It’s depressing that women in America are the target of hate and suspicion simply because they possess wombs. Suppressing the rights of women is morally wrong — whether it’s the Taliban or Christian fundamentalists doing the suppressing. America appears to be entering a new dark age where women’s reproductive rights are once again a political […]
You gotta hand it to Bibi Netanyoohoo: his genocidal policies toward the Palestinians sure have made his country more secure, haven’t they? You betcha! He should be real proud of himself for making everyday life so safe and secure for the people he pretends to care so much about. Yep, Israeli citizens can sleep safely […]
Agenda-setting theory relates to mass communications and media; particularly news coverage. It focuses on how the news is presented and what news is shown to the public as being newsworthy. My focus in this blog will be on the recent phenomenon of participatory or ‘citizen’ journalism, and how this new development disrupts the assumptions of […]
I’ve always hated the term African-American, because I found it downright patronizing and vituperatively ‘Politically Correct.’ I am old enough to remember when that whole PC thing happened: during the odious Reagan era of the early 1980s. The ‘Reagan Revolution’ was a complete fraud; a Ponzi scheme of monumental proportions foisted upon an ignorant, gullible […]
‘Colion Noir’ is the latest weapon to be deployed in The National Rifle Association’s ongoing battle to win over minorities to their maniacal cause. Noir has become a YouTube sensation – and a darling of the NRA – because supposedly he is a young black man who opposes even the most common-sense gun control laws. […]
Mad Men is a perfect example of a serialized historical melodrama that permits viewers to re-evaluate the past. The show was created by Matthew Weiner, a co-writer and producer of The Sopranos, in 1999. Mad Men arguably tells us less about the 1960s than it does about the current desire for collective nostalgia for the […]
Effective celebrity activists use their fame and fortune to bring attention to important issues and to give credibility to legitimate representatives of social movements. Internationally-known celebrities can help expose and highlight problems which would normally get little or no news coverage without their involvement. But does celebrity involvement really make any difference in what people […]
My first encounter with social media was probably listening to the car radio as a child while my parents drove around Los Angeles in the mid-1960s. These are some of my earliest memories. A few of the songs I can recall hearing during this time include A Hard Day’s Night by The Beatles, Stop In the […]
The second event which influenced my sense of identity was more technology-driven, and it came much later in my life. The transition from vinyl albums to compact discs was a difficult one for me, and it was at this time when I first realized that for better or worse, change was inevitable; there was no […]
The final innovation which profoundly affected my personal sense of identity was the advent of the Internet. By the time my wife and I broke down and bought our first PC in the early 90s, the World Wide Web was already a full-blown global phenomenon. The Internet opened up entirely new vistas of research and […]
Jason Darensburg's Blog-o-rama 