My friend showed me this youtube video that I personally found quite enjoyable and very... well... interesting. It proves my point earlier that we are too concerned with political image.
FAIR WARNING: For those sensitive to 4 letter words and some racy topics, maybe this isn't for you!
Personal tid-bit: my favorite part is definitely "Hold your horses there northern exposure."
Onto a serious note, this is how a lot of us form our opinions about political figures. I'll admit, this woman does a pretty good impression of Palin, but it is only an impression. If you have been following up on current political events, most of these references will make sense and you understand their background and where they stem from. If not, we are simply taking in what we see as fact. It is important to be knowledgeable enough to be able to distinguish the fact from the fiction and what is mindless forms of entertainment.
3 comments:
A large part of what the media focus on these days is political figures. It appears a new favorite hobby of American citizens is catching up on the latest political scandals. Magazines and the news devote a lot of their time to the politics. I think that it is important to take into account what they report, but also keep in mind that you need to be careful about you read and think is true.
While they are very entertaining, and usually bring out at least a laugh or two no matter which side of the political spectrum you lean toward, I think that shows like "The Colbert Report" and Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" can be dangerous if misinterpreted. Like the author of this post stated, "It is important to be knowledgeable enough to be able to distinguish the fact from the fiction and what is mindless forms of entertainment."
Unfortunately however, if you have been doing the reading for this class you know that most young people are getting a disturbingly low amount of news. A 2004 Pew study found that many young people turn to these comedy news programs for their main source of news information (21% of people surveyed under age 30 said they "regularly" learned about the 2004 campaign from comedy shows like The Daily Show). And since these shows are comedy shows and don't claim to be true news, they aren't held to the high legal and ethical standards that real news programming is.
I think the video was pretty funny but I also think it is dangerous to base your vote on a video like this. Many voters see comedy central or SNL making fun of a certain candidate and decide their vote on that. People need to pay more attention to the actual candidates, not on those who impersonate them and belittle them.
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