Television's take on Politics

In this week's episode of Community, an NBC intelligent, comedy show, the Dean of the college announces to a group of students that Vice President Joe Biden will be coming to visit the college that day. The Dean realizes that he does not have a representative of the student body to meet the Vice President. Therefore he decides to run an election for the President of the student government, which the college did not have. Jeff Winger, one of the main characters, is a lawyer back in college as a result of his law degree being revoked, decides to run for President simply to prove the point that politics are stupid. In his first speech to the public, Jeff says absolutely nothing. In fact the words that come out of his mouth are, "I think beer should be cold and boots should be dusty." However, his mannerisms, good looks and simply the way he speaks manages to persuade people to vote for him. I think this is an interesting way for the media and popular culture to comment on politics. The end of the episode ends with nobody winning the election, however, the episode portrays a. the pettiness and lack of substance in politics and b. how easily people can be persuaded. 


Here's the link to the episode:
http://www.nbc.com/community/video/intro-to-political-science/1302550

A New Age for Revolutions

After the revolution in Egypt that took place this month, it appears that other Authoritarian countries are getting nervous about the use of social media networks and even mass text messaging. Here's an article from the New York Times about Chinese Security Officials trying to prevent a protest.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/world/asia/21china.html?_r=1&hp

Freedom of Information

In our last lecture we discussed watchdog journalism and the Freedom of Information Act. I found the debate in the class to be very interesting. The question raised was do we, as citizens of a democratic country, have a right to know everything? Are there issues that should be hidden from us? Do we have a right to inquire on public officials whereabouts or actions?
Thoughts please...

24/7 News

This past weekend I took a trip down to Florida to pay a visit to my grandparents. My grandfather, a man in his mid 80's, spends the majority of his day sitting on the couch with the tv on the CNN news station. As my grandfather is an elderly man, his hearing is not top quality, which means that he keeps the tv on a very high volume. With all that being said, this past weekend marked a very important point in history as on Friday, February 11, 2011, Mubarak announced that he would be stepping down as the President of Egypt.  Because the television was blaring all day, I got to hear the announcement of Mubarak's resignation minutes, if not seconds, after it was actually said. I think it's pretty incredible that at this day in age, we are able to connect to a country that is half way around the world immediately and be completely aware of the events and issues of the current times of Egypt and other foreign countries.
It also, however, made me think about the role of a journalist. One journalist was asked where she was at the time of the announcement, and she actually said she missed it because she went back to her hotel room. This made me think that with the availability of cameras on cell phones and accessibility of uploading information to websites, the role of the journalist is not as important anymore. Yes, I was able to know about the President's resignation because of CNN, but to the many other people who were not at my grandparents and did not have CNN playing all weekend, they found out just as easily online, and not necessarily by reading the New York Times or any other news website.... this is just something to think about.