We started the day on national television with C-SPAN and White House Press Secretary, Dana Perino. Even though listening to someone reinforce and defend George Bush’s policies sounds excruciating, it actually provided me with an opportunity to view the reality inside the White House walls. This opposite spectrum actually benefited my understanding of media relations and the executive branch. Many people have mentioned media as the “fourth” branch of American government and Perino’s presentation on C-SPAN really made me believe these accusations rather strongly. It is important to be informed but people must look at the perspective of the news media with a critical eye in order to depart from embellishment.
After C-SPAN, the greatly anticipated speaker Ted Koppel answered various questions regarding his observations and predictions related to the media, the presidency and politics. I was greatly disappointed by Koppel’s lack of connection and personality while speaking. Even though some of his predictions and analysis proved to be very insightful, overall, I became turned off very quickly due to the lack of life encompassing his words.
Fortunately, Clarence Page went above and beyond my already high expectations. Page is very charismatic, very insightful and humorous. Page’s interesting discussion on the evolution of colored people to Negros to blacks to African Americans to people of color proved to be an unspoken reality. Even though he meant to deliver this idea through humor, it really made me contemplate the next stage of “titles” Americans love to designate. I really hope that the election of Barack Obama, whether he is titled black, mulatto, half white, etc., finally erases the racial lines in American society. I hope that one day, my children will be color blind of race and these titles will be things of the past. We only hinder and regress the collective good when we discriminate, label and alienate.
Our visit to the Algerian embassy was very interesting and a nice change in direction. I love to hear perspectives of American government and politics from the outside. The most beneficial and crucial comments always come from those that do not live in the biased culture. It is unfortunate that the news media does not cover more regarding up and coming Arabic nations like Algeria. For the Algerian embassy to open up their doors for 13 young American students really shows me that the world really is not such a horrible place, as often perceived. Instead of CNN and NBC merely covering negative stories regarding Arabic countries, they should supplement them with positive stories regarding their participation in peace treaties and humanitarian efforts.
NOW for the exciting moment. Mindy, and I attended the Georgetown/Syracuse NCAA Mens Basketball rivalry game. First, we rushed out the door, only to take the wrong metro train which ended up working out better than originally planned. Then, we could not find the box office and thought the huge line that spanned at least 4 blocks signified our doom that we would not get tickets. Thankfully, some one graciously informed us that it was actually the student line and that the box office was around the corner where we previously searched. During our trek to the box office, we passed various scalpers and people looking for tickets (AND people that interestingly shouted “Go Bonnies” while commenting on Mindy’s sweatshirt). We really thought we were doomed but a little faith goes a long way because we actually were in luck and could buy tickets. Since we had at least one hour to pass until we could actually be seated, we headed to The Green Turtle, a bar and grill. I highly recommend that our group returns there for appetizers because they smelled absolutely delicious. Ironically, we faced our doom in the nose bleeds ironically right next to a Bona grad. I decided that we should move closer to the court and we all ended up sitting in the first section right next to the Georgetown students behind the basket. We sat behind four Syracuse alumni that talked with us about how great Bonas basketball used to be and one saw our Washington Center group on C-SPAN this morning. We also were in attendance with John McCain, who was not sitting in box seats and actually seemed to be sitting farther back than we were. Ha Ha =).
On our way back home to Rosslyn, we met 2 more Bona grads. I could not believe how many Bonaventure people I met in one day, 300+ miles away.
