Burning, laughing, and protesting... response to 4-7-05's presentations

Thursday was another great day of presentations for Modern Rhetoric. Each presenter brought a new flare to the Multimedia presentations. I will give my comments on them all below:

Burning Books: Wow, this is something that has been a very hot topic in my hometown. Again, I am from Rock Hill, SC which is a super conservative and religious town about 3 hours from Clemson (2.5 if you drive fast). The school board for Rock Hill is also ultra conservative. When I was in school, they woulf pull a book for the sole fact that they did not like it or did not care for the author. I was in middle school when the whole controversy over Deenie by Judy Blume broke out. The book was banned in other parts of the state, and the board felt like they had to jump on board and ban it too. Until the book was banned, the request list for students to check out that book was so long! I guess it shows that the more a book is talked about, the more people want to read it.
I agree with some of the previous posts that book banning is getting out of control. I have also noticed that some places sponsor a "Read a Banned Book" day or week. If I remember correctly, Clemson had one of those about two years ago. There is also a poster on the fourth floor of Daniel that lists banned books and encourages you to read them. Of course, I was as shocked as many of you to see some of my favorite books like To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee on the banned list. I also enjoyed some of the clips of Harry Potter and some of the "extremists" and religious views.

Comics: I actually collect political cartoons. I have been interested in them for a long time. I think they can tell you a lot about our society like what things are important and what we value. I think that this was an excellent presentation because it gave us examples of the cartoons as well as some of the thoughts of expert people who study the impact of political cartoons. I thought the definition of the four things that political cartoons have to do to get their point across was good as well. I never knew that the cartoons had to fit certain guidelines to get their message across. Lastly, I thought the tieing in of the JibJab clip was perfect. A friend of mine sent me the link to the orginial JibJab election cartoon. The one we watched in class was very funny, made fun of a lot of people and their choices, but it will create an image into their viewers head thay reminds them to vote in the upcoming election. And, getting people to vote is the most important thing.

Protesting: I thought that Jaquinna was very brave in selecting her topic for the multimedia presentation. The fact that their are not enough minorities on the bench is very disturbing to me because I guess I would like to think that our state is moving in a new direction, away from our racist roots. As we talked in clas afterwards, I do not think there should be racial or gender quotas put in place because it might not always give us the best candidate or the person who is best qualified for the position. I think that there should be outreach programs at schools and especially law schools that encourage and support women and minority students that prepares them for their future career. I would not hold all this anomoisty toward the state legislature though because their is a bill in the SC house that would provide funding for a law school at SC State University. The presentation was good because Jaquinna chose a topic that was relevant and important to her because she wants to be a judge one day. I would have liked to see maybe a little more multimedia in the presentation. Rep. Gilda Cobb hunter, the woman I asked about in class, has a website directly focused on this topic.