For my second book I chose The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare. In the entire play there was an enormous amount of dramatic irony. The audience knew that Falstaff was being tricked by Mistress Page and Mistress Ford. Falstaff tried to make money off of both women by sending them both identical letters. The purpose of his letters were to seduce both of the women, so much so that they would give him power over their husbands' wealth. When both women find out that they got the same letter, Mistress Ford goes to Mistress Page's house and tells her about the atrocious letter. From that moment on, they make a plan to get back at Falstaff by making him believe that his "seducing" is working. Mistress Ford tells Falstaff that she would love to take him up on his offer. All the while, Mistress Page's daughter, Ann Page, is trying to be won over by Dr. Caius, Fenton and Slender. Mistress Page wants Ann to marry Dr.Caius while Mr. Page wants Ann to marry Slender; however, Fenton is the one she really wants to marry.
When Master Ford finds out that his wife might be having an affair with Falstaff, he tries to find any way to prevent it, or at least find out everything that's going on. He makes up an alter ego named Brooke and goes to find Falstaff, he offers him a lot of money and tells him that he wants to know every little detail because he's been in love with Mistress Ford since high school. Falstaff, thinking seeing only money signs, agrees and promises to tell Brooke everything, he tells him that he's going to Mistress Ford's house that afternoon. When Master Ford hears this, he rallies up a lot of men and tells them that Falstaff is in his house having an affair with his wife.
Meanwhile Mistress Ford is at her house with Mistress Page trying to plan what's going to happen when Falstaff gets there. When Falstaff does actually get there he tries his hardest to seduce Mistress Ford. When Mistress Page comes back to tell Mistress Ford that the men are coming to the house, Mistress Ford hurriedly goes towards the door and opens it. She tells her that the men are on their way to the house and that if Falstaff doesn't get out of there quickly he's going to be killed. Falstaff ends up running out of hiding and runs into a big laundary basket. They pull him out of the house as soon as the men come in. Mistress Ford and Mistress Page just sit around and say that they were just home all day talking.
The whole play goes on to talk about how Falstaff finally learns his lesson when both Master and Mistress Ford and Master and Mistress Page pull a huge prank on Falstaff making him look like a fool. Ann Page ends up choosing Fenton while both Dr. Caius and Slender end up being tricked into marrying guys.
The play uses dramatic irony to the fullest, none of the characters knew what was really happening until the end, and in the end they all learn their lessons.
There are two major controversies revolving around the American people's voting rights. One being the case of ACORN and the other being the case of the potential vote-suppression.
The ACORN controversy is one that isn't much of a controversy, at least it shouldn't be. Really all what ACORN did was turn in registration forms, which they were legally obliged to do. Every registration form they receive, they legally have to give to the election officials. Because ACORN saw that many forms had strange names such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, they flagged many registration forms before turning them into the officials. Now it's being said that ACORN knowingly turned in those forms and tried to register fake people.
According to the New York Times, "Acorn is a nonprofit group that advocates for low- and moderate-income people and has mounted a major voter-registration drive this year. Acorn says that it has paid more than 8,000 canvassers who have registered about 1.3 million new voters, many of them poor people and members of racial minorities." ACORN is supposedly responsible for registering thousands of fake voters under names such as Princess Nudleman, a goldfish in the state of Illinois. They registered hundreds of people to vote and gave money to both candidates. In the third debate McCain kept saying that ACORN gave tons of money to the Obama campaign but according to Factcheck.org both candidates got money from the corporation. McCain said, "“is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history ... maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.” McCain believes that the ACORN fraud may lead to the end of democracy because they are faking voter registration.
In the case of Voter Suppression, it's been around for years, but always seems to be on the loose during election years. With voter intimidation and misguided voter information, not to mention the never ending technical problems with ballots. People are being misguided and intimidated everyday, they are told that they aren't eligable to vote because their information doesn't exactly match. Some people are being tricked into thinking that the election is another day, in Virginia, "A phony State Board of Elections flier has been posted around the Hampton Roads area, stating that Republicans vote on Tuesday, November 4th, and Democrats vote on Wednesday, November 5th."
Many people's citizenship is being questioned during the election; according to the Jackson Free Press a woman from Georgia was sent a letter saying that she was not a citizen and had no right to vote. When she got the letter she called her mother for her birth certificate and she called to see what was going on, they later said that the same thing happened to 50,000 other voters. According to many people this became a matter of voter suppression and it made people question whether the government was taking the rights of some people away by not letting them vote. Lots of people are scared that this might become a problem in swing states such as Ohio and Florida. Some also say college students are victims of voter suppression and that their vote might be at risk for voter suppression.
The Lincoln Douglas debates were about three hours long while the 2008 presidential debates were only an hour and a half long. The Lincoln Douglas debates asked 1 question and allowed time for rebuttals while the 2008 presidential debates gave one minute to answer the question and about 30 seconds to rebuttal. Many people watch the presidential debates because they allow them to see what each candidate is bringing to the table and what he plans to do for our country. This presidential election is going to be very important because we are in need of a new president. We have on of the worst financial crisis' ever, we have two wars going on and we have many angry citizens. Both candidates are trying to convice people that they are the man for the job and that they are the ones that can get it done sccessfully. They want people to vote for them and sometimes it makes people think that they will say anything for a couple of votes. Both candidates point fingers at each other saying that they will increase taxes, make it harder for citizens to get healthcare and they say that they don't believe that they can solve the financial crisis.
The thing that I thought I did really well was set up my time and make everything go together. I think that I made a good paper, because I was the only one who really focused my time on it and really took it seriously. I did most of the work and I think that at times I got frustrated, but in the end, I believe that the work I did was worth it. I believe that my ledes were good and that they were enough to catch people's attention while still fulfilling the requirements. I did a lot to make my writing good in the time I had, I made good body paragraphs and I left enough room to make more of the story on any following page.
I really disliked the overall process, I thought that a lot of things were left to me and that I didn't have enough time to do everything I wanted to make the newspaper the best it could be. I made the pictures, I wrote two articles and I put the whole layout together; I think that working in uneven groups really makes some people work harder than others. I would want to work with people that would help me more, my group did help me, but they also made me do a lot of things on my own that weren't my responsibility. I think that I did really good considering the amount of time I had and how much work I had to do. Even though I did do most of the work I was really happy with the end product, I put all I could into making the newspaper good and I believe that it really came through in the end.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
How has the Internet affected the way that Americans approach democracy? How does the Internet and it's effects fit into the historical context of technology and democracy in America?
Well it said that we could pretty much post any pictures we wanted, so i'm going to post some of mine. :]
All of the following pictures are 1000% mine.
This picture was taken in San Ciro de Acosta, San Luis Potosi, Mexico This picture was also taken in Mexico. This picture was taken on a steep hill called "la cruz", it is called that because at the top of the very large hill is a giant cross with the virgin mary under it. This picture was taken the day after my birthday in my backyard, apperantly it had either snowed or hailed and left a giant patch of ice in my backyard. For more click HERE!
While watching the news, i saw a video clip of McCain getting booed at one of his rallies. While many criticize McCain for calling Obama a decent family man and a man that should not be feared, I believe that it was an honorable thing to do. I believe that McCain sees that his numbers are going down, and that he's trying to reassure his supporters that this world isn't doomed when Obama takes office. McCain is trying to be a man, and I can see why his supporters would boo and say that he's accepting defeat, I believe that it was an honorable thing that McCain did, he did not let his supporters sound ignorant and call Obama an arab or a terrorist. He didn't let people insult Obama but he did say that he himself believed that he would be a better president.With all of this, I have found myself to have more respect for McCain and how he's fighting for his place in the white house.
My debate was the one in Freeport Illinois. Both Lincoln and Douglas were talking about the fugitive slave act, admissions of slave states and interstate slave trade. Lincoln was basically saying that the country needed to come up with a plan that would affect the whole country instead of having pure democracy. Douglas on the other hand believed that popular sovereignty was the only way that the slave states could be treated. He believed that the states should have the power to say whether or not they wanted to have slaves, if they didn't, they could ban it, and if they did want slavery, they could have it. Lincoln believed that Douglas was just trying to cover up the fact that he supported slave states. He believed that Douglas wanted to hide behind popular sovereignty and wanted to hide the fact that he was pro slavery. Douglas came back by saying that Lincoln wanted political equality for blacks, not just the abolition of slavery.
I believe that now and days debates are much shorter and more for entertainment. They are trying to put as much information as fast as possible. They are a little bit more less formal and they take less thinking. Even though they are more entertaining and take less thinking, I think that I'd rather watch the debates now then the debates back then.
While most of the population is white, Obama has higher numbers than McCain. Obama has 50-52% of the votes while McCain has 44-45% of the votes. A lot of states that would normally vote republican are now voting for Obama. My question is, what brings people to love Obama so much? Is he really just a good speaker or is America wanting a change? Is America sick of having a white president? Are they just sick of the same? I ask this because Hillary Clinton was a white woman with a lot of experience and a democrat, but she did not get elected. Is America more sexist than racist? When McCain changed his slogan to "Change" his numbers went up, even though he didn't change any of his ideas. A question I have about demographics is how do they get all of these numbers? How do they know for sure that all of these numbers are solid? I want to learn more about demographics and I want to learn how to use them and find real averages and numbers.
Racism and segregation are just as evident today as they were in the 1950's. Although we all try to close our eyes and make it seem as though we do not have racism in the United States, we do. Segregation in schools is not something in the past anymore, segregation is unfortunately still around and is affecting everyone in the country. Even though it has been a long time since slavery and segregation, racism amongst Americans is still present today.
In 1954 there was a little girl who was in the third grade named Linda Brown, she had to go to school four miles away because the "white" school would not let her attend. Even though the "white" school was only a few blocks away they would not let her go there and instead she had to go to a school where the school was a dangerous four miles away. When her father decided that this was unfair, he decided to do something about it. Her father decided to look for help in the NAACP, they were eager to help. They went onto say that because blacks were forced to go to different schools that they were being considered inferior to whites therefore making schools unequal.
Americans are now are being reminded of race everyday because one of the presidential candidates is black. While we try to say that race no longer takes part in our world, it does. In politics and in the world, race is a huge part of the united states. It's as if though people are being racist to themselves.
This poll shows that African Americans and other races believe that there is still racism in the united states today.
In the 1960's George C. Wallace said "Segregation now, segregation forever." but then again, "In this speech, delivered to a largely white student audience at the University of California at Berkeley on October 1966, Carmichael states the Civil Rights Act exists in order to ease the conscience of white America, and that the fight against white supremacy was not yet finished," even then, Carmichael knew that racism was not something that was just going to go away.
As Harriet Breecher Stowe once said, "When whites were captured, taken prisoner by Indians, they were separated from their families, and Indians would keep them, let's say, hoeing corn. Rhetorically, Mrs. Stowe asked, Is escaping a sin? Are the Indians now "your masters"? Are you now "their servants"? duty-bound to stay with them? to not escape? Is that God's will for you? If opportunity to escape occurs, is escaping a sin? or taking Indians' food or supplies for the journey with you? Instinctively, Northerners understood Mrs. Stowe's point: There were no masters, none authorized by Bible or Constitution, and so, no obligation to obey them. But rather, there is a right to escape, to use standard self-defense methods, and, for others to aid you in escaping, a right to rescue." During the Civil War, blacks were slaves and even though the war didn't start because of slavery, slavery was a huge part of the war. After the war slavery became illegal but segregation was still there. In 1954 the law was passed that made segregation illegal.
Even though we try everyday to make racism and segregation go away, it seems as though that day's not coming very soon.
Works Cited: Cozzens, Lisa. "Early Civil Rights Struggles: Brown v. Board of Education." www.watson.org. http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/early-civilrights/brown.html (accessed Oct. 2, 2008).
Heffner, Richard D.. A Documentary History of the United States: (Seventh Revised Edition). New York: Signet, 2002.
Mcconnell, William. Great Speeches in History - The 1960's (hardcover edition) (Great Speeches in History). Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2002.
"Abolitionists Opposing Slavery and Tobacco." Index - Slavery - Tobacco. http://medicolegal.tripod.com/abolitionists.htm (accessed Oct. 3, 2008).
