response essay blog post

I am going to respond to Lana Chiad's essay entitled "The Lord's Army". I am going to counter this argument by arguing that religion is not forced down the throats of American children. I do not believe that this is true, in turn for my first point I believe that children are taught the religion of their families and later on once they truly understand that religion, they can choose for themselves whether or not they believe it to be true. My second point I plan to argue is that religion is not taught to children to keep them from being psychotic murderer, it is taught to children because it is what their parents believe and it is important to them, therefore they teach it to them and hope they believe in it for the sake of believing in a higher power. My third point I plan to argue is that not every christian couple is going to brainwash their child into hysteria about God.

challenging media

I took the time to watch Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising's Image of Women because of the little side note Ms. Clark wrote about one of the images being a photoshopped picture of Gisele Bundchen claiming that it was a model with anorexia that had died in 2006, Ana Carolina Reston. You do not have to be a genius to figure out that the picture is of Gisele and if you have ever seen Gisele you would know that her body absolutely looks nothing like the body portrayed in the photo. This is another case of "lets make models look like starving victims of society and make everyone against them". Yes, the media, television, magazines and more often have skinny or fit women in their ads but this to me does not say "all women need to be this size" when women are put in ads so skinny they are often wearing something or near something that is trying to be sold. This to me says "if you wear this product you will look good just like these women". It is enforcing the product, not the model's body weight. I hope that Jean Kilbourne realizes that she has made a complete fool of herself by falsely advertising Gisele as an anorexic model. Everyone knows what Gisele looks like, if you have seen a show or a Victoria Secret ad, it is apparent who she is. I guess Jean Kilbourne thinks that everyone viewing this slideshow of hers is an idiot because not only did she use Gisele as an anorexic Ana Reston, but she used an ad in which Gisele was in earlier in the slide show with her REAL body. In one part of the slide show it was real Gisele, then a photoshopped Gisele saying that she was a different person. This woman, Jean Kilbourne, has completely false information and speaks only of her opinions of women and the images in the media. I trust nothing that this woman may say or do. If Jean Kilbourne told me the sky was blue I can honestly say I would have to go outside and look up. If she wants to be taken seriously in the fight against anorexia like she says she does then she should definitely not use false photos and should focus more on real life situations and if the images of women on tv affected them or not. But in anorexia, the false body image does not come from super models on tv, it comes from a distorted image of themselves in their own mind. I find it ridiculous that Jean Kilbourne thinks she can blame models and tv ads for anorexia in America because that simply is not true. I truly wish that Kilbourne would just do some research of her own for data, numbers, statistics, real life stories, ANYTHING to make her statements plausible. I completely do not agree with Jean Kilbourne in this matter and hope she learns to use real information some day.

dissenting voices

I do not completely agree with the article I read today, published on the front page of the New York Times. The article was entitled "Deep Rifts Divide Obama and Republicans", which spoke of the Republican win over the house and their gains in the senate. President Obama and the Republicans have vowed to work together toward great progress in the country but their divide in policy is making this harder than expected. When reading this article I was genuinely interested but something immediately caught my eye in the second paragraph of the article. I am accustomed to and I'm sure most people are that we call our President "President Obama". When I read the article, the writers Peter Baker and Carl Hulse refer to him as "Mr. Obama". I was appalled when I saw this. Not only does this take away his title as President but it makes him seem like an inconspicuous street walker that could be any man. This is THE President of the United States of America, this was a pretty bold move to strip him of his title in an article displayed on the front of the New York Times, perhaps the most popular news paper in the country. This was not just a preference of name calling by the writers or a "uh oh", this was an intentional attack and I am surprised and appalled that the editor of this article let it be published like this. I am not a huge fan of Obama, I am a Republican and also disagree with a lot of his policies but I feel that he deserves the respect to be called President, the title that he rightfully won. As I kept reading it became completely apparent to me that the writers were indeed attacking President Obama. They looked upon every word of our President and found something negative about it. They made it way too obvious that they are against him in policies. I thought that most news articles, especially front page articles, weren't supposed to be bias or controversial. When I read "More conciliatory than contrite, Mr. Obama used that phrase, “take responsibility,” six times but rejected the suggestion that his policies were moving the country in the wrong direction." I knew that it was a direct attack to the President and the article may not have anything to do with the Republicans and President Obama working together but having different opinions in policy but it was intentionally written and published due to their personal want to bash the President. Our Capitol is struggling and to be honest, fractured because of the differences between so many people running our country. Everyone is going to have to agree on something in the end, and negativity is not appreciated or helping at a time like this. The American people must come together in times like this.