News About Obama (10 Revelations)

10- “By linking political issues to the extraneous concerns for race, glamour, religion, or experience, and avoiding central questions of power and purpose in society, the real intellectual and ideological questions of the social order have been wholly obscured and the mass capacity to respond

to the problems of that order seriously reduced” (Streets, 167). It really is a problem that media coverage of pop-culture has become what we care about more so then what is really going on in the world today. One of these options will effect us and our lives, the other will serve as a conversation topic for about 5 minutes. Photo Credit.

To an extent, I view this as scapegoating. We are focusing all our attention on others, making it the focus of our problems. Like pop-culture, because dealing with that is something we can actually handle. It's seeing someone else's life and it makes us feel better about our own in some cases.

9- “’Brand Obama’s’ pure media-created celebrity-hood has been amajor factor in his ascendance, particularly with regard to younger voters” (Streets,169). It’s true, but it’s also fair. You have to appeal toyour audience on their media platform, and Obama did just that.

He communicated in a way and reached the youth in a way that was understandable to the best of our abilities. He is a flawless speaker, and utilized numerous media platforms to reach is target audience. This appealed to the Limbic brain, because he instilled an emotional transfer in his speeches, also the Neocortex because he was saying things that had such a deep meaning to them. Photo Credit.

8- “Obama has nonetheless benefited from being mentally hyper-competent in the wake of the often highly incompetent Bust administrations ‘region of error’” (Streets, 170). American’s needed someone to trust, and someone who wouldn’t run them further into the ground then we already were. Bush left a big mess to clean up, it was just a matter of whose hands it actually fell into. Photo Credit.

With this election, I feel people were more involved, because of the hole that Bush left, it was like this election suddenly had everyones attention. Or maybe it was the place I was at in my life, being among students voting for the first time. However, I feel this is an example of the personal shift. It went from this feeling of "my one vote doesn't matter" to "I have to vote, my voice has to be in this."

7- “A candidate also has no chance for the White House is he or she does not gain approval from the powerful people who own and manage national and global corporate media” (Streets, 189). This is so true, and so sad. It's prime example of the political shift. We always have to have someone with the money bags approving everything that we do or try to do. Photo Credit.

It's a terrible realization and something that I truly detest about our country. As I am aware that Obama did take big hand outs from companies for his campaign, I respect him for trying to raise it by donations from everyday plain folks.

6- “We who protest the war are not politicians. We are citizens” (Streets, 193). I love this sentence, it goes to show that we know what we want, but we can’t trust the politicians to fight for it. When I think of this, I think of plain folks, because this is what the phrase appeals to, those of us that want to make a difference but are seen to low on the scale to make any real type of difference. I believe that a lot of poeple looked up to Obama as speaking for the small person, and I think a lot of those people are incredibly let down by the way his presidency has gone. Photo Credit.

News About Obama (10 Revelations cont.)

5. “I heard self-identified leftist activists describe Obama as a peace and justice candidate who wanted to end war and redistribute wealth. I was also told by Republicans that Obama was a Democrat they could imagine voting for, precisely because he wasn’t especially left-wing or liberal” (Streets xxvii). This quote is an example of the discursive shift. It's said that Obama is a Moderate Republican, but going through on the Democratic nomination. Everyone takes what they want from the situation, you choose and apply it to your opinions.

In this case, everyone was destined to come out feeling let down because it's impossible for Obama to please everyone. He frustrates Democrats by always seeming to side with big business America instead of ordinary Americans, and he frustrates Republicans by being a Democrats and believing he does the complete opposite. Drew Weston discusses this further via CNN. Photo Credit

4-“The 2008 Obama presidential run may be the most slickly orchestrated marketing machine in history” (Streets, 60). I agree with this statement, Obama was everywhere. He was a well-marketed product but was marketed as a simple solution. The way he was marketed was sending the message that if you vote for him, then your problems will be solved, because he was marketed purely as a brand.

It's crazy to think about, that our president is seen more as a brand then as leader. It's crazy to think that this the place we are at in society, that we can relate more to a product then we can to a leader. Photo Credit.

3- Observation 3- “The essay contained four gloomy black-and-white photos of Senator Clinton, all full of foreboding shadows, and four photos of Obama in color. …The message could not have been more clear: Obama represented a colorful new and optimistic future; Hilary is harsh, dark, old, and depressing” (64). As Postman said previously, that image is truly everything. If you’re going to be looking at someone, you at lest want it to be someone that keeps your attention. The image is a powerful thing.

This also touches on production techniques, because the way they are showing these images has a biased meaning. If shows what opinion they the company holds. It's tricky to make journalism of any type unbiased with words, but with images that says something else, because every photo truly is worth a thousand words. Photo Credit.

2- “But the operative U.S. definition of ‘democracy’ is rather different from the dictionary meaning” (130). I find this to be true, I also believe that everyone has their own definition of the word. This falls under the tool sets in personal meaning, because everyone has their own meaning of this word, and everyone expects different things from it.

We all like to look at things in our own ways, but the problem with doing this is that we all derive our own meaning from situations, and then needless to say we are all let down to some extent. In our country, we all have our own opinions of what should be taking place and what is best, but our own voices aren't generally heard. Photo Credit.

1- “What is the idea of our moral superiority based on? Surely not our behavior toward people in other parts of the world” (132). We should be treating others the same way we want to be treated and seen in the world. From my travels, I have learned that no one really respects an American. A lot of this is due to what other countries see of us in the media, and they then hold this true of us once we travel, and these assumptions are what they go off of.

This fits in with individual meaning, perfectly. If we want the world to have a better opinion of us, then we need to be sending a better image. Electing Obama, someone who is seen as young, poised, and a positive image in the media, was also a ploy to establish better relations with those countries that aren't exactly fond of us. Photo Credit.