Guaranteed To Make Your Day

The holiday season is always said to be the most wonderful time of the year. For me, that means Christmas time. Starting December, the holiday spirit takes over. I am super into it; decorating the tree, gingerbread houses, holiday movies (mostly Elf, probably the best Christmas movie of all time) and so much more.

I think sometimes the holiday season can bring out the selfish sides in people. It is kind of inevitable, because you always wonder, What am I going to get this year? Am I going to get what I asked for? Everyone has those thoughts. But, the holiday season is also about giving. That can be the best part of Christmas. Giving someone a gift they really wanted, and seeing the look on their face. Especially little kids.

I saw a commercial in one of my classes last week, and it made my day. It is probably the cutest story I have ever seen. It is not so much a commercial, but a great story that West Jet Airlines pulled off. In the video, they focus on one flight and all the passengers on it. When they check in their boarding passes in the machine, there is a video of Santa that asks every passenger what they want for Christmas. They answer with one thing they want, and get on their plane - not thinking much of it. However, while they are in the sky, the airline has people in the city they are flying into go and get every single thing that the passengers wanted. They get them before they land in that city, and wrap them all. Then, once the plane lands and the passengers go to baggage claim to get their luggage, they get the greatest surprise ever. Instead of their luggage coming out of the baggage claim, they each have the one thing they wanted for Christmas wrapped and sent out. The shocks on everyones faces made my day.

I think oftentimes people can get lost in the holiday season, in terms of what to buy, what they are going to get, and other things. It seems like everyone moves a hundred miles per hour during the month of December. But it can be very refreshing and fulfilling to take a minute and enjoy the holidays, and not get caught up in the stress of things. You can witness things like these, and it can lift the stress and help you remember what the holidays are really about.

Honoring Events The Right Way

This year, December 7th was the 72nd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. With it being such a big part of the history of the US, many people were mentioning it on social media. Many companies sent out tweets about the day as well. One of the companies that tweeted about Pearl Harbor was Campbell Soup's SpaghettiOs. The tweet they sent out ended up getting them into some trouble, and social media exploded. The tweet is to the right.

Many, many people expressed their anger on twitter, saying how offensive the tweet was. They thought it was absurd to use a mascot for the brand to represent an important moment in our nation's history, that is not to be joked about. The tweet was only live for about 10 hours, because the company took it down soon after they put it up. They then released an apology, saying, "We apologize for our recent tweet in remembrance of Pearl Harbor Day. We meant to pay respect, not to offend."

This is not the first time that a company has tweeted out something that has not been taken well by social media users. I did some more research, and found out that AT&T has also recently gotten into trouble for tweeting something about 9-11 that didn't seem respectful. They tweeted out a picture of one of their phones showing a picture of the lights shining where the World Trade Center would be. This tweet is to the left.

A lot of the reason tweets like these have gotten companies into trouble is the hidden promotions they have in them. It almost seems like, to me at least, that the goal of the images is to notice the logo of the company, or the product, and not actually remember our history. I think this shows that advertisements and promotions in America today have become overwhelming. Companies will go to any extreme to advertise their product. It seems like all they really care about is the money. It is like what we talked about in class today, about how TV shows are only made based whether or not advertisers think that people will watch, thus watching the commercials. I think that it was wrong for these companies to use these important dates in history as a scheme to promote their products, but I think it is what America has become - a money making machine, and it is inevitable.

Portrayals of Prejudice In Media

I spent my long weekend catching up on some TV shows I hadn't been able to watch during the week. One of those was New Girl on Fox. I personally love New Girl; I think it is really funny. But, I was watching one episode from a couple of weeks ago, when the cast, at some point ends up at a police station. One of the characters, Coach wants to go in to confront a police officer about something. But one of the other main characters, Winston, who is African American, doesn't want to. He says to Coach, "Hey, did you hear the joke about the two white guys and two black guys walking into a police station? The white guys walked out."

We had been talking about prejudice against prisoners in class last week, and this just happened to catch my attention because of its relevance to the issue. In class, one of the questions we had asked was, Who do police profile? According to the NAACP, of the 2.3 million prisoners, nearly 1 million are African American. They also say that there are 5 times as many whites using drugs as African Americans, but African Americans are put in jail for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of whites. Why is this?

I did some research on this subject, and came across an article in which they talk about criminal injustice. They quote Michelle Alexander, from her book The New Jim Crow: the Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. She says, "The drug war has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color, even though...people of color are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites". According to studies done, white students use cocaine or heroine at 7 times the rate of black students, and use crack 8 times the rate of black students. I personally believe a big part of the reason African Americans are targeted so much more than whites is the media. So many TV shows portray their criminals/villains/bad guys as African Americans or Hispanics. There are many shows on primetime this year in which the villain is acted by a Hispanic or African American. What the media does is put a face to the bad guy/villain, and if that face is so often one of color, that is what we will start to believe is true in real life. Because these portrayals have been around for such a long time, it has become almost engrained in your mind. Therefore, maybe not purposefully, we start to imagine most criminals as African Americans. This has kind of sent our prison system into a downward spiral, because they are faced with the major issue of racial prejudice.