Introduction rough draft for Research Paper

There is a plague on the earth today. It is not locusts, or fire from heaven; the rivers are not turning to blood, but it is a plague nonetheless. It affects young adults of every religious denomination and sect, young men and young women who are just beginning to grow into their newfound independence that comes with officially becoming an adult, perhaps leaving for college, perhaps working, or perhaps just in that difficult in-between stage before they feel their life really starts. No one knows exactly what the repercussions of this plague will be if it is allowed to continue, but how do we stop this plague of Godlessness that is sweeping away the youth of the nation? Young adults are falling away from religion at an unprecedented rate; (insert statistic + citation here) of (ages from study) say that they do not go to a religious services regularly (or whatever the study I can find says) Young adults of every religion are increasingly choosing to stay away from the traditional worship setting, this is a fact, but it raises two essential questions. The first: Why? The second: What is to be done? In order to answer these, other questions must find their answers as well, such as what are the young adults being exposed to that would draw them away from religion, or what about religion would push them away? Perhaps one answer to these questions will be revealed by looking at the ubiquity of modern technology, namely the internet and the rise of social media. The internet allows a vast amount of the world’s knowledge to be accessed from almost anywhere at any time, not only through computers, but also through the tablets and smart phones that many young adults carry around with them at all times. It provides a chance for them and others to share their opinions anonymously, and be exposed to other people’s opinions, which are also often shared anonymously. The opinions shared on the internet about religion are not always positive, in fact, in light of religious issues such as the struggle of Gay rights, and the war on the terrorist Islamic extremists, religion is too often painted with a negative brush.  Numbers of young adults attending church services are dwindling in part because they are becoming disillusioned with religion because online media portrays religion as backwards, militant, and bigoted. 

Annotated Bibliography

*so, this is totally the only thing I forgot to print out today, so hopefully I'll be able to go print it fast after class, but if not... here it is!!!

Works Cited

Anonymous. ReligiON, ReligiOFF. weknowmemes.com. We Know Memes. 2012. Internet Meme (picture).

This source is a popular internet meme, found on several source websites, of which the cited site is only one example. Memes are pictures with captions that are used to make a statement on current issues, similar to a political cartoon. They are often published anonymously on internet forums and express the opinion of those that create them, and those that share them. This particular meme portrays the opinion that religion is medieval is backwards.  I think that this will strenghtn my argument because it shows a common portrayal of religion in a forum that many young adults are familiar with.

Douthat, Ross. "Divided by God." The New York Times 7 April 2012. Opinion Editorial.

This is an opinion editorial, so it expresses the opinion of one person regarding religion in America; it was published by the New York Times, which is a widely read magazine all over the united states. It describes how the United States has become so religiously diverse, and increasingly secular, to where we are largely practicing a hybrid of religion and secularism, become what Douthat calls "a nation of heretics" because we can never agree with one another on anything involved with religion. The article also talks about times when churches were strong and had a wide base of support, namely the civil rights era. I am hoping that I can use this article to show that the US is becoming more secular, which contributes to the negative portrayal of religion on the internet, and I hope that by pointing to times when churches had stronger membership, I will be able to give good suggestions to the interdenominational faith council.

Gonzalez, Michelle A. "Religion and the US Presidency: Politics, the Media, and Religious Identity." Political Theology (2012). Online.

This article deals with how religion was portrayed in the 2012 presidential election which showed how religiously diverse the United States had become. It analyzes the increasingly interconnected nature of religion and politics and how religion is necessary to politics; I hope that this will help me to see and analyze how Americans feel about religion.

Hosseini, S. H. "Religion and Media, Religious Media, or Media Religion: Theoretical Studies." Journal of Media & Religion (2008). Article.

This is a scholarly source. it's a research paper about the relationship between Religion and the Media, analyzing a spectrum of ideas that ranges from the Media being completely controlled by religion and religious authorities, to the idea that the media is completely independent of, and some might go so far as to say unbiased by, Religion. This has a lot of other good sources that it can point me to, but it doesn't really have any original ideas. I'm hoping that it will help me to articulate what I think the current relationship is between religion and media, giving me a good foundation and springboard for the rest of my argument.

Rhode, Harold. Most Intolerant Religion. 29 March 2013. Article. 6 November 2014.

This is a blog post on an expressly anti-Muslim website, explaining how and why the Islamic religion and the people who practice it are backwards and poor. It makes the point that they as a society are unable to forget perceived past wrongs. I want to make the point that religion is perceived as backwards, but I don't know if this is the best source, simply because it has such an explicit bias.

Research Homework 1

Amy McLean

Research Homework 1

What is a question you want to answer with your research? What is the history behind this topic? Who are the authorities/stakeholders involved in this topic? What sources seem most useful to you so far, and why?

The question that I want to answer with my research is why young adults are falling away from religion. There are many different ways that I could take this, many different reasons why people who are in their early twenties are no longer going to church. The leaders tend to be old and out of touch. religious people in the media are sometimes portrayed as superstitious or bigoted, most often bigoted, especially with the gay rights issues: young people see the church as prejudiced and controlling. Young adults are becoming disillusioned with the concept of God and organized religion. if there's a god, they see him as loving and accepting of all people and differences, god is no longer seen as someone who expects a certain standard of moral living, besides simply accepting and loving everyone as he does. There is also that science is attacking the validity of religion by saying that everything needs to be proved. I was going to work on the science versus religion, but now thinking about it, I am going to deal with how religion and spirituality are portrayed in the media, both in news sources and in social media. How does the media portray religion? What is this doing to young people’s views of religion? How can we reverse or combat this?

The history behind this topic is the evolution of the media, with the increase of newspapers, radio, television, and especially the development of the internet. There is also the current issues of gay rights, and religious extremism and terrorism in the middle east, which has brought religion out of the private life and into public scrutiny. There is also the literal history of churches being prejudiced and close minded in the past about things that are now generally accepted such as science (heliocentrism), and divorce; it is not a far leap to believe that the churches are “wrong” again to hold back what is seen as progress today. With a history of religious violence, churches can be cast as having made mistakes and being selfish and corrupt.

The authorities on this topic. well, I can easily find authoritative and representative sources in the news about how the religion is portrayed in the media. I can probably find some studies about this, which will be helpful and authoritative. Other authorities on this topic will be the major media distributors, like New York Times, for news, or Buzzfeed for social media. the media sources that are popular that large numbers of young adults visit, could be considered an authority on what young adults believe or at least what they are being exposed to.

The sources that seem most useful to me right now are the primary sources because they accurately depict how religion is being portrayed in the media. Another kind of source material that I am finding useful are articles and journals that track the media and it’s effects. I think that online comment sections may very well be extremely useful in gaging how the young adult demographic responds to the way that religion is portrayed in the media. Hopefully, what young adults comment on these articles will reflect whether this age group agrees with what the media says or disagrees with it.

Sources:

Gonzalez, Michelle A., “Religion and the US Presidency: Politics, the Media, and Religious      Identity” Equinox Publishing, 2012

Hosseini, S. H. “Religion and Media, Religious Media, or Media Religion: Theoretical Studies” Journal of Media and Religion,Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, 2012

Paulson, Michael; Santos, Fernanda, “Religious right in Arizona Cheers Bill Allowing Businesses to Refuse to Serve Gays” New York Times, 2014

Paulson, Michael, “Megachurch Pastor signals shift in tone on Gay Marriage” New York Times 2014

Di Stefano, Mike, “Hillsong Megachurch Denies Supporting Marriage Equality” Buzzfeed.com, 2014

Libraryfest!

So Library days.
Topic
Issue/Problem  Solution
Audience.
we are the bridge between youth and old guys sitting on the council.

Narrowing Topics:
reasons (instant gratification vs. the faith building process)
ask questions
take piece by piece, ask yourself how you can be more specific; what do I really mean when I say this?
Ex. "youth" = "16-22"
answers to questions
specify general words like "faith" especially if different churches define faith differently.

the secularization (reliance upon science, pushing prefrences between good choices, technology, separation of church and state, logical education, still influenced by enlightenment) of society (american society, schools, government, news) is deminishing the validity of religion. (youth learning to distrust things that cannot be proved, need for tangible evidence and data. philosophy that religion is used to keep people down, give people power and money)

Growing agnostic class
distrust of organized religion
spiritual but not religious.

Interlibrary loan, Get it at BYU

• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-mcswain/why-nobody-wants-to-go-to_b_4086016.html
• http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2013/october/state-of-american-church.html
• http://www.churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-articles/164787-thom-rainer-13-issues-churches-2013.html

BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE: A NO MAN'S LAND, OR "INTERDIGITATIONS"?

• Delivered in Kearney, Neb., Sept. 20, 2012
• "He Blinded Me With Science": Science Chauvinism in the Study of Religion.

Manipulation...bwahahahaha!!!

Style Academy #4
Manipulating Parts
I expect that this will show me how to use syntax and sentence order to make my sentences more powerful and impactful. I'm hoping to learn how to add more variety to my writing and make it more interesting to read.i know that word order and sentence order is powerful, but i'm interested to see how they play with it; you really can't play with syntax and word order too much while writing prose or else sound like Yoda you will, which is obviously not the most professional way to come across, especially in an academic paper.
So, the video teaches that every sentence is made up of two major elements: main ideas and modifiers. The position of the modifiers, as openers, closers, or interrupters, can determine their importance to your reader; for example putting a modifier in the closer position will cause it to stay in the reader's mind because it's the last thing they heard in the sentence, but the interrupter, put in the middle of the main idea, is seen as subordinate or simply adding fun extras to the main idea of the sentence.  a modifier placed in the interrupter position does have merit, however, in that it makes our writing sound more conversational and is effective in referencing things that were brought up earlier in the piece. you can make a modifier a main idea, or a main idea a modifier, depending on what effect you want to have. you can also have multiple modifiers and main ideas in the sentence and create patterns with them.
It's all about how the modifiers effect the main idea of the sentence and how important that modifier is to the point that you want your audience to believe, and what you want the audience to take away.

Exercise

Main: Snowden self-indulgently short circuited the democratic structures of accountability.
Modifier: he was putting his own preferences above everything else.

• Opener:
• Putting his own preferences above everything else, Snowden self-indulgently short circuited the democratic structures of accountability.
• Interrupter:
• Snowden, putting his own preferences above everything else, self-indulgently short circuited the democratic structures of accountability.
• Closer:
• Snowden self-indulgently short circuited the democratic structures of accountability, putting his own preferences above everything else,

Reflection

So the Rhetorical Analysis was an interesting paper to write. I was expecting something horribly dry, which it is more boring than the opinion editorial was, which is understandable because they are completely different genres with completely different purposes. The purpose of the opinion editorial was mainly to persuade, and in order to do that effectively I had to entertain my audience, and I also had a lot more freedom of form than I felt like I had in the Rhetorical Analysis. The purpose of the opinion editorial has an element of persuasion, but mostly it is analysis: what did the author do in his attempt to persuade his audience, was it effective, and why? I was not necessarily trying to entertain my audience, but rather give them an accurate analysis of this piece of rhetoric. Besides a difference if goals, these two genres have very different audiences. The difference between the two styles really highlights how important the audience is to writing. The audience wants different things depending on what they are reading. If you try to simply inform a reader during an opinion editorial, they will stop reading it, but if you try too hard to entertain a reader reading a rhetorical analysis, the reader will stop reading because you are aren’t giving them the information they asked for. It was somewhat of a challenge to write these two papers back to back, but I also learned a lot from it.

                Some challenges that I had with the rhetorical analysis and some things I learned from it was that I needed to use the article a lot more than I thought I did. In beginning writing, “summary” is almost like a dirty word. You turn in a book report and get a “C” because it was just “summary.” So, going into this, I assumed that I wasn’t really allowed to summarize at all, which wasn’t true. It’s a hard balance to achieve between summary and analysis. Another way that I could have more effectively used to article to support my analysis of it was using quotations more extensively. Again I was nervous to use quotations, because, like summary, they can just be used as space filler; however, I learned that having quotations really strengthens and contextualizes your argument, making your analysis more effective. Another tool that makes your analysis more effective and allows you to analyze effectively is asking yourself “why” about everything the author does. “Why does he use a question here?” “Why is he drawing this comparison?” Thinking about why the author was doing what he was doing, and why it affects the audience in the way that it does is really at the heart of analysis.

                This was a challenging paper to write, but I also learned a lot about how to analyze and how to support an analysis using the article, and the importance of genres and writing to the correct audience. 

Uneasy Celebration: American Justice and Divine Mercy

Amy McLean

Kaleigh Spooner

WRTG 150

October 24, 2014

Uneasy Celebration: American Justice and Divine Mercy

I grew up in America during the war on terror. I was only 6 years old in 2001 when the twin towers were hit and our country suddenly became immersed in a war on terror, and America was changed forever.  I grew up listening to concerns about Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden on the news and around the dinner table. I remember when Saddam Hussein’s regime was overthrown and he was killed, and everyone said that Osama bin Laden was even worse, and that if we could get rid of bin Laden, we would win the war on terror. That was not necessarily true, but that was the public consciousness. When I learned that bin Laden was dead, I saw the news footage of thousands of people on the streets of New York, standing on each other’s shoulders, waving American flags and celebrating bin Laden’s death. I remember thinking that it was a little wrong, because I remember how outraged people were when rumors went around after 9/11 that people in Arab nations were celebrating the attack and death of Americans. The roles were now reversed.  I thought that maybe we weren’t sending the right message to the world by being so excited that someone had died. Because of this, I was hesitant to celebrate the Death of Osama bin Laden, even though I knew that he was an evil man.

Like me, Patrick Clark also has a moral hesitation to celebrating at bin Laden’s death, and he, in his blog post American Justice and Divine Mercy: Thoughts on Osama Bin Laden’s Death, successfully persuades his readers, predominantly Catholics like himself, to feel the same. He does this by using rhetorical questions, comparisons, and strong appeals to authority.

Clark’s essay consists largely of rhetorical questions, starting with the very first sentence, “First, should we consider it anything more than a blind coincidence that this momentous attack was carried out on Divine Mercy Sunday?” drawing his readers attention to the coincidence, and asking them to evaluate its significance . He proceeds to ask his readers many questions throughout the essay, each bringing up new ideas and parallels that Clark’s readers probably haven’t thought about.  So this begs the question: why phrase these new ideas as questions? Why not simply state them as facts or thoughts or beliefs of the author, since he seems to think of them that way? By phrasing these ideas as questions, Clark accomplishes two distinct purposes. First, Clark knows that his ideas may be new to his reader, so by presenting an idea as a question, he implies that the reader has the option to accept or reject it, while at the same time implying that he, the author, whom the reader trusts, has already accepted this idea, which is incentive for the reader to accept it. For example, “is it appropriate for Christians to feel a little uneasy with the outpouring of ‘solidarity’ among the American citizenry in the wake of bin Laden’s death?” Clark uses this question to make his readers believe that Christians should be uncomfortable with the solidarity, because, although a reader could answer “yes, that is entirely appropriate,” the implied answer is “no,” and a reader will feel uncomfortable if they do not agree with that, especially if they have agreed with the implied answers to any of the other questions Clark poses.  Second, questions, especially rhetorical ones, beg to be answered. By asking the reader a question, Clark is asking them to actually think about what he is telling them, rather than accepting or rejecting them at face value. These questions encourage readers to think and come up with their own opinions about America’s reaction to bin Laden’s death.  Posing the question “what are we to make of this jubilation?” requires an answer, and immediately the reader’s brain starts working to provide that. This is one of Clark’s main purposes: to get his readers to think about, and hopefully accept, his conclusions and ideas. Clark also uses these questions as an appeal to logos, because as his readers ask themselves these questions, they realize that that they have opinions that they have not thought deeply about, which are not logical, and thinking about the issue is the logical conclusion. This all plays into the genre of religious rhetoric that Clark is writing in. Religious rhetoric is characterized by moral arguments, which Clark’s clearly is, and often includes rhetorical questions with the intent of encouraging the audience to think more deeply about the message.     

Another rhetorical device Clark uses to convince his readers that the celebration at bin Laden’s death is immoral and unchristian is comparison. Clark draws comparisons between bin Laden’s death and Christ’s death.  “Can we reasonably and in good conscience associate the bullet-hole in bin Laden’s head with the hole in Jesus’ pierced side, from which divine justice and mercy poured out upon the whole human race?”  These parallels that Clark draws are exaggerated, suggesting that by celebrating bin Laden’s death, Americans are either downplaying Christ’s death, or exalting bin Laden to a role of savior, neither of which is the intent of the celebrators, but by making these comparisons, however exaggerated, Clark effectively villainize the celebrators as opponents of Christ. Therefore, Clark implies, any true follower of Christ, who opposes comparing the Lord to a mass murderer, should agree with Clark’s idea that the celebrations at bin Laden’s execution are wrong. This plays to the genre of the piece in that pieces of religious rhetoric normally glorify and honor the deity of the religion, here Christ. Clark surprises his readers by almost seeming to break with the form and characteristics that they were expecting in his essay. This accomplishes the desire of gaining the reader’s attention and sympathy. Attention because it is outside of the form that was expected and sympathy because Clark implies that he is not making the comparisons of Christ to amoral figures, but rather those celebrating are the ones that are profaning Him. Clark’s audience are then more likely to unite with him ideologically because they do not want to be an enemy to Christ, which is how Clark, through these exaggerated comparisons, seems to characterize those celebrating at bin Laden’s death.  The religious audience will also feel rage when they see their deity unceremoniously compared to a mass murderer. Clark plays off of this anger by directing it at those who are celebrating at bin Laden’s death. This shows how these comparisons are overwhelming appeals to pathos, playing off of the moral feeling and gut reactions of the readers when they see something sacred seeming to be held in such irreverence by those who celebrate bin Laden’s death.

Patrick Clark strengthens and backs up his highly moral, and guilt-based, argument with strong appeals to authority, among them the Bible, St. Faustina (who instituted the Catholic holiday of Divine Mercy Sunday, the day that this attack was coincidentally carried out), and Pope John Paul II (who was beautified, meaning made a saint, on the very same day that bin Laden was killed). By choosing these authorities to reference and quote, Clark uses sources that his audience is familiar with, and that are extremely kairotic, since bin Laden was killed on the Divine Mercy Sunday set apart for the beatification of Pope John Paul II. Clark’s audience is already thinking about these people, and already respects them, so by quoting them, he appeals to something comfortable and familiar, and audiences are more likely to accept something that they see as comfortable and familiar, rather than completely new information. Another purpose of Clark’s appeals to authority is that it gives his argument deeper import. If he, a Catholic blogger, says something, there is no real reason to believe it, but if the pope says it, then believing it is essential to eternal salvation. By quoting these authorities, Clark is able to convince his audience that there are important spiritual reasons to believe his ideas. The last purpose of Clark’s appeals to authority is that these people were well respected, and are held up as saints and examples in Catholic culture and doctrine. As such, Catholics trying to become better look to them, their beliefs and their lives as examples and try to emulate them. By quoting them, Clark implies that if Faustina and John Paul II were still around, they would agree with him and support his argument, and encourages his Catholic audience to follow the example of these venerated saints and agree with him as well.

In conclusion, Clark successfully uses rhetorical questions to make his audience think about the moral issues attached to celebrating bin Laden’s death , comparisons to evoke strong emotional responses, and appeals to authority to convince his readers that there should be some sort of moral and religious objection to celebrating bin Laden’s death. 

Original Blog for Justice and Mercy

So I just found the original article "American Justice and Divine Mercy" by Patrick Clark ( http://catholicmoraltheology.com/justice-mercy-and-solidarity/ )that I am writing on. It's really interesting to see what other people thought about the celebration at bin Laden's Death. The blog also linked to other forums ( http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?p=7825229 ) That show that Clark was not the only one to draw the parallels he did.

Thesis Proposal

                In Patrick Clark’s article American Justice and Divine Mercy he effectively accomplishes his goal to persuade his readers, predominantly Catholics like himself, that there should be some moral hesitation to celebrating at Osama bin Laden’s death.  Some of the major tactics that Clark uses are rhetorical questions, parrelellism, and repititon, and appeals to athority.

                This essay is full of rhetorical questions. One of Clark’s main purposes is to get his audience to deeply think about this issue, so the questions are extreamly effective. These questions also serve to highlight disparities between what the readers believe about Christ and his death, vs. what they believe about Osama bin Laden and his death. Clark uses it as an appeal to logos, revealing the logical fallacies in his reader’s own thinking, and also as ethos, defining the morality that he believes his audience should be living by.

                There is a lot of grammatical parallelism as well. This is effective because it highlights the comparisons that Clark is making. It is an appeal to logos, again serving to highlight the fallacies in his readers thinking, and to Pathos, because it makes us feel guilty and uncomfortable that we are feeling and thinking this way.

                The repetition in the essay highlights the important points and ideas; several words are repeated in almost every paragraph: mercy, justice, jubilation, solidarity, Divine Mercy Sunday. This is also an appeal to Pathos, because these are all words with a strong emotion attached to them, and sometimes different emotions in religious vs. political contexts and repeating them in both contexts brings all those emotions into the mix.

                There is also overstatement (in comparing bin Laden’s wounds to Christ’s- that’s a little extreme), strong appeals to authority, allusion to bible and saintly sources, and very religious diction.

God Bless America! Appeals to Ethos, Pathos, and Logos in Romney's speech

Purpose: To persuade listeners that Romney’s Mormon faith will not make him a bad president

Romney uses ethos very effectively in his speech considering that one of the main purposes of the speech is to establish his ethos: his credibility or his ability to govern despite him being a minority faith. Another way that he uses ethos is that he cites the example of John F Kennedy, and says that he, Romney, is just like him: an American running for president, not a religion running for president. What this does is it draws a parallel between him and a beloved president who was a religion that was not necessarily liked in America’s protestant culture, so if Kennedy could be a good president, so can Romney. One other appeal he made to Ethos was that he was raised on American/Christian values, which shows that he is a moral person and not different from other religious people in America.

Some appeals that Romney made to pathos include his statement that liberty is a gift from God and Americans have sacrificed more for liberty than any other nation, and that hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost to preserve freedom. What this does is that it evokes a sense of mourning for those America has lost, while at the same time uniting them in pride and patriotism. Another, very effective thing that Romney does is that he ends his speech with “God Bless America” which, as well as having religion as a closing comment, is a typical way for presidents to end speeches and it evokes a huge sense of unity and patriotism.  

Logos is the backbone of the argument, so many of the other appeals I’ve mentioned could also fall here under logos. Another one I noticed was that Romney makes the point that even though the specific beliefs of all the diverse creeds are different, there is still a common sense of morality that unites the people, the good old American values that are shared by every religion. Also, throughout the speech he makes appeals to different authorities mainly by quoting past presidents such as John Adams and Abraham Lincoln. This reminds listeners that our government has always been founded on faith, so Romney is really not that different after all.

Ethos in Mommy Blogger

     One thing that Matchar does to appeal to Ethos, as it pertains to her credibility, is that she mentions the comment thread that she saw on one of the blogs that reveals that she is not the only “closet non-Mormon reader of Mormon mommy blogs.” What this does for her ethos is show that her experience is more the norm than the exception. This makes her audience realize that what she is saying is applicable to a more general audience, to them.

     She also says that she reads more than one of these blogs. This helps establish her credibility because it shows that she is extremely familiar with her subject. She knows a good representative sample of these blogs, which makes her a good judge.

     Another thing Matchar does is add a rebuttal, bringing up the point that maybe this is just a front and these women’s lives really aren’t as happy as they make it seem on their blogs. What this shows her audience that she has thought about this issue from all perspectives and is a critical, unbiased judge of the situation. 

Reflection on Opinion Editorial

                When I heard that we were writing an opinion editorial, my first thought was that this was going to be really easy: a paragraph or two, just basically state my biased opinions, no research involved and be done! Then I read the sample editorials. Yeah, I realized I was thinking a Dear Abbey column, not an editorial.  This was going to be basically like a standard high school five paragraph essay, which was kind of depressing, because I always had felt so smothered by that form, it just felt like I was filling in the blanks. Then I started writing and reading others and I realized that I had been wrong yet again. In reality, the opinion editorial assignment was halfway between my two mistaken ideas; it was about the length of a standard five paragraph essay, but it was personal, more like a Dear Abbey column. It was really  fun and somewhat liberating to write in first person, using personal examples and talking directly to the audience; I felt like more of me, more of who I am, came out on the paper compared to my more academic style of work, where only my knowledge, or worse only my professor, ends up. I am excited to try to take the more personal aspect (putting more of me on paper) and transferring it to a more academic style.

                Part of the process that I really enjoyed was the freewriting and outlining and it was really fun to watch how my ideas changed throughout the process of writing, from my initial free write to my final draft. I wrote down all these ideas in my free write and outline that had something to do with my basic subject, and then it was basically like doing a puzzle, fitting all of my ideas into an essay that entertained and educated. It was a lot easier than starting from scratch on the first draft.

So, to sum up, the things I really liked about the Op Ed was that I outlined extensively and I was able to be a lot more personal in my writing.  

Final Draft

Amy McLean

Kaleigh Spooner

WRTG 150

September 29, 2014

The Flood of Immorality in the Media

            I am a student, and like all the other students out there, I have watched my fair share of Netflix while procrastinating homework. The struggle is familiar to all of us: you have finished the last season…what do you do now? Aimlessly browsing can lead to you finding your favorite show in the whole world, but most of the time its only fruits are boredom and frustration. So you start looking up the shows that are popular, you know the ones, The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, or Game of Thrones. It only takes a few seconds before you are accosted with images that stick in your head long after the episode is over. I’m talking about all the violence and sex that is portrayed in today’s movies and TV shows. Writers and producers today stuff the media to the brim with the “sensational,” crossing lines of traditional values that should not be crossed. This has been coming on since popular media was created; writers wanted to do something different, to make their name in the world, so they would go slightly beyond what society at large taught, blurring the hard lines of morality and trespassing into the gray area. Today it has gone beyond the grey area. The lines are no longer simply blurred; they are gone, erased for all time by the revenue that applying to these base instincts brings in. The media has gone too far in its willingness to portray things that were entirely taboo subjects fifty shades of gray ago. We need morality in the media. We as a society need to reaffirm the limits that once existed on what could and could not be shown on screen, and we as individuals need to reaffirm our limits of what we are willing to watch.

            First of all, what is morality? Websters dictionary defines it as beliefs about what is right behavior and what is wrong behavior; or the degree to which something is right and good. Some might argue that the first definition is all that morality is: a belief. It is nothing but an individual standard and that there is no overarching code of right or wrong that goes beyond one person’s opinion: morality is nothing but an opinion held by a person. George Washington said that “Religion and morality are the essential pillars of civil society.” If people cannot agree on what is right and wrong, crime rates increase and the society becomes less stable. When a society has a clear set of morals, it is more stable and produces a better quality of living for everyone involved.

Our society used to be more united on our morals; they are still reflected in our laws, such as that against murder.  But if we believe that killing is wrong, which is one of the few standards that it seems we can all still agree on, then why do we get such enjoyment out of watching people die? I cannot answer that question and I will not try to, but it is an observable fact that our society is now unable to agree on what is right and wrong, so, for the sake of the argument, I’m going to appeal to religion, which has traditionally been the foundation for common morality. It is recorded in the Bible that God gave ten unchangeable commandments to the children of Israel, two of which were, “thou shalt not kill” and “thou shalt not commit adultery.” In the meridian of time, Christ further emphasized and expanded these commandments to say that you should not be angry or lustful.  When producers choose to show gory violence, viewers are witnessing glorified murder, and is there any question that when TV shows use sex and nudity to attract viewers they are marketing to pure lust?

When you stop to think about it, what these shows appeal to is our basic animal instincts. Animals are driven by instinct to reproduce and hunt and eat. We as humans have been blessed with a higher intellect and should live more altruisticly, not being held captive to our natural instincts. “for the natural man is an enemy to God” if we ever hope to live in Joy as He does, we cannot be constantly catering to our basest instincts. But movies and TV are now constantly relying on these basic animal instincts to obtain viewers. Shows both use sex and violence as tools to obtain viewers, and unfortunately, yes, it works in many cases. However, this use of sensationalism has the potential to destroy creativity in the media. As long as a show has enough “excitement,” often in the form of sex and violence, writers don’t need to have a creative plot or three dimensional characters to keep viewers interested for the whole film or series. We can see this laziness of Hollywood creeping in in different respects as well: there always seems to be nothing but sequels and reboots on the menu of new releases. The media is getting lazy, substituting explosions for plot and love scenes for complex characters. Allowing writing and producers to use sex and violence to get viewers does not encourage writers to reach their artistic potential, instead it encourages them to exert the least amount of effort possible in their writing and creative process.

 I believe that we as a society have grown tired of the laziness that Hollywood is increasingly falling prey to. We hunger for works that entertain without offending, that feed our minds instead of just our carnal instincts. A few movies come to mind that, in the past few years, have had huge commercial and popular success in all age demographics, despite, or perhaps because of, that fact that they were squeaky clean: free of gory violence and overt sexual elements. Frozen, although originally geared toward children, was a success among adults, even those who do not have children to go watch it with. The Lego Movie, a financially successful and popular film, was marketed to young adults as well, even though young adults are the demographic that most of the immoral media we have been discussing is written for. There are also examples of films like The Princess Bride that have remained popular through the chaotic shifting of virtues that characterizes the time that we live in. The popularity of these movies and other clean media sources shows that society at least enjoys, if not craves, cleaner sources of entertainment.        

            In conclusion, the media has crossed lines of what should be shown in terms of sex and violence. These activities are immoral according to God’s laws and we should not be watching them depicted in increasingly vivid ways. I don’t know if we can turn back the tide of increasing immorality in the media, but we can chose not to let it drown us. Find the moral high ground. Rise above the floodwaters. And when the flood is gone, we will remain

GASCAP for OP ED

Here’s a GASCAP for my OpEd, it was actually really helpful to write it out and spend some time thinking about arguments that I could use.

G- generalization:

                I couldn’t really come up with a lot on this one, I could say that because I take offense to the moral degradation of today’s media, everyone does, but that’s not necessarily true, especially after reading forums discussing the subject.

A-Analogy:

This one was easier. I think. If I’m doing it right.

-genuinely creative works that use sex and violence and have high viewers, non-creative works use those devices to try to attract an audience.

-high acceptance rates of movies like frozen which, because they were originally geared toward a younger audience, are free from the objectionable material, but they have gained a large adult and young adult following as well, which could show that our society craves some of this simpler, cleaner entertainment.

-Princess bride. Uses some violence, but it’s not the gory violence in most Movies and TV shows today. It doesn’t really have a lot of dirty jokes, and it is still viewed today for entertainment, not just as a “classic”

S- Sign:

                If we allow violence and sex in the media, we as viewers will become desensitized to it. We already have. Things that are prevalent on screen now, would not have been allowed, or if they had been wouldn’t have been watched. In I Love Lucy, Lucy and her husband always were portrayed with twin beds. Now it is rare to find a movie geared toward adults that don’t have bedroom scenes.

C-Causality:

                If we become ok with these things being portrayed, how much of the same will we be willing to accept, or at least turn a blind eye to, in society at large? We already live a world with very different morals than when our parents grew up, how much is going to change?

A-Authority

                Some people obviously care because they have definitive movie ratings and boards to decide these things. There are statistics of how many movies each year have what ratings

                Also, we are at BYU, so we can quote Divine Authority, like the 10 commandments, two of which are thou shalt not kill and thou shalt not commit adultery. I can quote For the Strength of Youth and Apostles.

P-Principle

                This is a morally driven argument, that entertainment can survive, and should survive without  relying on cheap resources. Those things are wrong, and so are watching them. 

Style Academy: Combining and Imitating Sentences

Well, there’s obviously not going to be lot that will help my writing from just the introduction to the site video, although it was helpful to know how to work the site. I think that working primarily on the sentence level is going to be a very different approach, because in the past, we’ve been taught mostly on the paragraph or essay level and simply told: avoid choppy sentences and run-ons, but focus on having that nice 5 paragraph essay and the sentence structure for your paragraphs. It was pretty easy to combine the sentences when they gave you two or three ideas to meld together, but it was considerably harder when, as in the first sentence of the glasses example, they asked us to combine four or five different ideas. It took me several tries to be able to combine them all into one sentence; I kept attempting to create two.  The imitation was harder. Do we start out by keeping most of the same words and punctuation, but changing the subject and then make it our own from there? Anyway, I think that will be the more effective of the two exercises- once I get the hang of it. 

Thesis Proposal

the pressure for writers to push the envelope and defy social norms has created a popular entertainment culture that is violent and sexual and goes directly against traditional morality.

There has been some agreement in what is “moral” and good to show on screen, due to the fact that we have ratings for our movies and television shows. G being free of any objectionable material, the main ones that the ratings are based on is sex, violence and profanity, R being full of these and only viewable by adults, or those accompanied by adults.

Reasons: there has been an increase in rated R movies, to the point where G and PG films are rare, and then only targeted toward the young child demographic.

Many sitcoms and other television shows now have dirty jokes, or an increase of them, and premarital sexual activity, whereas that was not allowed on television before. Many shows have a TV 14 rating. It is hard to find shows without overt sex and violence in them.

It feels as though these things are the “easy laughs” and the writers aren’t even trying to truly entertain us anymore.

Creativity doesn’t have to be going against society in such a blatant way, things like Japanese haiku or Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter, where the strict form gives rise to creativity. 

My Opinion on Op Eds

Here are some of my random thoughts and reactions to the three opinion editorials we were assigned for Friday's class.
First, A Miniskirt, Even With Leggings, Is still a miniskirt. I really liked how she established her credibility in the first paragraph. It was actually something that I noticed in all three of the opinion editorials. Before they launched into their topic, they told you things about them that were relevant to their opinions on the topic. Miniskirt told you that she was a returning student with the benefit of hindsight, so you know that she has a unique perspective of seeing the issue in two different times, with two different types of people. I thought it gave her a very strong argument that she pointed out that the opinions were the same in the seventies even though the dress code has changed since then. At first I was a bit nervous when she introduced her third reason, when she said, "this is not an LDS-based comment." I thought that she was going to completely ignore one of the most recognized reasons why we have the dress code -because we follow LDS standards, but then she gave that reason just enough attention at the end of the essay to let us know that she knew it was a real reason, but not enough attention that it was repetitive. she gave me a new way to look at the dress code and I really liked that.
Second, A Kiss-Less Campus. I didn't really enjoy or agree with this one as much. I can see PDA on campus, and maybe it's because I've been here a year and I'm used to it, but I don't think it's as big of a problem as Kiss-less makes it out to be. One thing that I don't know is right or wrong, but I didn't like was her use of very charged words like "obnoxious" and "annoying". It just made me think that she wasn't a very objective judge of the issue, she was just angry that she couldn't study because people were kissing too loud. She did have a few strong points though. The idea that we should consider our setting before we act, and giving examples of that, gave her a very strong point. She does assume that others have been in the same situations as her, so she relys primarily on anecdotes. I have been in a one of situations before, so I could agree with her, but most of her stories were things that I had never noticed. To her, the problem was "obvious," to me it wasn't.
Third, Wrestling's Dirty Secret. I really enjoyed reading this because it was referenced in the book and I was curious to read the rest of it.  I liked how he told us the background of the issue, and personalized one occurrence of it - Jeff Reese. He also gave practical advise on how to solve the issue - body fat calibration and banning plastic suites.
I thought they were all thought provoking, and gave me new information that I hadn't thought about before.

20 Minute Free Write

For Opinion Editorial

Alright, so here I sit, about to do a free write for the opinion editorial for Writing 150. I need to write an opinion article on an issue that I’m passionate about, with research to back me up. So what am I passionate about? Do I even have passions? That’s getting a little bit too philosophical for this assignment. So, what is an issue that I’m passionate about? I’m passionate about the arts, but I don’t really have any formed opinions on what exactly should be taught in school when it comes to the arts. Let’s just start by listing some issues. Hot topics today are… gay rights, illegal immigration, women and the priesthood, Obamacare, national debt, personal debt, technology in schools, our generation being too “plugged in”, environmental preservation, “fad diets” such as gluten free and Paleo diets, women working vs. being in the home, racial discrimination, body image, and sensationalism of the antics of reality TV actors and child stars. Ok, so of those issues what do I want to write about? The media’s attention to the “crazy acts” of child stars, I know my opinion on that, and there are lots of current examples (Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Lindsey Lohan, etc.) I believe that the attention paid by the media to the crazy antics of these personalities is ridiculous. These kids keep “pushing the envelope” in order to stay in the public eye. Another thing in the same vein I could talk about is the pressure to keep “pushing the envelope” in theater, television, and music. There is a pressure and norm for writers to do things which haven’t been done before, or which defy current societal norms. Increasingly, media tends to be on the side of the crude or vulgar rather than the creative. Thinking outside the box has led to an entirely new box being constructed; one that goes in opposition to traditional values and to God’s commands. Examples: most comedies, Saturday night live, most Rom Coms, the ever popular 50 shades of grey. Possible Thesis: the pressure for writers to push the envelope and think outside the box has created a popular entertainment culture that is vulgar and crude and goes directly against traditional morality and God’s commandments. 

Introductions

Hello!

A little bit about me...

 My name is Amy McLean, I am from West Jordan, UT (for those of you non-utahites, that's about a half an hour south-west of downtown SLC, and about 10 minutes away from the Oquirrh Mountain Temple.) I am currently a Sophmore, but, no I don't have my major picked out for sure yet. I've thought about a lot of options, but all of them are still up in the air.

I really enjoy...
 the performing arts, musical theater especially. I like both being in musicals and watching them, I've even written a script or two (though nothing refined enough to be produced.)

I waste my time...
reading fantasy books. I'm always up for recomendations...after I get my homework done!

My Expectations and Goals for WRIG 150...
I would like to be able to read and write more effectively. I don't really need to persuade people that often, but I would like to be able to look for these rhetorical devices in what I read to help me make informed decisions. I do have a lot of papers for other classes, and I hope that this will teach me how to write more concisely, clearly, and confidently.