This was a pretty moving blog post to read. It was so well written you would think that someone who has at least an undergraduate degree and maybe even a graduate degree was the author. But it was written by a lifer who is serving time for first degree murder and who did not even graduate high school. Pretty amazing stuff. It was also moving to hear the story he was telling about the men consoling another man who just learned that his son had died in a car crash. I could picture this story like I was watching it with my own two eyes, and did not expect that it was taking place in a prison. To hear that acts like this occur on a daily basis and especially between two men who are known to dislike one another is extremely eye-opening. Like the author said, you expect prison to be full of the worst that mankind has to offer; people who are violent, unforgiving, and show no compassion towards others. But after reading this letter it is hard not to think the exact opposite. The two men put aside their differences because they knew that the one prisoner was in such grief and needed a shoulder to cry on and someone to talk to. It is hard for me to think about doing this for someone that I “hate” or dislike, let alone two men who have committed horrible crimes doing so behind prison walls. It was also pretty cool to hear about how when a tragedy occurs in the world the men in the prison do everything in their power to help as much as they can. The author said that it kills the man to think that they can’t do more to help. This really blew me away because I always held the belief that people in prison really did not have that much of an interest in the outside world, let alone have all of the men rally together to provide any help they can. It is kind of hard to think about prisoners, especially lifers, in this sense. These men and women have committed such heinous acts that they deserve to be in the position that they are in and I do not think that anyone should feel sorry for them that they can’t talk to or see their family or help in the ways that they want to do. These were the rights that they sacrificed when they decided to commit the crimes they did, and now they have to pay for it. I understand that people can change and many of the lifers have a lot of regret for the crimes they committed and are completely different people now then when they entered prison. That is good for them and I am really happy for them, but it does not change the fact that they were once criminals of the worst kind and were once some of the worst that mankind had to offer.

I think a lot of Americans had the idea in the back of their head that the war in Iraq is largely about oil. I mean it is no secret that as a nation we are largely dependent on the Middle East for our oil and that as a people we are largely dependent on oil to perform our daily activities. Government officials could have said all they wanted at the onset of the war that it was about weapons of mass destruction and getting rid of a dangerous leader in Saddam Hussein. However, I think a lot of people saw through these statements into the hidden motive behind the war, which is to gain control of the oil supply. And these beliefs were confirmed when hearing the comments Sam showed us in class from George W. Bush, John McCain, oil executives, etc. Before attending the class I did not know that people in power had come out and declared this as the motive so clearly, but the comments really do eliminate any doubt that the war truly is about oil. I have a problem with the whole Christian Invaders thing though when I look at it from the view point of an American. I understand that this is likely how I would feel if I was an Arab Muslim looking at the war from a completely different perspective. With some of the videos Sam showed us it would be easy to think that we were fighting this war with a motive in addition to oil, which is to convert all Muslims to Christianity. But from my perspective, I truly do not think this has any effect on why we decided to fight this war or why we are still over there. America, to me at least, is not the extremely religious country that it used to be. It seems like with each passing generation we become less and less religious. I honestly do not care if my best friend, my boss, my wife or whoever is not the same religion as I am, and I am sure that a high percentage of Americans feel the same way I do. So because of this I do not think the American soldiers currently fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan or putting their lives on the line for the hope that one day all of the citizens of these countries will convert to Christianity. I know that George Bush was quoted saying this is a crusade, a holy war, and that we did see videos of Christian extremists and groups of people trying to convert the locals to Christianity. But in no way do I believe this represents the majority of the soldiers or the people backing the war, and by no means do I believe that this is even close to being as big of a factor on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan than is oil.

I think this is an interesting point. I mean people who are born into less advantaged situations than others do need some help to get into a good college and get put on a more level playing field with those born into a wealthy and or a well connected family. This is why I think that affirmative action overall is a good idea. But I also do not think that it has been used properly as we discussed in class, with it benefitting primarily white women and not benefitting those who really need the extra assistance. But I also think that other things need to be taken into account in certain situations just like this video talks about. The guy who asked the question wondered about affirmative action as far as hiring doctors and other medical personnel in hospitals. In this case I believe race should be completely thrown out when considering applicants for hire. People deserve to have the best medical personnel possible to make a diagnosis or perform their surgery or help them get healthy. The only thing that should be considered during the hiring process is the ability and aptitude of the applicant, nothing about them racially or ethnically. Race should be completely thrown out in this case and if it is not then that could decrease the value of medical care that patients across the country are receiving. If someone got hired at a hospital over someone else who was much more talented and much more qualified simply because they were Black or Asian, that would completely defeat the purpose of affirmative action in my mind. That does not serve the citizens of that community the way they deserve to be treated as far as medical care is concerned. I would like to know how the person who made the hire would feel if the life of their husband or wife or son or daughter depended on the care of this less qualified doctor. I am sure they would be questioning their hiring decision, just like this poster is as well. This is not to say that those people do not deserve a shot however. I think they deserve to be placed at a little bit of an advantage to get into a good medical school when compared to his or her white counterparts, but after that their performance in medical school and in any work experience after school should be the reason they do or do not get hired for the job. Not what race they are. Nepotism is also interesting because it also can lead to less qualified people being hired for certain jobs just because they have a networking relationship with the person doing the hiring. This is also a problem with things like the medical field because it decreases the overall quality of care people receive, just like affirmative action can as well.

To be honest I mean it is just not something I want to think about on my own let alone make the choice to take up my own personal time to learn more about it. If my girlfriend or whatever decides she wants to let me in on it and talk about it with me then fine I would do that. But I am not going to go around asking her a million and one questions about it just to learn for myself what is really going on. Because, and I am sure pretty much every guy in the class would agree with me, I like to think about that area on a girl in a much different context than when a girl is “bleeding”. Which by the way is a gross term to describe it as, even if that is what is actually going on, and I really hope other girls do not catch on to it. Kind of skeeves me out every time I hear it. Like I said I would not be against learning more about it if my girlfriend wanted me to know more about it, and it probably would be pretty beneficial to know what was going on. I mean it would help a lot of guys know when to be extra careful and prevent becoming an unplanned dad. So in that sense guys should know more about it. But I think I speak for most if not all guys when I say that this is not a topic we generally want to study or read about. I’ll stick to music and sports for my reading pleasure.

As far as the whole would tampons be free thing I do not really understand what that is all about. Just the fact that guys would need to use them does not have any effect on if they would be free or not. Of course they would still cost money it does not make any sense to think otherwise. Guys need, well maybe not need but do use condoms and they still cost money. And they are pretty damn expensive too. It is funny to joke about how it would be different with guys than it is with girls. Guys probably would talk about it a lot more differently than girls do and there would be a lot more bar fights. We find enough reasons as it is to get pissed at each other and to throw pms on top of that sounds like a recipe for disaster. I always thought girls were open about it with other girls though. At least from my experience I thought girls talked about it all the time. Regardless I’m sure glad I don’t have to deal with it. Until I get married probably that is.

My initial reaction after reading this article was just thinking about how bad I feel for Constance McMillen, the girl who asked to go to prom with her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo. I know how much high school students, especially juniors and seniors, look forward to attending proms. I can’t imagine how she is being treated at school now with all her fellow students knowing that their proms were cancelled because of Constance. It has to be hard enough to be a teenager who is out of the closet as a lesbian in high school let alone with this whole other controversy surrounding her. She has to be going through hell right now. It is also sad in a way that she had to be from this area in Mississippi. The article itself says that a teacher told Constance that “she had to remember where she was” when she approached the teacher about the same-sex ban on dates. It’s a shame that she did not try to do this in a more gay-accepting area, such as areas in California or New York for example. If Constance’s hometown held the same viewpoints towards same sex relationships as these places, I think it is safe to say that her wishes would have been much better received.

That being said, I honestly do not know how my high school would react in a similar situation. I know that we had our fair share of gay and lesbian couples in our high school, but I do not remember them attending prom together. I like to think that it would not have been too big a deal. But at the same time I think, even if same-sex couples were permitted to attend as dates, they would have been the focus of attention and a lot of students would have looked at them funny. I think I have grown much more accepting over the years, but I can’t confidently say that as a high school student I would have been excluded from that group of students.

It is sad to think that even in 2010 some places want to ignore the idea of same sex couples and that certain people think that a same sex couple attending prom together can be so destructive. It is also crazy to think that a school district will go so far to prevent this as to cancel prom altogether, which in effect alienates the gay and lesbian couples from that area even more. It really does seem so 1990s like Sam said. Aside from all this I thought probably the strangest part about the whole story was that Constance would not be allowed to wear a tuxedo. What’s the logic with that?

As a white person, I feel the need to address this question. I have been to many theme parties and even hosted a couple of them myself. Having a theme just adds something different to the party and makes it more exciting then just a regular party at someone’s house or apartment, in my opinion. Also, it gives girls an excuse to dress sexy most of the time, which works in my favor as a guy. But at the same time the high majority of the parties I have been to at Penn State are not themed. So “there must not always be a theme”, and, at least in my experiences, themed parties are more of an anomaly than the norm. As far as addressing your point about the majority of the themed parties you hear about being hosted by white people, I cannot really argue against this because this is true for me also. I have never heard about or been invited to a themed party not hosted by a white person, but then again I am not friends with many people who are non-white. I do not think that you can generalize themed parties as being a white only trend. I bet if someone did a study looking at theme parties nation wide they would find that a good percentage of themed parties are being held by non-white people as well. I would be shocked if this was not the result, but like I said I cannot really speak on this with any personal experience to back it up. Something about this question that made no sense to me was when she brought up how most of these themed parties are based on making fun of black stereotypes. As I said earlier, I have been a part of a lot of themed parties and I can’t think of one example of a party that could be interpreted in this way. One party was called a “black and white” party, which means black and white clothes not like a 1960s segregated concert. Another party was a jersey party, which can’t be argued is making fun of black people because an equal number of white people wear sports jerseys as black people. A different party was a hippie party, which is not making fun of any race in particular and definitely not black people, if anything. And as for some of the most popular themed parties, an argument can be made that the parties are actually making fun of white people more than any other group. Two examples off the top of my head are “CEOs and Business Hoes” and “Golf Pros and Tennis Hoes”. I mean, historically the people who have held the position of CEO and the people who have been members of a country club have been white, so I do not see the validity of your argument here. I would love to hear some examples of parties that made you think this, because I honestly have no idea where you are coming from (no offense).

I honestly do not think that there should be any difference between male gay couples adopting children and female gay couples adopting children. In my view, I do no think that either group has an advantage raising a child over the other. I will admit, however, that I am a traditionalist in the sense that I think that the best situation to raise a child in is with both a father and a mother present. But, this is not to say that I do no think it is healthy for a child to grow up with two parents of the same sex. I absolutely think that two women or that two men can raise a child the right way and can raise that child in such a way that their son our daughter will lead a very successful life. The whole idea of having two fathers or two mothers seemed so crazy to me because I had never met anyone who was raised this way. This, of course, was until I came to Penn State. And, furthermore, this was until the first semester of my senior year. Last semester was the first time I met a girl who was raised by two dads. She was in one of my classes, and it was not even until the end of the semester that I realized she came from this sort of upbringing. Throughout the entire semester I had gained a lot of respect for her by the way she carried herself and by how intelligently she spoke about a variety of topics. She seemed like a normal girl, and a girl who was destined to succeed and destined to contribute to the world in positive ways. One of the last classes we had together first semester, our class was visited by students who are part of an organization similar to the gay-straight alliance here at Penn State. This girl in my class raised her hand and opened herself up to everyone to the fact that she was raised by two Dads. She said that she felt that she experienced the same, normal childhood as everyone else in the room and she felt that she turned out ok, just like all of those in the room that were raised by a “normal” family, i.e. a mother and a father. I think that this took the whole class aback, because I do not think that anyone in the class, who did not know her personally, had ever thought that she could have been raised by anything other than a mother and a father. This was when it truly occurred to me that, in the grand scheme of things, it does not matter if two men, two women, or a man and woman raise a child. All that matters is that the parents love their child and do everything in their power to support their child and ensure their well being.

I was shocked by a couple of things about this blog post. The first was the fact that a high ranking politician would go public with comments equating those on welfare to stray animals. This is something that, even if you believe it, I do not think should be spoken, regardless of who you are. It is something that you should just keep to yourself, especially for a public figure who has been elected to represent the values and beliefs of many. The second shocking aspect of this post was learning that a high majority of welfare subsidies go towards the wealthy. I honestly had no idea that this was the case, and as the blog says, I had always thought of welfare as something that was given to those who need it most. To those who could not support themselves or their family without it. This is what welfare means to me, and this is what I think it should be. These people need that money to survive. In class today we talked about what causes people to lead the lives they do. We talked about homeless people and the fact that there is a good chance that 50% of the reason they are homeless is due to causes for which they had no control over. This means that these causes could have happened to anybody. So what possesses someone to think they have the right to call those who so badly need welfare subsidies to survive “stray animals”? And how could you possibly use the metaphor “do not feed stray animals” when talking about providing welfare to the poor? As citizens of our country, who share the same rights as every single one of us, they should be supported by the public in the hope that the future will be brighter for them, and if not for them then for their children. I absolutely have no problem with the welfare program we have in this country, and to take that a step further I think we can do even a little bit more. I also absolutely hate the language that Andre Bauer used when discussing the program. However, I do have a problem with those who make the choice to live on welfare for an extended period of time without searching for a job or trying to advance their education with the goal of one day being able to support yourself and your family. I look at our welfare program with the hope that those who receive subsidies will use it as a way to bridge the gap during extremely difficult times and help get them back on their feet. This is why I was so shocked to hear that the “vast majority of welfare subsidies” are not used for this purpose. Maybe the problem is not with the “animals” Andre Bauer; maybe it is with people just like you.

I can understand where David Brooks is coming from when he makes his conclusion about the presence of the white people as “saviors” theme in Avatar. By no means, however, do I think that James Cameron had this theme in mind when he created the movie. As Sam said, I do think that Brooks may be reading a little too far into the film, but like I said, I do not think that this theme was something that drove the creation of the movie. I think that it just kind of happened. I did see this movie, and at no point did I think about this theme while I was sitting in the theater. Furthermore, at no point did any of my friends I saw the movie with talk about it afterwards. I understand that Brooks likely based this conclusion on the fact that the “hero” Avatar in the film was a white man in an Avatar’s body. But this ignores the aspect of the movie that troops of white men and women were responsible for the attempted destruction of the Avatar’s land and people. Largely, the white man was more of the villain in this movie than the hero. While, as I mentioned earlier, the hero Avatar in the movie was originally a white man, his efforts would not have succeeded if it was not for the collaboration of many non-white species and animals. I do not mean to be giving a summary of the movie, because that is not what this post is about and I do not want to ruin the movie for those who have seen it. However, I thought that the above aspects of the movie were necessary to point out when discussing why I disagree with Brooks’ theory. If anything, I think that a stronger argument can be made against what Brooks is saying. I would fall into the category of one who has grown up in this culture and has not restructured his or her thinking, but I think that is irrelevant because I do not think that it would cause me to change my opinion about this topic. In my opinion, the movie Avatar was more about the ground breaking visual aspects of the film and less about a complicated plot filled with underlying themes and meanings. There definitely are themes within the film, because what film is without themes. But this is one of the main reasons, along with the description of the story line that I discussed earlier, why I believe that Brooks’ opinion is inaccurate and that he is reading too far into this film. Take this film for what it is worth; an amazing visual experience that is unlike anything to ever hit the big screen before. Not a film that depicts the white man as the savior for all mankind.

This video was really shocking to me. I am a big sports fan, but I had no idea this type of thing was going on in the European soccer leagues. It really does seem like Europe is hundreds or so years behind the United States in its tolerance of people of other races. The fact that the crowd chants “monkey, monkey” every time a black soccer player would touch the ball or would throw bananas on the field truly is unnerving. It is crazy to me that in this day and age, societies can have such little tolerance for black people (or other races). One thing I found especially surprising was how fans of teams who have black soccer players on their rosters still participate in very racist acts towards these athletes (i.e. the two acts mentioned above). I thought that these acts would be reserved for those black athletes on the teams for which their favorite club was competing against. By no means does that make these actions ok, I just thought that the fans would support the players on their own team regardless of what race they are, as long as they performed at a high level. This does not seem to be the case when you consider the examples of two black soccer players featured in the video who are considered by many soccer fans to be some of the best players in the world. Not even their excellent performance on the field could spare them from being the targets of these horrible racist acts. I understand the argument that Europe has been a continent that has always had a very small portion of their citizens be black, and this acts as a little bit of a culture shock to them. I also understand that they feel like their culture is being threatened by the presence of the “dark skinned” peoples. I feel as if this is very similar to what occurred in the United States during slavery and after slavery was abolished. Americans did not feel comfortable with black people participating so much in their culture, and they committed racist acts against them and limited their legal rights. However, this is no excuse. It was not an excuse for the Americans of that time period, and it is not an excuse for European soccer fans. But as the video points out this problem is not limited to soccer fans. The coach of Spain was caught saying “give it to the black” in reference to a player on the French international team. I believe that this proves that the problem of racism really is a cultural problem within Europe. It makes me feel a lot better about the progress we have made towards racial equality when I think of the acceptance of athletes of all races here in America, and then I watch this video about the European soccer league. It really is a story of two different worlds.