American History, Race & School

There's a lot being said about teaching racism and slavery and its place in American history in schools.

The primary criticism of that by a lot of parents and right-leaning legislatures ruling on this is that (they believe) it's a form of white guilt. Their argument is that teaching students - especially elementary school-age students - about racism and slavery in America is supposed to make white children feel guilty, and that isn't remotely true at all.

Recaps Disclaimer

My recaps are intended solely for the purpose of summarizing movies and television shows for reference.

They are not intended as substitutes for the actual program, nor should they be used as such.

I encourage readers of this site to watch any programs I review and/or recap themselves on a device or service convenient to them.

Eric Smith, Writer/Editor/Site Manager

James Bond Rankings: 2021 Edition

With the release of No Time To Die, Daniel Craig's final outing as James Bond, the question will be asked: is it good? How does it stand in a franchise of twenty-four (now twenty-five) films?

9/11/2021: What's Different?

 I’ve been thinking a lot about what I wanted to say today, 20 years on from the worst terrorist attack on our nation, a year during the worst pandemic in our nation’s history. Should I connect them? Is it worth saying, if it's probably been said already, with interest?

The one commonality in all of it is that indifference is the cause of all of it. Indifference to those who are left suffering the consequences.

20 years ago, we were united in our grief, and for that time, we were all Americans. Why, 20 years later, in the face of another situation resulting in thousands upon thousands of deaths, do we hate each other so much?

Huckabee's Jaws Reference: Revised

A quick note: I very much admire the original article I wrote in 2016, and during Trump's first term, I've wanted to update it with more information. However, I found there to be almost too much content to truly condense into the article and make a complete comparison.

As we head into the 2020 election, though, I decided to make some slight revisions to the article to make it more clear and professional, although the content is largely the same.

On Monday, October 10, 2016, Mike Huckabee made an effort to defend Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump by comparing him to Quint (Robert Shaw) from the 1975 movie Jaws.

 

"He’s vulgar, he’s salty. He might even get drunk. But hold on, here! He’s the guy who’s gonna save your butt and save your family. And so at the end of the day, when he kills the shark, you’re happy about it," he said on the program.

Opinion: 2020 and the War for America's Soul

The world is a different place than it was five years ago. I'm a different person than I was five years ago, as I'm sure we all are. I see the world differently. My views and perspectives, once fresh and open to possibility, have been hardened and jaded with the cold, ugly truth of reality.

I had a faith in our government -- that the United States would be better than the worst of its people in the overall grand scheme of things.

Then the 2016 election happened. Donald Trump won handily. It doesn't matter whether there was foreign interference in the election. It doesn't matter that he now faces an impeachment inquiry. It doesn't matter that his approval ratings have never really broken 50% in national polls. Hillary Clinton's emails don't matter.

He is in office. He is President of the United States. Enough people decided he deserved that position that they voted for him.

September 11, 2001 - In Hindsight, 18 Years Later

I wish I had a powerful, beautiful statement I could make in tribute to today. I wish I could say something that hasn't already been said probably hundreds of times today, or over the 18 years passed.

The Walt Disney Corporation: Providing Entertainment with Messages

The point to this was simple: study a media agency, find a point about it and argue that point. It seemed a daunting challenge until I thought of Walt Disney and The Walt Disney Company.

Before reading, I want to emphasize the point I aimed to make here: I am not condoning the actions of The Walt Disney Corporation or Disney himself that potentially speak to corruption, greed or other unfavorable aspects. The point I strove to make is that I believe that Walt Disney and The Walt Disney Company, for all of their failings and flaws, are a fundamentally good and beneficial organization.

I chose this angle because I felt I related to Walt Disney as a storyteller. As I write below, Disney never aimed to underestimate his audience's intelligence, no matter how childish his works may have come off as. He also so little reason to hide the ugly nature of the world from the children viewing his films. Since one of my aims is to write fiction, I understand and can relate to this.

It was from that angle that I decided I wanted to write about Disney in a positive way, looking for the inherent good in the apparent ugliness.

A Short Analysis of Malcom F**king Tucker

To most people, Peter Capaldi is best known for the Twelfth Doctor on BBC's Doctor Who. Before that, he'd starred in handful of other productions, in particular as John Frobisher in Torchwood: Children of Earth, Cardinal Richelieu in The Musketeers, and as the ironically named W.H.O. Doctor in World War Z.

Before all of that, though, he was Malcolm Tucker, the profane head of the Department of Social Affairs in The Thick of It, a political satire/drama series. Below is a short analysis I wrote of the man as a leader and a character.

Opinion: Why Attacking Net Neutrality is a Precursor to State-Run News

Updated 8/23/2017

While I’ve been signing a number of petitions to make my opinions known about political matters over the past few months, I very rarely comment on them.

However, with this one, I felt a special connection and an obligation to post my thoughts. Below is what I said and why.

Saw VI: Mixing Political Commentary & Horror

Background

For this assignment - from an American Horror course, I was instructed to pick a horror film and analyze how it approaches a political or social topic. That was the core idea of the assignment, though I was largely limited to analyzing the film according to references in notes and material covered in course discussions.

I lacked a wide array of horror films with an explicit focus in politics. The few films I noted with a subject matter that involved politics or social topics basically consisted of The Omen (original series and remake) and Day of the Dead (original, 1985). However, with healthcare being a major subject in recent months, I decided on Saw VI, which uses healthcare as a plot point

The following is my written analysis, albeit highly edited and, in my mind, improved based on my own feelings and feedback after I submitted it*.

Characterization in Louise Erdrich’s Indian Boarding School – The Runaways

I recently rediscovered a few older assignments from my time at HACC. One of these is an analysis I wrote about characterization for a short story in my Fall 2014 Introduction to Literature course.

I wrote this analysis as the second part of a two-part assignment studying the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The first part involved a slideshow presentation with a partner with information about the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

I have little to add beyond the fact that little, if anything, has been added or edited from this posting.

Genres: Few, Many & More

Background

This is an early assignment I wrote while at HACC for a media studies class in 2015. The instruction was very much, "Pick a topic from a list of topics and write about it; include references to conglomeration, convergence and how advances in technology have affected it."

From this list, I selected a topic about genres. I first asked, "What can I write about this that would make it unique or worth reading?" Eventually I narrowed down on an angle: how genres have evolved over time and how they can divide in to sub-genres, and those sub-genres can be divided, and so on.

I wasn't planning to post this at all, but after one of my classes studied genres and narratives, I decided to revisit this and post it.

Painting Critique

Here, I was asked to find and review a painting. For the assignment, rather than search the mass amount of paintings in databases across the internet, I decided to review a print I personally owned. Here is what I wrote.

Keeping an Open Heart – Literally

PinnacleHealth in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania became the first institution to work in a nationwide medical clinical trial.

The trial is set to test transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) treatment. Also known as transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI), TAVR is slated to be a less invasive and longer lasting treatment for cardiac conditions.

Animal Rescues – What, Why and Who?

Most people are in agreement. Animal abuse is ugly, no matter how much offenders try to “pretty” it up. 62% of people in a Gallup poll believe animals deserve some level of protection from harm and exploitation.