Political Shorts

Jrn 131 Week one, first blog post
What should and shouldn't be in the news

On a recent trip the Grand Canyon, the weather of which we all know quite well, a certain first lady by the name of Michelle Obama led her family to enjoy their vacation. As she stepped out of the family private jet, she started a debate over something not so controversial - - a pair of shorts.

Why does society care so much about her shorts? Karina Bland of the Arizona Republic writes, "more than 300,000 people responded to an online poll by the Today show, with 83 percent saying Michelle Obama had the right to bare legs. Of course she does, though even I was surprised at first to see her in shorts." Several comments on the articles website show the debate over the shorts.

"Muscular gams" my ass! Those shorts were horrible and she deserves every ounce of criticism she is getting. She looked like anything but the "First Lady", in fact, she hardly looked like a lady at all! Capri pants in a khaki material or even, gasp!, knee length shorts in a more feminine fabric than denim would have come off MUCH better. This was an embarrassing move on her part." and a response to this was one comment I thought very fitting, "Damn her free will. Get a life."

Sure there was a time when people of status were meant to dress as modest as possible, but that time is certainly not now. Free will is supposedly pretty much America's motto, and aren't there worse decisions made that we should be focusing on instead? Wearing shorts, no matter who you are, in Arizona heat is hardly an issue worth mentioning.

http://www.azcentral.com/style/fashion/articles/2009/08/24/20090824bland0823new.html

In other news, we all have heard at some point the bad publicity associated with social networking sites such as Myspace and Facebook. We should all also know my fascination and love of the website YouTube. For years now I have followed the lives of various video bloggers, aka "Vloggers" and have seen their rise to internet fame and the amazing things they get to do with their lives because of it.

One of my favourite vloggers is Myles Dyer, a guy from England who for four years now has, once a year ever year, held a 24 hour long webcast to raise money for the charity Unicef. He stays up for 24 hours straight and entertains viewers and has other youtube stars guest star in short videos, all to raise awareness and raise money for the charity.

There are of course other youtubers doing things for charity, which I think is amazing because these people, these random every day people turn into something much much more because of a website that allowed them to be creative in front of an audience, and they are using this audience of luck for a greater good. I wish more people would hear about these things.

http://blog.stickam.com/index.php/2009/08/12/14-hour-stickaid-marathon-to-benefit-unicef-streams-live-815/