A bit of political science

So, as you may have heard this week, the government had a shutdown due to across-the-aisle bickering over the budget. Mother Jones has an excellent roundup of links detailing what that means. Some really scary stuff is potentially happening (like, for example, military personnel will still have to work but without pay. :{ Yikes.)

There are a couple things about this that are fairly disturbing:

1) Most Americans (according to this and other polls I've seen floating around) are opposed to the shutdown. Their representatives are acting in opposition to the wishes of the people they're elected to represent.

2) This Jimmy Kimmel video (it's funny and sad rolled into one.)

So, for this week's blog, I want you to watch the Jimmy Kimmel video and tackle a big question: What's the solution? I don't mean politically (meaning don't write "Congress should do X.") I mean, what's the solution for people like us? If we're one of the people who disagree with this action, who dislike what the government's doing, how do we affect change?

This is going to function as an interesting transition into what I want to focus on for the rest of the semester. We've been talking a lot about lenses that give us a way to look at things, but what if we don't like what we're looking at? 

Now's a chance to start thinking about that and, if you feel powerless or helpless, maybe the rest of the semester will be an opportunity to change that.

HOMEWORK
For Monday, I'd like you to start on this PDF. It will (probably) be our last, very long scholarly text BUT I think it's more readable than the other two. You do not need to read the first page. The biographical information is optional; I would recommend skimming it. So, really you're starting on page 2448 (or the fifth page) with the header "From Subculture: The Meaning of Style."You will need to read to page 2452 or right before the header "Ideology: A Lived Relation." It's about five pages.

Here are some helpful hints:
-Hebdige does a job of defining his terms, even if it's not marked with "this means"/"as defined as"/etc. So if you run across a weird word or idea, look for his explanation.
-Keep in mind his headers. His titles are very telling about what he's talking about in each section.
-Try to make connections between his arguments and your own life or this class. Hebdige is writing about pop culture not something high falutin' or obscure.

You should be able to view and download it via the link below. Please print out and/or bring your own copy of this to class next week.

LINK

Several people have emailed to let me know the document hosting/linkage plan is not working, so check your email: I've sent out the document via your NMSU email (or whichever email Canvas uses as default.) Still read the appropriate pages and print out a copy for class next week. We'll be talking about this more than once so a hard copy will definitely be worth it.