I love Dr. Bezio’s point about the titanic being a system that people believed to be so big and strong it could not be sunk. But because many individual mistakes made by members of the system took place it did. We live in Systems surrounded by systems, we grew up in systems, we learn in systems, every part of my life that I can think of is some sort of system. And the things that go wrong in it are system failures. I feel as though I have no control over any of these systems, but I do believe I have an influence on them. The little things I do and say in my everyday life affect the systems around me, and while I may only be one person and have never felt like my voice could make much of a difference I do know that I affect the systems I am in.

Something that stood out to me in the podcast was Dr. Bezio’s mention of the ecological effects of the shutdown period last spring into summer. When I found out last year that our emissions had gone down by an extreme amount while we were all in quarantine I had very mixed feelings. I was glad that I could see that there are ways for us to slow down our emissions which are affecting the climate but discouraged to see (not realize, because I already knew this) the change that us not leaving our homes each and every day to go to work, or school had on the environment. Seeing things like this does not give me hope “that we can make a difference if we change” but discourages me to see that the systems we have in place are so detrimental that by fixing one thing we often hurt another. The changes it took to affect the environment in a good way (for a short time) were so bad for everything else. How tightly weaved our systems are make them all the more difficult to reform.

I could write an 8 to 12-page research paper on either of these music videos. The number of references, statements, ideas, questions, and more in both the music video for Childish Gambino’s This Is America and Beyonce’s Formation (without hours and hours of close reading and analysis) seems infinite. But I will not close read either of these music videos in my blog post because the entire time I was listening to Post cast #12 The Song that Doesn’t End I was thinking about my Senior year of high school’s history class. We did a whole unit on the Vietnam War protest songs. We close read songs, the texts, rhythms, context, and more. My teacher had us all close read the songs and then we would discuss in class our thoughts which lead to long discussions about interoperation and perspective. I thought it was fascinating and sadly have forgotten which songs we close read. But this podcast did prompt me to go find a lot of my old work from the class and made me think of other discussions we had in high school about music.

My homeroom teacher was a science teacher and a musician. One day in homeroom he had us all come in and he put the music video for Childish Gambino’s This Is America on the large screen in the front of the classroom. We watched it and discussed it, I do not know for sure if this is true, but I feel as though not many other people here at UR had high school experiences like mine in which a teacher could put on a video like this one and not get hate for it. I feel lucky that my high school teachers brought up such things. And I think it is fascinating that here two years later these discussions are no less prominent. Fascinating but also disappointing as I feel as though music videos like this one have only become more relevant to our day-to-day lives. While I say that I do not mean they were not relevant then but simply I, and many others, are more educated than we were two years ago and we see things such as racial-based violence in the news more and more each day.

I am thoroughly confused by Charlotte Perkins Stetson’s short story, of course, I understood what was going on in terms of Charlottes bed rest, but I did not understand what was going on with the paper. Was she going delusional because she was being forced to stay in bed or was there mold in the walls? I’m glad that Dr. Bezio told us that this short story affected at least one women’s life as an individual and that it affected her doctor’s prescription of such tactics. Regardless of understanding the story the first time I read I did find it interesting; I think if I went back and close read it, I would get a lot out of it. Even without a close reading of it, I found her writing to be very eloquent and full of particularly interesting adjectives. I also on a surface level found potential parallels between Charlotte Perkins Stetson growing up without a father and her relationship with her husband John. Many of these moments both reflected the absence of a father in her life as well as how husbands treated their wives as children, and how because she was troubled, she must be treated as a child. All of which deturbed me. I am intrigued by how this story preempts her leaving, of course, the “creeping” is a sign she wishes to do things she is not supposed to do when John cannot see her. But beyond that, the story does not (at least as far as I have read into it) indicate the desire to really leave her husband and even more so does not really show us a great connection between her and her child. But again, I did not close read this story and would surely get much more out of it if I did so. I do want to draw one more parallel to the last class before I wrap up this blog post. This short story shows a great deal of leadership as it had a profound effect on whether or not to use these “rest cures.”

I can only assume that Dr. Bezio wants us to be thinking about voter suppression today, as the podcast spoke on the importance of understanding history and Dr. Hayter’s reading was about Richmond’s history of voting rights and voter suppression. In the podcast Dr. Bezio warns us to keep track of who is writing our history, she reminds us that in large part we have Eurocentric/western history which is a whitewashed form. She reminds us that when we read our history books, we are most likely reading the words of White Christian men with lots of money, as they could afford the time and resources it took to record anything. They also, as she points out in her podcast, felt as though what they were recording was important while the lower-class people most likely were just living their normal lives and doing things like making bread which doesn’t feel important enough to record. She continues on to say if we believed history word for word, rather than read between the lines and behind the stories told to us we would think that women, people of color, and people without lots of money didn’t do anything. I think it is interesting that in Dr. Hayter’s reading we know what was going on in Richmond regarding voter suppression in the late 1960s because the mayor at the time Phil Bagley said in a private setting, “I did what I did about the compromise because the n*** are not qualified to run the city of Richmond.” I think it kind of ironic that while we often only hear the “rich white men’s” sides sometimes their words are so blatantly horrific that one does not have to look further into something to see what they are doing wrong. Meaning yes, oftentimes we do not get to see all sides of events but if what is recorded is saying something that we can see is wrong it makes our understanding a little better.

http://livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1972

My favorite McGovern advertisement from 1972 is “This Time.” I couldn’t really tell you why I liked it more than other ads, but I really enjoyed the end of the ad when they shake hands and cheer. I also liked this commercial because not only did the dialogue bring up relevant topics that were around during his campaign, specifically about international relations, China, Russia war, veterans, and communism but because it was based on a conversation with one civilian it enhanced McGovern’s personability. The conversation also happened in front of what seemed to be a strong working-class community. Next, I noticed that McGovern had way more “anti-other candidate” commercials than Nixon. I am interested to see the spread of data in class to see if that has to do with his democratic party affiliation or if is just that Nixon was running again to he had decisions he made and things that happen while Nixon was in office to use against him.

I think there should have been checkboxes in our list about the Environment and Change/openness, and International relations. I felt like they were missing.

Additionally, I was drawn to Dr. Bezio’s pos cast because it made me think of my FYS First semester of my freshman year. I took a rhetoric class focused on the White House, and we also talked about the effect of being able to hear and see the president on VT and radio, and how heavily that impacted the public.

I never play video games and so I knew I was going to be bad at the Millennium Village Simulation before I started playing. I had trouble playing the game because the help button sent me to an error page. But because it was a video game, I did think it is really interested that it exists. I had not thought about video games being about this kind of thing, so I found that interesting.

I really appreciated Dr. Bezio’s metaphor for systemic issues as nerves. It was a great way to talk about how complex they are and how much they intertwine in people’s lives. A couple of her best points were that when she said one’s nervous system gets messed up it either shuts down or fights back through pain. This is synonymous with systemic issues in the US because oftentimes people feel so defeated by the systems in place they just shut down, and other times they have the energy to fight back but it does not end well for them. The podcast obviously made me think of the University of Richmond’s current situation because she addressed how humans feel threatened by change. And I think that more than actually thinking it is the correct decision to keep the names our Board of trustees believes change is unnecessary and feels threatened by the idea of it. But change is necessary and without change, we would not be the evolved society we are today. One thing that stood out to me in the reading was when Dorner said that we fail because we make lots of small mistakes that add up. Therefore, the little things do matter, which sometimes we all struggle to understand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDAg3VkZPg8

I enjoy this advertisement for the exact reasons I am supposed to, and I do not mind but I also am not looking to “bundle my house and car insurance” at this point in my life, and am not the demographic they are trying to reach. Geico reaches all demographics with their ads to become a well-known name which will, in turn, make their company look bigger than it is. The values portrayed in this ad are family values. More specifically nuclear family values. The father seems to have just returned home to his wife making dinner after driving his kid home from school. It is also a black family which is an attempt at Geico to show that they are “diverse” and inclusive. I enjoy Tag Team and the jingle they made for this commercial, but it does make me think would they have chosen them if it was a white mother cooling dinner? Probably not. The story the ad is telling us that if you buy Geico Insurance something amazing will happen to you and you will be happy enough (you and your spouse) to dance in joy. Their verbal message is very straight forward from the beginning, this ad does not make you wait for its point it gets it out of the way in the beginning so you can think about it while you get the song stuck in your head and turn to associate the real song and the jingle version with Geico insurance. Going back to the family structure of the commercial it draws on parents stronger than others. Having the teenage daughter walk in, make a classic teen expression, and then walk away in discontent with her parents reminiscing of an older song that they listened to ads a young age is an easy way to make parents connect. That concept of your kid making fun of or dismissing something that you are reminiscing about happens (in concept) to every parent regardless of race or class). I think insurance commercials are interesting in relation to the concept in the reading about how Ads can be damaging when it comes to class. The reading talks about how a society full of commercials is based on a world in which to fit in you have to be able to buy the commercial goods and name-brand items that everyone else.

This podcast and reading combination were particularly interesting, statists being manipulated and lied about are something I think about a lot in my daily life. I try combat it like Dr. Bezio said in the podcast by checking my sources and trying to find other sources to substitute them but as the Huff says, “You can’t win”. Numbers are such a powerful tool and many of us depend on them for the “truth” but I wonder in the modern day with all of the media we have and the unregulated nature of the internet can we trust anything we don’t find it at least two peer reviewed studies? When reading How to Lie with Statistics I thought a lot about assumptions, especially on page 26 when Huff was talking about the two groups of interviewers. I found myself expecting the outcome to be what it was when asked a question such as “would blacks be treated better or worse here if the Japanese conquered the U.S.A?” more people answered yes when asked by the black interviewer. I thought about assumptions because I assumed people would be more comfortable sharing their (racist) opinion with a white person. This part also stood out to because it emphasizes that having a bad sample is not the only way to get skewed statistics there are so many other factors some of which are simply uncontrollable.

I am completely torn on this subject; I do not think having buildings named after Ryland and Freedman are moral given their history of decisions but, I fully see that there are negative consequences that may be too great to change the names of these buildings.

On one side just because these men gave the school a lot of money, and in Rylands case worked to make Richmond College his version of great when he was president does not mean they deserve to be honored today. The good things they did do not outweigh the bad, and just telling people more about their history (both good and bad) will not solve the problem at hand, our school is honoring bad people. Other schools that have changed names of buildings such as Georgetown University which changed two names of dorms named after past presidents who were slave owners in 2015 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/georgetown-university-to-rename-two-buildings-that-reflect-schools-ties-to-slavery/2015/11/15/e36edd32-8bb7-11e5-acff-673ae92ddd2b_story.html) have received more good press than bad. Our school will also receive good press if we change the names, and while some donors are threatening not to stop donating if there is a change other are threatening the opposite.

But despite my belief that it would be morally sound to change the names, I don’t think we will and I see why. Most of our money comes from people who do not feel we should change the names and of course our Board of Trustees does not support it. The other day in class someone mentioned students standing up and demanding change, I think this is great in theory but in reality, would do more harm than good. I do not think our administration will change their minds considering how much time was spent on the Presidential Commission and how much information came from it. In other words, I think that if this year of research didn’t change anyone’s mind not much else will. If the students tried to use the power of the bad press as someone suggested in class, I think it would hurt more than help. If you think about it some of the decisions that our administration makes to save their butts, while we may disagree with them help us too. I am NOT saying we should ignore issues that are detrimental to our safety (such as the sexual assault case that came out and leads to a restructuring of Title IX) but the better our school looks the more our degree means. *This is also an argument I could use for changing the names, and I am not using it as a reason to keep the names but a reason to think before we act*

I have never given much thought to prescription drug laws, in my mind I just thought if I get sick or have a medical emergency a doctor or nurse practitioner will tell me what I need to get better and point me in the direction of any prescription drugs I may need. I have also never put time into thinking about the government’s paternalistic role in prescription drugs. This prompted me to ask myself, which is more moral, giving someone an untested drug they need knowing it could have negative side effects, or not giving someone an untested drug they need knowing they will suffer without it? Do I just think it makes sense to not give someone a drug we don’t know is safe because that is what dominant culture has told me? Did other countries adopt similar pharmaceutical regulations because they are a good idea or because they felt it was necessary? After listening to the podcast I have an increased idea in my mind that other countries have their reasons for the things they do, while we might think it is “normal” to regulate drugs I feel as though other countries would have had to decide on their own that it was a good idea to have prescription drug regulations because our normal is not automatically other counties normal.

I wrote a paper critiquing the rhetoric of Nancy Ragan’s “Just Say No” campaign in my FYS first-semester last year. I am really glad Dr. Bezio talked about the racial dynamic in the advisements in her podcast because it is a side of the campaign I did not come across in my research about the language of the campaign. On a side note, I have a feeling if I had my professor would not have enjoyed reading/wanted to read my paper on the subject, but I would have loved to explore it.