5-3 Popular Culture Artifact

A man’s home is his castle. A castle is a large fort or group of buildings that were built for defensive measures and offensive weapons, strong enough to repel an attack. Castles were enclosed in thick walls with places to shoot arrows from. They were often surrounded by a deep ditch filled with water. The castle was the home of a noble, a king or queen (monarch), or someone important and loyal to the monarch.

The word castle comes from a Latin word meaning fortress. European castles developed from fortified camps built by the ancient Romans and from fenced villages of prehistoric Europeans. The earliest castles were built of earth and timber and placed on a constructed or natural hill, called a mote. Today the structures that most people think of as a castle were those built of stone in Europe between A.D. 900 and 1400 (Wikipedia).

The Castle was the ultimate status symbol for medieval lords. It was a home, a fortress, an outpost, and a safe place for everyone to take refuge in times of danger. It was an integral part of a knight's life and one of the most enduring symbols of medieval culture. Castles played a central role in the political and military system of its times. It also served as a barracks, prison, storehouse, armory, treasure house, and center for local government. A castle was not only a bastion and place for detention of prisoners but also a social place where a knight or lord could entertain his peers. Over time the aesthetics of the design increased in importance, as the appearance and size began to reflect the prestige and power of the occupant. Over time comfortable homes evolved within the fortified walls of the castles. In the 16th Century castles became homes and in the 21st Century, homes became castles. The prestigious and powerful members of our society found great uses for mammoth houses, symbols if you will, of who they are and how successful they’ve become.

According to Forbes Magazine, the average home price on Forbes.com's Most Expensive Homes in America list last year was $51.9 million. It's not surprising that the average price this year dropped to $47.4 million--but it is surprising that the drop was so slight. During the course of a year rife with national and economic woes, a few houses from our list were pulled from the market--one was sold at a discount and the rest are languishing as owners hold fast to the stubborn belief that a $50 million bid is coming any day (Forbes, 2008).

Financial clout is the name of the home-buying game among luxury house hunters. Evidently not many are as dependent on lower interest rates to make the move, nearly one-third (31.5%) of buyers paid cash to purchase their one million dollar plus home. Of those who choose to take on a mortgage, 17% placed a down payment that was 50% or more than the price of their new luxury home. According to a recent Caldwell Banker survey, despite paying a big price tag for top-of-the-line homes and amenities, 41% of these luxury homebuyers still plan on investing more money in the home by doing major renovations. In terms of negotiating style, the top luxury homebuyer's tactic was described as "close to the vest, minimum divulgence" (63%), versus "hardball" (24%) and "money is no object, I just want it" (13%). Additionally, it seems these homebuyers use these negotiation tactics successfully to get the best price as the survey indicated that only six percent actually pay over the asking price (Caldwellbanker.com, 2008).
While business executives of large corporations are the number one profession among luxury homeowners, entrepreneurs who own their own businesses are at a close second. That could be one reason why Coldwell Banker sales associates define the wealth of their rich clientele as "new money" (68%), versus "old" or "inherited money" (11%). Other top professions (in order) of buyers of million dollar plus homes were: doctor, banker, lawyer, stockbroker, actor, musician and inventor (Caldwellbankers.com, 2008).

Two-thirds of these homeowners are from the "Baby Boom" generation (between the ages of 35 and 55), but 28% are moving into luxury properties as they approach their retirement years (56 years and older). Only 4% of luxury homeowners are under 34 years of age. Eighty-eight percent of luxury home purchasers are married, of which 55% have children. About 1 out of 10 are single (6% men; 5% women). Seven out of 10 luxury homebuyers (72%) come from the same state where they buy their new home, of which 55% are from the same city. Twenty-four percent come from out of state, while 3% hail from another country (Caldwellbankers.com, 2008).

It is understandable that these luxury homebuyers are looking for particular lifestyle items and amenities to enjoy - in the comfort of their own home. Whether cooking for themselves or employing their own chefs, designer kitchens are the number one priority for luxury homeowners. Following kitchens, the top five most requested amenities (in order) are: media/entertainment room with theater-style seating, wine cellar, tennis courts/basketball courts, indoor pool and ballroom/cigar room. Which proverb is true: "Less is more," or " bigger is better"? When it comes to number of rooms and square footage, it seems that size is relative.
From 1980 until 2007, ---the average American home grew every year, according to the National Association of Home Builders. Now that trend has started to turn, as Americans are embracing smaller homes with an emphasis on design and details and spurning the suburban mega-mansion. The move to smaller homes can be found in the luxury market, too, as buyers pony up two or three times their city's median price per square foot to buy homes that are often under 1,000 square feet (Forbes.com).

According to the National Association of Monster Home Builders (NAMHB), in 1945 the average new house was only 900 square feet and by 1970, that figure grew to 1,900 square feet. Today's average is 4,700 square feet. One in five now are more than 11,000 square feet and five stories tall.

As houses bloated in size, the number of household members shrank from 8.1 people in 1971 to 1.6 people today. The average building-lot size contracted to 7,000 square feet from 13,000 in the 1980s. Builders put in monster homes on whatever miniature lots they can find or knock down smaller houses and replace them with castles. There are now more monster houses on smaller lots with fewer people living in them.

Fueling the monster home craze was the dizzying rise in house prices in the huge real estate bubble, coupled with the extravagant wish list of home features Americans want. 97% prefer six or more bedrooms with 66% wanting at least five. 85% of Americans want to walk in to their wine cellars, closets and pantries. 88% want multiple shower stalls, 95% want indoor pools and laundry rooms and 64% seek home offices and four car garages. More than two-thirds crave home theater rooms, exercise rooms, sun rooms, dens and inside greenhouses. Thus monster homes blossomed (NAMHB).

At the national level, housing prices peaked in early 2005, started to decline in 2006, and may not yet have hit bottom. On December 30, 2008 the Case-Shiller home price index reported its largest price drop in its history. Increased foreclosure rates in 2006–2007 among U.S. homeowners led to a crisis in August 2008 for the subprime, collateralized debt obligation (CDO), mortgage, credit, hedge fund, and foreign bank markets. In October 2007, the U.S. Treasury Secretary called the bursting housing bubble "the most significant risk to our economy" (Wikipedia, 2009).

For many involved in this crisis, the American dream of owning their own castle has turned into a myth, a fairy tale of make believe. They now have to put off the stereotypical rich-indulgent lifestyle of castle living for more modest digs. The market is forcing consumers to embrace the idea that a house is first and foremost a place to live and not a place to entertain two hundred of your closest friends.

References

Caldwellbankers.com, official website. Retrieved May 4, 2009 from, http://www.coldwellbankerpreviews.com/servlet/ResourceGuide?action=showArticle&articleId=1360

Forbes.com (2008). Forbes most expensive homes in America. Retrieved May 5, 2009 from, http://www.forbes.com/2008/10/13/homes-small-luxury-forbeslife-cx_mw_1013realestate_slide.html
Wikipedia, Official website. Castles. Retrieved May 5, 2009 from, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle

5-1 Weekly Written Analysis

A malicious software program known as Conficker that many feared would wreak havoc on April 1, 2009, is slowly being activated, weeks after being dismissed as a false alarm. Conficker, also known as Downadup or Kido, is considered one of the most sophisticated virus that quietly turning thousands of personal computers into servers of e-mail spam and installing spyware on unsuspecting personal computers.

The worm started spreading late last year, infecting millions of computers, allowing them to respond to commands sent from a remote server that could effectively control an army of computers. The Conficker worm is especially tricky because it can evade corporate firewalls by passing from an infected machine onto a USB memory stick, then onto another PC.
Its unidentified creators started using those machines for criminal purposes in recent weeks by loading more malicious software onto a small percentage of computers under their control. Fortunately, as far as computer viruses go, the number of infected computers that have become active is relatively small. Many experts believe, however that the Conficker virus is just getting started, installing a second virus, known as “Waledac”, which sends out e-mail spam without knowledge of the PC's owner, along with a fake anti-spyware program. Conficker also carries a third virus that warns users their PCs are infected and offers them a fake anti-virus program, Spyware Protect 2009 for $49.95. If they buy it, their credit card information is stolen and the virus downloads even more malicious software (Wikipedia).

The first variant of Conficker, discovered in early November 2008, propagated through the Internet by exploiting the vulnerabilities in the network services of several Microsoft Windows products. A second variant of the worm, discovered in December 2008, added the ability to propagate removable media and network shares. Researchers believe that these were decisive factors in allowing the worm to propagate quickly: by January 2009, the estimated number of infected computers ranged from almost 9 million to 15 million. Antivirus software vendor Panda Security reported that of the 2 million computers analyzed through ActiveScan, around 115,000 (6%) were infected with Conficker (Wikipedia).

Many researchers familiar with the virus fear the networks that are controlled by the Conficker worm might be deployed on April 1 since the worm surfaced last year and was programmed to increase communication attempts from that date. The good news is that the security industry that formed a task force to fight the worm, bringing widespread attention that experts said probably scared off the criminals who were responsible for the virus.

References

(Wikipedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conficker

4-3 Heroes and Celebrities

Hero- a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities. A person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model (Dictionary.com). Hero has been synonymous with warrior. Although we often link these words today, we do have an expanded, more inclusive definition of hero than the ones we inherited from the Greeks. Modern dictionaries list three qualities in common after the entry hero: extraordinary achievement, courage, and the idea (variously expressed) that the hero serves as a "model" or "example"--that heroism has a moral component.
A celebrity is a widely-recognized or notable person who commands a high degree of public and media attention. The word stems from the Latin verb "celebrare" but one may not become a celebrity unless public and mass media interest is piqued. There are degrees of celebrity status which vary based on an individual's region or field of notoriety. While someone might be a celebrity to some people, to others he may be completely unknown (Wikipedia).

Heroes are important because the term “hero” is the name given to extraordinary individual who embody qualities a society finds most admirable. Such people show us the way, energize us, and keep us from the darkness. They remind us of how much more we could do, and of how much better we could be. They instruct us in greatness and how to be great.

After the September 11 terrorist attacks, hero was resurrected across the nation to describe the firefighters and police officers who lost their lives in the World Trade Center, rescue workers who patiently picked their way through the rubble, passengers who thwarted terrorists on a hijacked airplane, and soldiers who left on planes and ships. In difficult times, we turn to the word hero to express our deepest sorrow, our highest aspiration, and our most profound admiration (Gibbons, 2002).

Heroes teach us lessons of greatness. When Nelson Mandela left the South African prison without rancor, he invited his guards to his inauguration, we are instructed in magnanimity. When Mother Teresa moves to live among the poorest of Calcutta, we learn about compassion. James Stockdale, before joining Ross Perot in 1992 as a vice president candidate, spent eight years in a North Vietnamese prison and wasn’t broken, we now understand bravery.
We can challenge the times and be combative. In a bureaucratic age, celebrate individual achievement; in an egalitarian age, praise genius; when everyone is a victim, stress personal responsibility. In our popular culture, high culture and celebrity age, caution young people about worshiping fame and beauty; in a society mesmerized by athletes, recall the moral language of sport (Gibbons, 2002).

It’s a shame but many of us have never heard of Brian Chontosh. Chontosh was a 29-year-old Marine lieutenant leading his platoon on Highway 1, just outside Baghdad, Iraq when they came under heavy fire. He ordered his vehicle to head directly for the enemy trench, jumped out and began firing with his rifle and pistol, before running out of ammunition. The citation for Chontosh's Navy Cross reads: "With complete disregard for his safety, he twice picked up discarded enemy rifles and continued his ferocious attack.... When his audacious attack ended, he had cleared over 200 meters of the enemy trench, killing more than 20 enemy soldiers and wounding several others."

This is a battlefield exploit worthy of someone you may have already heard of, Sgt. Alvin York. Sgt. York almost single-handedly killed 25 Germans and captured 132 enemy combatants, in 1918. You might know of York because he was played by Gary Cooper in the movie about him or maybe because of the half-dozen books that are still in print about him. We have collectively lost our ability to make popular battlefield heroes like York. With a few exceptions, like the extraordinary Pat Tillman, who left the NFL to join the Army Rangers or Jessica Lynch who became famous after she was captured by Iraqis and later rescued by fellow soldier man. The names, Lynch, Tillman, York and Chontosh are better known than the many others than are not known but have done much more notable things. These names are quickly forgotten when more important names like Hilton and Spears are thrust into our lives through our televisions and radio. In the last decade Americans have become almost obsessed with wanting to become a celebrity and to have their moment in the spot light, their 15 minutes of fame; therefore, redefining for the next generation what it means and what it takes to be a celebrity-hero.
Most of us look for heroes today among the famous because we have a fascination with celebrities and see them as something bigger than ourselves. Today, we are more likely to perceive a celebrity as a hero because they are famous.

The cult of celebrity is the widespread interest in arbitrarily famous individuals, has become a prominent social phenomenon in late 20th century in Western popular culture. The public fascination with such celebrities, driven by constant publicity and exposure in magazines, newspapers and television, fame is an essential prerequisite for celebrity status, though the principal reason for such fame is often minor. The cult of celebrity is often considered representative of the perceived attitudes towards deliberate apathy, trivia, and dumbing down in popular culture. It is associated with an increased focus on celebrity by the entertainment industry, including the growth of the reality television and talent shows like American Idol. Gossip-oriented magazines such as the National Enquirer have been almost entirely responsible for promoting the cult of celebrity (Wikipedia).

Today our culture tends to look for "heroes" who can be portrayed, not as warriors, but as ordinary people who overcame a struggle or outlast a competitor, like on the reality show Survivor. Our modern-day heroes are ones that beat another participant for the crown jewel of the sole-survivor on a TV show, becoming an instant celebrity. The hero turn celebrity is a recent phenomenon in American culture. They are not made during times of trial and great sacrifice; they are created each week by networks, manipulating the viewers to generate ratings. The meaning of hero in the 21st century has been watered down to define just about anyone as a potential hero-celebrity; it all depends on its marketability. A sad commentary on the values that our society places on who should become the next hero, or as we have come to expect, the next American Idol. My hope is that this discussion of heroes and celebrities will encourage us to become more interested in past and present public heroes and that it will revive the qualities of admiration, gratitude, and awe too long absent from our culture.

References

Gibbons, Peter (2002) Heroes for our age: How heroes can elevate student’s lives. Retrieved April 24, 2009, from http://www.aft.org/pubs-eports/american_educator/winter2002/Heroes.html
(Hero) Dictionary.com, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hero

4-1 Sex-ting

What happened to the time when if you liked a girl at school you would simply pass her a note to let her know? These days there is a disturbing new trend with teenagers flirting in cyberspace by sending nude or semi-nude photos from cell phonesto cell phone: instead of "texting," they call it "sexting."

Sexting, according to Wikipedia- Sexting (a portmanteau of sex and texting) is the act of sending sexually explicit messages or photos electronically, primarily between cell phones. Sexting was reported as early as 2005 in the Sunday Telegraph Magazine, and has since been described as taking place worldwide. It has been reported in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and Great Britain.

While many of these teens send the images with the intent of certain eyes only, the X-rated offerings are usually not kept by the boyfriend or girlfriend, the photos often wind up being shared and disseminated to other people. What teens don't realize is just how serious the consequences can be. The dangerous combination of teenagers behaving provocatively and impulsively is not new, but the accessibility to the technology is. With cell phone cameras, they have been handed a tool so easy to use for some it's impossible to pass up.

The risqué game has very real consequences. The phones these days take very good photographs and can be sent to the Internet and put it on MySpace pages where other people can view them and save them to their page. Once they are out there, while they might think only their friend is viewing them, they and everyone else has to be concerned that many other people including dirty old men, pedophiles, and sexual predators that collect these images and prey on children are viewing them too.

To combat this growing trend, prosecutors are looking to put people in jail for a felony crime for taking pornographic photos of minors and distributing them through a text.

As technology continues to change the ways teens communicate, parents need to monitor who their teens are talking to, and more importantly what they are talking about and sending out. It's really important that parents talk to their teens and help them develop their emotional skills and warn them of the dangers of sending their image to anyone, even someone they care about.

References

Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexting

Article Analysis 1-3

In 2008, David Wall constructed an article titled, It Is and It Isn’t: Stereotypes, Advertising and Narrative, where he attempts to demonstrate stereotypes work by projecting positive and negative fantasies through the visual media and connecting the stereotype with perceived social realities. In his introduction, Wall provides a great example of a 2005 British Labour Party ad featuring Conservative politicians Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin, both of whom are Jewish, depicting them as flying pigs. The Labour Party argued that the poster was designed to only link the phrase “when pigs fly” with the likelihood of the Conservatives being able to produce an economic strategy. Critics of the ad said it is at best insulting and at worst anti-Semitic for portraying the two Jewish candidates as pigs. Was the ad racially motivated, with the intention of appealing to an audience’s stereotype by portraying the two Jewish candidates as pigs, part of a continuum of anti-Semitic propaganda, or was the ad a simple depiction of a well known phrase where two politicians (who happened to be Jewish) faces were innocently superimposed on two pigs with wings to make a political point?

Wall goes into great depth in his article, revealing the human conscious and sub-conscious fantasies, and the power of stereotypes which he believes are rooted in our social reality. Stereotypes, like ads, according to Wall, “Target our deepest human emotions such as fear and desire, and they appear ‘real’ because they are part of a political, cultural, and aesthetic landscape-that separate spheres of which touch and merge at crucial points-that reinforces their believability. Difficult though it is to see beyond these horizons it is not impossible. We need to understand the enormous power possessed by the visual media to develop and promote stereotypes but also that the visual text can be assessed and analyzed in ways in which reveal the wider politics that produces it (p. 1048, 1049).”

The purpose of advertising is to persuade; the slogan and the image can be humorous or attention grabbing but the body is always to extol the benefits of the message and thus persuade the audience. When analyzing an ad one has to identify the key persuasive words and consider their effects on the audience. Ad campaigns often make use of stereotypes as a way of communicating a meaning. Sometimes the stereotype is deliberate and for comedic effect. Wall uses a good example of an Old Milwaukee beer commercial where two men open a beer and suddenly are met by the “Swedish Bikini Team”- a group of bikini-clad Nordic beauties-parachuting into their living rooms (p.1039). According to Wall, what the advertisers are relying upon with this “act of contextualized interlocution” is not an exchange of information but the manipulation of the roiling emotions of desire and anxiety (p. 1041). However, as Wall demonstrates, some images and messages in advertising reveal portions of our self-identity which comes from the images and messages in the advertising that surrounds us. These stereotyped images and messages can be potentially harmful, especially in political ads where there is continuous pressure to create ads more in the image of the audience’s motives and desires, while concealing the true “motives” of those making the advertisement. In politics, where mud is the weapon of choice, a return volley is always needed to counter an opponent’s attack, especially if the original attack was effective and, as in the “pigs” campaign ad, made an emotional appeal to the subconscious minds of the intended audience, but more so to the those of the Conservative party.

Some ads have their emotional appeal in the text, but for the greater number by far the appeal is contained in the art-work. This makes sense, since visual communication better suits more primal levels of the brain. If the viewer of an advertisement actually has the importuned motive, and if the appeal is sufficiently well fashioned to call it up, then the person can be hooked (Petra, M. & Sorapure, M., 2007).

Before an advertisement goes public, market research is done to know and describe the target group in order to exactly plan and implement the advertising campaign and to achieve the best possible results. The science of advertising and marketing is used to improve its effects. Knowing that advertising has an agenda setting function, it’s hard to imagine any well organized political campaign would not understand the potential for controversy if such a depiction is presented to the public. Advertising often uses stereotypic gender specific roles of men and women reinforcing existing clichés that have been criticized as “inadvertently or even intentionally promoting sexism, racism, and ageism… At very least, advertising often reinforces stereotypes by drawing on recognizable "types" in order to tell stories in a single image or 30 second time frame.” (Wikipedia).

The TV commercial is generally considered the most effective mass market advertising format. The most important element of advertising is not information but the suggestion, the emotional appeal to the subconscious of people. This, by altering the context in which advertisements appear things can be made to mean just about anything and the same things, can be endowed with different intended meanings for different individuals and groups of people. As Wall points out, stereotypes often have a “kernel” of truth as its center; there is nothing within these stereotypes which has anything to do with reality (p. 1041).

There were other examples of stereotypes that play out in society and were articulated and factually based in the article. Wall presented one example I disagreed with and would argue that he himself has made an assumption in which may have stereotyped Londoners who left the city from 1993-2002 as anti-immigration and racist. I don’t share in his opinion that the media is somehow complicit in generating and propagating “fear and panic through which all social problems are attributed to the corrosive presence of the ‘foreign body’ (p. 1046). Wall describes the stereotyping taking place in England, as it is propagated by the tabloid press, as that reason for the “wider panicky fantasies about the supposed negative consequences of immigration (p. 1046).” The assumption here is that the Londoners that left the city couldn’t have left for any other reason than that they were bombarded with racial stereotypes through mass media and from this onslaught of visualization, caused them fear and anxiety of losing their “Britishness” and left the city over a nine year period. Wall completely ignores the economic and social impact that mass immigration has on the host country’s resources. Instead, he compares both mainstream British political parties and their constituents to the country’s well know racist Enoch Powell, the ultra-right wing National Front leader of the 1970’s. This is an unfair comparison and one that may imply Wall’s own bias view on immigration and those that have a different view. The different view, it would appear in Wall’s eyes, to be cloaked in some degree of overt or sub-conscious form of racism.

In conclusion, the article is very effective in recognizing various forms of stereotyping in our society. We should learn to analyze what we see and hear and look beyond the smoke and mirrors and sleight of hands to dispel stereotypes as an acceptable form of culture. In that, as well as much of what was presented in the article, David Wall and I completely agree.

References

Petra cca, M. & Sorapure, M. (2007). Common culture: Reading and writing about American popular culture. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. ISBN: 0-13-220267-0.

Browne, R. B. (2005). Profiles of popular culture: A reader. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN: 0-87972-869-8.

Wall, D. (2008). It Is and It Isn’t: Stereotypes, Advertising and Narrative. The Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 41, No. 6, 2008, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Wikipedia, Official web site. Advertising retrieved April 19, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising

3-3 My Favorite Stereotype

I took the liberty of analyzing and reflecting on a stereotype beyond the guided questions in this assignment (Action Item # 3). Stereotyping is one topic I can run wild with in identifying and discussing the various forms of stereotyping that I know to exist in contemporary American society. However, there is one stereotype that came to light in recent days from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano, who offended many Americans and especially, veterans after her April 7, 2009 DHS Assessment Report, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” was made public.

The agency's intelligence assessment, sent to law enforcement officials last week, warns that right-wing extremists could use the bad state of the U.S. economy and the election of the country's first black president to recruit members. The assessment also said that returning military veterans who have difficulties assimilating back into their home communities could be susceptible to extremist recruiters or might engage in lone acts of violence. In her key findings (emphasis added), the Secretary wrote that there is, “No specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence…” (p. 2). The report also warned police across the nation to watch out for those who may have anti-abortion bumper stickers, claim the 2nd Amendment right of personal possession of weapons or express loyalty to U.S. Rep. Ron Paul or other third-party political candidates.

As an example of right-wing extremism, the secretary includes a known violent anti-government hate group, the white supremacists, as an example of the type of right-wing extremist people she is referring to in her report, “Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration (p. 2).” She, in effect, has stereotyped any American who disagrees with the current administration’s view on abortion, immigration, gun control, economic and social issues, and are susceptible to being recruited to radicalization, bent on organizing and plotting attacks against America. What a blatant and irresponsible stereotype placed on millions of Americans who simply express a conservative view on these issues, the current state of our democracy, economy, or our standing in the world. That’s not being a radical, that’s being American.

At the height of the debate over the adoption of the Constitution in 1787-88, a series of articles began to appear in a New York journal. Their authors, calling themselves “Publius,” urged the ratification of the new constitution, offering-in Thomas Jefferson’s words- “the best commentary on the principles of government which ever was written.” These eighty-five articles, commonly known as “The Federalist Papers,” were, in reality, the work of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. Their purpose was to persuade convention voters and ultimately the general public, that the old government, as it existed under the Articles of Confederation, was defective and that the proposed constitution, with its three branches of government, was the best means of realizing the ideals of justice and individual rights (Wright, 1996). According to Napolitano, our Constitutional founding father would be among the radical right whose organized speeches and letters to the public would be considered threats to the government and national security.

Alexander Hamilton warned, “It may be said that it would tend to render the government of the Union too powerful, and to enable it to absorb those residuary authorities, which it might be judged proper to leave with the States for local purposes” (p. 167). Hamilton, like many strict-constitutionalists believe, much of government’s power lies within the states and not the federal government. As the current Obama Administration encroaches upon constitutional and individual freedoms, as some believe, Americans have a right and duty to speak out against its government and not to be marginalized and stereotyped as an extremists or radical, on either side.

This report has some asking if there really is a threat to Americans or is this a blatant attack on conservatism and an agenda driven left-wing smear tactic on individual liberties and our Constitutional guarantees? What forces contributed to this stereotype? Napolitano said, “Following the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, the militia movement declined in total membership and in the number of organized groups because many members distanced themselves from the movement as a result of the intense scrutiny militias received after the bombing (p. 4).” Many people, including “right-wing” extremists, completely disagreed with the terror act of Timothy McVey. Everyone, including right-wingers, viewed McVey as an Anti-American radical and not a non-violent activist exercising his Constitutional right to speak out against his government.

According to the Washington Times, the secretary was made aware of the inflammatory statements and issued the assessment, as is, in spite of the internal civil liberties watchdog’s objections, “Homeland Security Department officials disregarded warnings from their internal civil liberties watchdogs before releasing a security assessment of "right-wing extremism" that had Secretary Janet Napolitano apologizing to veterans Thursday. A spokeswoman confirmed that the department's Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties raised objections about some of the language in the nine-page report before it was sent to law enforcement officials nationwide.
The office "did object to a part of the document, which was not resolved before the product went out. This was a breakdown of an internal process that we will fix in the future (Hudson, 2009)”.
Napolitano’s stereotype would appear to be driven by a clear misunderstanding of whom and what conservative leaning people believe and think about government and its role in their lives. The view Napolitano has of some Americans is likely the result of her own political prejudices and biases towards strict constitutionalist conservatives and their ideology. It has been said that if you repeat a lie long enough, over time, people will begin to accept it as truth. As we learn new contradictory information, we incrementally adjust the stereotype to adapt to the new information. We usually need quite a lot of repeated information for each incremental change. Individual evidence is taken as the exception that proves the rule.

Whether you lean politically to the left or right, we should never characterize or stereotype anyone as an extremist or radical for simply expressing, through a bumper sticker, rally, street march, T-shirt, or an organized protest, the fundamental disagreements we have with our political leaders’ ideology or the positions they take on social or economic issues.
On April 16, 2009 Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano said she was sorry U.S. veterans were mentioned in a report on right-wing extremism. CNN said some veterans groups were offended by the departmental report and that Napolitano told the news network's "American Morning" the assessment was not intended to offend U.S. veterans. "I know that some veterans groups were offended by the fact that veterans were mentioned in this assessment, so I apologize for that offense. It was certainly not intended," Napolitano said (UPI, 2009).

The Assessment Reports are part of the department's routine analysis of intelligence information to give to law enforcement agencies guidance on possible security threats. In my view, Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano’s well-intended assessment should focus more on the real and immediate threats to our country’s security, such as the 35 radical Muslim compounds in the U.S. training its followers on how to kidnap and kill Americans, than the rhetorical. How about assessing the current and real threat from groups such as MS-13, the South American gang that claims to have a growing membership of more than 100,000 members in the U.S., which have terrorized and victimized American citizens? What about the well-organized gangs that have killed hundreds of people along our southern border, including immigration border agents and police officers, while smuggling drugs to be peddled on our streets. These are examples of the real threats we face to our democracy and our way of life. This negative stereotyping has only drawn attention away from the Assessment Reports intent and has focused more on the self-serving political agenda of its author. John F. Kennedy once said, “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.” It’s unfortunate but this apparent stereotyping, intended or not, has only perpetuated the generalizations and assumptions that feed the conflict between liberals and conservatives.

References
DHS Assessment Report (2009). “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment. Retrieved April 16, 2009, from http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/041609_extremism.pdf
Hudson, A. (2009) Washington Times.com. Homeland issued 'extremism' report despite objections: Napolitano apologizes to veterans offended by report. Retrieved April 17, 2009, from
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/17/homeland-security-got-internal-flags/
UPI.com (2009) Top News: Napolitano apologizes for extremism report. Retrieved April 16, 2009, from http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/04/16/Napolitano-apologizes-for-extremism-report/UPI-66131239896833/
Wright, B. (1996) The Federalist Papers: The famous papers on the principles of American Government. Barnes & Noble Books, Harvard University Press.

3-1 Weekly Analysis: Twitter

Tweet? Oh, I thought you said, “Sweet.” I recently learned what a "Tweet" is and what Twitter is and what this new craze (at least new to me) is all about. To tell you how up to date I am about electronic communications, I viewed a face book page about four weeks ago for the first time. I listened intently to my co-worker as he explained what face book is all about. I heard of face book but I thought it was a communication hub for young people. Now we have Twitter. I heard about this recently because Ashton Kutcher was officially crowned “King of Twitter” by Oprah Winfrey, who also became a fledgling twitter-er(?) herself. As has been reported by the media, Kutcher accepted his crown the night before when he beat CNN in the race to be the first with 1 million Twitter followers. In honor of his win, Kutcher has agreed to donate 10,000 mosquito nets in time for World Malaria Day. No, you didn’t just get punked he really has recorded over a million Twitter followers and he did make the pledge, a gracious act for someone with an impressive, one million “Tweets” from his tweet-heart followers.

Now that Kutcher has made become a true success story and has finally made his mark Oprah couldn’t be up-staged on this very important day, so she, too featured her own Twitter extravaganza on her TV show, using the same endorsement platform for her book of the month club or whatever she calls it. Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone said in an interview, “that while the lag was an unforeseen eventuality, he added that Twitter wasn’t originally imagined as the sort of social network where anyone would acquire 1 million followers (Popkin, 2009).” Stone was referring to Kutcher’s success in achieving the 1 million mark and a lag is a delay in service one experiences when dealing with internet connected electronics. After feeling the success, Ashton is now set to tour America, landing his first prime time appearance on none other than the Oprah show. Kutcher will visit Oprah's talk show to discuss the historic 1 million Twitter followers he’s established, beating the Twitter account of CNN. Poor CNN, they get beat by every cable news organization and now they get beat by Ashton Kutcher on Twitter. According to news reports, Oprah is also set to tweet her first 140 characters on live television. Set your DVR's to record history everyone!

Popkins, H. (2009) MSNBC. Retrieved April 17, 2009, from, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30268246/