Hey, folks. Sorry about the [ever-ongoing] technology problems. I hope you were able to finish watching "No End in Sight" off www.freedocumentaries.org or youtube. Anyway, I know it's a complicated issue with a lot of names and facts to remember, so I'm pasting in my notes. Hope they help! If you use these for your paper, just add a parenthetical citation, i.e. (Class Notes).
1) The film begins by stating a number a number of problems that the U.S. faced in Iraq-including a lack of adequate supplies, troops, and a workable plan. The film also points out how, in the build-up to the war, the public was told that it would be quick, relatively painless, and cheap, something I (and probably your parents) remember from the news at the time.
2) The film shows an ironic scene in which Rumsfeld says Bush's contributions will be recorded by history. What do you think Bush’s place is history will be?
3) Do the filmmakers have a bias? Do they make this bias obvious through their lighting and editing? It's not necessarily bad to make your bias clear—in fact, it's an honest thing to do—but we as the audience should be willing to fact check. I think there's a bias in this film, but I also think that they make a serious effort to show all sides of the debate and verify their claims.
4) May 1st, 2003-Bush says: "In the battle of Iraq, the United States and her allies have prevailed." Four years later, 3,000 more American deaths, 20,000 American wounded. Baghdad has at least 10-15 bombings a day. Civilian death toll could be as high as 600,000.
5) Robert Hutchings, Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, produced a detailed, disheartening report on Iraq that the president and his staff immediately condemned, but the president hadn't actually read it!
6) Colonel Paul Hughes says he immediately suspected bin Laden on 9/11, when the Pentagon was attacked.
7) Marc Garlasco, senior Iraq analyst, was immediately told to see if there was any link between al Qaeda and Iraq. He concluded that there was NO relationship. So why did Bush and most of his staff insist that there was?
8) History—Bush's inner circle had a long history with Iraq. Hussein used chemical weapons against Iran, as well as his own people, but Reagan feared Iran more and supported Saddam Hussein. Said one State Department document, "Human rights and chemical weapons use aside, in many respects our interests run roughly parallel to those of Iraq." Iran and Iraq fight to a stalemate. Iraq invades Kuwait (first Gulf War). U.S. sweeps in and defeats Iraq, but Saddam Hussein left alive. Bush Sr. urges a revolt. Iraqis revolt; U.S. doesn't support the revolt and the rebels are massacred. Under the economic sanctions (especially during the Clinton Administration), countless more Iraqi citizens die while the rich remain wealthy. The desperate turn to fundamentalist Islam (historically, desperate people often turn to radical movements and/or religions). Hussein attempts to assassinate Bush Sr.
9) Jan. 20th, 2003, President George W. Bush signed NSPD #24 which gave control of post-war Iraq to the Pentagon, meaning that technically, Iraq could be governed without the direct oversight of the White House or Congress.
10) Ahmed Chalabi is named president of the Iraqi National Congress. He is widely viewed with suspicion; the U.S. Intelligence community didn't trust him. He said that post-war Iraq would be pro-American if he was in charge. The plan—the U.S. would stay for 3-4 months, install Chalabi, then in 2003, we'd start leaving. (Obviously, that didn’t happen.)
11) Initially, the U.S. was welcomed. Most Iraqis were overjoyed to be freed from Saddam’s brutal reign. Why did things change? In WWII, the planning to occupy Germany was started two years in advance. In Iraq, it was started 60 days in advance. Retired general Jay Garner was put in charge. Instead of leading 22,000 men, as he had in the past, he would be in charge of the entire country of Iraq. Ambassador Barbara Bodine was placed in charge of Iraq's capital, Baghdad. They had minimal staff, no computers, no plan, almost no one who spoke Arabic, etc.
12) Donald Rumsfeld, then Secretary of Defense, said we weren't there to run Iraq or establish marshal law, just to get rid of Saddam Hussein. American soldiers offered little or no intervention in the looting. The looting escalated, due in large part to about 100,000 criminals that Saddam Hussein released from jail prior to the war. One estimate of the damage from the looting—12 billions dollars! Rumsfeld: "Stuff happens!" Imagine your own city/country is being looted on an unprecedented scale. How would this affect your morale?
13) Bodine made a list of 20 sites that need to be protected. The list was ignored. For example, the National Museum of Baghdad, which contained some of the world's oldest artifacts, priceless treasures as much as 7,000 years old, and Iraq's National Library and National Archives were all burnt down. Obviously, this had a tremendous psychological and economic effect on peaceful Iraqis.
14) Rumsfeld originally wanted only about 100,000 troops. General Shinseki testified before Congress, despite pressure to keep his mouth shut, and said it would take several hundred thousand to do the job right. Colin Powell and Dick Armitage privately agreed. Rumsfeld eventually conceded to sending a little more—a total of 160,000.
15) Not enough U.S. and coalition troops to stop the violence or ensure the safety of Iraqi civilians. Iraqi v. Iraqi violence escalates.
16) April 23, 2003, Rumsfeld replaces (fires?) General Jay Garner and puts Paul Bremer in charge instead. Bremer immediately purged at least 20,000 members of the Ba'ath party, including those who had joined only to save their lives. Many of these were the "technocrats," the most educated and experienced Iraqi public officials. This further crippled Iraq's economy. 27% to 50% unemployment in Iraq. (By comparison, the U.S. had 25% unemployment during the Great Depression.) Imagine you're a civilian who's already endured a brutal dictator, the destruction of all your cultural history, and rampant lawlessness and murder, and on top of that, you haven't been able to find a job for eight or so years.
17) Bremer disbanded Iraq's army and secret police, thereby infuriating half a million armed men! Many of these men, out of work and angry, joined the insurgency instead. The U.S. then had to train a new military in Iraq from the ground up—something which, according to General Garner, can take years.
18) Iraq had around 70 large weapons storage depots and many ammunition dumps, but there weren't enough U.S. soldiers to guard them. Since many of the insurgents were former military men, they knew where the weapons/munitions were. The film doesn't mention Al Qa'qaa, but that's yet another example. Details are sketchy, but it’s believed that as much as 370 TONS of explosives was probably stolen. If you happened to be watching the news around that time, you probably noticed that's when attacks and suicide bombings started happening on a massive scale.
19) Paul Hughes says that he repeatedly told Walt Slocombe (Bremer’s second-in-command) that he had plenty of Iraqi soldiers who wanted to join with the U.S., but Slocombe (according to Hughes) ignored him, even though Slocombe wasn't actually in Iraq and hadn't met with the Iraqi military leaders. Slocombe also admits that they didn't consult with the U.S. military officials before supporting Bremer’s decision to put half a million armed men out of work.
20) U.S. troops did not have adequate armor. Despite constant attacks, Rumsfeld and Bremer said it wasn't a gorilla war, just isolated violence, etc. A key scene: a U.S. soldier asks why they don't have adequate armor; Rumsfeld basically says it's because they haven't had the time and resources to make it yet.
21) Hughes says he repeatedly left "the green zone" to meet with actual Iraqis, whereas most of the rest of those in charge of reconstruction did not. Bodine was fired for rocking the boat. Hughes said a lot of "pretty boys" were hired to work with the reconstruction because their families had made substantial financial contributions; however, these new hires had little or no experience and did virtually nothing. Every three months, they'd be cycled out.
22) Iraqi contractors were ignored so that U.S. contractors (like Parsons and Halliburton) could be brought in at much greater cost.
23) $18 billion dollars earmarked for reconstruction, but one year later, only $1 billion had been spent (i.e. the Iraqis had no water, heat, power, etc., despite what Bush and Bremer had promised).
24) Bremer allegedly refused to meet with many Iraqis. He also wouldn't return calls or meet with Sergio Vieira de Mello, the U.N. chief envoy, who had come to Iraq (with a team of U.N. diplomats who spoke Arabic) to try and mediate with the Iraqis. Sergio was later killed in a bombing.
25) 45,000 civilian contractors serving in a military capacity, often with very bad judgment (like in the case of Blackwater, which the film doesn't mention, who opened fire on and massacred unarmed Iraqi civilians).
26) Said one Iraqi: "Saddam hurt us badly. This is true. This is something we won't forget. But what came is worse than Saddam."
27) The insurgency was made up of many different groups with different religious views and goals.
28) As the situation in Iraq got worse, the CIA made a special report with several scenarios, but the president didn't bother to read it—even the one page summary.
29) Muqtada al-Sadr used the frustration and desperation of the Iraqis to fuel anti-American sentiments and gain political power in 2005 elections.
30) Cheney, in 2005: "we're in the last throes of the insurgency", but the violence continued!
31) In 2005, the U.S. escalated training of Iraqi soldiers. Rumsfeld "resigns".
32) As of 2010, the estimated costs of the Iraq war: around 740 BILLION dollars! (That's roughly double the costs of the war in Afghanistan, according to www.costofwar.com.) This is epically higher than we were promised it would cost before the Iraq War, like when Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said that due to Iraq's oil revenue, the war would pay for itself. What could we have done in terms of education and healthcare in the United States with that money? When President Eisenhower was leaving office, we warned America about the "military-industrial complex." In other words, watch out for those who encourage us to go to war so they can get rich!
33) To quote Marine lieutenant named Seth Moulton: "Are you telling me that's the best America can do?"
34) Since this documentary was made, the situation in Iraq has become more stable. Why? We sent more soldiers to restore order (aka "the troop surge" talked about my politicians), drove out most of the terrorists, and put control of the Iraqi government more in the hands of the Iraqis.
35) The big questions: why were all these mistakes made (so that we can avoid making them in the future), and what do we do now? Whether you're conservative, liberal, or moderate, what's the moral of the story here?
Friday, October 29, 2010
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Info on Group Presentations
GROUP PRESENTATIONS
Step 1: Get in groups of 4-5 people. It’s a good idea to organize according to some common interest (like people who have the same major).
Step 2: Identify a local problem (something to do with Ball State or Muncie in general).
Step 3: Come up with at least one person you could interview to get some information/perspective on the problem.
Step 4: Come up with a solution to the problem.
Step 5: Prepare some visuals (like a PowerPoint) to accompany your presentation.
Step 6: When you actually give your presentation, everyone in the group should contribute. You want your presentation to take about 10 minutes. In the presentation, you must do the following:
1) Identify the problem.
2) Tell us why it’s a problem, i.e. back up your case.
3) Propose a solution.
4) Play Devil’s Advocate, i.e. explain any possible difficulties/problems/objections to your solution.
5) Counter those counter-arguments. In other words, explain why your solution is still a good one.
Remember early in the semester when we talked about the different types of audiences? Assume your audience is undecided on this issue. That means you should use different appeals (ethos, pathos, logos) to try and convince us to agree with you.
In the past, students have addressed such topics as problems with the Health Center, problems with meal plans and how they can be fixed, trouble with the current parking situation (and how to fix it), admissions standards for Ball State University (whether they should be raised or lowered and why), etc. This assignment is MUCH easier if you choose a topic that you actually care about.
Also, even though we’re not actually giving the presentations until the end of the semester, it’s a good idea to get started early because it may take a few weeks to set up interviews or conduct surveys and research. For example, if you’re going to give a presentation on the Health Center, you might want to interview a nurse or two. If you’re presenting on the meal plan, you might want to interview someone in charge of Ball State dining, plus a student from another university that you think has a better plan.
Step 1: Get in groups of 4-5 people. It’s a good idea to organize according to some common interest (like people who have the same major).
Step 2: Identify a local problem (something to do with Ball State or Muncie in general).
Step 3: Come up with at least one person you could interview to get some information/perspective on the problem.
Step 4: Come up with a solution to the problem.
Step 5: Prepare some visuals (like a PowerPoint) to accompany your presentation.
Step 6: When you actually give your presentation, everyone in the group should contribute. You want your presentation to take about 10 minutes. In the presentation, you must do the following:
1) Identify the problem.
2) Tell us why it’s a problem, i.e. back up your case.
3) Propose a solution.
4) Play Devil’s Advocate, i.e. explain any possible difficulties/problems/objections to your solution.
5) Counter those counter-arguments. In other words, explain why your solution is still a good one.
Remember early in the semester when we talked about the different types of audiences? Assume your audience is undecided on this issue. That means you should use different appeals (ethos, pathos, logos) to try and convince us to agree with you.
In the past, students have addressed such topics as problems with the Health Center, problems with meal plans and how they can be fixed, trouble with the current parking situation (and how to fix it), admissions standards for Ball State University (whether they should be raised or lowered and why), etc. This assignment is MUCH easier if you choose a topic that you actually care about.
Also, even though we’re not actually giving the presentations until the end of the semester, it’s a good idea to get started early because it may take a few weeks to set up interviews or conduct surveys and research. For example, if you’re going to give a presentation on the Health Center, you might want to interview a nurse or two. If you’re presenting on the meal plan, you might want to interview someone in charge of Ball State dining, plus a student from another university that you think has a better plan.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Discussion Questions over Sicko
Here are some questions relating to Sicko which we'll discuss in class on Monday. Naturally, you're also free to incorporate these into your journals (due Wednesday, Oct. 27th) or your Researched Argument paper, if you choose to examine the health care issue.
1. What are some of the arguments that Sicko is making and what type of appeals (ethos, pathos, logos) or evidence are used to back up these arguments?
2. Is Moore using any argumentative fallacies? In other words, are there any flaws in his logic or evidence?
3. According to the CIA, the United States is the second richest country in the world, well ahead of France (#9) and Cuba (#63). Why, then, is the United States ranked #37 in the world in terms of its health care?
4. Compare and contrast a French hospital with an American hospital.
5. Compare and contrast the attitude of French people/voters (as presented in the film) with that of voters in the U.S.
6. Do you think the health care industry should operate on a for-profit model?
7. Even though the U.S. is generally considered to have poor health care compared to other countries, it has some of the best hospitals and doctors. What might account for this?
8. Universal health care: socialist handout or investment in future generations? Discuss.
1. What are some of the arguments that Sicko is making and what type of appeals (ethos, pathos, logos) or evidence are used to back up these arguments?
2. Is Moore using any argumentative fallacies? In other words, are there any flaws in his logic or evidence?
3. According to the CIA, the United States is the second richest country in the world, well ahead of France (#9) and Cuba (#63). Why, then, is the United States ranked #37 in the world in terms of its health care?
4. Compare and contrast a French hospital with an American hospital.
5. Compare and contrast the attitude of French people/voters (as presented in the film) with that of voters in the U.S.
6. Do you think the health care industry should operate on a for-profit model?
7. Even though the U.S. is generally considered to have poor health care compared to other countries, it has some of the best hospitals and doctors. What might account for this?
8. Universal health care: socialist handout or investment in future generations? Discuss.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Vote for What We'll Watch in Class!
This was a fairly last minute decision but I decided not to show Religulous in this class. Even though I like the documentary, it’s pretty edgy and probably more trouble than it’s worth. (If you haven’t seen it, it pokes fun at/illustrates the dangers of religious extremism, but expands on that to say that religion in general is inherently dangerous, which is a stretch). However, I really like reinforcing lessons/discussions with documentaries and there are quite a few other ones that fit perfectly into this section, so I thought we’d put it to a vote. I’d like to pick TWO of the following. (If you click on the name of the documentary, it should link to a preview.)
Sicko—a Michael Moore documentary examining healthcare in the United States versus healthcare in other countries. Although Moore’s documentaries tend to be pretty biased, his approach is still pretty affecting and well-researched. In other words, you may not always agree with his interpretations of the evidence, but he still generates a lot of attention for and concern about issues that plenty of others would prefer to ignore.
No End in Sight—probably my favorite, this one talks about why everything went to hell in Iraq after the main ground war ended, especially in terms of the insurgency. Even though the documentary points out the huge mistakes made by the Bush Administration, it’s actually very fair and pretty air-tight, consisting almost entirely of interviews with some very brave U.S. generals, colonels, soldiers, and civilians who candidly point out the mistakes that were made (and tried to prevent them).
Fog of War—an interview with Robert S. McNamara, former Secretary of Defense, who speaks pretty candidly about the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, and the fire-bombings of Japanese cities in World War II (resulting in a massive civilian death toll). Pretty gripping with loads of good information, but you need to have your thinking caps on.
White Light/Black Rain—another one that I think everybody should watch at some point in their life. It’s mostly interviews with civilians who survived the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the American pilots who dropped the bombs. Very good, very sad, shows all sides of the issue. Mostly subtitled, though.
Jesus Camp—a disturbing look at Christian Fundamentalism in the United States, mainly focuses on a Bible camp for kids that teaches them that they should literally have the same zeal and obedience as radical Muslim suicide bombers. Pretty unsettling. In previous classes, my students (religious and non-religious alike) found it pretty engaging.
Wal-Mart: the High Cost of Low Price—this one examines consumerism in the United States, as well as the sweatshop issue that we briefly touched on in class discussion. Makes some good points and usually generates some good debate/discussion; maybe not quite as entertaining, though.
Invisible Children—this is good but pretty sad. It’s about three young, inexperienced guys who travel to Sudan to document the war there, and wind up learning about and interviewing a huge group of homeless African children who are literally on the run for their lives, trying to keep from being kidnapped and forced to become child-soldiers.
Supersize Me—most of you have probably seen this one, but it’s a funny (and sometimes disgusting) look at the fast food industry, lawsuits against fast food companies, advertising practices, etc., that gets into issues of personal responsibility and legal liability.
Again, ALL of these raise some pretty important issues (morals in a time of war, globalization, consumerism, moderate versus extremism in religion, government responsibility, personal responsibility, healthcare, etc) that tie into our general discussions pertaining to potential research/argument paper topics, and I’ve taught all of these in composition classes before, so I’m pretty flexible.
Sicko—a Michael Moore documentary examining healthcare in the United States versus healthcare in other countries. Although Moore’s documentaries tend to be pretty biased, his approach is still pretty affecting and well-researched. In other words, you may not always agree with his interpretations of the evidence, but he still generates a lot of attention for and concern about issues that plenty of others would prefer to ignore.
No End in Sight—probably my favorite, this one talks about why everything went to hell in Iraq after the main ground war ended, especially in terms of the insurgency. Even though the documentary points out the huge mistakes made by the Bush Administration, it’s actually very fair and pretty air-tight, consisting almost entirely of interviews with some very brave U.S. generals, colonels, soldiers, and civilians who candidly point out the mistakes that were made (and tried to prevent them).
Fog of War—an interview with Robert S. McNamara, former Secretary of Defense, who speaks pretty candidly about the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, and the fire-bombings of Japanese cities in World War II (resulting in a massive civilian death toll). Pretty gripping with loads of good information, but you need to have your thinking caps on.
White Light/Black Rain—another one that I think everybody should watch at some point in their life. It’s mostly interviews with civilians who survived the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the American pilots who dropped the bombs. Very good, very sad, shows all sides of the issue. Mostly subtitled, though.
Jesus Camp—a disturbing look at Christian Fundamentalism in the United States, mainly focuses on a Bible camp for kids that teaches them that they should literally have the same zeal and obedience as radical Muslim suicide bombers. Pretty unsettling. In previous classes, my students (religious and non-religious alike) found it pretty engaging.
Wal-Mart: the High Cost of Low Price—this one examines consumerism in the United States, as well as the sweatshop issue that we briefly touched on in class discussion. Makes some good points and usually generates some good debate/discussion; maybe not quite as entertaining, though.
Invisible Children—this is good but pretty sad. It’s about three young, inexperienced guys who travel to Sudan to document the war there, and wind up learning about and interviewing a huge group of homeless African children who are literally on the run for their lives, trying to keep from being kidnapped and forced to become child-soldiers.
Supersize Me—most of you have probably seen this one, but it’s a funny (and sometimes disgusting) look at the fast food industry, lawsuits against fast food companies, advertising practices, etc., that gets into issues of personal responsibility and legal liability.
Again, ALL of these raise some pretty important issues (morals in a time of war, globalization, consumerism, moderate versus extremism in religion, government responsibility, personal responsibility, healthcare, etc) that tie into our general discussions pertaining to potential research/argument paper topics, and I’ve taught all of these in composition classes before, so I’m pretty flexible.
Stephen Colbert and Jonathan Swift: More on Satire
Hey, folks. Well, I've had so many students ask questions about satire (how it works, why writers take that approach, etc) that I'm starting to think Indiana school systems aren't covering this anymore (which is a bad sign). So I thought I'd write up a crash course, complete with blasphemy and bad jokes.
The classic example of satire, coming from 1729, is Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal." The essay argues that the Irish government should respond to poverty by using unwanted kids as food. Did Swift actually think we should be eating children? Of course not. He exaggerated for dark humor and shock value, to get his audience's attention, so that he could try and get them to see how bad it was that the government (and the wealthy) of Ireland at that time didn't seem to care about all the neglected and starving children right under their nose.
Satire is to apathy what an uppercut is to somebody's jaw. It's a great way to reach an audience that's stuck in their old ways and very reluctant to consider a different point of view (i.e. people who are dumb). There are many modern examples.
If you watch "The Daily Show," it's pretty obvious that Jon Stewart is a liberal/progressive (even though he picks on Democrats, too) but Stephen Colbert seems on the surface to be mega-conservative. Actually, his act is a total satire, a parody of Bill O'Reilly and Glen Beck off Fox News. From his clothes to his jokes and the various segments on his show, Colbert uses exaggeration to mock what he sees as O'Reilly's and Beck's use of bad logic, their lack of appreciation for science and civil discourse, their use of fear to gain an audience, etc. His famous speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner in which he made fun of George W. Bush (who was literally a few feet away) is another example.
Now, Colbert could just come out and say directly what he really thinks--but that wouldn't be as funny. By using humor and staying in character, he's able to better convey why he thinks the people he's satirizing are absurd. That also has the added bonus of getting under some people's skin because satire isn't always easy to understand and it's very hard to counter.
Here's another example. This famous letter made the rounds on the internet awhile back. It was also. It was supposedly sent to Dr. Laura Schlessinger, a radio talk show host known for making Bible-based arguments against homosexuality. The letter satirizes this by pointing out plenty of other biblical passages that Schlessinger ignores; in other words, it demonstrates that she was being hypocritical and just trying to claim divine authority for what is really just her personal opinion.
The writer of the "Letter to Dr. Laura" could have just said something like, "Dear Dr. Laura, I disagree with your view that homosexuality is a sin, something you've based solely on the Bible, since the ancient books of Leviticus and Exodus also express many other laws that all of us break on a regular basis. So if we don't make burnt offerings or think it's a sin to eat shellfish, and we no longer believe in selling children into slavery, why should we adhere to prohibition of same-sex couples as put forth in Leviticus?"
Instead, though, the letter PRETENDS to agree with Dr. Laura, gets the audience to lower their guard, then proceeds to point out the hypocrisy of those who cherry-pick passages from the Bible (or any text, really) just to substantiate their own claims. Why? Well, because it's unexpected, a little funny, and a much more effective way of pointing out that Dr. Laura wasn't even familiar with the very text she was quoting.
A big question people ask: how do we know something is satire? Put another way, how do you know Hitler's autobiography, Mein Kampf, isn't just a satire making fun of racism? Well, even if the Holocaust hadn't happened, you have the way Mein Kampf is written, i.e. it's ranting, rambling, and largely incoherent. If you look at "A Modest Proposal," on the other hand, it's well-organized and very articulate. Can you imagine a smart, sane person thinking that we should eat babies? Probably not. so even without looking at Swift's (or Hitler's) other writings, we can tell which one of them is making a satire.
Long story short: satire requires a sense of humor, but more importantly, it requires empathy and three dimensional thinking (aka thinking outside the box).
The classic example of satire, coming from 1729, is Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal." The essay argues that the Irish government should respond to poverty by using unwanted kids as food. Did Swift actually think we should be eating children? Of course not. He exaggerated for dark humor and shock value, to get his audience's attention, so that he could try and get them to see how bad it was that the government (and the wealthy) of Ireland at that time didn't seem to care about all the neglected and starving children right under their nose.
Satire is to apathy what an uppercut is to somebody's jaw. It's a great way to reach an audience that's stuck in their old ways and very reluctant to consider a different point of view (i.e. people who are dumb). There are many modern examples.
If you watch "The Daily Show," it's pretty obvious that Jon Stewart is a liberal/progressive (even though he picks on Democrats, too) but Stephen Colbert seems on the surface to be mega-conservative. Actually, his act is a total satire, a parody of Bill O'Reilly and Glen Beck off Fox News. From his clothes to his jokes and the various segments on his show, Colbert uses exaggeration to mock what he sees as O'Reilly's and Beck's use of bad logic, their lack of appreciation for science and civil discourse, their use of fear to gain an audience, etc. His famous speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner in which he made fun of George W. Bush (who was literally a few feet away) is another example.
Now, Colbert could just come out and say directly what he really thinks--but that wouldn't be as funny. By using humor and staying in character, he's able to better convey why he thinks the people he's satirizing are absurd. That also has the added bonus of getting under some people's skin because satire isn't always easy to understand and it's very hard to counter.
Here's another example. This famous letter made the rounds on the internet awhile back. It was also. It was supposedly sent to Dr. Laura Schlessinger, a radio talk show host known for making Bible-based arguments against homosexuality. The letter satirizes this by pointing out plenty of other biblical passages that Schlessinger ignores; in other words, it demonstrates that she was being hypocritical and just trying to claim divine authority for what is really just her personal opinion.
The writer of the "Letter to Dr. Laura" could have just said something like, "Dear Dr. Laura, I disagree with your view that homosexuality is a sin, something you've based solely on the Bible, since the ancient books of Leviticus and Exodus also express many other laws that all of us break on a regular basis. So if we don't make burnt offerings or think it's a sin to eat shellfish, and we no longer believe in selling children into slavery, why should we adhere to prohibition of same-sex couples as put forth in Leviticus?"
Instead, though, the letter PRETENDS to agree with Dr. Laura, gets the audience to lower their guard, then proceeds to point out the hypocrisy of those who cherry-pick passages from the Bible (or any text, really) just to substantiate their own claims. Why? Well, because it's unexpected, a little funny, and a much more effective way of pointing out that Dr. Laura wasn't even familiar with the very text she was quoting.
A big question people ask: how do we know something is satire? Put another way, how do you know Hitler's autobiography, Mein Kampf, isn't just a satire making fun of racism? Well, even if the Holocaust hadn't happened, you have the way Mein Kampf is written, i.e. it's ranting, rambling, and largely incoherent. If you look at "A Modest Proposal," on the other hand, it's well-organized and very articulate. Can you imagine a smart, sane person thinking that we should eat babies? Probably not. so even without looking at Swift's (or Hitler's) other writings, we can tell which one of them is making a satire.
Long story short: satire requires a sense of humor, but more importantly, it requires empathy and three dimensional thinking (aka thinking outside the box).
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Bullet in the Brain
Creative Writing and Social Commentary
Good stories (like good poems, songs, art, movies, etc) accomplish at least two different things at the same time: on the surface, they serve as entertainment; in a deeper sense, though, they serve to elucidate some aspect of the human condition.
The following is a short story by Tobias Wolff, which at first seems to be about a bank robbery gone wrong, but actually addresses those struggles in society and human consciousness that can often lead us to become disillusioned and apathetic, despite the brain's/soul's natural state of wonder. In short, this story is a creative answer to the same questions you're going to be addressing in your Researched Argument paper.
No journal due on this one. Just give it a read sometime (it's short). We'll watch a short film adaptation in class, time permitting.
Bullet in the Brain
by Tobias Wolff
Anders couldn't get to the bank until just before it closed, so of course the line was endless and he got stuck behind two women whose loud, stupid conversation put him in a murderous temper. He was never in the best of tempers anyway, Anders—a book critic known for the weary elegant savagery with which he dispatched almost everything he reviewed.
With the line still doubled around the rope, one of the tellers stuck a "POSITION CLOSED" sign in her window and walked to the back of the bank, where she leaned against a desk and began to pass the time with a man shuffling papers. The women in front of Anders broke off their conversation and watched the teller with hatred. "Oh, that's nice," one of them said. She turned to Anders and added, confident of his accord, "One of those little human touches that keep us coming back for more."
Anders had conceived his own towering hatred of the teller, but he immediately turned it on the presumptuous crybaby in front of him. "Damned unfair," he said. "Tragic, really. If they're not chopping off the wrong leg, or bombing your ancestral village, they're closing their positions."
She stood her ground. "I didn't say it was tragic," she said. "I just think it's a pretty lousy way to treat your customers."
"Unforgivable," Anders said. "Heaven will take note."
She sucked in her cheeks but stared past him and said nothing. Anders saw that the other woman, her friend, was looking in the same direction. And then the tellers stopped what they were doing, and the customers slowly turned, and silence came over the bank. Two men wearing black ski masks and blue business suits were standing to the side of the door. One of them had a pistol pressed against the guard's neck. The guard's eyes were closed, and his lips were moving. The other man had a sawed-off shotgun. "Keep your big mouth shut!" the man with the pistol said, though no one had spoken a word.
"One of you tellers hits the alarm, you're all dead meat. Got it?"
The tellers nodded.
"Oh, bravo," Anders said. "Dead meat." He turned to the woman in front of him. "Great script, eh? The stern, brass-knuckled poetry of the dangerous classes."
She looked at him with drowning eyes.
The man with the shotgun pushed the guard to his knees. He handed the shotgun to his partner and yanked the guard's wrists up behind his back and locked them together with a pair of handcuffs. He toppled him onto the floor with a kick between the shoulder blades. Then he took his shotgun back and went over to the security gate at the end of the counter. He was short and heavy and moved with particular slowness, even torpor. "Buzz him in," his partner said. The man with the shotgun opened the gate and sauntered along the line of tellers, handing each of them a bag. When he came to the empty position he looked over at the man with the pistol, who said, "Whose slot is that?"
Anders watched the teller. She put her hand to her throat and turned to the man she'd been talking to. He nodded. "Mine," she said.
"Then get your ugly ass in gear and fill that bag."
"There you go," Anders said to the woman in front of him. "Justice is done."
"Hey! Bright boy! Did I tell you to talk?"
"No," Anders said." Then shut your trap." "Did you hear that?" Anders said.
"`Bright boy.' Right out of 'The Killers.'"
"Please be quiet," the woman said.
"Hey, you deaf or what?" The man with the pistol walked over to Anders. He poked the weapon into Anders' gut. "You think I'm playing games?"
"No," Anders said, but the barrel tickled like a stiff finger and he had to fight back the titters. He did this by making himself stare into the man's eyes, which were clearly visible behind the holes in the mask: pale blue and rawly red-rimmed.
The man's left eyelid kept twitching. He breathed out a piercing, ammoniac smell that shocked Anders more than anything that had happened, and he was beginning to develop a sense of unease when the man prodded him again with the pistol.
"You like me, bright boy?" he said. "You want to suck my dick?"
"No," Anders said.
"Then stop looking at me."
Anders fixed his gaze on the man's shiny shoes.
"Not down there. Up there." He stuck the pistol under Anders' chin and pushed it upward until Anders was looking at the ceiling.
Anders had never paid much attention to that part of the bank, a pompous old building with marble floors and counters and pillars, and gilt scrollwork over the tellers' cages. The domed ceiling had been decorated with mythological figures whose fleshy, toga-draped ugliness Anders had taken in at a glance many years earlier and afterward declined to notice. Now he had no choice but to scrutinize the painter's work. It was even worse than here remembered, and all of it executed with the utmost gravity. The artist had a few tricks up his sleeve and used them again and again a certain rosy blush on the underside of the clouds, a coy backward glance on the faces of the cupids and fauns. The ceiling was crowded with various dramas, but the one that caught Anders' eye was Zeus and Europa portrayed as a bull ogling a cow from behind a haystack. To make the cow sexy, the painter had canted her hips suggestively and given her long, droopy eye-lashes through which she gazed at the bull with sultry welcome. The bull wore a smirk and his eyebrows were arched. If there'd been a bubble coming out of his mouth, it would have said, "Hubba hubba."
"What's so funny, bright boy?"
"Nothing."
"You think I'm comical? You think I'm some kind of clown?"
"No."
"You think you can fuck with me?"
"No."
"Fuck with me again, you're history. Capiche?"
Anders burst out laughing. He covered his mouth with both hands and said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," then snorted helplessly through his fingers and said, "Capiche- oh, God, capiche," and at that the man with the pistol raised the pistol and shot Anders right in the head.
The bullet smashed Anders' skull and ploughed through his brain and exited behind his right ear. But before all this occurred, the first appearance of the bullet in the brain set off a crackling chain of ion transports and neuro-transmissions. Because of their peculiar origin these traced a peculiar pattern, calling to life a summer afternoon some forty years past, and long since lost to memory. After striking the cranium the bullet was moving at 900 feet per second, a sluggish pace compared to the lightning that flashed around it. Once in the brain, that is, the bullet came under the mediation of brain time, which gave Anders plenty of leisure to contemplate the scene that, in a phrase he would have abhorred, "passed before his eyes."
It is worth noting what Anders did not remember, given what he did remember. He did not remember his first lover, Sherry, or what he had most madly loved about her, before it came to irritate him—her unembarrassed carnality, and especially the cordial way she had with his unit, which she called Mr. Mole, as in, “Uh-oh, looks like Mr. Mole wants to play,” and, “Let’s hide Mr. Mole!” Anders did not remember his wife, whom he had also loved before she had exhausted him with her predictability, or his daughter, now a sullen professor of economics. He did not remember standing just outside his daughter's door as she lectured her bear about his naughtiness and described the truly appalling punishments Paws would receive unless he changed his ways. He did not remember a single line of the hundreds of poems he had committed to memory in his youth so that he could give himself the shivers at will. Anders did not remember his dying mother saying of his father, "I should have stabbed him in his sleep."
He did not remember Professor Josephs telling his class how Athenian prisoners in Sicily had been released if they could recite Aeschylus, and then reciting Aeschylus himself, right there, in the Greek. Anders did not remember how his eyes had burned at those sounds. He did not remember the surprise of seeing a college classmate's name on the jacket of a novel not long after they graduated, or the respect he had felt after reading the book. He did not remember the pleasure of giving respect.
Nor did Anders remember seeing a woman leap to her death from the building opposite his own just days after his daughter was born. He did not remember shouting, "Lord have mercy!" He did not remember deliberately crashing his father's car into a tree, or having his ribs kicked in by three policemen at an anti-war rally, or waking himself up with laughter. He did not remember when he began to regard the heap of books on his desk with boredom and dread, or when he grew angry at writers for writing them. He did not remember when everything began to remind him of something else.
This is what he remembered. Heat. A baseball field. Yellow grass, the whirr of insects, himself leaning against a tree as the boys of the neighborhood gather for a pickup game. He looks on as the others argue the relative genius of Mantle and Mays. They have been worrying this subject all summer, and it has become tedious to Anders: an oppression, like the heat.
Then the last two boys arrive, Coyle and a cousin of his from Mississippi. Anders has never met Coyle's cousin before and will never see him again. He says hi with the rest but takes no further notice of him until they've chosen sides and someone asks the cousin what position he wants to play. "Shortstop," the boy says. "Short's the best position they is." Anders turns and looks at him. He wants to hear Coyle's cousin repeat what he's just said, but he knows better than to ask. The others will think he's being a jerk, ragging the kid for his grammar. But that isn't it, not at all it's that Anders is strangely roused, elated, by those final two words, their pure unexpectedness and their music. He takes the field in a trance, repeating them to himself.
The bullet is already in the brain; it won't be outrun forever, or charmed to a halt. In the end it will do its work and leave the troubled skull behind, dragging its comet's tail of memory and hope and talent and love into the marble hall of commerce. That can't be helped. But for now Anders can still make time. Time for the shadows to lengthen on the grass, time for the tethered dog to bark at the flying ball, time for the boy in right field to smack his sweat-blackened mitt and softly chant, They is, they is, they is.
Good stories (like good poems, songs, art, movies, etc) accomplish at least two different things at the same time: on the surface, they serve as entertainment; in a deeper sense, though, they serve to elucidate some aspect of the human condition.
The following is a short story by Tobias Wolff, which at first seems to be about a bank robbery gone wrong, but actually addresses those struggles in society and human consciousness that can often lead us to become disillusioned and apathetic, despite the brain's/soul's natural state of wonder. In short, this story is a creative answer to the same questions you're going to be addressing in your Researched Argument paper.
No journal due on this one. Just give it a read sometime (it's short). We'll watch a short film adaptation in class, time permitting.
Bullet in the Brain
by Tobias Wolff
Anders couldn't get to the bank until just before it closed, so of course the line was endless and he got stuck behind two women whose loud, stupid conversation put him in a murderous temper. He was never in the best of tempers anyway, Anders—a book critic known for the weary elegant savagery with which he dispatched almost everything he reviewed.
With the line still doubled around the rope, one of the tellers stuck a "POSITION CLOSED" sign in her window and walked to the back of the bank, where she leaned against a desk and began to pass the time with a man shuffling papers. The women in front of Anders broke off their conversation and watched the teller with hatred. "Oh, that's nice," one of them said. She turned to Anders and added, confident of his accord, "One of those little human touches that keep us coming back for more."
Anders had conceived his own towering hatred of the teller, but he immediately turned it on the presumptuous crybaby in front of him. "Damned unfair," he said. "Tragic, really. If they're not chopping off the wrong leg, or bombing your ancestral village, they're closing their positions."
She stood her ground. "I didn't say it was tragic," she said. "I just think it's a pretty lousy way to treat your customers."
"Unforgivable," Anders said. "Heaven will take note."
She sucked in her cheeks but stared past him and said nothing. Anders saw that the other woman, her friend, was looking in the same direction. And then the tellers stopped what they were doing, and the customers slowly turned, and silence came over the bank. Two men wearing black ski masks and blue business suits were standing to the side of the door. One of them had a pistol pressed against the guard's neck. The guard's eyes were closed, and his lips were moving. The other man had a sawed-off shotgun. "Keep your big mouth shut!" the man with the pistol said, though no one had spoken a word.
"One of you tellers hits the alarm, you're all dead meat. Got it?"
The tellers nodded.
"Oh, bravo," Anders said. "Dead meat." He turned to the woman in front of him. "Great script, eh? The stern, brass-knuckled poetry of the dangerous classes."
She looked at him with drowning eyes.
The man with the shotgun pushed the guard to his knees. He handed the shotgun to his partner and yanked the guard's wrists up behind his back and locked them together with a pair of handcuffs. He toppled him onto the floor with a kick between the shoulder blades. Then he took his shotgun back and went over to the security gate at the end of the counter. He was short and heavy and moved with particular slowness, even torpor. "Buzz him in," his partner said. The man with the shotgun opened the gate and sauntered along the line of tellers, handing each of them a bag. When he came to the empty position he looked over at the man with the pistol, who said, "Whose slot is that?"
Anders watched the teller. She put her hand to her throat and turned to the man she'd been talking to. He nodded. "Mine," she said.
"Then get your ugly ass in gear and fill that bag."
"There you go," Anders said to the woman in front of him. "Justice is done."
"Hey! Bright boy! Did I tell you to talk?"
"No," Anders said." Then shut your trap." "Did you hear that?" Anders said.
"`Bright boy.' Right out of 'The Killers.'"
"Please be quiet," the woman said.
"Hey, you deaf or what?" The man with the pistol walked over to Anders. He poked the weapon into Anders' gut. "You think I'm playing games?"
"No," Anders said, but the barrel tickled like a stiff finger and he had to fight back the titters. He did this by making himself stare into the man's eyes, which were clearly visible behind the holes in the mask: pale blue and rawly red-rimmed.
The man's left eyelid kept twitching. He breathed out a piercing, ammoniac smell that shocked Anders more than anything that had happened, and he was beginning to develop a sense of unease when the man prodded him again with the pistol.
"You like me, bright boy?" he said. "You want to suck my dick?"
"No," Anders said.
"Then stop looking at me."
Anders fixed his gaze on the man's shiny shoes.
"Not down there. Up there." He stuck the pistol under Anders' chin and pushed it upward until Anders was looking at the ceiling.
Anders had never paid much attention to that part of the bank, a pompous old building with marble floors and counters and pillars, and gilt scrollwork over the tellers' cages. The domed ceiling had been decorated with mythological figures whose fleshy, toga-draped ugliness Anders had taken in at a glance many years earlier and afterward declined to notice. Now he had no choice but to scrutinize the painter's work. It was even worse than here remembered, and all of it executed with the utmost gravity. The artist had a few tricks up his sleeve and used them again and again a certain rosy blush on the underside of the clouds, a coy backward glance on the faces of the cupids and fauns. The ceiling was crowded with various dramas, but the one that caught Anders' eye was Zeus and Europa portrayed as a bull ogling a cow from behind a haystack. To make the cow sexy, the painter had canted her hips suggestively and given her long, droopy eye-lashes through which she gazed at the bull with sultry welcome. The bull wore a smirk and his eyebrows were arched. If there'd been a bubble coming out of his mouth, it would have said, "Hubba hubba."
"What's so funny, bright boy?"
"Nothing."
"You think I'm comical? You think I'm some kind of clown?"
"No."
"You think you can fuck with me?"
"No."
"Fuck with me again, you're history. Capiche?"
Anders burst out laughing. He covered his mouth with both hands and said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," then snorted helplessly through his fingers and said, "Capiche- oh, God, capiche," and at that the man with the pistol raised the pistol and shot Anders right in the head.
The bullet smashed Anders' skull and ploughed through his brain and exited behind his right ear. But before all this occurred, the first appearance of the bullet in the brain set off a crackling chain of ion transports and neuro-transmissions. Because of their peculiar origin these traced a peculiar pattern, calling to life a summer afternoon some forty years past, and long since lost to memory. After striking the cranium the bullet was moving at 900 feet per second, a sluggish pace compared to the lightning that flashed around it. Once in the brain, that is, the bullet came under the mediation of brain time, which gave Anders plenty of leisure to contemplate the scene that, in a phrase he would have abhorred, "passed before his eyes."
It is worth noting what Anders did not remember, given what he did remember. He did not remember his first lover, Sherry, or what he had most madly loved about her, before it came to irritate him—her unembarrassed carnality, and especially the cordial way she had with his unit, which she called Mr. Mole, as in, “Uh-oh, looks like Mr. Mole wants to play,” and, “Let’s hide Mr. Mole!” Anders did not remember his wife, whom he had also loved before she had exhausted him with her predictability, or his daughter, now a sullen professor of economics. He did not remember standing just outside his daughter's door as she lectured her bear about his naughtiness and described the truly appalling punishments Paws would receive unless he changed his ways. He did not remember a single line of the hundreds of poems he had committed to memory in his youth so that he could give himself the shivers at will. Anders did not remember his dying mother saying of his father, "I should have stabbed him in his sleep."
He did not remember Professor Josephs telling his class how Athenian prisoners in Sicily had been released if they could recite Aeschylus, and then reciting Aeschylus himself, right there, in the Greek. Anders did not remember how his eyes had burned at those sounds. He did not remember the surprise of seeing a college classmate's name on the jacket of a novel not long after they graduated, or the respect he had felt after reading the book. He did not remember the pleasure of giving respect.
Nor did Anders remember seeing a woman leap to her death from the building opposite his own just days after his daughter was born. He did not remember shouting, "Lord have mercy!" He did not remember deliberately crashing his father's car into a tree, or having his ribs kicked in by three policemen at an anti-war rally, or waking himself up with laughter. He did not remember when he began to regard the heap of books on his desk with boredom and dread, or when he grew angry at writers for writing them. He did not remember when everything began to remind him of something else.
This is what he remembered. Heat. A baseball field. Yellow grass, the whirr of insects, himself leaning against a tree as the boys of the neighborhood gather for a pickup game. He looks on as the others argue the relative genius of Mantle and Mays. They have been worrying this subject all summer, and it has become tedious to Anders: an oppression, like the heat.
Then the last two boys arrive, Coyle and a cousin of his from Mississippi. Anders has never met Coyle's cousin before and will never see him again. He says hi with the rest but takes no further notice of him until they've chosen sides and someone asks the cousin what position he wants to play. "Shortstop," the boy says. "Short's the best position they is." Anders turns and looks at him. He wants to hear Coyle's cousin repeat what he's just said, but he knows better than to ask. The others will think he's being a jerk, ragging the kid for his grammar. But that isn't it, not at all it's that Anders is strangely roused, elated, by those final two words, their pure unexpectedness and their music. He takes the field in a trance, repeating them to himself.
The bullet is already in the brain; it won't be outrun forever, or charmed to a halt. In the end it will do its work and leave the troubled skull behind, dragging its comet's tail of memory and hope and talent and love into the marble hall of commerce. That can't be helped. But for now Anders can still make time. Time for the shadows to lengthen on the grass, time for the tethered dog to bark at the flying ball, time for the boy in right field to smack his sweat-blackened mitt and softly chant, They is, they is, they is.
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