Propaganda Galore

By: Jessica Rampke

There is a vast majority that surrounds our President. There is the positive outlook that gives him praise for feats that he has not even accomplished yet, and there is the negative that includes accusations of false religion and citizenship. These next slides will analyze some of the media that have been used to display both sides of the propaganda.

Analyzing Political Cartoons

This cartoon uses satire

to bring up the issues

that President Obama

promised to fix and yet

has not. It includes

“crashers” that

represents the War,

Health Care Reform

and fixing the economy

which were all on

Obama’s list of things

to fix. The cartoonist

wants to remind people

that while Obama is

receiving accolades for

his ideas, he has

actually yet to achieve

any (at the time that

this cartoon was

published).

Analyzing Political Cartoons

This cartoon is

derived from

when Obama was

trying to get the

Olympics to

Chicago. This

artist is pointing

out how the

president is

juggling all of the

issues at hand,

which is almost

an Olympic feat

in its own rite.

Analyzing Political Cartoons

This cartoon is ridiculing how the Nobel administration gave Obama the Nobel Peace prize. The author is using sarcasm as the tone for the cartoon. Some people agree with the cartoon is thinking that Obama did not really deserve the Peace Prize, but a lot of people also think he deserved it in it’s entirety.

Analyzing Political Cartoons

This cartoonist is showing us the change in Obama’s war plans recently that goes against the Nobel Peace Prize (represented by the dove holding the olive branch) idealism. Obama had recently changed his original War plan to put more troops in Afghanistan which, in the cartoonist’s opinion, will cost more lives and more money. The bird is telling Obama that he preferred the old action when he wasn’t involved with all of the war issues.

Analyzing Political Cartoons

This cartoon uses

satire to point out the

differences in our two

most recent

presidents. The bird

carrying the olive

branch represents the

Nobel Peace Prize

Obama won and the

fact that it pooped on

Bush’s head is a

reference to the “war-

mongering” and chaos

that the Bush

Administration had

created. The artist

wants people to show

the vast differences in

the presidents and the

positive changes

Obama can make.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/obama

-This article was written by Andrew Sullivan, a journalist for the Atlantic, and a media authority.

-This article’s main point was about how the argument against Barack Obama, was not really about him, but so about the slander campaign against peace amongst Americans. Since Vietnam, there has been a bitterness that has turned rather toxic in the media propaganda about all parties.

-He uses claims of value, using mostly the moral arguments that are used against Obama. He points out that Obama seeks to repair America in the sense that he wants to repair the health care plan. His opposition calls this Socialism and slam him for turning against Democracy. He also points out that Obama isn’t perfect and has many moral flaws like his temper.

-An underlying assumption in the article is that while Obama is not a perfect person, he is possibly the only person to positively change America.

-There is no solid evidence in the argument, but more of a description of his character and a brief history of America’s past. There are no specific dates to validate against or citable statistics to back anything up.

- All in all, it was a pretty believable argument. While there was no evidence presented, the moral descriptions of Obama and his policies were appealing to the average reader who is looking for a change (which just about every American is doing right now).

www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/81955/february-08-2007/debra-dickerson%3FvideoId%3D81955+deborah+dickerson+and+stephen+colbert&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

This video clip is one of the best that I have seen yet. This is an argument between Debra Dickerson (a journalist that focuses on the black society in America) and Stephen Colbert, host of the Colbert Report. The main reason I wanted to analyze this video even though it is not a typical media as stated in the instructions for the presentation, I think it is a propaganda agenda gone wrong.

- This interview starts off in Stephen Colbert’s typical fashion by getting directly to the point as to why his guest is there. Debra is claiming that Barack Obama is not black in the American sense. She tries to use claims of fact, saying he did not come from West African slave descendants so therefore is not a brother to her kind (being descendants from slaves). She claims that his heritage did not endure the same problems and struggles as her people, and that her people will not embrace him, but if the white people do not embrace him because he claims to be black and support all black then the whites are racists. At this point Colbert turns the argument against her with the best reference EVER! Quote: “So it sounds to me like you are judging blackness not on the color of someone's skin but on the content of their character, which I think realized Dr. King's dream in a very special way. “ That was pretty much the end of the interview. Debra came with no solid evidence, and her claim that slaves descended from West-African wasn’t completely true (a good number came from the south central region). She tried to use appeal to the audience of the travesty of the slave trade to back up her reason that Obama was not black because his lineage did not suffer like hers, but she ended up sounding ill-informed and prejudiced.

This is a great example of bad evidence. Online, this is posted as Obama’s birth certificate, as an official Kenyan Document, but at the top, the address is in Hawaii. This renders the “evidence” very inconclusive since it is only a partial view of the document.

This illustration is of Hitler being used in Obama’s campaign poster. His opposition is making the allusion that Hitler also wanted to change, and that led to the Holocaust. This is using slander and implying that voting for Obama could lead to disastrous consequences, like the deaths of millions in a war that wasn’t necessary.

In the issue relating to the Good/Evil debate of President Obama, I have uncovered that the positive outweighs the negative on multiple levels. The most conclusive point is that the anti-Obama viewpoint constantly brings to the table shaky evidence (if any at all) and the pro-Obama side uses tactics that use his morals as their defense. The way the information is presented through the tone of the media seems to help with persuasion, but all in all, it will always come down to the evidence. (Please refer to slide 10…yuck!)