Charity Photo-Op Exposure

This weeks article I have chosen, is written by Felicia Somnez and talks about the recent shenanigan involving Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan at a soup kitchen in Northeast Ohio.

            While on the campaign trail, after Ryan had finished a Town Hall Meeting at Youngstown State University, he and his family stopped by the St. Vincent De Paul Society in Mahoning County to get “help out” at the local shelter.  The curious thing, though, was that he decided to show up unannounced and largely uninvited!  The soup kitchen, which is run by Brian J. Antal, is primarily funded by private donations.  Antal expresses concerns about Ryan showing up unannounced being misconstrued by those that fund his organization as a political sway.

To make matters worse, it appears as though Ryan’s visit did not accomplish much.  He and his family arrived after the food had already been served, the hall cleaned, and most of the staff already gone for the day.  According to the article and folks interviewed, they came in like a whirlwind unannounced, made nice with the people who were still there, put on aprons and cleaned already clean dishes for 15 minutes before leaving for the airport to continue the campaign trail.

It appears as though this was a political pony show move akin to that of kissing babies or shaking hands with blue collar factory workers.

The author of this article, Felicia Somnez is by no means an unbiased writer.  It is pretty clear from a simple google search that she is a staunch democrat and writes as such.  Though, personally I was impressed that she did not resort to lower brow mudslinging to make an already clearly foul situation even worse. 

The Insatiable Media Sensation

The post I chose for this week’s Blog assignment was a Huffington Post article written by Jason Linkins and Elyse Siegel titled “Obama Performs His Disappearing Act: The 2012 Speculatron Weekly Roundup for Oct.5” The article, while I was interested in reading at first, became pretty clear to me that it was just traditional sensationalist media trying to make mountains out of molehills.

For example when the authors mentioned their disappointment that the debate was not a “Zinger fest”, this is a debate, not a circus show focused on entertainment.  Stating that the debate was “remarkably free of attacks to the jugular”, as if it were a bad thing rubs me the wrong way. Why is refraining from tearing down another candidate a flaw? I have grown weary of the mudslinging that has become popular in politics as of late. Furthermore, why should the president be wasting time tearing down Mitt Romney and pointing out how much he flip flops on issues, when that is the job of the moderator? A debate is to focus on the topics at hand, not to spend the entire time tearing each other down. The writer stating that the Obama campaign not pointing out Romney's lies until the day after being useless is silly. This election is more than a series of televised debates, it's important that the public stay informed even when it's not the most popular thing on T.V. To watch.  And as a matter of fact, there were sites that WERE fact checking AS the debate was happening. 

It was also the opinion of the authors, as well as several other sources that the “clear” victor in this first debate was Romney. Stating “ by not losing, Romney won”.  So going into a debate without saying anything of real substance and telling large falsities is considered now to be presenting one's self as a "credible Candidate"? Is winning by not losing an actual victory nowadays?

To me, this all seems to be sensationalism. Calling Obama listless and performing a disappearing act seems a bit extreme and uncalled for. And declaring a man a winner simply because he had presence and energy is just about as silly as saying someone won because they didn't lose...

One of the authors, Jason Linkins, has a history of this sensationalist sort of writing.  In fact, he was banned  from the HuffPo Front Page for awhile for his writings and articles.  This article makes brevity a joke, and seems to me that they are looking to stir up the pot more than aiming to be objective.