Rights vs. Safety

Most people don’t realize that when you are on the phone or you send an email it is automatically stored by the National Security Agency (NSA). The NSA was developed after 9/11 to prevent terrorist and other attacks. Some people have taken issue with the NSA because they feel they are being unjustly violated. As it turns out, a federal judge agrees with them.

According to an article in The Guardian, Federal Judge Richard Leon believes that the collection of America’s metadata goes against the fourth amendment. This amendment states that it is illegal for unreasonable searches and seizures to take place. That being said, the NSA isn’t there just to listen to you and your friend gossip on the phone.

In a 60 Minutes piece last Sunday Keith Alexander, leader of the NSA and US Cyber Command, along with other members of the NSA revealed some of the things the NSA has done to protect the US. One attack they did see coming was called the BIOS Plot. The BIOS Plot was a system (allegedly by China) that could destroy computers. It would get the operating system to turn on the computer and essentially turn it into a brick or a paperweight. An attack like this has to potential to take down the US economy. The NSA was able to stop this catastrophe before it became a national issue.

This issue reminded me of the question we’ve been thinking about in my American Studies class. This question is: When, if ever, and to what degree, should civil liberties be limited during wartime? Although I am not talking about a war, I think this question still applies in this situation with some minor alterations. So my question is: When, if ever, and to what degree, should the NSA be able to compromise some of our rights as Americans in order to protect the US?

Good Guys and Bad Guys

In my American Studies class we’ve been talking about how on TV there are often “token” characters that are only there to make the show more diverse. My teachers have made it clear that this applies to dramas, so that left me wondering about other forms of TV. Since I generally prefer sitcoms to dramas, I decided to look up the top sitcoms to see if they follow a similar system of having “token” characters.

            According to TV Guide, these three were top in the ratings for sitcoms in 2013.

The Big Bang Theory

Two and A Half Men

How I Met Your Mother

The Big Bang Theory features Kunal Nayyar as Raj Koothrappali. Raj is the only non-white main character out of these three shows. Clearly, making sure the shows are diverse is a lot less of a concern for the producers of sitcoms than dramas, but why?

            These shows do draw fewer viewers than the dramas, but they still have around 16 million viewers each episode. In my opinion, I think that dramas are more concerned with having their “token” characters because in dramas there are often “good guys” and “bad guys”. For example, in class the vast majority of dramas we talked about were crime shows. In these shows the main characters are typically trying to solve a new case or arrest a new criminal each show. If all of the main characters on the show are the “good guys” and if they’re all white than the only characters left for minorities to play are the roles of the “bad guys”. Therefore, it is important for the main casts of dramas to seem more diverse, even if they are just tokens, so that all of the “good guys” aren’t strictly white.

            Sitcoms, on the other hand, are usually more light-hearted and don’t usually have a lot of criminals or “bad guys”.  Therefore, the networks might not view it as important to make sure their cast is diverse. Personally, I think this is an issue that should be addressed because I think that TV shows shouldn’t only be diverse so that they don’t generalize certain groups as the “bad guys”. Why do you think that top rated sitcoms are less diverse than the dramas?  

$25 for Catching an Illegal Immigrant

Believe it or not, there was an event scheduled for last Wednesday called “Catch an Illegal Immigrant” at University of Texas at Austin. The Young Conservatives of Texas, a group of college students at University of Texas, planned to have people walking around the campus with “Illegal Immigrant” on their clothing. Any student to catch one of these people would win a $25 gift card. The group said the purpose of this event was to start a campus-wide discussion about the topic of illegal immigrants but they had to cancel the event when the school threatened to expel any participants.

This event reminded me of a picture in a Zine by Billy Dee that we looked at in my American Studies class last week.

This picture had the caption “The Prison Industrial Complex criminalizes immigrants”. We learned in class that this means that immigrants are often being arrested and contained in prisons until they are deported back to their home countries. Since the object of the game was to “catch an immigrant”, isn’t it doing the same thing as the Prison Industrial Complex?