"CNN Leaves it There"

Jon Stewart began his show last night by introducing arguably unimportant topics such as the "big game" last night while a video of a gay protest is on the screen. He harps on the fact that CNN is always "leaving it there" and postponing important discussions while they have a full twenty-four hours to talk about said important topics. Stewart goes on to poke fun at CNN for fact-checking an SNL skit in which Fred Armisen plays Barack Obama, claiming to have done nothing since taking office. CNN delivers a massive report on this skit and found that while many of the president's initiatives have not moved forward, he has in fact done something since taking office. The detailed approach CNN takes to fact check a comedy show while featured speakers on this show throw out numbers without any sense of validity is deemed comical. John Stewart continues by showing several instances of CNN guests saying spurious things and introducing made-up statistics without being asked where their numbers came from or countered with facts. Despite these horrendously inaccurate claims, the hosts of CNN simply "leave it there." Stewart is mainly criticizing the lack of fact checking seen in the media's discourse on politics, though he hints at their use of time and judgement.

In academic discourse, the vital - as opposed to superfluous - events would be the ones heavily analyzed. Because academic discourse makes use of the educated people in whatever the proposed issue is, it is more than just two people who have an opinion. As the objective of public discourse is to entertain, viewers leave less and more incorrectly informed after watching shows like CNN. Public discourse is easy, as academic discourse seeks to further the discourse rather than split it.

Sacred Language, Spoken Language

Upon entering the screening for this film, the fact this movie centered around the Hebrew language was the extent of my background knowledge. I was unaware of the tensions that existed as Hebrew transformed from a religiously sacred language to an everyday, common spoken language. The subtitles offered little help as I spent the entire movie trying to wrap my head around the concepts presented. Although I took little from the film in the way of true understanding, I did gain some knowledge about the differing relationships many from Jewish descent have with the Hebrew language. Each speaker interviewed brought something unique to the film, and I tried to take down the most striking things said by each speaker.

I missed the name of the first male interviewed, but his parents spoke both Russian and Yiddish. However, he only heard and spoke Hebrew in the home. He never celebrated Shabbat or any other traditional Jewish holidays even though he grew up with the Bible serving as a fundamental element of his childhood experience. I remember him talking about how some grew angry at the fact that the Bible was being used to explain geography and archeology. This is one example of how the Hebrew language was beginning to be used outside of religious contexts. He ended with commenting on the existence of Hebrew, saying "without Hebrew, there is no rebirth of the people." This man rejoices over the victory of Hebrew, as it has managed to be successfully revived, but fears the impoverishment of the language.

The second speaker, a lady by the name of Michal Govrin describes how she lost her family, and with them, her faith. She spoke of Tel Aviv, which I now know to be the second largest city in Israel. Michal informs viewers of a six-day war resulting in the erasure of an entire culture. She claims that only the Talmud, a central text of mainstream Judaism, saved the people from complete destruction. Mrs. Govrin also hints at some conflicts with Christians who said they were “true Jews, true Israel.” Michal's interview was followed by a song that was nothing short of confusing.
However, it seemed to evoke a strong emotional response from fellow viewers, many who were of Jewish descent and/or understood the language. The song ended, and 'hmms' and 'ahhs' of approval were heard all around.

The parents of the third female interviewee came from a family Egyptian Jews. she used the words dynamic and supple to describe the way the Hebrew language is spoken presently. She clarifies that the sacred language, or the Hebrew she heard growing up, is not as supple as the Hebrew spoken today. As a writer herself, she loves Hebrew with a passion. She references the Hebrew she loves as being the one used to translate children’s books. However, she can’t bear to read the new, contemporary translations - it's synthetic. The sacred language is no longer a museum piece; it has been toughed, spoiled. She claims that this is the result of Hebrew literature.

Roy Greenwald was very religious as a child, and often went to the synagogue. He was taught as a child to embrace the sacred language, Hebrew. Learning to kiss the Torah, Roy "put the verses in [his] mouth and memorized them." Greenwald says something really interesting: the danger of Hebrew, its beauty too, is when instead of being a prayer it turns into politics. He draws similarities to the Yiddish language. Apparently is a similar language but does not represent the same things the sacred language does. He argues that sometimes Yiddish holds on to stronger meanings of words that Hebrew has let go of because of political/military reasons. For example, there is one word in Hebrew that means security, while the similar Yiddish equivalent goes even deeper and defines trust. New knowledge to me, Yiddish was a “banished language” ultimately sent with so many of its speakers to the gas chambers. It was spoken by two-thirds of Hebrews before the war.

Etgar Keret spoke of how Hebrew is a language that at one point ceased to be a spoken language. He, as a son of Holocaust survivors, says the language is part of Israeli identity. For Etgar, the tension between the slang and the sacred language is absolutely fascinating. For reasons I am not entirely sure of, Mr. Keret relates more to Eastern European Jewish writers than Israeli writers who describe a reality he doesn’t feel a part of.

Yitzak describes his relationship with Hebrew in a more abstract sense. He describes that for some, Hebrew is a language and, for others, an idea - usually of Christian origin. Yitzak says that writing in Hebrew is an act of passing on a legacy, like writing in Spanish. Hebrew is a good example of the legacy that he’s received, "like a gift wrapped in gold," and the legacy that he will pass on. Yitzak grew up in an educational system that mystified the Bible, while excluding rabbinical Hebrew text. He then presents a more optimistic view, claiming "a language that destroys 'the sacred' can just as easily construct it."

Shimon Adaf's parents came from Morocco, wanting to master the Hebrew they heard around them. However, they soon realized there was another Hebrew - the one spoken in the synagogue. At the age of 5 while in the synagogue, Shimon heard men singing the Song of Songs, and realized this was a new Hebrew, a sacred Hebrew. He says that one can easily lose himself in the sacred, and this was an important moment in his life. Shimon tried to put the sacred Hebrew and the spoken Hebrew in to different categories, but found it very difficult. The more he tried to suppress the Hebrew of the prayers, the more the thought came. Shimon saw this when his first poems were translated into English and German. Language is powerful and translated can lose some of that power.

Haviva Pedaya describes a difference between the language she hears and the language she speaks – there is conflict, a struggle. She says the tension begins in kindergarten and continues through school. For this reason Haviva was silent growing up, at times she was virtually mute. She was so afraid of saying the wrong things thus disrespecting the sacred language that she was "pregnant with words" until she finally started publishing. Writing has given her the release she needed.

Zali Gurevitch was an especially entertaining character. He considers himself taking part in a language game, a game of Hebrew. Zali calls it a game of beginnings. Hebrew allows for the combination of modern and archaic in a "thrilling" way. It is Zali's belief that in order to create a new Hebrew culture, you have to move from a sacred language and sacred culture and – not change it - but revive it, kick-starting it again to create new genres and new ideas. Because it is the mouth that breathes and speaks, it is through language and the sound that resonates that we understand the meaning. Zali considers himself lucky to be able to take apart in the language that is Hebrew.

Michal Naaman says that with Hebrew, you can't say anything natural or authentic because the words were so elevated, precious, and sacred. He mentions diaspora, a word that many of the speakers before him also referred to. I did some research and found out that a diaspora is any movement of a population sharing common ethnic identity. While refugees don't always settle in a new geographic location, diaspora refers to a permanently displaced and relocated collective. Over time, remotely separated communities tend to vary in culture, traditions, language and other factors. The last vestiges of cultural affiliation in a diaspora are often found in community resistance to language change and in maintenance of traditional religious practice. After learning this, I could make sense of the frequent use of this word throughout the film.

Overall, the film was well made. If I could change/improve one thing, it would be a suggestion made by those in charge of Visions&Voices with regard to background reading. I would have been able to make more sense of the film if I had some previous knowledge about Hebrew and its status as both a sacred and a spoken language. This being said, I still found many of the personal stories very interesting. Even without the background information, the important role of Hebrew in the lives of those interviewed was apparent.

TAG and AXE: Smells Like a Fallacy...

TAG and AXE body spray commercials are famous for containing blatant and hilariously faulty cause-effect fallacies. This fallacy is committed when a person assumes that one event causes another just because the events occur together. The error in this fallacy is that a causal conclusion is drawn without adequate justification. These commercials implicitly, rather than explicitly, state that if you wear TAG or AXE body spray, beautiful women will be strongly attracted to you. In one of the TAG ads, a guy puts TAG on before picking up his date from her parent’s house. To his surprise, the girl’s mom becomes attracted to him after smelling him as she answered the door. One AXE commercial features a woman pushing her elderly mother in a grocery store when she smells AXE wafting in her direction. She abandons her wheelchair ridden mother and cozies up to the store employee stacking cans, dancing suggestively around him. These commercials incorrectly associate wearing AXE or TAG body spray with success in the female department.

LINKS!
Mom Makes a Pass
The "AXE Effect"

Access to Non-standard Dialects

There are many advantages resulting from keeping access to non-standard dialects open. This access gives society a way to celebrate the richness of diversity of a language. Non-standard dialects are not appreciated, but stigmatized. People speaking in the non-standard variety are quickly associated with a less educated or an economically poor background. Keeping access open eliminates the favoring of only those who speak the standard variety. When access to non-standard dialects are closed, the standardization process of the language norm further separates people into socially identifiable groups, those with prestige and those without. Society must embrace these non-standard varieties if its citizens are to feel any type of pride in their natural speech.

As favorable as it may be to keep access open, it is not practical. In order to get anywhere in this society one must have the ability to "fit in." As we have discussed in WRIT140, it is highly unlikely that the United States would elect a president into office with a thick Southern drawl or a tough Bronx accent. To put it plainly, we (as a society) vote for the person who best represents the USA - a standard English dialect is usually must. It is debatable whether or not keeping access open is even possible. Some may say that everyone could just be left to speak their personal dialects of English. A plethora of questions come to mind, the most prominent being: how will anything get done? In my opinion, the best way to tackle the issue of open/closed access to non-standard dialects is to:
1. Emphasize that all dialects of English have important values and cultures stored within them.
2. Suggest standard English as a sort of lingua franca shared by all non-standard dialects.
3. Enforce standard English as the dialect to use in most affairs dealt with outside of the home, especially in business and government. A look at history can tell us that those speaking standard English generally tend to be more successful.

Summing Up
While society should embrace every dialect for the unique perspectives they add to our daily life, practicality suggests that speaking the standard dialect increases success rate.

My Fair Lady

My Fair Lady follows the story of a young Cockney-speaking flower girl, Eliza. After hearing her ghastly misconstruing the English language, Professor Higgins claims he can transform her into a duchess. The fact that Higgins assumes his dialect of English is correct and every other one is wrong suggests that there can only be one "right" or "true" language and all others are inferior. The claim that correcting Eliza's language can turn her into a duchess implies there is a connection between proper English and high society. Wanting to be more than a common flower girl and run her own shop, Eliza seeks Higgins and dares him to make good on his offer.

Threatening her with starvation, Higgins forces Eliza through countless, insensitive drills to refine her speech. Among these were constant repetition of her vowels, "the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain," "in Hertford, Hereford, Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen," and general speaking with marbles in her mouth. This harsh and unnecessary treatment is a caricature of the hard work and suffering that goes into learning a new language. Once Eliza has "mastered" the language, Higgins and his colleague take her out to the races - a taste of real high class society.

Restricted to speaking of weather and health, Eliza stumbles her way through her first "proper" conversation. She passes of her mistakes as the new small talk and manages to snag the attention of a particular Freddie Eynsford-Hill. However, once Eliza becomes involved and excited in the race, she unconsciously reverts back to her loud Cockney self. This illustrates that once Eliza actually felt something, she went back to the language that she felt comfortable expressing herself in.

At the end of the film, Eliza is passed off as a duchess but she remains unhappy. Although she looks the part, there lacks substance. The movie as a whole suggests that gaining a language to fit in with society is not all positive gain. Eliza had to give up part of herself in throwing away her Cockney accent. The real question posed is whether the benefits of relinquishing a language or dialect outweigh the consequences.

Our Green Future: America’s Young Environmental Leaders Speak Out

Three Brower Youth Awardees were featured in the second of the two-part USC "Speaker Series," presented this past week.

First up was Rachel from Berkeley. She started off with poor footing, showing students a video produced by UCLA about USC's C+ sustainability grade. Most of her presentation dealt with her and her accomplishments, complete with the "ra-ra, if I can do it, so can you" pep talk. I wasn't really surprised at USC's grade, seeing as places such as New/North don't even have recycle bins easily accessible. However, problems such as these have a fairly simple solution. I do agree with her statement claiming "we are the most powerful stakeholders on our campus."

Next up was Billy from Yale. Of all three speakers, I feel as though his was more organized and informative. He started with a shocking fact: A certain glacier in India could be gone by 2030, a glacier that 5 million people rely on for their source of fresh water. I liked that he actually defined all of the "go-green" terminology, whereas others often throw this jargon at their audiences and move on. He spoke of the building blocks needed to rebuild the green economy:
-Reinvesting financial capital
-Preserving natural capital
-Maximizing human capital
He was an interesting presenter, probably aided by his use of powerpoint.

Last but not least was Erica from Stanford/Oxnard. Her story was a bit more compelling, perhaps due to its personal connection to her life. She brought up several interesting points, such as the fact that voices are more powerful than money. She spoke a lot about finding your voice, and how educating yourself is the first step. Finally, she mentioned that small things make a difference in thinking globally.

Overall, I feel like this presentation was much more informative than the first. The speakers were younger, which made their speeches easier to relate to. Even though I feel like I learned a bit more about the efforts being made to strengthen the global economy, I will continue to reduce, reuse, and recycle and consider my civic duty complete.

All in Favor of an Apology...

There is only so much an apology can do. It cannot erase the past or undo the harm that's been done. In the case of the Aboriginals of Australia, a simple "I'm sorry" went a long way. Prime Minister Rudd's apology proves that people admit wrongdoings occurred and genuinely feel remorse for the hate crimes. An apology, especially from someone as iconic as the prime minister, is the first step in mending relationships between the Aboriginals and the rest of Australia. Mixed responses following Rudd's apology show that the indigenous Australians had more positive feelings or their feelings did not change at all. According to a local Australian poll, gratification and relief were the most popular emotions that Rudd's plea evoked. This solidifies that an apology, if done correctly, never hurts.