Current Events Activity 1.2

1B.

Long Term Republican Candidates were in a way by reviving a preferential treatment by the CNN crew - any candidate had the chance to respond to any claim or allegation made against them with a rebuttal, giving certain people who are frequently the object of scrutiny, namely Donald Trump.There is no way for mainstream candidates to avoid coming under fire and being tasked with responding to claims or comments by log shot candidates. The Donald tends to be center stage because of a vicious cycle of high polling numbers and oversaturated coverage by the media, he also happens to be very good at using that media coverage to make aggrandizing statements to attract controversy.

2.

John Brennan visited the UT campus in order to release 2,500 new documents from the LBJ and JFK presIdencies. The CIA is currently undergoing a process of declassification, and releasing a bunch of previously confidential presidential daily briefs might held the Agency in their effort to appear more transparent. The briefs apparently give keen insight into the dizzying array of challenges faced by both presidents during the 1960's.

3.

Hungarian Security Forces used water cannons to repel migrants who had been attempting to cross through the border with Serbia on their way to elsewhere in Europe. The refugees crossing through the Balkans must deal with land mines, which are left as a residual from the decade long crisis that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Xenophobic governments, especially the Hungarians, have arrested migrants en masse, and other obstacles along their route to Western and Northern Europe.

4.

A 14-year-old engineering student named Ahmed Mohammed made a clock and brought it in to his class in McArthur High School in Irving, Texas. The clock had posted no problems until the alarm went off, at which point, presumably because the student was a Muslim, he was detained by police and arrested. Islamophibia in the wake of 9/11 is nothing new, and the demonization of an entire religious group based on the actions of a few people is something that should and did spark national outrage of the purest kind, a Twitter hashtag. President Obama invited the kid to the White House. The Irving City Council passed an anti-sharia law law in an attempt to curb the looming threat of radical Islam or some such made up boogeyman, because Irving, Texas can sometimes be not that welcoming to Muslim people.

ESSAY QUESTION

I first heard of this story on Twitter in a typical slightly misinformed tweet about the subject involving a few pictures of Flavor Flav, it was a pretty ridiculous few minutes. I am not typically someone who gets easily outraged at news articles about islamophobia, I guess I go get outraged, but it is fairly outrageous. I don't think that it should have deserved front page attention, but the story about Hungarians with water cannons could probably have been bumped. I think the underlying problem with the story's placement has to do with the quality of the writing more than with the story itself. I would have put the story on the second page, I don't think that incesence should take prominence away from political debates, no matter how outrageous it is.