Censorship

Today in class we watched a movie about the controversial part The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn plays in schools and libraries all over the country throughout many time periods. Many people in the documentary were upset that the book was mandatory reading in school. They were upset because the book uses the word "nigger" many times throughout the book. People in the documentary were claiming that Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain was a racist because of his excessive use of the word. I feel that even though the people believe that Twain was a racist they should still read the book so they can interpret for themselves. The people protesting the use of the book in schools claimed that it was degrading to have to read about their people's past. I have not yet read the entire book so I cannot make my own opinions but from what other people have said in the documentary Twain was not a racist. In fact he was using the questionable language and portraying the black people the way he did to make a point. Another belief that I have is this, a word is a word. In the case of This book the word is nigger. This word holds a VERY strong negative connotation and can hurt many people. However, the only way to get rid of the negative connotation is for people to be exposed to it so they become immune to it. For example, when I was younger I used to gasp every time I would hear someone say "damn" I would react this way because first, I was taught it was a bad word and second because I hadn't been exposed to it. Now that I have been exposed to the word a lot it no longer upsets me. All in all I am very exited to read this book.

Ending the war

Recently a huge anti-war group stopped trying to cut funding for the war because they are now aware we are too far into the war to pull out now. Instead the groups are trying to prevent Bush from making a long lasting agreement with Iraq which may mean we will have troops in Iraq for many years. I think this is a really great thing that these groups are doing. The groups were not being very succesful in blocking funding for the war so they decided to try stopping Bush from doing another terrible thing. The groups are still fighting the funding of the war which is great because the US is spending eight to ten billion dollars a month. Imaging what our country could do with that extra money!

The News?

early this morning i was eating breakfast while watching NBC 5. I was expecting to learn about important events going on in the world and my country. Rather than the news focusing on current wars or the election, the main focus was Brittany spears. This is an example of what the popular demand is in news. people would rather learn about a celebrity's life than polotics, wars and the safety and well being of our nation. Many news channels are similar to the one i saw this morning. Many news shows focus on fun stories and show things people want to see rather than showing the real important things. A nother thing news shows often do is when they leave you hanging in suspense rather than giving you the story straight foreward. For example, when a commercial will come on at 5:00 and say "Is the water your drinking deadly?" find out at
9:00. This may be the way news stations make money but it is a very poor way to tell the news. I wish there was a station on TV that gave the straightforeward trustworthy news.