ABC News

An important news clip is about hospital bills being out of control. People are paying more than they should or what it is worth in medical bills in the United States. According the lady in the news clip, for being in the hospital for 3 nights and getting her gallbladder out, her hospital bill was $40,000. Her insurance is only willing to pay half. A single blood pressure pill cost her $15 while the hospital buys it for 3 cents. She says she wants to pay her bill but does not want to overpay. The reason why medical bills in hospitals like Northside have high bills is because they lose millions of dollars from patients who don’t pay. So they have to raise the price for the patients that do pay to gain that money back. Medical bills account for 60% of bankruptcies. This clip is important to us people in the real world because it has to do with our health and money. It also is showing how hospitals are turning healthcare into a business for profit not just there to actually help the sick and injured.

            The news story that I would consider meaningless was the tour of Air Force One that carried JFK before and after he passed away. Since the anniversary of his death has approached, the news reporters went for a tour and was told about the plane ride back to Washington, D.C. with JFK’s casket. Not that this isn’t important because JFK was an important person, but it was not irrelevant to what is going on now in the country. There were more important issues brought up in the news story that this clip was on the memorable side. Chuck Klosterman would qualify this story as meaningless because it doesn’t affect us with money, health, or our livelihood. It would also qualify for this category of meaningless to Chuck because it take time to know a person or an event and then it only shows 5 minutes of highlights which only talked about a memory.

The Mellennials

In class this week we discussed different generations. The generations of the Millennials are people born from the 1980’s to 2000. I was born in 1992 so that makes me a “Millennial”. I believe that the rise in technology of the Internet and cell phones during those years define the generation of the Millennials. I think this rise in technology has a positive and negative aspect. The Internet is good for valuable information and for social networking. On the other hand, it has become an obsession when we could be doing other things. The rise in cell phones during this time made life easier to contact people when they were not home. Cell phones like the internet are becoming an obsession as well. The name Millennials is very fitting because it makes me think of the future and that generation is the future in technology and life.

Reality TV

Klosterman says that real people start to act like the archetypes they see on TV. The point of this is to be identifiable. Being interesting has been replaced with being identifiable. An example is there is always a jock, a jokster, a nerd, a black guy, a gay, and a pretty girl. I think this is a strong idea because it is happening everywhere not just on TV. Take social media for an example. People act how they think they should instead of how they really do just to either put on a show or make people like them. People are constantly categorizing themselves according to what pop culture tells them.  It controls how they talk, dress, and behave around others.

Accidental Racist

People are making a big deal out of the song, “Accidental Racist” by Brad Paisley featuring LL Cool J. In the song, Brad is a country artists who sings that his shirt and his ways are not racist that his generation has nothing to do with the Civil War. LL Cool J is a rapper that sings in response that they are both judging and that they shouldn’t do it anymore. In our readings from class, we learned that country music has a story that relates to your life. This could be love, death, or in this case…conflict. Country music loves to bring up issues and sing about them. Because this music is popular in culture it’s a good way to get the message across. We learned that Hip Hop music is about the lifestyle of power, money, and the lifestyle of gangs and ghettos. This relates to the Accidental Racist because all of these songs judge people by their cover. The controversy is that one side doesn’t want slavery and racism brought up and others think it’s a good idea to talk about it now after all these years. It bothers people because they don’t want conflict. Others like to talk about it because they want their world to be peaceful. My view on this is that it is a good message to get across but I don’t like how it was a song. The lyrics are somewhat meaningful but the beat and word choice was weird. I believe there is other ways to get this across besides a song. I believe that this song still won’t change things between people