Meta Post Part Three

I would like Mr. Bolos and Mr. O'Connor to assess my "The Power of Television" post. I really enjoyed writing this post because I thought it was extremely interesting. I used something we had discussed in class, television, and went even further with it. It look me a long time to write this post, and I researched it to make sure I was being accurate and sounding completely ignorant. I hope you guys like it!

What a Smallville

So last night I was watching an episode of the show Smallville titled Sacrifice from the show's 9th season. In the episode, Checkmate, a secret government agency, has been hacking and downloading information from the Watchtower in order to find its location. Watchtower is the name of the tower that Chloe Sullivan uses to coordinate superhero missions for Clark Kent and the other members of the soon to be Justice League.

Anyways, in the episode, the agent who runs Checkmate, Amanda Waller, says, "if you don't stand with us, you stand against us. It's time for you to pick a side" to the "red blur" who is Clark Kent as Superman.

Clark Kent from the show Smallville.

As soon as I heard this, I immediately thought of play The Crucible that we had read as a class earlier this year. In the play, Judge Danforth tells John Proctor, "that a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it."

In both these examples, they give people an ultimatum of either being on their side or being "against" them. Is dissent allows considered loyalty? I think that in many times it can be, although I'm not sure if that's fair to say. Just because someone doesn't agree with a certain policy or idea, does not mean they are necessarily a threat to national security or anything like that. But rather they are a threat to power because they choose to confront what they believe is wrong.

The Curious Case of Bradley Manning

I have decided that for my junior theme I will be focusing on government secrecy. Part of this obviously includes classified documents and the United States' "war" with WikiLeaks. Bradley Manning, an Army intelligence analyst, was "was arrested...and accused of downloading several hundred thousand diplomatic cables and classified reports...providing them to WikiLeaks" according to the New York Times.

Recently this month, there have been additional charges filed against Manning including "aiding the enemy," and he has been in solitary confinement. There has been a lot of support for Manning with many critiques about how he is being treated in jail.

Top State Department spokesman Philip Crowley stated that Manning's treatment was "ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid." In response to these comments, Obama reassured the public in a news conference that the jail conditions of Manning were "appropriate and meeting our basic standards."

But is it fair for Manning to be incarcerated? Should he be considered an enemy to the state?

I don't know if I'm very convinced that he should be jailed. Although I understand he released classified information to the public regarding the American government, should these have been even classified in the first place?

According to CQ Researcher Online, about 90% of classified information does not need to be classified. Furthermore, even Defense Secretary Gates, said that "the leaks were likely to cause the nation minimal long-term damage." So why does Manning need to take the fall for it?

I think it's because the WikiLeaks documents definitely did embarrass the United States government. It has showed that the government has lied to the people. According to CQ Researcher Online, "months after the leaks were published, nearly 100 government intelligence analysts reported to Congress that the disclosures had done little actual damage to US national interests."

The government is making an example out of Manning and WikiLeaks. They do not want their secrets being shared with the world. There are images to uphold and people to please. After all ignorance is bliss, right? But knowledge, knowledge may just set you free.

The Power of Television

In AS, we have been discussing TV tokenism and the power television has on the way people view different races. Recently, I came across a very interesting article from the New York Times that discussed an experiment conducted by French Researchers linking television and torture.

The article states that, "French documentary producers managed to trick dozens of people — who were told that they were taking part in a pilot for a new game show that, in fact, never existed — into administering what seemed like painful electric shocks to a fellow contestant."

The fellow contestant happened to be an actor, who was not actually shocked like the participants thought, but rather was acting like he was in serious pain.

What's even more "shocking" was that "only 16 of 69 people asked by the host to push levers that delivered a 'dangerous shock' of 460 volts refused."

That's approximately 23% of the participants who refused to deliver the shock to their fellow contestant.

The producer of the documentary who filmed this experiment, Christophe Nick, said in a statement to the Associated Press that "this experience shows that in certain circumstances, a power — the TV in this case — is able to make you [do] something you don’t want to do.”

Nick suggests that people tend to obey authority or the power, the TV in this experiment, over what they believe is morally right or wrong. Furthermore, they believed that the producers of the game show would not ask them to commit something morally wrong as what they appeared to be doing.

So if a TV show can cause people to electrocute others, what else is it capable of? How powerful is television really?

I believe that it has tremendous power to do good and to cause harm. As it says in the article, that "when people are in front of television cameras, somewhere in their minds they may always suspect that what appears to be reality may in fact be some sort of a hoax." People confuse what's right and what's wrong because they would rather receive their 15 minutes of fame. Just look at any reality TV show, like 16 and Pregnant on MTV. It has been reported that some of the girls on the show have gotten pregnant just to be on the show. It's sad what being on TV can do to some people.