Killer Culture

David Kupelian, in his essay "Killer Culture" does an incredible job of diving into the youth cultural movements of today. He disects them, puts his own spin on them, and ultimately evokes a wide range of emotion from his reader. His ability to make the reader completely engulfed in every word makes this piece very captivating and interesting, however; with his heavy use of cited sources, it makes the reader wonder if it his piece or just a compilation of other works.
Kupelian does a masterful job of describing and detailing some of the crazy things that are happening with the youthful culture in America. He uses language that is so vivid, lacking no detail, bringing the images he is trying to portray, to life. By using language that is not often found in academic writing he helps bring a certain attention to his words that is found more often in liesurely reading.
However, when reading "Killing Culture", it is hard to ignore the often long and frequent quotes. These quotes effectively back his argument, but the pure number and mass of them lead the reader to question whose words they are really reading. In the end, Kupelian infuses a lot of opinion which helps to give ownership back to himself, but through the heart of the essay, where it matters most, he loses some of that ownership.

Framing Class

In "Framing Class, Vicarious Living, and Conspicuous Consumption", author Diana Kendall writes about the power of the media, and its ability to "shape and create cultural perceptions." She discusses how media audiences perceive and ultimately "act upon popular cultural images or frames". Throughout the piece she breaks down and analyzes how each different class is portrayed in the media, giving various examples, and why they are portrayed that way. She talks about how this portrayal has influenced our country for the worst, and how dangerous this will become as more middle-class and working-class families lifestyles continue to deteriorate.
In the end, she places most of the blame on the fact that media has become basically a small piece in huge conglomerate companies, who only care about the bottom line. She states, "The profits of television networks and stations come from selling advertising, not from producing programs that are accurate reflections of social life." And, because the owners and executives of these large corporations are a part of the upper-class, they have no desire to change the status-quo.
In the best part of the piece, Kendall pleads with her readers to not let media be their one and only source of information in their lives, "For the sake of our children and grandchildren, we must balance the perspectives we gain from the media with our own lived experiences and use a wider sociological lens to look at what is going on around us in everyday life." Well said. Media cannot and should not play a large role in how we perceive the world around us. We need to get off the couch, get outside, and define our own lives, and stop letting media define it for us.

Grammar Post 3

As I been writing my papers and responses, I have noticed that I use quotation marks quite often. I figured I better learn how to correctly punctuate them. I found this information from http://www.drgrammar.org/faqs/#15.


Quotation Marks and Other PunctuationThere are three basic rules.

1. All commas and periods should be placed inside the quotation marks.
2. All colons and semicolons should be placed outside the quotation marks.
3. Question marks and exclamation marks should be placed within the quotation marks when they apply only to the quoted material; they should be placed outside when the entire sentence, including the quoted material, is a question or exclamation.

Serving in Florida

In Barbara Ehrenreich's "Serving In Florida", she takes us through a "scientific experiment" to learn a little more about living a working-class life. She first takes on one job as a waitress, then adds another so she can pay her bills. She begins to find herself entrenched in the lifestyle and even the attitude of the working-class person.
Ehrenreich's experience is very telling, and very entertaining. She could have learned of working-class life through study and reading. She could have communicated the differences from her "real" life to her working-class life through statistics and numbers. However, by living to tell the tale, she adds a genuine touch to her story that could only be gained from actually living the life of the working-class.
By the end of the piece the reader is surely convinced that if you have options that will lead you away from the working-class world, take them. She paints a very depressing reality of what it takes to make ends meet, if you are part of this working-class. She is convincing and entertaining, and does a great job of getting her point across.

I Just Wanna Be Average and Against School

Our education system is far from perfect. There are plenty of educational failures that can be blamed for personal and societal failures. But, there are also many people who have a teacher in high school, or college, or a course they took that ultimately changed their lives for the better. In the "Learning Power" section of Rereading America we have been able the contrast very different writings that have detailed some of the struggles and successes of our schools.
Upon first comparison, it would be easy to see the similarities between Michael Moore's "Idiot Nation" and John Taylor Gatto's "Against School". However, Gatto is a much more believable and credible source, and makes his argument in a much more constructive manner. He describes how our school system was doomed from the start, because of it's origins to "military state of Prussia". Gatto was a life long educator, and his critique seems to come from a true desire to fix the system, rather than in Moore's case, a miserable failure who wants company. Mike Rose's "I Just Wanna Be Average" goes another step in the positive direction by showing that even in a broken system it just takes one good teacher and a small amount of student initiative to allow somebody to break through and achieve.
In education, as in most situation in life, we will reap what we sew. Education is not, and never will be perfect. We have the responsibility to get from it what we need. These writings are good examples of people that believe their happiness or their success is another's responsibility. And, on the flip side, in Rose's case we read of somebody taking the initiative to create their own destiny.

Grammar Post 2

I used my last grammar post to help my reading response for "Idiot Nation".

This post is about the use of commas and periods inside quotation marks, another question I seem to come across in my writing. I found this at http://www.drgrammar.org/faqs/#88.

Commas and Periods Inside Quotation Marks? "Place periods and commas inside quotation marks.[Example:] "This is a stick-up," said the well-dressed young couple. "We want all your money."This rule applies to single quotation marks as well as double quotation marks. It also applies to all uses of quotation marks: for quoted material, for titles of works, and for words used as words.Exception: In the Modern Language Association's style of parenthetical in-text citations . . ., the period follows the citation in parentheses.[Example:] James M. McPherson comments, approvingly, that the Whigs were not averse to extending the blessings of American liberty, even to Mexicans and Indians" (48). (Hacker, A Writer's Reference 285)

Idiot Nation

In "Idiot Nation" the author, Michael Moore, gives us his opinions on the failings of our education system. In his usual degrading and negative way, Moore writes this piece as a way to get back at the educational system, that failed to make him into a positively contributing human being. If you were to write a research paper on "What is Hypocricy?", this piece could be your main resource.
"Idiot Nation" is filled with one hypocritical statement after another, as Moore tries to convince america that we are not educated well enough, yet, he himself did not even graduate from college. He berates President George W. Bush for being a "C" student at Yale and Harvard, yet, he couldn't graduate from his local city college. And, in what was the most blatantly hypocritical moment, he writes that society's attitude toward teachers should be one of great gratitude (which it should be). Then, turns around and gives instructions on, "How to Be a Student Subversive Instead of a Student Subservient". Yes, this is how to show our teachers how greatful we are to them.
Moore has some valid points in his piece, and points that I agree with. However, he loses his credibility and the piece loses it's appeal because of the obvious hypocracy. I think this piece shows that we can really be exposed, and our character revealed when we let complete bias override an honest pursuit of truth.