10 Years Later

Today marks the 10 year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. As we have discussed in class, there is a lot of confusion about the motive for the invasion and if it was the correct choice. Though I don't want to delve into the motivation for the intrusion, I do want to insert a statistic about the approval rating of the war. In a Gallup poll taken between March 7 and 10 of this year, 53 percent answered that they disapproved of the war. Whether it be the confusion over the causes and intentions, or the length of our invasion there, this anniversary is marked with clear disapproval.

With America in its role as the global policeman, we are involved either physically or financially in most wars/conflicts that occur. The Iran-Israel conflict, the Syrian revolution, and many other conflicts are occurring right now, most of which we are involved in. What interests me is the motive for getting involved.

I know that the reason we are involved in conflicts is deep and complex, but I wonder why the US is the country that is involved. Why not Russia, England, or China? Why us?

I think this is the case because of our dominant economy and drive to be at the top. Every State of the Union Speech the President emphasizes how we need to be the leader. This rhetoric and focus on being on top spills over to our actions. Thus, we get involved in other conflicts, that sometimes the public does not even support!

What do you think, and why?

NFL Tokenism?

TV tokenism has now become very apparent to me after Mr. Bolos' presentation and all of the presentations. Admittedly, I had never thought of how common TV tokenism is, and how the same patterns of characters appear in tons of shows. TV tokenism is the idea that having one or a couple minority characters will offset accusations of a certain network or show being racially biased towards casting white actors over minorities. This pattern is very alarming to me, especially since I had no idea that it was so prevalent. It made me wonder if tokenism was also apparent in other parts of our society.

As it turns out, there are tons of examples of tokenism in our society. The one I was most appalled by was in the National Football League (NFL). The NFL has a rule, the Rooney Rule, which mandates that every team has to interview at least one minority coach for a head coach position. This is very similar to a quota in a way. It is similar in the sense that each team has to interview one minority candidate, but different in the sense that they are not required to hire a minority person for that position.

I know what you're thinking - this is in no way similar to tokenism. Tokenism is, after all, "using" minority characters to avoid backlash. But the Rooney Rule is similar to tokenism because it forces teams to at least try to hire a minority coach. And that is where the controversy comes in.

As with quotas and tokenism, backlash is almost certain. For one, it is easy for some to say that if a minority coach gets hired, it could be that they were hired solely on the basis of race. Though it is almost always incorrect, and obviously offensive, those kinds of comments are pretty common.

But what I was more concerned with was if the rule was effective or not? In this current NFL off-season, there were 15 top coaching vacancies available. How many of those fifteen spots were filled with minority coaches? NONE. So perhaps I was incorrect with my assessment of NFL tokenism - it may be more of the NFL trying to be racially equal (and failing miserably).

Herm Edwards, an ex-NFL coach, hopes that the rule doesn't encourage situations where teams just meet the quota JUST to meet the quota: "It can't be 'who is the guy to interview to get this out of the way?'" But sadly, that is what it looks like it has come to, at least in this off-season.

I don't think that is a coincidence at all - I think that white coaches have the upper hand when it comes to hiring in the NFL. What do you think - is this just another example of tokenism? Is the Rooney Rule sufficient to try to be racially equal, or does it fail miserably?

US-Israel Alliance

President Obama is scheduled to make a visit to Israel in a couple of weeks, his first in his presidency. Israel is a very important ally to the US, as the president stressed. But he also called the alliance "eternal". Obama's use of the word "eternal" is very rhetorically powerful, but also assumes that the US will eternally be a super-power. The reason Obama is being so reassuring towards Israel is because he wants to convey the message that he is on their side in the Iran nuclear facility events.

Iran has recently been making strides in their nuclear capabilities, supposedly. They claim that they are very close to being able to make a nuclear bomb, but many countries are skeptical of that claim. Nonetheless, Iran and Israel have a very heated relationship over land disputes.

But this brings up an interesting thought - why can the US have nuclear weapons, but deny other countries theirs? Though Iran may seem like an irrational actor, increasing economic sanctions to prevent the development of weapons may actually fuel the fire. This is similar to what Mr. Bolos said a while back - why does the US get to criticize Iran on its horrible treatment of women, when it took the US 200 years for women to get equal rights?

Though I do think Iran with nuclear weapons could be extremely dangerous. I do not know why the US gets to control them. What do you think - does the US have the right to boss around other nations? Why or why not?

Martin and the Media

Over a year after the controversial, fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin on a dark, rainy February night, there has been no mass amounts of analysis of the situation, or live coverage, or even that many articles about the shooting. But the shooting, which was the biggest news story for the week or so after it happened, is no less important now than it was a year ago. The media, however, no longer prioritizes this important, almost monumental event in their news coverage. This, to me, is indicative of how the media shapes what news is and is not relevant - a pattern that has been the case for a while.

For those of you who don't know about the case, I will give a brief description that by no means is sufficient to sum up the story. One night, Trayvon Martin, a black teenager, was walking home from the store and was approached by a volunteer watchman. The watchman, George Zimmerman, thought Martin was acting suspicious is his wealthy, gated community. Zimmerman then fatally shot Martin (if you want to learn in more detail about the story, go here).

After the shooting, the news exploded with tons of different accounts of the story, supposed facts about the case, and certainly opinions about the motive of the shooting and if Zimmerman was justified in killing Trayvon. Though this case is very intricate and complex, I think that the media's response to the story is just as important as the story itself.

Dylan Stableford, Senior Media Reporter for Yahoo! thinks this case exposed the worst in the media: "The Trayvon Martin case has exposed some of the media's worst tendencies - selective editing, rushing to judgement, stoking anger for ratings and pageviews". The word "selective" indicates that the media only portrays certain parts of the case, in order to make the story seem more interesting to the audience. Tendencies like misrepresenting a story for "pageviews" and "ratings" are clearly horrible tactics the media uses to gain popularity.

And after a week, fua, as Oscar Wao would say. It is gone. No more constant coverage of the story, hourly updates, you will rarely even see any kind of story on it. Do you think that the media does a correct job covering all stories fair and equally? Is it legitimate for them to alter stories so they are more popular and make more money? I certainly do not think so, but please share your thoughts.