Borderlines

       Yesterday night I was at a friends house. He lives on the north side of Isabella street. The border between Evanston and Wilmette runs down the center of that street, and I realized as I was driving home that if he lived on the other side of the street, I never would have known him. He wouldn't have gone to WJHS, and he would begoing to Evanston High School instead of New Trier, and we would never have met. It was interesting to look down the street and know that someone my age living to my left has a similar life to mine, while someone living to my right has had a totally different set of experiences. The situation reminded me of the field trip we took last November, when we passed the large park (I can't remember the name of the park) and went from a fairly affluent neighborhood to a run-down, more impoverished neighborhood. There too an invisible border separated people with two different sets of experiences.
       It dawned on me how much impact location has on everyone's life. Americans separate much of public life geographically, so that in many cases which side of the border you live on can be destiny. This isn't just for schools, like the NT and Evanston High School border. As we saw in Chicago, economic success can depend on the neighborhood as well. If you were planning to start a business, which side of the park would you want to be on? And what would you do if you couldn't afford to be on the "right" side?
       Something important that I'm not sure many fully appreciate, me included, is how close the north shore is to areas that are vastly less wealthy than we are. A few miles and the township border is all that really separate New Trier and Evanston.

What do you think about the effect of borders on life?

Image Credit: http://cnsnews.com/image/mexico-border-4

Rupert Murdoch and the Power of the Media

       Mr. O'Connor mentioned Rupert Murdoch, the man who owns Fox News. I've seen his name in the news about a phone hacking scandal in Britain, so I did some research. I was surprised by how much he seems to resemble Charles Kane's . It turns out that Rupert Murdoch is almost a modern day Charles Foster Kane; they both are massively rich media barons, and both of them suffered a downfall because of a scandal. The most interesting part of his life to me, though, was how he used his wealth to affect politics, specifically by helping create Fox News.
       It is common knowledge that Fox News has at least some bias towards the right end of the political spectrum; they employ or have employed many former republican politicians and right wing figures, such as Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and Glenn Beck. The news station Murdoch founded was at least more supportive to republican rivals than some of its rivals, such as CNN and ABC, and that must at least partly be attributed to the man himself.
       The support Murdoch's Fox News lends to Republican causes is mirrored by the influence that Charles Kane and his real life analogue William Hearst had over the politics of their time. The ability of those two figures to create public support for a war with Spain is similar to Murdoch's ability to create support for conservative causes through Fox News; all three figures slanted their news coverage somewhat to shape public opinion, though for radically different ends.
       The continued existence of people with such control over media, like Rupert Murdoch, is interesting because news organizations are usually seen as institutions; the power that the few people leading them has is often ignored. We all have heard of "yellow journalism" from the early part of the 1900s, but not everyone realizes that there are individuals around today with influence similar to that of newspaper owners like Kane or Hearst. Is individual control of news an issue today? How can media shape politics?

Image Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_Channel

The Linden L Station

       After we talked about the L on Tuesday, I remembered a story my dad had told me about why the L line ends in Chicago. I don't remember when, but at some point he told me that the original plan was for the L to end in Evanston. The owner of the railroad company lived in Wilmette, and he wanted the L to be accessible to him, so one night he ordered his crews to extend the line without the knowledge of the government. I thought that this story might parallel the story of the big ditch; a community benefiting because of its influence and the power of its inhabitants. It turns out, though, that the real story is a bit different.

       By looking up the Linden L station on Wikipedia I found the name of Chicago Tribune article from 1912 with the story; "Night Raid Puts "L" in Wilmette" I found the article using ProQuest (Junior Theme!). It turns out that the basics of my Dads story were right. The tracks were extended overnight, but over the opposition of the community instead of because of it. Most residents of Wilmette were opposed to having the L in their town because they were afraid that having the line would lead to groups of partygoers coming from Chicago during the summer. The railroad company owned the land, and wanted to extend the tracks for years, but when they decided to go ahead with the project, they were forced to do the construction in secret, because of the resistance from the community.
       I found the story to be interesting because of the amount of influence Wilmette had over the railroad. It doesn't directly match the story of the big ditch, but the fact that the community was able to prevent the tracks for so long still reflects the amount of influence wealthy towns have. The town showed a sort of protectionism; they didn't want "less desirable" crowds to have access to their town.The ability to protect the status of a town is a very good marker of class; the people in Wilmette had both the desire and the power to prevent an influx of  outsiders.I haven't really been following the Winnetka affordable housing debate, but I wonder if a similar strain of thought motivates some of the opposition to that proposal. Do you agree or disagree? Do wealthy communities try to exclude outsiders?

Image Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linden_(CTA_station)

Class Barriers

       Last week we watched a video about class distinctions in America. The most interesting section to me was the part where the middle-class woman hires a coach to help her appear upper class. The video made an interesting argument, that even if you have money, to truly fit in with those of a higher class you need to learn a complicated set of social customs and rules. The point was that at the highest level, social ability is as much a marker of class as wealth, and to advance one's class is more complicated than simply finding a good job. When I watched the video, I wondered whether this also applied to class changes lower on the spectrum; rising from a lower class to the middle class, or between different parts of middle class society.
      I don't think the social barriers are as high between changing between lower classes as they are with advancing into the upper class. The world the video shows, of fancy parties, is much more unforgiving than the world in general. The amount of attention to detail the woman needed to even attempt to appear natural in the new setting was pretty stunning, but I'm not sure we can apply the same principle to other strata of society. I'm speaking mostly from personal beliefs, but I can't believe an engineer or other high-end blue collar worker would judge someone for not wearing the right clothing the same way those at the party would have judged the woman if she was not wearing a 3,000$ outfit.
       Because of the severity of social situations in lower classes is significantly less, I believe the barriers between advancing from the lower to middle class are mostly educational or monetary. A construction worker can advance his status  if he is able to go through a vocational program and become an electrician, or another specialized job. I don't think there is a strong difference in customs between segments of the working class, and his increased income as a result of his better job would be enough to say he has raised his status.
      What you think about the barriers between classes lower than the upper class? I mostly am basing this argument off of personal belief, so I'm interested what others with different experiences have to say.

Image Credit: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/black-tie-event.html

White Noise and Selective Abortion

       While working on my Junior Theme, I originally planned to have this section in the paper. However, I couldn't find a way to integrate my connection to white noise that didn't totally kill the flow, so I decided to put this section in as a blog post. The style of writing is different, as a result.

       One of the most common forms of genetic engineering as I defined it in my paper is prenatal genetic testing combined with selective abortions. Some parents choose to have the genes of the fetus tested for genetic defects which cause diseases, sometimes through noninvasive blood tests. Often, if the tests are positive, pregnancy is aborted. There are parallels between the attitudes that cause this practice, and the attitudes of the people of White Noise to disease.
       The people of Delillo's America do anything to avoid illness of any type. This is evidenced by the grocery list of medications in Jack's household; "Blood pressure pills, stress pills, allergy pills, eye drops, aspirin. Run ofthe mill." Each pill staves off another ailment. Any possible health issue needs an answer, and the result is a massive pile of pills. It is eventually revealed that everything Jack does is because of his overwhelming fear of death, and the urge to cure every problem, real or imagined, is one of the primary manifestations of that fear.
       The reasons for terminating a pregnancy are similar to the motives of Jack with his pill obsession. As Erik Asch, an ethics scholar who has written on the issue, put it; "the idea is that prenatal testing," usually used for selective abortions, "helps prospective parents have healthy babies." Quite simply, the use of these tests allows parents to "solve" a health problem of their child, to get rid of an illness before it even begins. Like Jack's pills, the promise of fetal testing is to eliminate any possible health issue, and the motives of the two groups are parallel.
       I've tried not to either endorse or condemn the actions of those who use such procedures, both in this blog and in my paper. Mentioning abortion tends to provoke strong reactions, but regardless of which side of the debate you are on it is helpful to understand the motivations of those who use genetic technologies. White Noise provides a good illustration of these reasons.