Secrets, Secrets Are No Fun

   Clearly, the issues of Wikileaks and Julian Assange are on many people's minds lately, as Mr. Bolos also decided to blog about it this week. Assange, freedom of speech-activist and producer of the "revolutionary website" Wikileaks, is causing quite the stir internationally. Government officials believe he is "changing history" in the political world., and Time reports that his website "could become as important a journalistic tool as the Freedom of Information Act." In history's largest leak of secret governmental documents, Assange has gained the power to "put lives in jeopardy," as Hillary Clinton says. In a Time Magazine article covering the many views for and against Assange, the possibility of a "revolutionary movement" is mentioned many times.
   This reminds me of the fantasy fiction trilogy, Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. The trilogy is about a corrupt, Fascist government and how a girl named Katniss, who lives in the poorest of the 12 districts that make up their country, sparks a massive revolution by defying the government's binding laws. Like Katniss, Assange's defiance of the law is not exactly black and white. He argues that he is solely exercising his right to free speech, but is it his information to reveal, when it was given to him by others, possibly illegally? Technology has made it so easy for people to spread facts, slander, eye-opening discoveries, gossip, and just about anything. The fact that this new technological phenomenon is targeting big-name politicians has brought interest in what technology can do to another level.
   As Mr. Bolos posed the question, what should we do about Julian Assange and his new-found power? While some believe his purpose of educating the public about what exactly goes on in the decisions of our government is justified, others believe the opposite: is this extent of freedom of speech putting our country in danger?

Blame It, by Jamie Foxx

   Today, my group presented World War Two for the Perilous Times project. When creating the animoto(the slideshow summary of our presentation), our fearless leader Lauren wondered what song should play throughout it. Someone suggested "Blame It" by singer and actor Jamie Foxx. While this song is actually about the effects of alcohol, ("blame it on patron, got you in the zone"), we thought it would be clever because blame is such a reoccurring theme in WW2. We ended up using "Heard it Through the Grapevine" with a similar logic in mind. But the suggestion of "Blame It" got me thinking about how blame is so present in wars and troubled times. From the constant scapegoating of Jews in the Holocaust, to the vicious pointing of fingers in The Crucible, blame is rampant everywhere. It is, I think, one of the worst human qualities that people possess. Why would we turn against our friends and neighbors? Why would we lie, start rumors, and back-stab innocent people? The answer: to escape the blame, ourselves.

Dancing With the Tea Party

I had to steal this title from a blog I've recently encountered about the Bristol Palin debate that has been going on lately. Bristol Palin, a contestant on Dancing With the Stars, is now a part of the final 3 couples on the show, despite receiving the lowest scores of all the couples for the past few weeks. The scores come from judges who all have professional dance training and background, but the votes come from the adoring public. As the loyal fans of DWTS watched Brandy (of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella) get voted off after getting the best scores consistently for many weeks before that, they started wondering if there was something going on "behind the scenes". In blog posts (link) and news articles (link), people have suggested a glitch in the DWTS voting system, or even an unjust Tea Party takeover. The Tea Party, which I mentioned in my last post, consists of the "new" Republicans, such as Sarah Palin. And it just so happens that her daughter is a competitor on DWTS. Hmm...

I actually don't watch this show, but my mom does, and religiously. I used to watch it with her a little but I got sick of watching the judges judge great dancers harshly and poor ones really leniently. But many of the people blogging about this situation don't watch the show, just like me. It's not about who deserves to win, it's about questioning the ethics of a group of politicians who have possibly been rigging the voting system in order to make a political statement in support of Sarah Palin. The accusation is that Tea Party followers have been entering false email accounts into the voting forms on the DWTS website in order to vote more than once for Bristol. But others say that this is allowed because they don't state any rules limiting how many times you can vote for a contestant. I found the rules and regulations myself on the website and it stated that you may vote through text, email, or phone call only 5 TIMES. While I largely suspect that there was some ballot-stuffing going on, James Poniewozik of Time Magazine makes a good point: "The show is called Dancing With the Stars. Not, say, Dancing With the Dancers." This show is meant to be a popularity contest, not based on solely who is the best and strongest dancer of the group. And doesn't this remind you of our country's political system, in a way?

The results of DWTS will be revealed tonight on the final episode of the season...may the best politician's daughter win.

Quasi-Republicans

   We just learned about the Quasi-War from our intelligent peers this past week. Something that stuck out to me was the fact that back then, Republicans were called Federalists and Democrats were called Republican-Democrats. While the names of the political groups had eveloved since then, they have also evolved recently in the world of politics. There is now a "splinter" group of Republicans called the "Tea Party," which is made up of younger minds and has recently taken over the House. The Republican party had a hard time defining itself, and was considered to be running out of energy in terms of leadership, policies, and popularity. So the Tea Party came out and is trying to become the new "face" of the Republicans.

Pretending

   We briefuly talked about the Stanford Prison Experiment in class the other day. As some of the students had not heard about it, I knew what it was because we learned about it in Theater 3. It came into play when we started discussing the idea of "cognitive dissonance." This is when one believes something so strongly and completely in their mind that it becomes a reality for them. The reason this prison experiment was conducted at Stanford University was so study the psychology of pretending to be in a situation you're not really in. At least, that's how we looked at it in theater class. In the link provided, it seems as though the experiment was really to test the "goodness" of people when they are placed in an "evil" situation. This relates to The Crucible because as the accusations and rumors of witchcraft start flying, we see everyone in the town of Salem become accusatory and vicious. People start lying about the neighbors they have always held a grudge on, and basically condemning them to their deaths. The evil situation that has befallen the people of Salem brings out the demonic side of them. This is ironic because it is the demon that they are so strongly afraid of and avoiding.

Mommy's in High School?

A teacher from Teach For America visited us in class the other day. Teach for America is a program in which qualified adults volunteer as teachers of students in poor communities for 2 years. He talked about the community he teaches in, which is in the United States, contrary to what some of our preconceived notions stated. Curious as to what the school and students are like, we asked him how it is different than here. He would know especially because he graduated from New Trier so he had experienced both worlds in his young life. The most shocking thing he said is that a quarter of the students at his school have a baby. This disturbing, yet accurate fact, shocked all of us in the classroom. Occasionally there is an incident of teenage pregnancy at our school, but it is always regarded as a huge scandal, not a common occurrence. We New Trier students have such a narrow view of the world that we cannot possibly imagine some of the hardships these students face on a daily basis. It instills hope in me that we have programs like Teach for America that recognize these troubled schools and look to fix it, starting with small actions and working to change the system of education nationwide. I hope that we all put ourselves in those unfortunate students' shoes and realize how grateful we should be for this world we live in and do not take it for granted any longer.

Growing Pains

   Whoever saw Lagniappe Potpourri 2011, (this year), knows that the theme was CHANGE. Change is hard to do. Life is never constant. These were the reoccurring messages throughout the show. And while Lagniappe is a comical variety show, the message always seems to be such a present one in our lives as we journey through high-school. The most recent change I've noticed in my life has to do with Halloween. Last year, I planned my costume a good month ahead of time and had it all laid out a week before I wore it to school. This year, when people asked me what I was dressing up as, I found myself not only not knowing, but not caring. It's depressing to admit that I don't care about Halloween anymore, but it's true. I take this to mean that I'm growing up.
   A change that I haven't yet accepted is the fact that the local Glencoe upscale drugstore, Parkway Drugs, has been bought out by Walgreens. My mom went in there today to get her monthly fix of cinnamon Altoids and found that they were gone. No, not temporarily out, just gone. While that is an unpleasant change for my mom, the biggest issue is that Walgreens actually assured the staff of Parkway that they would all be able to keep their jobs, then pulled the rug out from under them a few days later by firing the two pharmacists, who are beloved figures in Glencoe and have been working there for a very long time. This harsh change has created such an uproar in Glencoe that people are vowing to boycott Walgreens/Parkway. While change is inevitable and oftentimes a natural thing, sometimes people have control over it. And in this situation, the Walgreens administration is entirely to blame.