Politics: The New Reality TV

This is the current cover of Entertainment Weekly. I love it! In case you can't tell, this is Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart. Here are some of my favorite quotes from the article, although you might not really get the humor if you haven't watched their shows before.

About change: "Do you mean change we need, or change we can believe in?" asks Stewart. "Any change is as good as a vacation at this point," says Colbert, who set aside his conservative TV pundit character aside for the chat. "I don't know if you've paid attention to the past eight years, but it has been a s---burger supreme."

Stewart on the campaign in general: "I was convinced an Obama/McCain campaign would be measurably different on almost all standards. And to watch it become Bush/Kerry, Bush/Gore, has been one of the most dissatisfying experiences."

Colbert on his character: "One of the things I love about my character is I can make vast declarations and it doesn't matter if I'm wrong. I love being wrong. So my character can tell you exactly what's going to happen: The Democrats are going to change everything. We're going to have gay parents marrying their own gay babies. Obama's gonna be sworn in on a gay baby."

Stewart on the financial crisis: "We were in this huge credit crisis, out of money. Then the Fed goes, We'll give you a trillion dollars, and all of the sudden Wall Street is like, "I can't believe we got away with it!" Can you imagine if someone said, "I shouldn't have bought that sports car because it means I can't have my house," and the bank just said, "All right, you can have your house. And you know what? Keep the car." [He throws up his arms joyfully and shouts] "Yeaaaaaah, I get to keep the car! Wait, do I have to give the money back?" "No, it doesn't matter." "Yeah, I'm gonna get another car! I'm gonna do the same thing the same way, except twice as f---ed up!"

Here is a link to the article. If you're a fan of either man, it's a good read.

Also, I watched the beginning of SNL last night. Tina Fey reprised her role as Sarah Palin, while Amy Poehler was playing Katie Couric. While hilarious, I though it must have been extremely exaggerated. Well, I watched a clip from the real interview. While it was a bit over the top (come on, it's SNL), some of it was authentic to how the interview went. Here is a clip from the real interview and below is the video from SNL. I am sorry, but I just do not like her. For one, when she is questioned further, all she can do the repeat her first statement. This is evidenced in the clip from the real interview. It kinda makes you think she's memorized talking points, and can't say much else.

Forever Strong

Last night, I had the unique opportunity to watch a movie made about my high school, Highland High. Specifically, Highland's rugby team. Highland's rugby team is kinda famous, I guess. When I was a student there, I knew the team was a pretty big deal. I think they placed 3rd in some sort of wold championship while I was there. According to the movie, under the current coach, the team's record is 367-9. Pretty darn impressive in my mind.

It was also kind of cool to see this movie last night because Adam and I actually met ten years ago this month, at Highland's homecoming football game. We wanted to go to the homecoming game, but we didn't make it, so this was close enough. :)

Speaking of meeting Adam... before we went to the movie, I went to an activity at the Deaf Community Center for my ASL class. I sat at a table where three Deaf teenage girls were sitting. They really reminded me of my high school days, because they saw some cute guys they didn't know and they were obsessing over them. Throughout the course of the evening, they went and met the boys and got their numbers. When they came back to the table, the most outgoing girl ran back excitedly and pumped her arm in the air. It was so funny!

Then...I got reminded of my teenage years again! When I got home from the movie, I started IMing a few friends. One of them was a former classmate, and he and I discussed old songs and finding YouTube videos of those songs.

It was a fun night with all that reminiscing!

Fall

Today is the first day of my favorite season.


Things I love about Fall include:
-the leaves! I love going on Fall drives up in the mountain to see the leaves.
-the temperatures cooling
-Hot chocolate
-Halloween
-new TV episodes of my favorite shows

Also, while I enjoy seeing the summer blockbuster movies, I also quite enjoy the more serious movies that tend to come out during the Fall and Winter seasons. There's already some that I am excited to see: W, Revolutionary Road, The Secret Life of Bees, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, etc.

Where the hell is Matt?

This video is amazing! It makes me smile and I could watch it over and over again.



And I just discovered he's made another one... here it is. I like that this one gets crowds involved in the dancing.

Harry Potter

This PostSecret made me smile as I have been listening to Harry Potter this week at work. I totally agree with this woman!

NY Times Op-Ed

I read two really great NY Times Op-Ed columns just now.

The first one is No Laughing Matter by Thomas L. Friedman. It's a bi-partisan look at what our economy needs and what Friedman thinks each candidate needs to do to help our country recover.

The second column is The Push to 'Otherize' Obama by Nicholas D. Kristof. This one is about how ridiculous it is that people are still questioning whether Obama is a Christian. Here's a quote from this one:

"In fact, of course, Mr. Obama took his oath on the Bible, not — as the rumors have it — on the Koran. He is far more active in church than John McCain is.

(Just imagine for a moment if it were the black candidate in this election, rather than the white candidate, who was born in Central America, was an indifferent churchgoer, had graduated near the bottom of his university class, had dumped his first wife, had regularly displayed an explosive and profane temper, and had referred to the Pakistani-Iraqi border ...)

What is happening, I think, is this: religious prejudice is becoming a proxy for racial prejudice. In public at least, it’s not acceptable to express reservations about a candidate’s skin color, so discomfort about race is sublimated into concerns about whether Mr. Obama is sufficiently Christian."

I think it is extremely sad if this is even true for some Americans. There shouldn't be any sort of prejudice of course, but if people are disguising racial prejudice as religious prejudice, well, that just lessens my faith in Americans.

More politics... but funny stuff

As soon as I heard that Michael Phelps was hosting the season premeire of SNL, I planned on watching it. When I began hearing rumors that Tina Fey might be appearing for a skit playing who else but Sarah Palin, I KNEW I would be tuning in. Michael Phelps did ok....I did like the skit where Amy Poehler played his mom. On the other hand, Tina Fey was awesome! I'm sure she has been practicing since Sarah Palin got announced as the VP pick and everyone noticed the resemblence, but her mannerisms and her voice were great.

The talk of sexism in the SNL clip reminded me of a spot on The Daily Show last week that I wanted to post but never did. It's about how the Republicans are all up in arms now about sexism, experience, and teen pregnancy now that Sarah Palin is in the picture and how hypocritical that is.

Imagine a Country

One of the first things that I was assigned to read in my Gender Studies class was an essay entitled "Imagine a Country" by Holly Sklar. I can't seem to find the full text online, but I would like to shar some of the tidbits that made an impression on me. The jist of the essay is that states a fact about America beginning with "Imagine a country."

"Imagine a country where one out of four children in born into poverty, and wealth is being redistributed upward. since the 1970s, the richest 1 percent of households has nearly doubled its share of the nation's wealth. The top 1 percent has more wealth than the bottom 90 percent of households combine."

"Imagine a country where health care aides can't afford health insurance. Where food industry workers may depend on food banks to help feed their children. Where childcare teachers don't make enough to save for their own children's education."

"Imagine a country where productivity went up, but workers' wages went down."

"Imagine a country where some of the worst CEOs make millions more in a year than the best CEOs of earlier generations made in their lifetimes. In 1980, CEOs of major corporations made an average 45 times the pay of average full-time workers. In 1991, when CEOs made 140 times as much as workers, a prominent pay expert said the CEO "is paid so much more than ordinary workers that he hasn't got the slightest clue as to how the rest of the country lives." In 2003, a leading business magazine put a pig in a pinstriped suit on the cover and headlined its CEO pay roundup, "Have they no shame? Their performance stank last year, yet most CEOs got paid more than ever." In 2005, CEOs made even more- 352 times the pay of average workers."

"Imagine a country whose constitution once counted black slaves as worth three-fifths of whites. Today, black per capita income is about three'fifths of whites."

"Imagine a country where health care is managed for healthy profit. In many countries health care is a right. But this nation has health care for some instead of health care for all. Nearly one out of five people under age 65 has no health insurance, public or private."

"Imagine a country where many descendants of its first inhabitants line on reservations strip-mined of natural resources and have a high proportion of people in poverty than any other ethnic group."

"Imagine a country whose president "has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution." A newspaper investigation reveals, "Among the laws [he] said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, 'whistle-blower' protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research."

While I saw some of the essay to be inflammatory and reaching for the negative, we need to be aware of what is wrong in our country and try to make positive strides for the better.

....

Well, I have had all these great posts planned, but time has just gotten away from me. I just finished the third week of the semester. My classes aren't necessarily hard this semester, but I'm struggling a bit. I think it's because I had two months off from school and got out of the habit. I'm taking 4 classes:

Gender and Contemporary Issues

This is by far my favorite class. We aren't just studying gender issues, but also race, class, sexuality, age, ability, etc. I've already read some stuff that opened my eyes, and I plan on posting some of it.

Shakespeare

The professor of this class is so knowledgable about Shakespeare and he's so nice. He has so many passages memorized, and he goes into actor mode. His voice gets really quiet and you can hardly hear him, but then he gets loud all of a sudden. It's so fun! We just finished reading Hamlet and it's been interesting comparing it to our current political climate.

Theories of Popular Culture

Well, I have to take an upper level theory class and thought this would be the least painful. Theory isn't my strongest subject, but this class is okay so far. I'm looking forward to some of the stuff we are reading later on.

American Sign Language 3

To get my degree, I have to take four levels of a foreign language. Even though I have a tutor for this class, and review, I usually feel behind. It just doesn't come naturally to me. I love learning about Deaf culture though, I'm just not very good at conversing in ASL.