TOW #24 - "Were those the days, my friends?"

     Before the last symposium, I was getting ready to read the texts I was assigned when I found out that Barracuda blocks the online textbook. I’ve never been able to access the online textbook on my personal computer because it says I don’t have an access code, so I used the resources that I had and found a whole bunch of links about gender, the topic I was assigned, provided by the site that has the textbook. I thought these were the texts, so I read the first couple. Instead of being sad that I wasted my time, I turned it into a TOW! I feel very creative.
     One of the articles I read was written by Elaine Morgan, a prominent feminist in the 60s and 70s. She writes about what went wrong with the feminist movement when she was young, arguing that, although women have ultimately become more equal, we do not live in the utopian world that she expected back then.
     I definitely agree with Elaine’s argument. Although there have been many improvements, there is still room to improve, and new problems have been created. Let’s begin with the improvements. Women are definitely better off than before. They are more independent socially, politically, and economically. Socially, women are now allowed to be their own person and don’t have to be the obedient wife. Politically, they have gained voting rights and rights to own property, and they have become political leaders. Economically, women can financially support themselves and are no longer constrained to making coffee and looking pretty. However, gender role still exist, we have yet to have a female president, and women still don’t have totally equal pay. We’re on the way to solving these problems, but we’ve created new ones by doing so. For example, women don’t really have the freedom to choose to work anymore. Now, women must work in order to support themselves. However, they still are mostly tasked with raising children, which costs money. They now have to carry the added weight of not only caring for the children but paying for the children. Morgan argues that this means we should have higher family allowances, but I disagree. In a perfect world it would be nice, but this would be very difficult to put into effect in the US. The reason it works so well in Scandinavian countries is that the population is more homogenous. In the US, there are too many people that see others as, well, “other,” and won’t like the idea of helping them.

TOW #23 - Visual Text

     The babies depicted in this image is covered with logos of various prevalent companies in today’s culture. The maker of this image is most likely arguing that we are influenced by the media and advertisements around us now more so than ever, even from the moment we are born. In this way, today’s kids are more products of advertising and the media than ever before.
     This claim definitely applies to many aspects of today’s world. Nowadays, all you have to do to keep a kid busy is give them an iPad. With the Internet at their fingertips, they are now so much more connected to the rest of the world than we were at their age. Although they have more resources, they are also exposed to the media and commercials more often. In this way, they are molded by and made a product of the media from a very young age.
     For example, my younger sisters got their first iPhones in elementary school, while I got mine in eighth grade. Today, they are so much more in touch with pop culture than I am. My youngest sister is obsessed with Snapchat, Instagram, and Musical.ly. Whenever she’s bored and standing around waiting, she whips and nae naes. It’s kind of embarrassing that she knows more about pop culture than her teenage sister, but it makes sense since she’s been using her iPhone from such a young age.
     However, this does not apply to all people of the world. There are still many people without access to advanced technology or Internet. Although the picture makes a great statement about developed countries like the one we live in, not everybody can relate to it.
     Overall, the maker of the image’s claim that today’s kids are exposed to technology and the media at a very young age and that this exposure makes them a product of pop culture has merit but cannot be applied to the entire younger generation since there are still many people without access to technology that we have so readily.

TOW #22 - FEC Implements One-Year Break Between All Presidential Terms As Reprieve For Weary Nation

It’s been too long since I’ve read some nice satire, and the Onion is the perfect place to refresh my memory. This article discusses a new one-year break between presidential terms implemented by the Federal Election Committee (FEC) in order to give citizens a break between the drama that surrounds a presidency. Of course, the nature of satire is to ridicule, in this case the US presidential elections, so it is not necessary for the report to be true. I could not find the author of this article, but the author and his or her credibility is not important in this situation because any informed reader would know that the information is inaccurate and heavily exaggerated to create a humorous effect. However, the author does create a sort of “ethos” by citing official organizations, like the FEC, and leaders of those organizations, like FEC chair Ann M. Ravel. As aforementioned, the reader of this article would have to be well informed on how the US government works as well as smart enough to understand that waiting a year between presidencies is completely out of the question because it would leave the world superpower without a leader. To further ridicule and make the article funnier, the author adds quotes from citizens reacting to the “change” made by the FEC. For example, alleged Columbus, OH resident Caroline Helling says, “Seeing all these TV and newspaper reports about whatever the current president just did or might do, hearing months and months of speculation about whether some guy’s gonna run or not—it will be the most amazing thing in the world to have a break from all that. I would love, absolutely love, to stop hearing a candidate’s sound bite on loop in the media, then hearing the other side overreacting and denouncing the sound bite, then seeing all the thinkpieces that come out about the overreaction, then having to go through the same shit all over again the next day.” This appeals to the author’s “ethos” by supporting his earlier statements and “logos” by providing a logical argument for keeping the breaks.