Election Season

As we get further into 2015, we are amazingly once again approaching an event that occurs only once every four years. And no, I don’t mean the Olympics.

We’re closing in on election season, and in this day and age the season lasts longer and longer. While the final election isn’t until November of 2016, candidates are already beginning to turn their attention to the New Hampshire primaries and Iowa caucuses for a strong head start.

This year, current President Barack Obama can’t re-run; his two terms are up, which means that in November of 2016 we’ll have a new leader of the free world. Predictions about the 2016 candidates were popping up as early as 2008, when many assumed that then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton would run in 2016; many still expect this, though she has yet to announce her candidacy.

While Clinton remains the most-likely candidate for the Democratic nomination, her credibility has taken a hint with a recent email scandal from her time as Secretary of State. This leaves the field open for another Obama to come on the scene and sweep the Presidency out from under her once again.

On the Republican side, a number of familiar names in politics are popping up: Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and Ted Cruz.

Cruz was the first to make the official announcement. With more than a year and a half to go until the general, Cruz is leaving himself a lot of room for leeway – and a lot of room for mistakes.

Undoubtedly, Cruz is just the start. The next couple of weeks are going to be full of candidacy announcements. I just want to know if Mitt Romney plans to run again.

Twitter in a Crisis

One of the most useful and rapid forms of communication is social media, and in recent years, that especially means Twitter and Facebook. Other sites, like Instagram and Pinterest, are good to have an account on, as well, to keep informed and engaged with customers. But for getting a message out to the public fast, Facebook and Twitter are the best.

Unfortunately, they are also very dangerous tools, because on social media any little slip-up or mistake can go viral very fast, often before it is even noticed by an organization. Social media is a great tool for managing and averting crises, but it also causes them.

In 2011, the American Red Cross had an issue on Twitter with one of the people behind their Twitter account. This employee accidentally sent a personal tweet through the Red Cross account. This is actually not an uncommon mistake on Twitter, but due to the nature of the tweet and that of the organization, it could have caused a problem. Fortunately, the Red Cross did catch the tweet before it caused too much of a problem, and managed the problem through twitter. In one tweet, the American Red Cross not only acknowledged the mistake and apologized for it, but it also used humor and a good attitude to successfully brush off the problem.

Then, to go above and beyond, the Red Cross re-tweeted an acknowledgement and explanation from the personal account of the employee who published the mistake.

This thorough and quick response left followers feeling like they were in the loop, and knew exactly what had happened with the incident. In a mini-crisis like this, most people are understanding; its a simple mistake, and anyone could have done it, therefore no one holds it against the Red Cross.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: The Possible First Female President

The next Presidential election is not until November of 2016. That’s almost two years away, but the American public is eager to look ahead. Already, potential candidates for the Presidential Election are making their announcements, feeling out voters, and raising funds to campaign. New Hampshire and Iowa are getting ready for the inevitable swarm of campaigning that comes in the months before the primaries.

In the Republican Party, there are a number of names being thrown around: Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Rick Perry… but in the Democratic Party, all eyes are on one woman: Former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Hillary Rodham was born on October 26, 1947. She was born in raised in Illinois, just outside of Chicago, in a conservative family. At age thirteen, while volunteering to help canvas Chicago’s South Side, Hillary Rodham found evidence of electoral fraud against Republican candidate Richard Nixon.

Rodham attended Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, as a political science major, where she was very active politically. Initially a member of the Wellesley Young Republicans, she later changed her views regarding the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam War. She graduated in 1969, with a Bachelor of Arts degree with departmental honors in political science, and became the first student in Wellesley College history to deliver the commencement address.

Following her graduation, Rodham went to Yale Law School, where she continued to be active politically and where she met fellow law student Bill Clinton. After a brief time in Washington, D.C., during which she served on the impeachment inquiry staff advising on the Watergate scandal, Rodham followed Clinton to Arkansas, where they were married in 1975. Rodham continued to work as a lawyer.

Bill Clinton became the Governor of Arkansas in 1979, and a year later the Clintons had a daughter, Chelsea. Bill Clinton lost the governorship in 1980, but won it back in 1982. While First Lady of Arkansas, Mrs. Clinton continued to practice law, and briefly considered running for Governor of Arkansas herself.

In 1992, Clinton chose not to run for re-election in Arkansas but instead ran for the Presidency. He was supported by Hillary, and told the public that they were getting “two for the price of one” by electing him. When he won the election, Hillary took a prominent role as First Lady, especially pushing health care as her main initiative.

In 2000, Hillary Clinton was urged to run for the now vacant New York Senate seat. She was a popular candidate, going on “listening tours” of each county, and defeated Republican Rick Lazio to win the seat. As a Senator, she took a prominent role, advocating for the victims and heroes of 9/11, voting in favor of the Iraq War, and against the Bush tax cuts. Voters approved of her record, because she was re-elected in 2006.

In 2008, Hillary was the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency. All eyes were on her, and she was expected to win. It was one of the closest nominations in history, but in the end, Illinois Senator Barack Obama came up and took the front-running spot, winning the nomination and then the Presidency. In his first term, Hillary Clinton served as President Obama’s Secretary of State.

Now, going into the 2016 Presidential Election, all eyes are on Hillary again for the Democratic nomination. Like in 2008, she’s the front-runner long before the race begins. If no “Barack Obama” comes up and steals the election from her fingertips, we might have another Clinton in the White House.

Desensitization of America

One of the sad things about current events is that not everything is important to the public. Its all dependent on the media, and what they decide is important or interesting, or what will get their news shows the highest ratings. That’s how non-stories like “Deflate-gate” and Ebola get so much time on the air, when real stories, real events in the world, are hardly even shown.

Who knows anything about the high school shooting near Seattle in October of 2014 that was given only a few hours of coverage on the national news? And who remembers, or cares, pausing to think about it for more than a few minutes?

Comparing this to the horror that gripped the country in 1999 after the Columbine shooting, it is easy to see that America has become desensitized to violence. This is sad, but it is also somewhat understandable. In schools around the country – from elementary schools to universities, there have been many deadly shootings since Columbine. And sometimes, like with the Sandy Hook massacre of first graders, the horror is so great it transcends that desensitization and once again grips us with horror, but not often enough. Killings have become to common.

Current events is not an optimistic thing. Most of the time it is sad. It includes all the terrorist attacks on US soil since 9/11. But it also includes those abroad that we don’t pay attention to. Talking to my classmates, I’ve realized that many people don’t know that there were two recent major terror attacks in Europe, both on free speech: the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and this past week’s attacks in Copenhagen.

America is watching these attacks in detached speculation. What is so shocking to them has become commonplace here, and the reactions to the events make this contrast more clear. We can only hope that these attacks are not the Columbine or 9/11 of Europe – the attacks that spark the beginning of a long series that only desensitizes the public.

A message to the media outlets: if you tell us, we will care. If you make these attacks and shootings news, people will respond to them. Stop going on about pointless events that don’t matter. It may be ugly, but we need to know, and we need to care.

YouTube

The most successful YouTube channels are the ones that everyone knows.

A lot goes into what people watch on YouTube, but for the most part, videos should be short, entertaining, and to the point.

One of the best examples of a channel that does this well is the Jimmy Kimmel Live channel.

Jimmy Kimmel isn’t exactly what I would call educational news; but he keeps up with things, especially in the entertainment industry, and makes a name for himself as a comedian.

But everyone has watched the videos of celebrities reading “mean tweets“. Everyone has seen the hilarious mockery of “Deflategate” Jimmy Kimmel’s show issued out with its “Locker Room Guy” video.

And the Halloween Candy videos sent in by viewers are absolutely hilarious. They’re one of the best examples of interaction with other people on YouTube, and are posted right at the front of the Jimmy Kimmel homepage.

Another strength of the channel is the uniformity of it. Every video has a “Jimmy Kimmel Live” label in the corner of the stillframe, which makes it easy to identify the official videos posted. Those videos also start off with the same screen, which has the label, and the same few notes of music. At the end, each video features Jimmy Kimmel talking, and urging watchers to subscribe.

All of these things – interactions with other users, amusing videos, and a trademark for its videos, make the Jimmy Kimmel YouTube channels a model example.

Magazines

If politics and current events are something you’re interested in, I would recommend Time magazine.

But here’s the twist: I don’t recommend the U.S. version.

For those who don’t know, Time is an international magazine that keeps readers informed with events going on in the world. It’s very informative, and most of its readers are highly educated adults with at least some interest in politics. They’re known for keeping up with a variety of issues: sports and pop culture are seen more often in Time than one would expect, and the magazine does its best to keep up with all the recent movements – gay rights, trans rights, whatever. If its even remotely an issue, then its probably been in time magazine.

Even in the U.S. version.

Unfortunately, the magazine has identified one major difference between readers in the U.S.  and those in other places around the world: people in the U.S. don’t really care about anything going on outside their own sphere.

Readers in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific who fit into Time’s demographic are interested in things going on outside their own country. Americans, it seems, are not.

The cover stories on the U.S. issues of Time are different from those in the rest of the world. The reason?

Because Americans don’t care about what’s going on in the rest of the world. They would rather read an editorial about football or the state of the schools in their country than the aftermath of the destruction in Haiti or the despair in Pakistan.  And if you ask me, that’s just sad.

I get why they do it. Americans don’t want to read about international events, and those covers won’t sell here like they do abroad. So Time changes the cover to create a different, more positive, image and sell more copies. I blame our culture and ignorance.

If you want to know what’s going on in the world, Time is a great magazine to keep yourself informed. As long as you don’t get the domestic version.

Welcome!

Hi, and welcome to my blog! My name is Kim Flatley.

Kim’s photo

I’m a sophomore at Syracuse University. I’m a dual student in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Newhouse School of Public Communications, where I am majoring in international relations and public relations. I was born in Dedham, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, and lived there until I was fourteen, when I moved to Westwood, Massachusetts, where I attended the local public high school.

When I’m not in school, I live with my parents, Tom and Joanne Flatley, my older sister, Lauren, and my little brother, Brendan.

The theme for my blog is politics and current events. I know it sounds boring, but it is something I’ve always been interested in. I got the idea for this theme when I was talking to a friend – I shall give no names – and realized that not only did this person think Ebola was a serious problem in the United States, and not know what the state of the union address was, he also was only vaguely aware of the fact that ISIS had something to do with the Middle East.

This was a pretty good indication to me that I was more in tune with politics and current events than most kids my age, which shouldn’t have been a surprise considering my major. These things are important to me, and I’m interested in sharing them, so I figured it make sense for a blog topic.

I’m really looking forward to writing this blog, which will be an entirely new experience for me, since I’ve never blogged before at all. So work with me, and keep reading my posts!

Kim