TV vs Print (fought by two writers)

After reading the essay Two Cultures I must say that neither side truly won me over. I Suppose that if I had to pick a side it would be with Paglia since I would generally rather watch TV than read myself. What i really can't agree with either side on is their reasoning. Perhaps I just can't get my mind around their ideas but the things they say sound very strange to me. Postman brings up an essay by John Locke talking about how “the body must become a slave to the mind” and notes that one of her students can only read if her body is in a some what strange position. I find myself to be a horrible reader, but I have never found myself unable to read unless I doing so in an exact posture. So long as the way I am sitting isn't distracting me then I am able to read just as well in any physical position. It seems that the idea that Postman was trying to convey was that ones physical state is connected with the way one reads. This is shown more when Paglia agrees with Postman's idea and explains how she noticed a connection between successful dancers and unsuccessful readers. This may simply be because I haven't had as much experience with as large of a number of dancers as Paglia, but every one of my personal friends that are dancers have been very interested in books and read far more proficiently than myself. I can understand the idea that if someone spends time trying to become better at one activity then will become less proficient with the activities they are forgoing. However it has always seemed to me that most people that are physically good in the arts, such as dance, usually enjoy reading as an art form as well. It almost seems like Postman and Paglia are taking being a reader and being athletic to the extremes, and referring to people people who never read and are constantly physically active and vice versa. Though I would wager that even the most intense Olympic athletes still pick up a book every so often.

Another topic the two discussed that I entirely disagree with is when they both agreed that when people watch TV they don't learn or retain any information. As I said before, I don't read very much at all, in fact I almost never read books unless it's for a class, and I don't think I have ever read more than one or two articles in a news paper. Almost all of the news I hear about is from the TV and many of the historical facts I know I learned from either the History Channel or from movies about a time period. But by the logic of Postman and Paglia I should know very little more than the information I was taught in school, which to me is somewhat insulting. I will say that I don't know nearly as much about Greco-Roman transitions influencing Judeo-Christian beliefs or about pegan ideals and teachings as the two of them. However this is probably because the History Channel hasn't done a special about it yet.

This November 4th our country watched as Barack Obama became our nations new president elect. Nearly every one saw this of course by watching some media news network and like wise, almost every person who voted based their decision on information they got from some media coverage. In a perfect world the media wouldn't have any influence of who wins an election. It would simply show each candidates points of view and ideas of how the country would be led. However, this is not a perfect world, it is far from it. So what role did the media have in deciding the outcome of the votes? Well stats show that a far greater percentage of media coverage was negative towards McCain. As well, much more of the coverage was positive towards Obama. So does this mean that since the new stations apparently talked about Obama more favorably than McCain that they are the reason why Obama won? I personally personally don't think so.

I feel that the reason why McCain lost is because he didn't have as good of a campaign strategy as Obama's. A lot of this that McCain did and talked about were not received very well by the public. This simply made it easier for the media to pick on McCain. I think the worst idea that McCain's campaign had was to have Sarah Palin as his running mate. I'm not saying she was unintelligent or would have been a bad Vice President, those ideas don't even matter. The problem with her was that she became an all too easy target for the media, and not in a good way. Any one has to admit that the idea of an extremely attractive young woman from Alaska being the Vice President of a very old man has some humor to it and is hard to take seriously. And with out looking any deeper into Governor Palin's actual political history that is all that people see. It also doesn't help when she would crack under pressure from the media, although i think most people would if they had to take the abuse she did.

What I am basically saying is that its not really the medias fault that they were so negative to McCain. Maybe they did take things a bit too far some times, but when you are running a political campaign you have to anticipate the medias reaction and plan your strategy around that.