Celebrity Culture in America

America has been the center of the entertainment industry for at least the past 100 years. It’s no wonder that celebrities such as Justin Timberlake, Jennifer Lopez, and the Kardashian sisters have become such global personas. The contagious and popular entertainment culture in America is the main reason that so many of its prodigies have turned into international sensations.

While being the nucleus of the global entertainment industry has its benefits and can be viewed as playing a positive role in American culture, people such as Courtney Enlow strongly disagree. In Enlow’s blog, she outlines why she believes the celebrity culture in America has “ruined us” (link). Most notably, Enlow claims America indulges in what is called “Universal Schadenfreude” or receiving pleasure from someone else’s misfortune. I have seen America build people up just to tear them back to the ground. I’m sure that almost every young American is familiar with the downward spiral that Britney Spears endured, several years back. Later in her post, Enlow discusses how we, the American people, have put these celebrities on a pedestal and how we have begun to consider ourselves inferior. When we choose people to be our role models, who have such high egos, the result will likely be negative.

It is okay for us to have people we look up to, but we have to be sure that we don’t take entertainment beyond what it is supposed to be – an enjoyable outlet on the side.

Learning to Write Properly

For the majority of my life, language at home and language at school have always been two completely separate worlds, in my experience. At home, literacy and language in general simply consisted verbal communication -- whether it was telling stories or catching up with the family -- there was no need to be a skilled writer. While at school on the other hand, writing was one of the most important skill sets at times, and while I was in high school the only time writing became important for me was while I was in school. This was a very unfortunate truth for me at the time.

Because of this, I never felt it to be necessary to my future to properly learn to write and therefore I constantly struggled. This has taught me how critical motivation is to becoming a good writer. It took me all the way until senior year until I truly gained the motivation necessary to learning to write academically. It was the struggle of not knowing how to write pitted against the demand and necessity to be able to write, during my senior year, that finally led to me buckling down and teaching myself. Albeit, there is still much progress to be made in my journey to become a better writer.

Political culture in America today

Exacerbated by the previous two elections, the two most prominent political ideologies in America are (allegedly) becoming more divided and rivalrous than ever. Or are they? Stephanie Pappas, a Senior Writer with the Huffington Post, says not so fast (link). According to Pappas, a new study done by PLOS ONE (link) asserts that, "Everyone, including political moderates, overestimates the gap between liberal and conservative morals..." Not only do people overestimate their political opponents, they over-exaggerate their own values and beliefs. For example, Pappas states how liberals and moderates who participated in the online survey believed that conservatives barely cared, if at all, about "harm/care and fairness/reciprocity," while the conservative respondents showed this was not the case.

So, what is making us feel like our nation is being pulled apart? It may be partially due to the fact that the last two elections have been such "high-octane" events. It could possibly be a result of the national media employing increasingly divisive headlines and diction in order to grab their viewers' attention. Whether it is because of the media, Bush, or Obama, America has been bombarded with polarizing appeals to ethos and pathos over the past seven or eight years that has left it seemingly more divided than before. The state of political culture in America is at a low-point, and until we realize how petty most of our differences actually are, things are only going to continue to get worse.