Response to "Mediating Hillary Rodham Clinton"

“As Hilary Rodham Clinton’s image shifts from a strong, independent feminist to a good mother and sympathetic wife/victim, her public opinion ratings improve.”

(Parry-Giles, Shawn J. “ Mediating Hillary Rodham Clinton: Television News Practices and Image-Making in the Postmodern Age.” Visual Rhetoric: A Reader in Communication and American Culture. Eds. Lester C Olson, Cara A. Finnegan, and Diane S. Hope. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2008. 375-91.)

I found this statement very surprising. I thought the opposite effect would happen once Bill Clinton’s affair was made public. The fact that Hilary Clinton stood by her husband throughout the entire ordeal is a little bit pathetic. I mean, the man had an affair! Why would stay with someone after that? For being such an important feminist figure and standing up for women’s rights, I feel like she dropped the ball on this one and went back on your words. I understand that her husband was a very important figure, but how can you let someone make a fool out of you in public to the entire United States? People say that by shifting roles to be more of a mother and wife, she helped her ratings when it came time to run for president. I was surprised by this. I expected most women to be appalled to the idea that she accepted to be treated that way and have her husband cheat on her. However, the ratings proved otherwise. After that incident I lost all respect for her. Women are not people that can be taken advantage of and be expected to remain by your side at all times after doing such a dishonest thing. I think that if she was really the independent feminist that she claimed she was, she would have left her husband.

Response to "Television's World of Work in the 90s"

“A primary concern is that television’s lessons and imagery may not reflect the real world. Some viewers, especially young children and those who watch more television, may not distinguish between symbolic and social reality.”

(Signorielli, Nancy, and Susan Kahlenberg. "Television's World of Work in the Nineties." Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 45.1 (2001): 4-22.)

I believe that this statement is entirely true. Nowadays the typical “American” family consists of a father who has a typical nine to five job, a mother who stays at home to clean the house and raise the children and the children go off to school during the day. However television does not portray and represent the families with single mothers, divorced parents, and families of different ethnicities. It wasn’t until the 1990s that we began to see a change in the family representations in television. Children today spend a lot more time watching TV instead of interacting with the outside world and other children. Therefore, the television is their only outside source of how the world is. If the families on television shows are not representational of real life, then they are going to believe something different to be the truth. This can lead to children to have a distorted view of what life really is. The majority of families do not live the typical “American dream” that you see on TV. Every family has their issues and discrepancies. Children who feel like their families do not live up to the standards of a typical family, may feel like something is wrong with their family or that theirs is dysfunctional.