Oprah for Dictator!

I'm not a fan of Oprah.  I am glad that a girl from the ghetto got out and made herself the most powerful woman on the planet, but I just take umbrage at one woman attempting to dictate how the world lives.  But enough about my own personal irrational feelings.  I am actually pleased with the book club in the fact that she is promoting reading so heavily.  I wish she would maybe pick books from a wider range of genre and older classics as well as newer authors but that is neither here nor there.  I'm all for reading for reading sake.  She should be recognized as a literacy giant in the fact that what she says America goes and does, thereby making books more important in the lives of many people.  I personally would have never heard of Toni Morrison had it not been for her book sitting on the Oprah's Book Club shelf at the Half Price Bookstore.  The article didn't seem to have much to do with Oprah's influence on Literacy perse, but more about her social influence and THAT can't be contested.  I don't agree with the statement that Oprah doesn't exploit her viewers weaknesses.  I believe that she does, just in a benign way.  She tells the people what to do to help themselves, what to read, go volunteer, go do..... She is helping them, yet treating them like sheep.  I will say though that English teachers ARE missing out on the opportunity to use Oprah's influence over the masses to their advantage.  If more of them would teach maybe one of her book club books a year, it would most likely be the one book that keeps the students engaged long enough to realize that reading is a fun past time. 

Gender, Advertising, and Mass-Circulation Magazines

OOOOh, this is a fun topic.  The beginning of the article is nothing more than a rundown of the rise of the woman's magazine and the popularity of such publications (because of the advertising? or is the advertising as such because of the types of publications they were.  I mean daytime soaps are called soaps because when they were aired, the vast majority of the advertisements that were played were for dish, laundry and body soaps.)  It goes into the problems in the Saturday Evening Post because they were unsure of where to place it in the canon of the magazines at the time, it wasn't necessarily marketed towards women, but it wasn't necessarily marketed towards men either.  Interesting.  it makes the point that men's magazines had more of a problem in the marketing because there were less male targeted goods.  I don't know if I believe the reality of that statement.  Even now, there is a large market for men, and in the 50's men still smoked, drank, bought cars and other various things that would have required advertising (also, men were the majority money makers and they had a perceived habit of telling their wives what they could and couldn't buy.)  it goes into sex magazines as well.  I won't go there.  I don't know what the point of the article is.  I really don't.  It doesn't seem to even make a point until the last few paragraphs of the article.  I didn't really like it much.

Hypertext and Intercultural Inquiry

(sorry I didn't do this before class, but here it is).
The way that hypertext changes the face of literacy is like the way that the printing press changed the face of books.  Hypertext allows the reader to choose which aspects of the knowledge that the reader wants to know more about making us all "experts" on different aspects of the subject.  You used the example of Bruce Springsteen in class, one person could be more interested in his discography and another in the state he came from.  Still another could be more interested in the fact that he is called the boss and where his name came from.  It opens up topics of conversation to new inroads (is that the right word?).

The intercultural inquiry does just about the same thing in a different aspect.  Where the conversation may not have different aspects of knowledge in the same subject, it is possible that the two people conversing will have a different reading on the topic at hand because of their understanding levels.  In the idea that two people from different classes (I don't necessarily like to use that term, but it works here) are conversing about the same topic in different (for lack of a better word) languages.  (or different uses of the same language)

The Pencil Riots

I know this article was about the history of the technology of writing, but I can't get past the part of the article where he mentions that "to his knowledge, no one rioted over the pencil."  I can see it now.  People with their torches and pitch forks, burning pencils in effigy!  I laughed so hard while reading that.  Otherwise, it was an interesting article.  Better than the others we read (mainly because Baron has a good writing style that is interesting and engaging) but I also liked reading about the history of writing.  This was a good article.  (I know this is a short post, but I didn't have much else to say about the article.  It was easy and straightforward)

Situated Knowledge

I was wondering if, in the 'presentation' that was given by the students of the CLC, if it was just the police trainer who was invited or if it was the entire force, and just he showed up.  I think that that area would benefit from an open, moderated dialogue between the youth and the citizens of that community and the people on the police force who patrol that area, but that is neither here or there.

The idea of situational knowledge is a good one.  I think that if more people took into account the idea of situational knowledge more people would be empowered.  It goes back to what we have been talking about almost the whole semester, the idea that just because someone can't articulate as well as I can doesn 't mean they aren't as smart (or is the majority of cases smarter) than myself.  I have learned to work the system.  I went for years as an undiagnosed dyslexic and for that reason I always had a hard time reading and writing in the classroom setting.  However, when I was 8 years old, I had 2 stories published in an anthology in my school.  It was not a publication that everyone was allowed into (if i'm not mistaken).  That, to me, doesn't sound like an uneducated person.  It sounds like a misunderstood person.

I liked this article more than the others... because it was a little easier to relate to with the idea of situational knowledge.  I liked that they tried to open up a dialogue between those in power and those being 'lorded over'.