This weeks blog is "Letters From Texas". This blog exposes the ridiculous and stupid about America's politics and social aspects. This blog is written by Harold Cook, who describes himself as a "progressive Texan in a bad mood." This blog seems to be well know in Texas due to reviews of the blog displayed in a column in the blog, written by local newspapers and news programs.
I am not going to respond to a prompt I am just going to wing it. I will be up front with this I don't get the blog. The humor if there is any is completely lost on me. I have read a couple of the posts and I can't tell if he is being serious or super sarcastic. If I knew more about politics I could see this blog being funny. From what I have read the author has a lot of experience being around politics. Therefore I think he has a point to be made I am just not in his target audience.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to respond to question seven.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Tyler that I honestly don't really understand Cook's blog. I don't find his comments humorous exactly but some of the links that he posted seemed ridiculous that they could actually happen. The link showing that an immigration officer put his wife on the terrorist watch list was very funny to me. Some other links seemed like they may have supposed to be funny, but I didn't really understand it. All in all, I still think the blog had a purpose to keep people informed in what is going on in politics. The audience may have be mostly Texans but Cook does do a good job citing links to other news sources. Even though I don't really understand his humor, maybe other people are able to gain knowledge through his posts.
I’m going to answer question #7 as well. I mean the blog obviously is meant to make a statement, but if it actually does is another story. Cook’s dry humor is funny to some, but judging by the amount of comments he gets I don’t think many people are listening to him. One person even wrote “yawn” as their comment clearly showing that not many people care. Some seem interested and make intelligent responses to the issues Cook writes about, but I’d have to say the split between agreeing and disagreeing with Cook’s posts is about 50/50 of those who comment on his blog. Cook is actually writing about important issues in his state and in the U.S., but his way of addressing the viewer may not be universal enough to appeal to a lot of people which doesn’t make his blog highly influential. Although he does seem to have a lot of great reviews from news papers and magazines, so maybe his columns are creating more discussion than his blog.
ReplyDeleteAt first glance the outlook of the blog gives you the sense that it is an advertisement for Texas with the interface showing the key features of what Texas is well known for, for example, the longhorn and the Alamo building, however you can also feel there is some sort of political idea involved as there is a picture of the state house building shown and also the flag.
ReplyDelete#7
ReplyDeleteWell I guess his intention of writing this blog is to share his beliefs and viewpoints to all the 'potential readers'. However, he narrowed down his audience group to a certain intellectual group or only people who are politically aware or involved. From his style of writing, i noticed his true humor or meaning seem to be clouded by his politically correct language, that is why we find it so difficult to recognize his sense of humor. Well I googled his involvement in the society, which i found that besides working as a political advisor, he also advises non-political clients on public relations, public image and crisis management communications. Therefore it shows that his blog's content, argument and use of language is so important to keep track on in order to maintain his public image and self-reputation. He might possibly just want to be humorous in a decent way.
I'm going to respond to prompt 1. I first noticed that Harold Cook had what seems like a cynical smile. His face is also kind of red, which might mean he is high strung or just really out of shape. Also, he posts all of his positive newspaper reviews along the left side, showing that his blog is popular and he might be a little arrogant. His first few posts make fun of the people in Texas complaining right now about the snow, so from these it seemed like he tries to be both cynical and funny. My little brother goes to school in Texas at TCU, and he said his school has been canceled the past few days because of two inches of snow that pretty much shut down Fort Worth, so I do think that there are a lot of people in Texas that freak out about the snow. These particular posts along with the rest of the items on the front page are all Texas themed, so we might be out of his target audience.
ReplyDelete#5
ReplyDeleteThroughout the blog, Harold Cook uses the pronouns you and we to try to connect himself to the audience. However, I think he tries to connect himself to the audience in a much more obvious way. The blogs main idea is about Americans and their faults, and this clearly shows that the target audience is americans who are probably slightly above average. If the audience is above average, they would be able to find humor in the the common faults most americans make. This target audience probably values education and morals, but they don't mind self-deprecation. Personally, I think the blog is hilarious, and the idea behind it is genius. Most people who use the internet and live in america would find this blog funny, and that gives Harold Cook a lot of free promotion for his blog.
#7
ReplyDeleteI think the blog is pretty funny. He pokes fun at a lot of issues, but from what I've read it seems more for readers enjoyment than persuading them. He makes fun of old people for being boring and some people not being able to deal with snow ( it's probably a good thing they don't go here then). These don't seem to be real controversial topics to me it just seems like he is joking around.
#7
ReplyDeleteFrom reading through some of the posts I don't believe that the blog is meant to do anything. It is Just a humorous way of looking at politics. Looking at his wikipedia page it seems as if he has a lot of respect in the government. He is even part of the Texas Democratic Party. So maybe he is trying to reach out to less politically literate people so that they can keep up on their Texas politics while also having a good laugh.
#1
ReplyDeletei think the name of the blog itself might be trying to say something. "letter from birmingham jail" was a letter written by martin luther king, jr in april of 1963 while he was, you guessed it, in birmingham jail. it was about racial integration. also, a well known movie directed by clint eastwood has a similar title, "letters from iwo jima." this movie is a japanese perspective on one of the turning point battles in world war two. reading the blog, i don't really see much of a connection to either, but it is interesting that the titles are so similar. i would agree that the writer of this blog does not seem to be seriously angry with the government, just poking fun at some of the silly things it does.
I have no idea what prompt to write about. So i'm going to comment on what tyler said in the first post as i don't completely get it either. It almost seems like a joking news feed thing sort of. Kind of like the daily show on comedy central or something where they mock all sorts of dumb news stories. But most of the stuff just seems completely dumb to me and not interesting at all. But like tyler W said, maybe we aren't the intended audience. I really can't even figure out who the intended audience is. My guess would be like well informed texans that know whats going on in texas news so that it can be mocked.
ReplyDeleteI'm commenting on the post Picture Me This. I believed that the post used logos arguement to show that the policy of viewing licenses of voters to let them vote is a bad one. The blogger makes valid arguements that people in texas can legally go up to 12 years without updating their picture on their license and that a lot of things can happen in 12 years to change appearance. Think his arguements make a lot of sense, but they did not strike as humorous as they did other people in the class
ReplyDeleteAt first glance I could see why this blog might be considered humorous. The first couple of posts he made were kinda funny because he brought up current events such as the recent snowstorm that swept across the nation, but he did not actually discuss the real dangers of the storm. Instead, he made fun of the elderly for boring their grandchildren, and Texans for over-reacting to cold temperatures. It appears as if he just takes headlines from around the nation and highlights the trivial aspects of the headlines, but as I looked further into the blog, he became less funny and more confusing. One post was simply a pie graph illustrating how many days of Christmas there are in a year which was obviously one. Then the only description he offered was "just sayin'". I have no idea what he is saying here or in many of his other pages. With the exception of the first two I can't really understand his humor or even the point of him continuing his blog.
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