Anna’s Blog

Ok this is really late but…I read the article on “The Onion” about the remote control that be used by a remote control and i thought it was really funny.  IT’s definitely satirical because it completely makes fun of the way that in America we have invented tons of things that can make our life easier because we are so lazy.  I kind of thought the article was serious at first becuase I’d forgotten it was satire and it didn’t actually seem that abnormal.  We have so many other things that help us in unnecessary ways that I would have completely believed the article.  It’s a little scary how lazy our country has become that something like that could happen.

This first semester I have learned a lot about evil and satire.  I remember in the beginning we focused a lot on different forces of evil in the world and how they can control society.  Macbeth was a great example of evil becuase it’s a tragedy.  Also, we learned about racism in Huck Finn and A Lesson Before Dying.  I also learned about the concept of satire, which is making fun of political problems through comedy.  We’ve read a lot this semester, and for the second semester, I hope to learn more about writing.  I really need to improve my skills when it comes to writing essays especially, but I also need to work on writing things like articles.  I feel like I haven’t done enough writing in my past english classes.

I found an article about racism where the angry racist is a white person. In the article, Racist Calls United South Harrison, the white person is really mad about there being a black mayor in his town. Charles Tyson, the first ever black mayor in South Harrison, got a lot of nasty phone calls from other racists, probably because they don’t think people of another race should have much power in their society. I think this quotation sums it um, “Jones’ experience with a man who chased him down before holding him at gunpoint on the side of the road out of disgust that ‘a black man could be driving a BMW’”. A BMW is a nice car, and clearly the man who held the mayor at gunpoint didn’t want him to be wealthy and successful/have power and influence. I think it’s pretty sad that some people can’t accept it that today everybody should be treated equally and have the right to be successful and have good jobs.  I can’t think of many ways that this relates to Huck Finn other than people not wanting african americans to do well and be equal to themm.

Ok, the Stephen Colbert Report thing didn’t really work on my computer, but i’ve seen the show before so I know how he is satirical.  His show is a lot like the Daily Show, but he amkes fun of people a lot more.  It’s kind of sad how in order for him to promote someone and their ideas, he has to make fun of them.  I remember the other night I was watching the show and the guest was somebody who thought that animals should have equal rights with humans.  All Colbert did was say how ridiculous his ideas were (I guess they kind of were, but thats not the point).  I think the Daily Show is a better form of satire because it focuses on more important things and is less obnoxious while doing it.

I read part of the slave narrative written by (and about) Annie L. Burton.  When she was describing what life as a slave was like on the plantation, she talked about everything from the food that she ate to the clothing she wore.  The following line made me realize how we take things for granted today…

      ”I never knew what shoes were until I got big enough to earn them myself.”

The fact that not only did she not have shoes, but she also had no idea what they were is really sad.  It shows that especially as a child, the slaves were hardly given anything at all.  This makes me realize even more that slavery was really not a just thing, and that the horrible ways slaves were treated must have been a huge motivation for Huck to help Jim escape.  This narrative shows that it was so bad that Huck could stop listening to what society said about slavery and go with what he thought was right.  Things like this that motivated Huck must have also motivated Twain to write the book and help to expose the real sides of slavery.  There are probably a lot of characteristics in common between Twain and Huck.

I expect to find that the slave narratives are about the ways that slave’s are treated and how the lifestyles of their masters was so different.  I already know that there were huge differences between slaves and their masters.  Slaves weren’t even considered to be human beings, so they experienced a lot of racism and were not treated well at all.  While their owners prospered off of their labors, slaves were forced to work ridiculously hard with no payment and if they refused, they would be whipped or beaten.  I suspect that the slave narratives will be about a slave’s perspective of their conditions and slavery, and that should be very interesting because it would be an opinion from when slavery actually happened.

I think that the whole situation of Dick Cheney’s company profitting so much by raising the price of gas in Iraq to about $25 a gallon is really wrong. It’s really bad that the vice president is making millions of dollars unethically by creating a gas monopoly for his company in Iraq. I don’t think that his company should have gotten involved in a foreign affair like Iraq because not only are Iraqis suffering by having to pay so much for gas, but so are our troops that are in the middle east. Clearly our vice presient cares more about making money than doing what’s right for our country, and I believe taht some sort of law should be passed so that this can’t happen again.

Also, I think it’s really strange that President Bush  doesn’t really agree with the plan that the group who wrote the article devised.  The plan they’ve thought up allows us to remove troops sooner rahter than later, and still help Iraq to become a stable country.  Obviously he doesn’t know what he wants, if he would rather keep troops there or try to take them out as soon as possible.

I found an article about the shooting outside of a stripclub in Queens that we mentioned in class: http://www.nysun.com/article/44585

This article claimed that the shooting was not in fact due to the police being racist, but officers doing their job and acting on evidence that they had found.  The article’s author doesn’t seem particularly racist or antiracism, as he does point out both ways that Sean Bell could have been killed. The point was made that…

“One might reason as follows: Black people are overrepresented in dangerous neighborhoods. Thus, officers will have more violent encounters with black men than with white ones. Possibly, then, officers of any color, exhibiting the tendency inherent to our species to generalize, might internalize, even involuntarily, that in tense situations, black men are more of a threat than others.”

I think it’s very interesting that today, even though we don’t believe that racism exists much anymore, a lot of us probably think of African Americans and other races differently without even realizing it.  The reason given by the author is a veyr possible one, that black people are generally found more often in poorer communities, and so we think of them as more of a threat than others.  Clearly, there are a lot of possible reasons that we and the police officers might possibly have been racist.

I think that satire is so popular because it is funny and a way to talk about serious problems in a light way.  This might help people to be able to deal with them better.  A reason why things like “A Modest Proposal” and Borat are considered to be satire is because while they are very funny, they are about political problems that need to be solved.  Something like Scary Movie would not be considered to be satire because it is just funny and there is nothing behind the humor.  The purpose of those types of movies is not to expose problems through humor, but just to give the audience a good laugh.  I guess that I do like satire because I don’t really find it annoying.  While I haven’t seen Borat, I really like the Daily Show and things like that which are very obvious as to which problems they are talking about.

We started school in a little, two-room school…which was Sims Chapel School sitting next to the Sims Chapel church. First, second, and third grades were in one room; and fourth, fifth, and sixth were in the other room.

I think this quotation describes teaching conditions that are very similar to what Grant had to deal with.  Just like Shirley Gray (who wrote the quote), he had to teach six grades in a church, which is no suitable place for learning.  Both teachers were deprived of good materials and books that we now take for granted today.  This quote also supports the fact that A Lesson Before Dying is definately based on true stories and conditions.