The ad shown above is from the Hillary Clinton campaign. In making this campaign, she intended to target the Muslim-American population and their sympathizers. Earlier on in the campaign season, Trump attacked Muslim parents when they spoke out about the death of their son during combat in Iraq. He noticed that only the father was speaking during this speech, and he said it was because Muslim culture would not allow women to speak. This was both inaccurate and racist. This statement of his solidified the Muslim community against him, as there was already a very large disdain for Trump because of his prior racist, anti-Muslim statements. Shortly after Trump commented on this couple’s speech– after he entirely overlooked the purpose of the speech–the mother came out and gave a statement. She stated that the reason she didn’t speak was due to the fact that speaking on the subject was just too emotionally taxing.In the ad, the father tells the story of his son, and his heroic act that saved many others while costing him his life. The video ends with such a powerful question: Mr. Kahn directs his question to Trump, asking if his son would have a place in Trump’s America.

Even though his son earned a Purple Heart and saved so many American lives, Trump cannot see past the fact that he was Muslim. He has many times stated that he would like to purge the United States of many ethnic groups, particularly the Muslim community for fear of Isis spies. Also in his campaign, he has alienated veterans, calling John McCain a “loser” for being a prisoner of war. He also has said that he can relate to veterans with severe PTSD because he too has made great sacrifices. By doing so, Trump has effectively alienated both the Muslim and veteran demographics. This ad by Hillary Clinton shows her support for both groups. It was deliberately made with the same family Trump previously attacked, and deliberately includes two groups of people that are currently very anti-Trump. After Trump lost those groups of people as supporters– if they ever actually did support him– Hillary made sure those people had a place for their votes to go.

Personally, I found this ad very moving and very powerful. While I am not a member of the Muslim community, nor am I or a member of my family a veteran, I found I could identify with this family. My mother is from Pakistan, and our family is very close witha number of Muslim families from all over southeast Asia and the Middle East. I feel personally offended by any attacks made on the Muslim community. This ad gave the Kahn family another opportunity to tell the story of their son without being overshadowed by Trump’s resulting racist comments. The story itself is one that is very emotionally moving, but the end is what really hit home hard. When Mr. Kahn asks if his son would have a place in Trump’s America, it almost made me cry. The point he was trying to make is that there are a number of groups that have immigrated to the United States, myself included, that Trump would like to deport from the country. Not only would he get rid of entire religious groups and ethnicities, but he would also deport American citizens that have fought for American ideals overseas, such as Mr. Kahn’s son. He does not consider them American even after the sacrifices they have made for this country.

The voter ballot set for my hometown shows a lot of familiar names. Obviously, there are the presidential candidates and their running mates, which I hope at this point we are all familiar with. A little closer to home, I found it interesting that the Senator and House Representative were going unopposed. Senator Lindsey Tippins is someone who has been very active in the community in Acworth. While I really don’t know all that much about his political viewpoints, I know he really is a very nice man and often visited my high school for various sporting events. I’m not at all familiar with the other incumbent in the House. On the Cobb County School District section, I wasn’t surprised to find Randi Scamihorn on the ballot. He was very active in my school as well and was my substitute teacher many times over the years. More interestingly, I noticed there was a Democrat on the list, which is very uncommon in my hometown.

As for the other issues on the ballot, I was actually just discussing these topics with my boss earlier this week. She and I talked about how the ideas on the ballot were good in the sense of the attempt to secure funds to help different groups of people, especially those who have been victims of sexual assault. The weird part is the group of people they intend to tax. This just got me wondering how much money that would actually raise and if that would be enough to actually change anything.

Playing around with the gender remixer made me realize the different aspects of gender-specific children’s ads. I hadn’t really thought much about these ads before, but the very different aspects of gender addressed in this video was quite startling. The girls’ ads are much more docile than the boys’, often emphasizing tasks centered around the domestic sphere. Girls are expected to play with toys that involve caring for animals or children, cooking, or doing hair and makeup. Looking at these now as a young adult, I am actually insulted by these ads. As a female, I’m expected to be drawn to homemaking and beauty moreso than building rockets or pirate adventures. The juxtaposition of the different ads’ audio and visual really brought to my attention these glaring differences. Growing up, I was always the girl who played with Legos and built forts outside with sticks and leaves rather than the girl who played with Barbies. Because of that, I hadn’t ever paid much attention to the girls ads (not that I even have cable to see these ads).

It’s hard to grasp the concept that these ads still exist in the progressive nature of today’s society. Gender is becoming an increasingly grey area in regards to the traditional definitions of gender and sex, and pop culture is starting to adjust to these changes accordingly. Clothing lines are become more androgenous in nature, and more things that were traditionally “female”, such as makeup, are reaching out to include the male demographic. Living in the city, I find these efforts are more prevalent than back home in suburbia. Even then, I am shocked that these ads are still airing today given that women have progressed so far beyond the confines of the kitchen that society previously held them in. I’m assuming there’s a strong opposition against the toy companies by some LGBTQ groups. Hopefully these ads will change sooner rather than later.

For the last week or so, I’ve been working a lot on the appearance and accessibility of my blog. The edits I made required me to activate some plugins on wordpress, which of course I had to Google what the heck those were. The ones that I think were the most useful were the media tree, the document, and the Google fonts plugins. I haven’t quite figured out the media tree yet, but when I do it will be very useful for uploading multiple media at once. The document one allows me to put a document on my page, and I’m looking for something that I could post to do that. The font plugin wasn’t really necessary, but I like my blog to look nice, and the fonts contribute to that a lot, I feel. I also activated a shortcodes plugin and a Zotero plugin, and I’m still a little confused on what exactly those do, but I’m sure if I keep looking, Google will have the answer.

Another major adjustment to my blog is in regards to pages, menus, and categories. When I initially went to install a menu on my blog, I set it up so that each menu link would take you to a page where I labeled each one according to the menu name. That was great and all, but I had no idea how to copy my posts from the all posts page and put them on the individual project pages. Eventually, I scrapped the pages entirely when I realized I could select my categories to be put on the menu. For that, I had to go through and fix all my categories to make them the ones we discussed in class (good thing I took thorough notes regarding that). I also found out how to make a static page and include a little blurb about the blog and the content that will be uploaded.

I’m actually really excited to use this now that I’ve customized it to my liking. I have an old film SLR that I’ve been using around the city, and I just haven’t gotten a chance to develop the reels of film. I plan on doing that ASAP now. Since they give you both the physical pictures and a disc with the digital copies, I can easily upload those to my blog and continue discussing my various adventures! I’m not going to lie, I kind of dreaded using this blog because I didn’t understand it, but as long as you take an afternoon and figure out how to use it, it becomes a lot more fun.