The Today Show

I stayed home last night, and this morning while I was getting ready for class, my dad was watching the Today Show on NBC. The segment that I happened to see was about High School Cheerleading coach Carlie Beck who got fired because she had posed for Playboy. At first I thought, well ok I guess that makes sense, but then I saw the rest of the story. One of the girls had been banned from tryouts for the next season because she had more than three unexcused absences from school, which was against the coach's rules. It was not until after this happened that the cheerleader and her family exposed the coach for having posed naked for Playboy. Apparently, the high school is in an uproar over this issue, most of them wanting their coach back. The girl and her parents claimed that they only exposed her on grounds of morals and because the coach was supposed to serve as a positive role model for all the girls on the sqaud.

This reminded me of some of the topics that we discuss in class in regards to ethics. Are there certain jobs that former Bunnies should be ban from? Is it true that because this woman posed for a few photos that she is a negative role model for these girls? I instantly thought of my post on E!'s show The Girls Nextdoor. When I think of those Playboy Bunnies, I think of idiots and skanks (pardon my French) who should not be anywhere near impressionable young girls. But then I also wonder, what is the coach's side of the story? I am not sure if the show gave BEck's side of the story, but I do not think that they did. There are a lot of questions left unanswered here. How many photos were there? When was she a model?

In addition to all of that there is the fact that Beck, in addition to school officials, were setting really high standards for the cheerleaders at the school. According to the article on the Toady Show's website, "These cheerleaders are not allowed to have racy pictures on MySpace, there’s a lot of things they’re not able to do, or shouldn’t." I feel that as long as she is not currently posing for Playboy then she really is not doing anything wrong. I say that only without knowing her side of the story. Maybe she regrets the things that she has done in her past and wants to help these girls do better for themselves.

Some of my classmates may say that this is not even "important" news. At first, I thought the same thing, until I really thought about it. Initially, I thought, why do I care this is jsut one high school in California, a thousand miles away from me. Then I put it into this perspective... The decisions made in this instance could end up having a huge impact on high schools everywhere. I realize that it sounds like I'm trying to defend the Bunnies, but I'm really not. If it is found that a woman who posed for Playboy is an unfit role model and should not work around kids, then what other kinds of people will also be banned? It's really hard for me to make up my mind on this issue, and I think that the circumstances underwhich she was fired are the biggest cause. Some girl cut school one day and her coach reacted so she got her fired. It's blackmail, and I think thats really the only reason why I feel bad for Beck. I do not have children of my own yet, so I really don't know how I would feel about a woman like Beck being a coach to my child. Read the article and see what you think.

New Law in Afghanistan

This morning, I was browsing through the New York Times online, and I came across this article about a new law in Afghanistan.  The law is only directed at the Shiite minority and has three provisions.  It makes it marital rape legal, requires that a woman get her husband's permission before working outside the home or going to school, and it makes it legal for a man to force his wife to "make herself up" or "dress up" if he wants her to.  The article speculated that the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, did this to render support from the Shiites in the upcoming election.  Karzai receives a lot of support from the United States and other Western nations, so he quickly came under attack from the leaders of these nations for passing such an oppressive law.  Now, he is reviewing the law to potentially change it.

The article also talked about a march that about 300 women had protesting this law.  They were attacked on the streets by men, but they continued on to the Parliament were they vocalized their feelings about this law.  According tot he article, most of the women in Afghanistan are illiterate and do not have nearly half as many freedoms as the men.  "But there they were, most of them young, many in jeans, defying a threatening crowd and calling out slogans heavy with meaning."

This whole thing took me really off guard.  Obviously, I have known for some time that women suffer from great oppression in the Middle East, but when I went on the New York Times website this morning, I really wasn't prepared for something like this.  When I first started reading the article, I thought of Shaima in our class, and it made me really sad.  I really don't know if she falls into the Shiite minority or not, but either way, it made me think of her.  Every time I read an article regarding that area, I wonder how someone could really deal with such things on a day to day basis and be as well-adjusted as she is.  Even before knowing Shaima, I would read articles like this or see stories like this on TV news and really feel somewhat spoiled for the life I have lived here.  I get upset when my computer breaks or when I don't do well on a paper.  Reading stories like this make me sit back and realize how lucky I am to have access to my own personal computer and, especially, to be enrolled in school as a woman.

Instapundit

Glenn Reynolds' instapundit.com is nothing more than his own bantering about news.  I guess that this is the whole concept of a blog and is what I have been doing on this site for the past few months, but it is weird to me that someone is making a living off of this.  While I am having fun doing this project for class, it seems somewhat pathetic to me that a grown man sits around all day thinking "what should I bitch about today."  That is not to say, however, that all of is posts were of that manner, but some of them definitely were.  Today alone he had 44 posts between the hours of 2:28 AM and 7:00 PM.

While a lot of the content was definitely based on what is going on in politics, there was a lot of other stuff in there that has no relevance to the real world.  One of today's posts was simply his own banter about something that someone had written about him in their own blog.  To sum it up, someone had responded to a quote from instapundit and then accused him for deleted the post so that no one would see the wrong that he had done.  He then goes into a page-long description about how the post was lost and why what he had said was right.  Really... who cares??

The rest of the content contained bits and pieces of stories from the rest of the news media, such as famous court cases and stories about Obama's initiatives.  Overall, this blog was not very interesting.  I am not trying to sit here on a high horse and say that mine is any better, but then again, I'm not doing this for a living and as far as I know I don't really have any fans that I am trying to make happy.