For our blog, we've chosen this:
AtlasShrugs
AtlasShrugs belongs to Pamela Geller, a deeply opinionated conservative blogger. For the past seven years, Geller has been using her personal blog to, in her words, bring "you the news you will not hear from the mainstream media, providing original reportage, covering little-reported events of great import, and giving an unblinkingly honest examination of global affairs". Her blog has landed her appearances on many of the major news stations, including NBC and CNN. Geller and her blog have also been the topic of a recently published NY Times article and interview.
One can easily note that her opinion, although her written hope is 'honest exmination', is rather biased to her personal conservative views. Her attacks on the Democratic party are ever present. Her views on politics are very clear through her blog. Receiving around 200,000 unique visitors per month, her blog is ever increasing in popularity, but is it directly the same with her impact? Thoughts?
In response to 5:
ReplyDeleteIn the article "Raise The Voting Age," it's not hard to see who her audience is. Here Pamela is appealing to the older Americans. She directly relates the young to stupid. This is not an article directed at people our age.
PG believes that the audience respects wisdom and intelligence when it comes to voting. But who doesn't? She doesn't want our 'morron' vote, but we are the future so we should have a say in the future. Geller relates herself directly to the audience, so obviously the 52 year old does not respect the next generation. I would be very surprised if she has any children...
Question #7:
ReplyDeleteIn the post "The Obama Agenda is Dead", Pam's followers seem to like her and only give her positive feedback, which is a little disheartening. People need some sort of disagreement or backlash in order to stay on the ground, this Pam probably thinks that her middle american bumpkin ideas are valid, which is just incredibly disheartening. America has a two party system that has worked forever but will not continue to work without both sides being cordial, calling democrats the "illegal ruling class" is just ignorant. I also noticed that Pam receives quite a few followers and comments and a lot coming from across the pond, which means her thoughts and blog is widespread. Congratulations to Pam, spreading the idea of partisanship and ignorance throughout the world, not just America.
Casey,
ReplyDeleteIt could be that her followers only post positive feedback because they are just that; her followers. While she receives over 200,000 visitors per month, who is to say that these aren't just fellow conservatives whose message is being voiced by Geller. In other words, she is only compelling to one side. In that respect, this blog doesn't really make that much of an impact, because preaching to the choir doesn't mean you're persuasive.
Also, does anyone else think these articles are really long? I took a look at the length of the post "The Good Muslim: Police Extracts", and it is basically a Q&A session with Roshonara Choudhry. That doesn't sound that bad, until you look at how long the Q&A session really is. There is no way that I (and I'm sure that a lot of other people viewing that site for the first time that don't have a conservative agenda) would read through that entire post, or for that matter, many of the other posts.
Considering the fact that this blog seems to attract mainly conservative minded individuals (as seen in the generally positive reception Geller receives in her post feedback) as well as the length of many of the posts, this blog can only attract a certain kind of person. With that being said, my question of "does this blog do anything?" can be answered accordingly: It does for certain groups of people. As far as a blanket statement of "does this do anything" is concerned, the answer, in my opinion, is no.
To be honest, I don’t really like this blog because it has too many bloody pictures and videos on it. For example, when I see the article “Stop Muslim Persecution and Wholesale Slaughter of Christians in Iraq”, all the scary pictures there made me sick. Since the writer want to stop the persecution, the information he should provide would be how people suffering and what could be done to improve instead of standing from the point of outside audiences and using these bloody pictures to blame them. I have to say, there is no wrong to focus and follow the war and political issues but the important thing is the way the writer explain. In this entire blog, I feel the writer blame too much about everything and another interesting phenomenon is that nearly all the comments hold the same opinion and keeping blaming everything. I am personally not a fan of politics but when I read this blog, I don’t think all the articles here bring us a good point of thinking. Instead, it leads us to increase the conflicts, say, between Muslim and Christian.
ReplyDeleteHart.447- She actually has four kids. She mentions them a few times (but only when convenient to her point).
ReplyDeleteBecker.380- I agree, the first thing I noticed was how long and rambling the site was. That definitely makes it hard to read for anyone who doesn’t readily agree with her. Especially when you compare it to last week’s blog, the Huffington Post. In her interview with the NY Times she mentioned that she updates this site 10 or 15 times a day. She’s passionate, I’ll give her that. But she needs to channel that passion into making a readable blog and not just tearing down Islam and thinking of clever names for liberals.
I’ve never followed any blogs and had barely even read any before this class and I think this is why. It’s so hard to find a blog that can actually progress the American dialogue. We need media forums were multiple sides of an issue can be explored and all ideas are held accountable. Geller’s, like many other blogs, I feel just reinforces and radicalizes the views of people who already agree. So I agree with Becker, this blog does nothing. At least nothing constructive.
And Wanwan, I agree with you also. Geller intentionally uses horrific images to promote her own ideology. I think that this is a terrible disrespect to those involved in the tragedy.
I am responding to question 1. The top of the blog that has the title has the background of buildings like in New York City. Then there is a woman holding up a globe. The author of the blog is a woman. I think implicitly saying that her blog is her holding up the world with her comments. As I looked down the side of the blog more explicitly there were book titles and small advertisements most of them putting down Obama. There is also some about stoping the Mosque around Ground Zero to be built. These "advertisements" on the side of her blog show her very strong conservative views without even reading any of her posts. The previews of her blogs on the first page have many disturbing pictures and titles such as "Stop Muslim Persecution and Wholesale Slaughter of Christians in Iraq." The author seems to be not only very conservative but also Christian. She implicitly suggests that Muslims are inferior to Christians and dangerous through her posts and "advertisements" on the side of the homepage.
ReplyDelete#7.
ReplyDeleteI mainly focused on the post "Stop Muslim Persecution and Wholesale Slaughter of Christians and Iraq." This post consisted of not very much writing, but graphic pictures that spoke more than words. There were multiple pictures the blogger posted from when "Muslim's seized a church in Iraq and kidnapped/slaughtered scores of righteous souls." Although the pictures are clearly meant to show one side of the problem, her use of graphic pictures of babies bleeding and severely harmed reached out to many viewers. In the comments, many people stated how the pictures were gruesome, yet got the point across. The pictures made the viewers strongly sympathize with the Christians in Iraq, which was the bloggers intention.
Every week when a new blog is put up I go to the blog and find a few articles that look interesting an read them. In this blog i was scrolling along and wasn't seeing any good ones. I then came to the awful, bloody photos of tragedy's with Muslim Persecution. If these pictures do not have an effect on people i don't know what would. These images are something that will stick in the back of my mind for awhile. There was not much writing in this blog article but much was not needed, the pictures on their own got viewer's attention and got the writer's point across.
ReplyDeleteIn response to #6 in "Russia: Muslims Set Three Churches Ablaze," I enjoyed the claim in which the author said how "In reality, no one with any sense is blaming all Muslims for anything that any individual Muslim has done; the problem lies in the Islamic texts and teachings that are used to justify such acts of violence." I find it amusing how on one hand this author is accusing anyone who doesn't believe the previous statement is an idiot, and at the same time is making the claim that people enjoy stereotyping a group of people when only a few people take deadly action. I like this claim. It implicitly suggests ideas and thoughts that go beyond the simple statement.
ReplyDeleteIn response to 7: After reading through a few posts it seems that the blog may not do exactly what it was designed to. It is very heavily oriented toward the right, perhaps too much so. It seems like the majority of people that read this already are of the same view as the writer, or somewhere close. The writing style can be fairly extreme and judging by the most current post, equally as immature. When someone of differing opinion comes across writing of that style, it is usually a turn off when they feel that they are being insulted by or laughed at by the writer. There is also a pretty heavy focus on the evils of Islam, which would also certainly turn away potential readers. So overall, I don't believe that this blog effectively accomplishes its mission.
ReplyDeleteI am responding to #7. The article that I decided to look at was Stop Muslim Persecution and Wholesale Slaughter of Christians in Iraq. This is different that the articles that I usually read because the article is mainly visual and not verbal.However, in this case I think that the pictures really do explain the whole situation a lot better than any words could. The graphic nature really incites fear into those that tend to go to church and feel that it is a "safe" place to be.It not only explicitly expresses fear but also implicitly because now the uncertainty of death of going out of your house is more widespread. The authors viewpoint is clearly present even though the writting is limited.
ReplyDeleteI'm responding to #7 to the article "Stop Muslim Persecution and Wholesale Slaughter of Christians in Iraq". This article is quite different from previous articles I have read. There are not many words in this article, instead there are a lot of photos. Sometimes, graphic pictures can be more powerful than words. Just like this article, we can know the situation clearly from these pictures, and we can see the fear on those people's face directly. People are so scared and helpless. Even though, the author didn't write a lot in this article, we can easily get his viewpoint from all those pictures he posted.
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ReplyDeleteUpon little inspection one can discern that this is a very republican biased blog. Upon scrolling down the page the reader can see an image with a representation of the red counties and the blue counties from the most recent election. The states are predominantly red and the title of the image states, "We Won -- Now What?". The interface of this blog does not appear to be very professional. There is a paypal donation button on the side panel, which would signify that the blog is not being funded by any outside source.
ReplyDeleteThough the blogs color scheme does not match with some of the content on the blog. It appears as though the writer uses fear tactics to get others to believe what she believes. The author is also quite an advocate of neoconservatism, this can be seen on the about the author page where it states that she is the, "executive director of Freedom Defense Initiative (FDI)/Stop Islamization of America (SIOA)". Though with most publications that attempt to make the reader feel fear or urgency a more vivid color palette is chosen. The colors on this blog tend to give a more rustic look and don't invoke the same emotions from the reader that a more aggressive color palette would.
I enjoyed reading a few articles in this blog because of Geller's credibility and the similarities this blog has with my paper. It seemed as though most of the articles targeted Muslims with a super-conservative point of view, however, some good points are made and they are showing a side to Islam that many people aren't exposed to. In the article "Not Your Mama's Robert Mitchum" A Muslim literally instructs viewers how to beat your wife. In the article "Islamizing the Public Library: Your Taxpayer Dollars at Work Proselytizing for Islam
ReplyDeleteAttack on Free Speech: 'My public library called the police on me'" A lady is harassed and banned from a library for handing out contradictory information pertaining to Muslims. Overall the tone of the article was very in-your-face. However, I appreciate the courage people have to stand up for what they believe and to go against an ever increasing liberal country.