVERYWHERE!!!!!


9-13-05

So I got to thinking on Monday when the class was talking about how the media tried to control what we watch and how they try to munipulate us into doing what they want. And it made me think of last semester when my roommate and I were on a "Friends" kick. For a little over a month all we did was watch "Friends" 24/7. After a while we noticed that through out the day we were comparing our lives to things that had happened in a specific episode. Eventually we got to the point where it was scary how often we could compare the happenings in our own lives to the television show. It was at that moment of realization we decided to turn it off.My entire life, I was under the impression that television shows like "Friends" and "Everybody Loves Raymond" were created because television stations knew we would like something to identify with. However, after my experience last year, it made me think that maybe the media is creating shows similar to us so that they can slowly transform us into the public of their choosing. I started wondering if I was creating experiences that mirror the episodes I took, or if in fact the occurances were commonplace and mimicked after others who had the same experiences before.So now I think that maybe the media is trying to make us a coffee drinking nyphomaniac nation obsesed with social stature and material belongings. (Don't get me wrong, I love the show) I guess I will always wonder.

9-13-05
I was having a hard time with finding a topic to state whether it was time or space biased. Then I thought about doing the obvious and stating something about a disaster. Take 9-11 for example, the media did a terrific job of swelling it up in everyones mind and making sure that everyone remembers every moment of that terrible day.I can remember the day it happened. I can remember sitting in my Algebra 2 class having no idea what was going on until the bell rang and I walked into the hall way and heard all of the gossuping going on. I can also remember thinking to myself over the next few days, "I wonder if I will remember where I was and what I was doing when this happened?" It then occured to me that I would because the media was practicing a space bias.They were making sure that we would never forget by telling us not to do so. It's like when you tell someone not to forget and they think they'll forget it, but they don't because they think about not forgetting it (I hope that made sense). They also crossed oceans and allowed us to gain support from other countries in our attack against terrorism.Just as the definition of Space bias states, it spreads aggressively across many medias. I thought it to be a perfect example of the power of the media in a stressful situation.

9-20-05
I was watching MTV the other day, and of course, at 8:00 they showed the MVT news segment. On it, was the rapper Kayne West who was adamantly calling the president a racists. His reasoning behind this was that he was giving no aid to the African-Americans stranded in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina.I didn't know exactly how to react to this because I was under the impression that Caucasions were a minority in the New Orleans area. If this were in fact the case, wouldn't it be near impossible for the rescue teams to evacuate anyone but African-American people?It also came to my attention that if African-Americans were in fact being denied rescue-aid, then would it be plausible that the president gave the specific orders to "not resue black people, only white". It doesn't make much sense to me.I simply viewed him as another hollywood sociallite trying to gain an extra 15 of fame, which he acheived in abundance.

posted by Courtney Wright @ 8:18 PM