My project is coming along a little differently than I thought. I wanted to write for the news show on Xavier Television, or XTV. However, we haven’t had that many news shows on our rotation. But, I did have another opportunity to write stories. This semester, I became the assistant producer for XQuisitely Urban, our entertainment and news show. I was able to write stories and cross check them with different sites. Even though, I wasn’t able to change the world, I did feel like a made some sort of difference. I was able to do something that many people feel that the media do not do when writing stories. I was able to take my time and write the stories with care. So, my project is coming along. I think that I may even influence other people. Now, the way that the media spins things has become one of the hot topics in my Mass Communications Research class. We talk about the news and media history. It has become a very interesting topic. In one of my previous classes, we read a book titled The Father of Spin. This book chronicles the life and the work of Edward Bernays. Bernays was the master of spinning stories. He was a master of propaganda. One example of this was his Torches of Freedom campaign. In this campaign, Bernays worked for the American Tobacco Company. The company wanted to increase their sales, and they knew that they could do this if they got women smoking. In Bernays’s era, the 1920s’-1940’s, it was taboo for women to smoke. So, Bernays, being the father of public relations, started the “Torches of Freedom” campaign to get women to smoke. In his campaign, Bernays framed the cigarette as being women’s “Torch of Freedom,” stating that women had the right to smoke. On Easter Sunday during the annual parade, Bernays hired women to walk down the street carrying lit “Torches of Freedom.” He also tried changing the appearance of the cigarette boxes to make them more appealing to women smokers. These are only two of the things that Bernays did in his campaign.

According to the Deuteronomistic historian, a good king is someone who obeys the laws of the Torah and obeys God. An interesting question was posed. Would the Deuteronomistic Historian approve of George W. Bush? I had to think about this question for a while. Then, I came to the conclusion that the Deuteronomistic Historian would not approve of George W. Bush. Bush does not stand by the laws of this land, nor does he care about not standing by the laws. The kings that were in the era of the Deuteronomistic historian had something that George W. Bush does not have. The kings had heart. They cared about their countries. They wanted to take care of their people (at least the kings that the Deuteronomistic historian approved of). They wanted to protect them. We are now living in a society where fear controls us. We are constantly on alert. In fact, the last time I went to the airport, we were in an Orange alert. It seems as if our governmental leaders do not want to protect us. They instead work for their own means. They do a lot of their work with a selfish mentality. This supposed “War on Terrorism” is not serving to protect the American people; it is Bush’s fight. His search for weapons of mass destruction has ended with us finding not as much as a lowly firecracker. But, yet and still, we are still in this war fighting unnecessarily. The kings that the historian would have approved of would not have been as Bush. Of course, every leader is selfish every now and then. However, the Biblical kings worked to keep the peace of their kingdom. When they were in times of war, they protected their lands. In the times after war, they worked to restore the soul of the kingdom.

Also, the kings that the Deuteronomistic historian would have approved of obeyed God. In this area, our Mr. Bush is an interesting character. The fundamental Christian beliefs that this country was founded upon, the same beliefs that he says he upholds, are being washed down the tubes. Everyday, through the orders he gives, he kills someone’s mother, someone’s child, someone’s brother, sister, father. Everyday, he commits murder. He goes against the Ten Commandments everyday. Thou shall not kill. Thou shall not commit adultery. Even though I say this jokingly for know, I believe that he and Condoleezza Rice are having an affair. Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy. His “War on Terrorism” does not take a day off for Saturday or Sunday, whichever day you believe to be the Sabbath. Thou shall not covet your neighbors stuff. It is completely obvious that Bush wants oil. He is coveting big time! Only his craving for oil has proved deadly for so many people. The Deuteronomistic Historian would not have approved of George W. Bush because he does not abide the laws set forth by the Torah, nor does he obey God.

The worst thing that David did actually goes in a small story. While Uriah the Hittite was at war, where David should have been, David had an affair with Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife. However, the story does not end there. Bathsheba gets pregnant. Uriah comes home from war and David thought of a plan to cover himself. David tried to convince Uriah to spend time with his wife, obviously thinking that Uriah and Bathsheba would have sex. Then Uriah would think that the baby was his. However, David didn’t calculate that Uriah would be loyal to his country. Uriah did not want to enjoy the amenities of home while so many people were still at war. So, David concocts a plan to have Uriah killed. Uriah is killed and it is made to look as if he died in battle. Bathsheba goes through the mourning process, as is proper, and David takes her as one of his wives.

Our project is similar to that of Biblical prophets in that prophets usually had some sort of bad news. In our project, we are trying to fix a problem. So we are, in a sense, being the bearers of bad news. Also, with this project, we had to write letters to heads of state and religious figures. We are working as the intermediaries between them and the public. In the same way, prophets were intermediaries between God and people.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 28th, 2007 at 11:04 pm and is filed under Week 09: Implementation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.