A Blatantly Racist Comic?

This cartoon above ran in the New York Post yesterday. Since then, there has been a lot of rumbling and talk about how this was a horribly racist comic that is comparing President Obama to a chimpanzee, touching on horribly racist ideas that likened African Americans to monkeys in the past. Is that really what this comic seems to be doing, though?

Big in the news this week was the story of a woman's chimpanzee she kept as a pet, violently attacking another woman and being shot to death. It was an awful story and horrible to think about. Also, President Obama signed the stimulus package bill into law this week. Does it seem too simple to connect the two stories into the comic's bottom line? I don't really think so. I think it can be read into comic that there are racist undertones if you try, but that is the case with so many issues/comments and I think that "racism" is called way too often on things that are not really being racist. I think this comic really is picking at the stimulus package itself and basically hinting that the thing may as well have been written by a bunch of monkeys or some crazed chimpanzee. I guess I could see it being more sinister of a message, but it's a bit of a stretch of the imagination to go there. It doesn't seem to have that intent and I think the author would have been very foolish to try to say that as his underlying message. It's all in the reading and we can't just know the intent of the creator, but I have a hard time believing it was more than a criticism of the stimulus package that hit on current events.

Reverend Al Sharpton had comments about the comic, arguing the other side. I wasn't surprised by that and while the stimulus package has become somewhat synonymous with President Obama, he's not the author and I think that Sharpton was taking advantage of this situation to remain in the limelight. I don't, by any means, think that we have reached an end to racist times or that racism doesn't still remain a prominent problem in the US/World, but I don't think that each and every idea that can be twisted and construed to be a racist one necessarily is.

The Economic Stimulus Plan

After struggling unsuccessfully to gain bipartisan support for the nearly $800 billion economic stimulus package, President Barack Obama just signed the bill in Denver, Colorado moments ago. It is uncommon for a President to do this outside of Washington DC. It is still tough to say what might be the repurcussions of this bill, or rather new law, whether it will have the hoped for positive effects or not. It seemed to go with little argument that something needed to be done and this package was pushed through Congress with the hopes of gaining Republican support, which unfortunately did not become a reality. Hopefully, this package will have the positive effects of new jobs and a stimulative effect to the economy, but there are so many possibilities and we can only wait to find out how well this will proceed.

Today's Presidential News Conference

President Obama held a televised news conference this evening. This was his first prime time televised news conference. I believe that these news conferences are a really good sign in continuing his advancement of keeping things open and transparent.

President Obama talked about a number of issues, leading and strongly focusing on the stimulus package and the economic problems that we are suffering right now. He is willing to admit that some of the attempts to bolster the economy may not turn out 100% the same as envisioned, which I think is a pretty honest thing to say, but also that we NEED to take some steps immediately to prevent this from going into a downward spiral that we may not be able to recover from. The situation that we have slid into, economically, has become one of the biggest worries on the minds of Americans this year. We are watching as job losses are constantly being announced on the evening news. There is consistently a flow of stories of yet new and more companies that are laying off more people throughout the country, which is creating even more of a worry about the economic situation.

Aside from the economy, President Obama also touched on such issues as Alex Rodriguez using performance enhancing drugs to what was the moment that he really was hit with the notion that he was truly President of the United States. I think President Obama was able to deal with the press questions with a touch of humor, while still focussing on the serious issues at hand. On my own part, although I've already obviously been a strong Obama supporter, I believe that he handled himself well and provided me with a growing faith in the direction that we're headed, despite the sad and unencouraging news that keeps piling up in the news each day...

The Death of MySpace...

For those who have been into social networking sites such as Facebook, Friendster, Bebo, and the many many others that are out there, for some time, you've def seen an evolution of sites and a Changing of the Guard more than once of who was king of the hill. As has happened to others, it seems that MySpace has slipped off its throne after resting on its laurels for a long time.

Prior to MySpace, it seemed that Friendster was really the belle of the ball. It was what it was in social networking. MySpace began growing in popularity and its growth was unbelievable. There finally came a point around 2005 when "everybody" had a MySpace page. You could find just about anyone you knew on there and people would look up new friends/dates/acquaintences as well as old ones on MySpace to see what they could find out about them. People were using the site to not only find their friends, but to hook up with old friends, date, and even stalk people. It was big enough, popular enough, and seemingly financially viable enough that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp purchased MySpace for nearly $600 million!

MySpace, while exceptionally popular, has often been looked at as sort of not serious enough and often too "kiddie". This has been where other social networking sites have filled the gaps. There is LinkedIn, which is much more business-related. LinkedIn is more career-based and serious and people will list their employment history, gather job references, and basically network with other career-minded people to hopefully network into better jobs and stay connected with good work references. Facebook originally only connected University and College students, then high schools, and later became public. It has also been looked at as a more serious version of MySpace, despite the "pokes" and applications that have been so frequent add-options for people's pages. Other sites such as these have really drawn a lot of people who may have been introduced to social networking via MySpace into abandoning that site.

It was probably about the middle of last year, 2008, that Facebok apparently seemed to overtake MySpace as the top-tier social networking site. The buzz was all about Facebook and MySpace was fast becoming yesterday's news. Facebook seemed to be picking up more and more people and I was able to watch as so many people I knew were coming over to opening up a Facebook account by Autumn of last year. MySpace had already been taking actions to compete with Facebook, such as adding apps, a big thing for Facebook, and also adding the status option (where people can update their status and add a "mood" that displays on their page), which was a big part of Facebook. It didn't seem to be enough. Around late Autumn or early Winter 2008, MySpace seemed to be done. The activity, in comparison to Facebook had fallen to the wayside so much that it was like a ghost town. Now, Facebook is still atop the stack, while many other specialised sites are attracting their own "customers". MySpace is going to have to figure out what needs to be changed with their formula to keep their users and attract new ones. People still seem to be on the site, but many more seem to just be there to be there, while being far more active on other sites. We'll have to wait and see if Facebook can remain in its place or if MySpace or another site might step up to fill that role in the future...