Blog 5 - Facebook Rewind

My Facebook citizen was an adventurous senior citizen from China. She was great at martial arts and loved to skydive. She was also into going to Bingo after she was done with her comedy shows on the weekends. All-in-all she was a pretty unique person. When I originally had an ideal citizen in mind I was thinking of the craziest person I could think of. I just didn’t think that being normal was on the right track to being ideal. Envy, theft, and death are all normal things that we encounter in life but are far from perfect. There is still one change that could be made to my citizen to make her an even better citizen.

One thing I would do to my citizen is have her more active in the society.  My citizen didn’t really take a stance to make a change on anything. To make her more ideal she would be passionate about a social issue. To be more specific I’ll say that she would fight for America to have universal health care. She would be passionate about this because when she was living in China a lot of her friends died of polio that ravaged the land. She wants to make sure that nobody has to lose someone close to them from a disease that could have been prevented from proper health care.

I think that this would be a great leap toward perfection. Before, my Facebook didn’t really have a goal that she was working towards. I think people should always have some desire that they’re aiming for. A depressing mistake that a person could make is getting to a point of their life and realized that they accomplished all of their goals; it means they didn’t aim high enough. My Facebook citizen will not have this happen and will fight for change until the day she dies.

A lot of the stuff that was covered in this course was taught in my high school. When I was a junior we had a boat-load of classes on rhetorical analysis. In my senior year we covered the moves of rhetoric: logos, ethos, and pathos. What made this class different was the emphasis on activism. I really enjoyed how this class made us take a social stance and to be able to sway people to our point of view. That is why I thought this class was worthwhile to take. The skills that we learned don’t just have to be used in the classroom either. They can be used at home, a ballgame, the movies, or pretty much anywhere when we have to argue our point of view. 

Blog 4

[I neglected to add the whole post. Here's the remainder]

My experience has led me to relay my own experience to others. I even managed to have some of my friends sign up to be donars. It feels like I'm really doing something that matters and it feels good. 

My Experience at The Ebony Health Series event (blog 3)

For this blog assignment I went to an event called “Giving your Seven Pounds” which was hosted by the Ebony Health Series. The main focus of the event was to raise awareness about the importance of bone marrow, blood, and organ donating. Because bone marrow type is dependent on race factors the presentation focused especially on African Americans donating. The goal of this Health Series was to have more people change their mind about any negative stigma they had with donating. One of men presenting there was Edward Drake. Edward was actually a self proclaimed great football player and was diagnosed with kidney failure when he got his routine physical. For two years Edward was on dialysis and it was very depressing because a lot of the people in the health center were dying because of lack of organs. When he received his new kidney he felt obligated to spread the word about the importance of donating. Now he is the founder of an organization called YNOT which stands for Youth Needing Organs and Tissues.

                One thing that really hit home for me was something that a Ms. Candye said. She explicitly spelled it out that doctors will not let you die just because you were an organ donor to save the life of another patient. I know that most of us are going into some medical profession and will end up being doctors. We would never think to do that dare we violate the Hippocratic Oath. But ever since I was a kid I thought this to be true. This was caused by what I saw in shows like ER and General Hospital. Ms. Candye said it made for good entertainment but couldn’t be further from the truth. The only way you’ll be a candidate for organ donating is if you’re brain dead of heart dead.

                Actually being at the event helped to sway how I felt about the whole business of being a donor. Seeing someone else’s personal testimony, and simply learning the truth about the process was a big push in the right direction. I liked the last thing that Ms. Candye said: “In the event of your death wouldn’t you like to perform one last heroic act?” When I thought about that I was just waiting for them to end their presentation so I could sign up already. Now you’re reading the blog of a new blood, organ, and marrow donor and I’m so proud to say that. 

Ani DiFranco's "Self Evident" Analysis

Ani DiFranco’s poem “Self Evident” is a politically provocative work to say the least.  The speaker fights the status quo of what our culture thinks about 9/11 and its repercussions.  The speaker of the poem seemed to be someone who was in obvious anger over how America perceives the events of the infamous day. The speaker is someone who strongly believes that Americans are being fed some type of propaganda from the media and the government in order to satisfy its hunger for retribution on other nations. It’s like the creator sees mainstream America as slaves to our newscasters and presidents.

                I think this poem mainly appeals to Americans that don’t have strong ties with one of three things: the formal news media, George Bush, or the democracy of the time.  People that were Republicans for instance were probably pissed-off by the poem; the speaker was just so direct by saying that the election was a phony and that George Bush isn’t president.  The speaker would mostly appeal to Liberals and people in the middle of the political road the best. I think that the speaker is trying to get these people to feel angry and to take a stand against the supposed deceptions behind the media and the government about terrorism. I think the main reason for this stand is to get our troops out of Iraq and to not allow us to be fooled by “the man”.

The speaker at least uses two of the rhetorical appeals in the poem. Logos is displayed when the speaker uses facts about September 11^th. The poem as a whole appeals to pathos because most people get emotional when you just mention 9/11. There might be some ethos in there somewhere but I couldn’t find it. I don’t know if it’s effective or not. I mean, it’s nothing like we haven’t heard about this topic a thousand times before since 9/11. I bet this poem was made shortly after that day because then it would be effective many times over. The very fact that I’m reading this poem instead of hearing it probably dictates my view of it not be as effective as it could be. Hearing the voice of the speaker would help me truly gauge how he/she feels (I say “he” because the speaker might be male; the poem doesn’t specify).

This analysis compares to the other exercises in class for several reasons. Firstly, it was political. Secondly, I kept asking “why” when I was reading the poem to help with my own analysis. Thirdly, I found different elements of the poem that demonstrated two different types of rhetoric.

*NOTE: Sorry for using the term “The speaker” over and over. It’s just hard to find a decent pronoun for that.

Ideal Citizen on Facebook page

I decided to make my “ideal citizen” a Ms. Pepper Mint Patty, a senior lady from Tibet. I chose that name she always “has the sensation” of being on top of the world. Her father was stationed in Lhasa, China during World War Two where he met her mom. Pepper spent her younger years in an ancient Monastery. It was here where she learned to put others before herself and wanted to dedicate her life to doing just that. I thought that Pepper going to Florida State University would demonstrate her intellect. She majored in social work in order to help others: I guess growing up in a monastery didn’t impede on her people skills. She used to have a problem with being “too social” with some people in her college days and has several kids to show for it, but she’s cool with that because that makes her seem motherly.

I said that Pepper likes to play the piano and bingo because those seem like typical things that a woman her age would like to do. She is also Republican like her peers. She also likes to watch Matlock, listen to The Rat Pack, and loves the Pride and Prejudice movie featuring Colin Firth (she isn’t so crazy about the Keira Knightley version). Young kids looking to vandalize know not to mess with the block that Pepper lives on. She happens to be on the Neighborhood Watch and mastered three martial arts while in the monastery and know how to take care of business; she even killed a guy with her big toe. What makes Pepper so unique is that she also likes to watch True Life, listen to Kanye West, and loves the Spiderman Trilogy. This shows Pepper’s willingness to try new things and allows her to relate to those much younger than herself.

Pepper also has an ideal view on life. One of her favorite quotes is, “Never take life to seriously. You’ll never get out of it alive.” She sure does live by those words seeing how she is an avid skydiver and performs standup comedy at the local comedy club. Her other favorite quote is, "We do not change as we get older; we just become more clearly ourselves." Pepper realizes that just because she is old doesn’t mean that she has to abandon her fun-loving self. That’s probably one of the most important things that make her such a model citizen.

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