If you watch South Park you know that someone or something is going to be made fun of. The show has been like this for years, and they have made fun of nearly every news headline and even though some people have become upset about these episodes not many go as far as threatening the producers of South Park. South Park aired an edited version in to appease the threats. In the edited version the character Kyle’s words were bleeped out so that he did not mention the Prophet Muhammad. Another thing that angered this Muslim group was that they complained South Park insulted their prophet by depicting him in a bear costume. This radical Muslim group posted on their website a warning to the producers that they might end up like Dutch Filmmaker Theo Van Gogh. Van Gogh was killed by a Muslim extremist for making a movie about a woman who rejected Muhammad’s teachings. The message online also included a gruesome picture of the dead Van Gogh, along with producers Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
I’m not exactly sure but I think these are the people that Sam was talking about in the Christian Invaders lecture. These people are just ridiculous, I can understand them being upset about what South Park aired, it was disrespectful. But then again so is everything else that is on South Park. It is completely unnecessary to kill someone or threaten someone’s life for airing a TV show, especially one that is a COMEDY. It is not like people actually believe anything that is on South Park.
South Park is just expressing their freedom of speech, and I cannot say that I do not support them. They constantly are poking fun at someone and even other religions. I don’t understand why these groups can’t take a joke. South Park often airs Jesus on their episodes and no one is making death threats because of that, and I believe that there are more Christians that watch South Park than Muslims or for that matter more Christians in the US.
I feel bad for this group; because all they are doing is making themselves look bad. These small groups of radicals are certainly a minority. I could be wrong but I don’t think that all Muslims want to kill the South Park producers. This is a perfect example of the Christian Invader lecture because just like people in Iraq think that Christians are invading their country. People in the US have a negative perception of Muslims because of the extremely radical groups that kill people because someone talks about their leader in a negative way. It is truly a shame that one person or group of people can ruin things for others.

This lecture was easily the best lecture for the year for me. I mean it made me feel like a complete ass though. Everything that I was thinking in my head about the war in Iraq and the people over there is completely jumbled inside of my head and I do not know what to think. I know everyone says to look at it from some one else’s point of view, and I would do that except I didn’t know why people in the Middle East hated us so much. I thought we are really trying to help them. When Sam actually placed us in the shoes of an Arab Muslim and showed us “all” of the bad things that Americans do to “us”, I was like wow. As an American I know that those few bad things that they see are not portraying what most soldiers are like. Like Sam said those few knuckle heads stick out and make it seem like all Americans are like that. From their perspective I can see that all of this “terror” stems from Christianity. But once again as an American I know that it is the complete opposite in reality.
One thing that I did not completely agree with was Sam’s example of the Chinese coming over and taking our coal. It’s not really debatable if we are in Iraq for the oil or not, because it obviously seems that way. I’m not sure if I’m correct or not but, I do think that we are buying this oil from the Middle East. In Sam’s example, the Chinese were just coming over taking our coal and getting rich off of it. Like I said before I could be wrong, but I think we purchase the oil, which means someone must be getting rich off of us. I don’t know what those people are doing with this money. I understand the point that I would be extremely pissed if someone came into my land and took my resources. I admit in Sam’s Chinese example, I raised my hand and said that I would be out fighting the Chinese.
Overall this lecture was just amazing and made me think so much. I have always needed that person or group of people to put the blame on and to me the Arab Muslims were that group. Horribly maybe racial profiling had a bit to do with it. Now I know that just like we see them as being bad, they see us the same way. I don’t know if this means as long as they see me like that then maybe it’s ok for me to continue viewing them the same way. Once I put myself in their shoes and then actually saw the examples of how they viewed us my perception changed completely.

There is definitely a lot to say about this video game. This game is absolutely disgusting and belittling of women, but to tell you the truth that is very normal for the Japanese society. Japan is a country that has a high addiction to pornography and is a very lucrative business over there. Japan is the “king” of cartoon animated pornography which is primarily what this game is about. I in no way support this game, but I do not think I would protest against this game. There are war games that are very graphic as well, they include murder and violence. Yet they are top sellers and high rated games in the American market. Who are we to say that rape is worse than murder or to say that either one is worse than the other. I play games like Call of Duty where the goal is to kill your way through the levels inflicting the most pain as possible on your enemies. This game is played by many people and not many complain about the violence. After playing this game and while I’m playing this game, it neither causes me to have violence towards these people nor relieves a feeling of anger that I have towards these people. So I do not agree with the people that say this “RapeLay” game can be used as an escape by rapists. I find this game as an interactive porno. People are always looking for a better way to “get off”. There are already rape scenes that are portrayed in pornography so I do not see why this game would be viewed any different. Your kid would have to be 18 to purchase this game, and if they are getting the game online than it would be the same if they were watching pornography. In my discussion group, our group was about split on whether the game should be banned or not and we had some very good comments from both sides. Some said that the game was not fair because only women could be raped. This shows a point that I brought up in my last comment about how there are so many women that scream sexism at everything. In this case I see it very disturbing that someone would play a game like this, and I hope others would too. But for a woman to say that she thinks it would be alright as long as men could be raped too, I think that’s going a little too far. Now after reading my comment many people may think that I support this game and that I would play it, but in reality I would for sure not come near this game. My point is that war games are legal so who are we to talk away any other type of game?

To a certain degree men are educated about menstrual cycles. In middle school, students have a health education class where they learn about puberty, reproduction, and the body in general. The menstrual cycle is lightly covered because first of all it does not occur in men and second of all young girls usually have this talk with their mothers. Young girls sometimes have discussions about menstrual cycles in their physical education classes as well. Boys get the basic idea of the whole cycle but then are not exposed to it again. I agree that young boys should not be further exposed to the cycle. At the age when boys and girls begin to have these talks, boys are immature and boys would be grossed out and not want to listen to what is going on. Besides the side effects of women emotions, men do not deal with the menstrual cycle. I agree that men sometimes freak out when talking about or discussing a menstrual cycle and that they should probably clam down or ignore the topic. Men sometimes get informed by their girlfriends about the cycle so some men are not as freaked out by the topic as others. I cannot speak for women, but I would think that some women do not feel comfortable talking about this topic in front of men, especially at a young age. I find this unfortunate because this is a naturally occurring thing in females and they should not be ashamed to talk about it, I’m not saying they should shout out and announce about it either though. Both men and women should be able to talk about this topic in a serious manner. Men should be supportive towards women when they are going through this cycle, and women should be lenient when dealing with men for not understanding everything that is going on.
As to the question about if men had menstrual cycles would they be provided with tampons for free, I think that is ridiculous. I’m going to assume that you are referring to how men receive free condoms, but women can get condoms as well. Condoms and tampons are two completely different types of things. Tampons are only usable by women. Condoms are for both men and women. They protect from pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Condoms provide a service for both sexes. Sexually transmitted diseases are a huge problem across the world; these diseases can even lead to death. Women should be happy that they can get condoms for free. I understand that tampons may be expensive but not everyone gets free condoms and they are expensive as well. Not everything has to come down to sexism. Men aren’t always treated better as some people would like to think.

I have heard so much news on the Mississippi school board canceling a high school prom because a girl wanted to attend with her girlfriend. This is ridiculous and the school should be ashamed of themselves. One reason for them not being able to attend was that it would distract from the educational process. How in the world would something that takes place at a school dance distract people from the educational process? After all what does a school dance have anything to do with educational process? If two girls dancing together distract people from the educational process then I believe every single school prom distracts students. I am pretty sure that no matter where you go there will be girls dancing together, whether they are gay or straight. Nobody asks them or even cares why they are dancing together. Another reason that the school said they could not come together was because they did not want the young girl to be wearing a tuxedo to the prom. This is another outrageous statement. I believe that a girl wearing a tuxedo would cover up more skin and be less revealing than some dresses that girls wear to dances. Which I think may be one of the most distracting things at dances. I am not complaining about the distracting dresses though. I have also seen guys unbutton their shirts and wear hats to proms, which is clearly more of a violation than a girl wearing a tuxedo. I’m not quite sure why the girls could not have just showed up together without telling anyone. Maybe they wanted to make a statement, or maybe they did not know it would cause such a ruckus. They simply could have just bought separate tickets and shown up in together. I know many girls that go to school dances with other girls just as friends or a group of friends, why is this case different. Of course this was unfair and it’s a shame that the dance was cancelled, and people may be upset with these two girls. They most likely could have worked around the situation so that the dance wasn’t cancelled. In this day and age it is pretty pathetic that two girls who want to go to a dance together can cause the whole dance to be shut down. At my senior prom there was at least one gay couple at the event, everyone knew that they were together. There were some people that did not agree that they should be allowed there together, but nobody said anything and nothing was done about it. It is not like the couple is married, they are in high school for god’s sake. It is becoming more and more acceptable for people to be gay in today’s society, so for those who are not ready, you better watch out.

Don “Moose” Lewis, is not only representing white people in a poor way, but giving a bad name to white athletes. As Sam says in his post, Mr. Lewis’s comments do sound like “the standard white racist stance on brown and black people.” The NBA Development league (the NBA’s minor league) barely gets any followers at all, basically because it is the players that cannot make it in the NBA. This proposed AABA league will most definitely be the least viewed and will eventually fail as a league. In my opinion the only viewers will be those “white racist” people, so I do not agree with Mr. Lewis when he says that there will be many people to watch these games. This league will be boring because obviously the entertaining and skilled white players are already playing in the NBA. They would have no reason to play in the AABA, especially because there would much lower incomes since there would be potentially no viewers or sponsors.
White athletes could very easily be upset by Mr. Lewis’s comments. They do not want viewers to separate athletes by their color. There are many great white players past and present that would vie for their positions atop the all time greats. When Mr. Lewis says that “that there are plenty of (white) guys who don’t like the upscale tempo of basketball that is played professionally today and they should have a chance to complete in venues where they can earn a living.” He is disgracing the white athletes by saying that they cannot compete with black athletes. I don’t understand why people would want to watch a slower pace game, or why athletes would settle to play in this league. Talk about being hypocritical, Lewis talks about black athletes just going through the motions, which sounds to me like a slower pace game.
Mr. Lewis made the comment,” With players on other professional teams carrying guns, attacking fans in the stands, and going through the motions of playing the game, fundamentally sound white players are a vanishing species.”, when I first read his comments I was drawn to his side and I actually thought for a second that what he was saying actually made sense. But then I caught myself. Sure there have been a few incidents that the NBA has frowned upon, and maybe some of them have been involved with black players, but that has nothing to do with white and black players. Even though a majority of players in the NBA are black and a few of these bad circumstances occurred with black people does not mean that all black people make poor decisions, like the above mentioned players did.

The statistics from the lecture on race inequality truly blew my mind. My senior year of high school I shadowed a lawyer in my hometown. For my last two periods of the day and into the afternoon I would report to the law office and follow him as he went through his day. I would accompany him to the courthouse and watch trials that were going on. From what I learned while shadowing him, the judge had guidelines by which he would sentence people. So when I heard that when a white and a black person with the same background were charged with the same crime, that a black person would serve more jail time I was quite surprised. I’m not arguing with the statistics but after learning the guidelines I was sincerely shocked.
In Luzerne County, a county next to mine, there was a huge judge scandal were Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took more than $2.6 million in exchange for sentencing youths to time at private juvenile detention centers. They were eventually caught and are now on trial. In this situation two juveniles with similar cases would end up with two totally different charges. Sometimes even small charges would result in juveniles going to this detention center. Obviously this is a situation in which the court system is very corrupt, I do not think that you can say that this is the same situation as is the case with black and white cases though. I do not think that in the case of black and white it is done on purpose, at least not consciously.
Regarding the comment about black people not having as good of lawyers as white people, I think that is a very possible statement. The statistics showed that on average white people have more money than black people. Lawyers are expensive and since white people have more money on average than black people they do not have as good of lawyers to defend them. In some cases they may need public defenders who are lawyers that are paid by the state to defend people that cannot afford lawyers. Public defenders aren’t being paid directly by the defendant and sometimes they may have a heavy case load. This may cause the public defender to not pay as much attention to a certain case as he would if he were being paid directly by that person. Of course that is unethical for the lawyer to do, but he might not do it on purpose either. In some cases a lawyer may not even see his client for the first time until he is in the courtroom. Money and lawyers may be the factor as to why those statistics were as they were.

I believe that there are a variety of reasons why lesbians are more accepted than gays in the today’s world, and that you can place a little bit of the blame on everyone. Stereotypes play a huge role in how people view gay and lesbian couples. Many people view lesbian couples as those attractive blonde bombshells that make out with each other. Gay couples on the other hand are viewed as very feministic men that wear tight pants and worry way too much about their hair. While these characteristics fit some gay and lesbian couples, the majority of couples are not like this at all. Pornographic websites and the seductiveness of women cause people to accept lesbians more than they would a gay couple. Women are very seductive and they know this. They can get whatever they want if they flirt and use their bodies the right way. There are many examples of how this happens. At parties all a girl has to do is lower her shirt a little, kiss another girl, or even wink at someone to get alcohol. In my discussion group and during my experiences I have heard girls say that they go to bars and try to get men to buy alcohol for them. Another example occurs in the policing system as well. I have heard countless stories of women getting out of traffic tickets because they either cried or flirted with the officer. Like I previous stated, women know that they are attractive and they can get men to do many things for them. I am not saying do not taking advantage of flirting with people to get what they want, but they do not have as many chances that women do. This is one of the reasons that lesbians are accepted more than gays. Men are attracted to women and lesbians are usually a thing that men enjoy watching. Even if a lesbian couple may not be deemed “attractive”, people may not view them as outcasts because women are affectionate and often have girls around them when they are sad or need help. This is not ordinary for men, many people view that men are supposed to be tough. If they are not tough and go to other men for comfort than they are straying from what many people call the norm. I do not agree with any of this. I believe that gay and lesbian couples should be allowed to be together. On Tuesday we discussed how people don’t like gay people to flaunt their “gayness” and I agree with that, but I also agree that straight people shouldn’t flaunt their relationships either. I do not like seeing people making out in public no matter their orientation.

Lieutenant Governor, Andre Bauer said something that he probably wishes he did not say. At least in public or in front of that group. Mr. Bauer probably is not sincere in his apology and he most likely believes what he said about people that are on welfare are animals. As this article states I am sure that many people probably feel this way also about poor people that are on welfare and use the system. Even though he is coming under fire for saying these statements, by his Democratic rivals who would call him out for saying even the total opposite and vice versa, he is gaining support in many people’s point of view. The United States is definitely under educated when it comes to these types of politics. Many people will agree with what Mr. Bauer said because they are unaware of all the subsidies that wealthy people encounter as well. I do not know if I can disagree with his statement either, but I would not be the person that would come out in public and say this. First of all I am not educated enough on this subject to make such remarks, and second of all there are most likely wealthy people that use the system also. I would like to say that people that use the system and do not try to get another source of income because they are lazy or just because they do not have to are what Mr. Bauer is referring to. As bad as this may sound, I do believe that some of the families on welfare in a way teach the ones they are living with that being on welfare and using the system is a way of life, and that it is ok to live that way. Conversely there are other people that are using the system as well, and probably do the same things. The welfare system needs to be edited. I do not know much about the system in the first place, but from what I have heard it needs to be changed. There are some people that are on welfare that do not need to be, and there are also people that are not on welfare but deserve to be. In some cases people that meet the requirements to be on welfare decline because they want to make money themselves and they do not want to ruin their pride by having someone else provide for them. I think it would be great if every person had that type of mentality, but I know that is just an impossible thing. I like what Mr. Bauer has to say about recipients of welfare being drug tested, but I do not know if parent teacher conferences should be a necessity.

Just like the article states, there is a good amount of black Americans that on the census identified themselves as “Negro”. The word “Negro” used to be widely accepted and was a rather name for a black person, especially when thinking of all of the vulgar names that some black Americans have encountered. Although some activists and politicians have complained that the Census Bureau has failed to keep up with modern times, I believe that it is not worth the risk of removing the category from the Census. If people do not believe that they fit under a certain identity, then they will not even mark it on the Census, which will surely affect the data. As long as black Americans continue to recognize themselves as “Negro”, than the name should remain on the Census. Over time this name may fade out, and when only a small percentage of black Americans recognize themselves as “Negro”, then I believe it is time for the Census Bureau to remove the name. I believe that as the years pass, even more names will be filtered in and out of the system. Just as has been done in the year past. For example the first Census only had one choice for race, and that was white. The categories “mullato”, Chinese, and Japanese were added as the years went by. The Census needs to be a flexible survey, which in many ways it already is. From this article I can see that the Census Bureau is experimenting with other ideas so that certain groups are not being left out of the data. The changes, which are going to be centered on race and Hispanic origin, are going to be experimental with follow up surveys to test its changes. A survey done by a New York University student showed just how different our census is compared to others around the world. Only fifteen percent of countries, including ours, used the word “race” when referring to questions about ancestry or national origin. Most of these countries were former slave countries too, which most likely played a pivotal role in the explanation. One peculiar thing that the article mentioned that I was not aware of was that the United States asks about Hispanic Ethnicity in a question all by itself. Whereas the rest of the world considers race and ethnicity to be synonymous. One of the changes that I like is that people who check “white” or “black” are able to write in more specific information afterward. This allows people who represent a large number of backgrounds to actually give a full description of their background, this way we can really know about the people. Former Census director Kenneth Prewitt describes it best when he says, “We are measuring the characteristics of the American people as they wish to be known.”