Free post2

I have enjoyed studying the current American presidential nominee election. There were many candidates at the beginning, but there are only 3 major candidates remaining. Two of them are from the Democratic Party, Hilary Clinton, and Barrack Obama, and the last one is from the Republican Party, John McCain. I was admired with American politics at the early stage of the election. However, I have become disappointed about the election that I realized that politics, in the end, is always same despite the location. For example, there has been another debate with Senator Clinton and Senator Obama. At the end of the debate Clinton said, “I am honored to be with Barrack Obama,” or something similar like this. Conversely, just a few days later, Hilary Clinton has said in her speech “Shame on you, Barrack Obama!” After seeing this, I realized that politics is always about hypocrisy, and even the most admired politicians are very hypocritical. In addition, the election has reminded me that politics is very dirty thing. It is dirty that, in politics, politicians always try to reveal his or her opponents’ dirty secrets to reduce the opponents’ vote. – In this election, mentioning of accepting lobbyists’ money is one example of the revealing. - In the early stage of the election, politicians did not make many of these dirty moves, but from the middle to the later stage of the election, they have made many of those moves. This is one thing that is different from South-Korean politics. In Korea, politicians always do this dirty revealing. (They must think that it is the best strategy to win. However, I personally find it disgusting.) Through watching American election process, I have found several interesting things. First, I have found John McCain’s case to be interesting. Somebody has questioned John McCain’s eligibility to run for the presidential nominee that the person has claimed McCain was not born on U.S. soil. According to the American Constitution, to be able to run for the president of the United States of America, the person must be born on U.S. land. However, the challenge on McCain was weak, and nobody cares about the eligibility now. – TOK case to study as well (humans do not care things after a while). Also, we may want to question the American people, because the country is built on the Constitution, and it seems to be that many people do not really care. – Second, I feel that racism and gender equality still remain very touch in America. Several middle-aged white female workers have posted bad comments on Oprah’s web because Oprah has endorsed Obama. Yet, about 90% of African-Americans support Obama because of race. (Furthermore, the bias in media, which the media mostly mentions democratic side, but not the republican side, represents the touchy issues of race and gender.) Yet, it seems to me that racism is bigger issue in the U.S. There are some people, who think Obama might get assassinated, but there are less people who worry about Clinton’s safety. Third, I have seen biases in the media. Generally, articles did not include biases, but media’s choice of articles was biased. About 80% or more of reports/articles in media included the democratic issues, but 20% or less reports/articles mentioned the republican issues. These biases were same in Korean media as well. There is another problem with media. I have recently found that Clinton, Obama and McCain are not the only left ones, but there are more candidates. Despite this fact, the media does not mention any other candidates than McCain, Clinton, and Obama. Finally, I am reminded by the bias of the media, and the election process about very important thing that people know what the society wants them to know, and they do what society wants them to do. The example would be Huckabee’s increasing popularity (media has shown many good values in Huckabee), and my ignorance of other candidates (due to media’s focus on the major three candidates.) We must remember one thing about this. Abraham Lincoln did not get much support in his early stage of election, but he became one of the most admired presidents.

Video

Link to the video:
http://news.sbs.co.kr/section_news/news_read.jsp?news_id=N1000369373

The video mentions Kennedy family’s endorsement to the candidate Obama. However, the video brings up an opinion piece from Wall-Street-Journal that the Super-Tuesday will be still disadvantageous for the candidate. The video also brings up more of statistic values such as Obama is behind Clinton by 20%, and several more examples. This video is biased even from the title – the title of this video is Obama, endorsed by Kennedy but super-Tuesday is… It is biased that it points out only one good sign to Obama, which is endorsement from Kennedy, but the video mentions many more ominous signs such as Wall-Street-Journal’s negative prediction of Obama’s Super-Tuesday result. The video is biased, yet the new anchors in the video have unbiased tones (In their usage of vocabularies, speaking tones, and the way the anchors address the issue do not represent obvious bias).

P.S. I could not post the video directly, due to technical difficulties with active-x. (the video is directly from one of Korean broadcasting website, and the video uses special active-x.)

Update

Recently, candidate Obama has won the pre-election greatly in South-Carolina. Also, Senator Kennedy said that he would endorse candidate Obama. Yet, candidate Clinton has won greatly in Florida. Indeed, both sides never back down. I remember watching CNN and saying that endorsement from Kennedy could be both poison and medicine for candidate Obama. CNN said that endorsement from Kennedy could cause some voter to turn to Clinton side. It looks like that senator Kennedy became poison to Obama. However, the pre-election is not over yet, and it is too early to judge this fact. Although it is interesting to watch the battle, it is boring that the result of pre-election is very easy to predict. Wherever there is more African-American population in a state, then candidate Obama wins, where Caucasian-American population has bigger portion than then African-American does, then candidate Clinton wins. The key to the victory over the election, the candidates should find some ways to capture interest on their opponents’ supporters (white Caucasian women for Obama, and African American for Clinton).

Response piece (Assignment #2)

publication of the column: Han-Guk Ilbo (Koreatimes)
Columnist: Jin-Soo Yi
Link to the column: http://www.koreatimes.com/article/articleview.asp?id=423400&comment_yn=N

In the column, the columnist starts with a very brief summary and his opinion on the result of the presidential election in Korea. His hopes are that citizens of Korean should work hard to make Korea better place, and elected candidate, Yi, would revive dying Korean economy. Then the columnist mentions 2008 American presidential election. He makes a comment that American-Koreans should participate more in politics in an attempt to make immigrants’ country, “America,” better. The immigrants’ communities in the United States should work hard to reform the immigration law. “We must solve the visa problem (I do not know what this means), and achieve the right to labor. The immigrants’ communities have waited 20 years for inclusive reformation of the immigration law. It is the communities’ responsibility to emphasize the immigration issues in 2008 American presidential election to reform the immigration law, which the communities want. If we can get the heat (enthusiasm, I assume) to this election, these tasks should not be difficult to solve.”

This columnist makes very interesting comment on the participations of American-Koreans in the politics. I have known that American-Koreans have not really participated in American politics. However, the comments made by the columnist reminded me the seriousness of this lacking participation. Indeed, there must be an inclusive reformation of the immigration law of the United States of the America. Although American-Koreans are in better condition than Koreans in Canada, the condition of American-Koreans is not good. I feel this way especially looking at my aunt’s situation. She is having much difficulty with achieving permanent resident ship in America, due to some visa problems (I don’t know much about it.) Also, looking at other immigrants (meaning not Koreans), especially, Afro-Americans, the immigrants participate much more in politics than the Koreans do. For example, Barack Obama, the African-Americans are already ready to have one of their people to be the American president. To raise their position in the society, the Korean immigrants must participate more in the society. In this way, I totally agree with the columnist.

Intro

Hi, everyone. This is my first entry for this blog assignment. My topic for the assignment is the American Election that is happening now. I am sure that many of you have this as your topic too. Although the election would turn out to be a battle between only the 2 major candidates, Obama and Clinton, the processing and the result of the election would be very interesting to see. As an only Korean in class, I think I can post some of Korea’s opinion on the issue, North Korea related issue, and the relation between the newly elected Korean president and the winner of the election, and etc… Of course, the election has many more things than just Korean related, and I hope some of you will share them.

I haven’t done much of research due to my sickness. However, it seems to me that the research would be easy because the election is a big issue in the world. I found a few interesting things from CNN reports and North American news papers, and some from Korean websites. Many of the Korean websites mentioned similar things to the English ones, but Korean ones were briefer about the election. Although it is a bit challenging to find the election related articles in Korean, I will try my best to share my people’s opinion on this issue.

Thanks.