Race, Gender, and Opposition

J441 Prompt: Over the past few weeks there has been much discussion regarding the opposition to health care reform and President Obama’s race.  If Hillary Clinton were president, do you feel her gender would have an effect on support or opposition of health care reform?

Response: Yes, there has been much discussion regarding the opposition to Obama’s health care reform plan. I actually came across an article about a Facebook poll that asked if President Obama should be assassinated. It was shutdown and the Secret Service has begun investigation, and while there’s no evidence that the poll was in relation to the health care reform plan, the timing seems to elude that the two may be correlated. In any case, I would say political activism is at an all time high, especially considering that President Obama has been in office for about nine months. I don’t think I remember people having so much to say about Bush a year into his presidency. Being the first African-American president is a large source of this activism, I’m sure, but I also feel like it’s the extent to which Obama is liberal that is stirring up some controversy. Now if Hillary Clinton were to be serving in place of Obama, I honestly don’t think there would be much contrast between the two regardless of their differences in race and gender. While her being Caucasian is a common thread between her and the former 43 presidents, her being female is the new discrepancy and similarly while Obama being male is his common thread, his race is the new factor. Treating both gender and race as equal, but different factors, the equation leads to the same answer. However, to consider and weigh gender and race different values, could mean a completely different outcome. I find myself in the middle. I am not naive enough to equate both gender and race as equal, but at the same time, I don’t think they are light-years apart in the weight they hold. In the particular case of health care reform, I think more than the physical qualities of the proposer (Obama or H. Clinton), the implications of the actual reform plan is what has the public so heated up. I can imagine a similar reaction from the public if the proposer were any other former president. In the end, the people who care about the race or gender of the proposer and base their decisions solely or even heavily on those physical attributes, are insignificant in number and/or the political power they hold (under the assumption that they are not very well politically aware or knowledgeable). In short, no, I do not think that there would be a significant effect on the support or opposition towards health care reform if H. Clinton were to be president.

An update on my life…and future blog aspirations

Hi everyone..!

I am back! For real this time. I will be a lot more active this year than last year, I promise! I am hoping to brand the name of “ispycandy” with having a domain (www.ispycandy.com), an ispycandy YouTube account, an ispycandy Twitter account, and maybe even a Facebook page. I have already created the former three, so feel free to anticipate a ton of activity from me..! At the same time, I will try to maintain my own branding of Chloe Park (www.chloe-park.com) with my personal Facebook and Twitter accounts.

To give a quick recap of my life in the past six months…I have kept pretty busy. I finished up my spring semester at school in the midst of going crazy trying to figure out what I would be doing during the summer. An internship, I had anticipated, but where? Well, I applied to many out in the west, particularly the greater Phoenix area, and got a few offers at small design and ad firms. Just when I was about to seal the deal with one of them, I got an unexpected call from Condé Nast Publications in New York, asking if I would be interested in being part of their summer internship program. My response? “..uh..yes?!” That was in March and the interview process began. What was so interesting about this entire situation was that I hadn’t applied to this year’s program. Condé Nast has a program application process setup on their careers site. I applied for the summer of 2008, when I first found out about it. After not hearing from them, I hadn’t bothered to apply again this year, but I suppose they had my application on file for this summer’s applicant pool. In any case, what a surprise..! I remember reading on Ed2010 how insane the program selectivity was and how the chance of getting selected to intern was slimmer than getting accepted to an Ivy League (another similar post). So, I didn’t really have my hopes up as I braced myself for a really tough interview. I was actually in Phoenix visiting at the time I got the call for an interview request. The HR lady I spoke with asked to set up an interview time either in-person or over the phone. I kind of laughed aloud at the thought of flying out all the way to NYC for a short internship interview and asked for a phone one. I guess I was wrong to laugh, as I later found out that people flew out from all over the place (Miami, Ireland, etc.) just to conduct this 30-minute (maybe an hour, at most) interview. Anyways, long story short, I interviewed a few days later and was overnighted a copy of last year’s [n]tern, the Condé Nast intern magazine. Weeks later, I was offered the title of Creative Director of [n]tern 2009 and Corporate Art intern. Probably sounds a lot fancier than it was. I’ll probably write a more detailed post about my internship (with photos, hopefully, assuming that a lot of people are interested in the world of CN behind closed doors). So I packed up my car and drove the five hours to NYC (from my home in NOVA) and nine weeks later, I had produced my first-ever magazine. Don’t know how that really happened, but I do know it was an intense, intense nine weeks. So I was moved back home in early August, packed up again and drove another five hours down to school, moved in, flew out to Los Angeles for a few days to vacation before classes started, flew back to RDU and started school last last Tuesday. Now I am sitting in the multimedia lab waiting for my 1 p.m. class to start. I have a quiz at 3:30 that I have completely neglected to study for and instead am writing this right now…er…we’ll see how that goes.

Anyways, if you haven’t already noticed, I am quite interested in many things in life, so hopefully this blog will (continue to) be a reflection of that. I usually am pretty good to being up-to-date with the latest technology gadgets, beauty products, media news, and etc. It’s just a matter of trying to keep this blog up to speed with what my mind is thinking..! It won’t be easy as I am taking 18 credits this semester, working as a part-time graphic designer, serving as an officer for a club and participating in others, but sometimes being busy propels more activity…and other times it just leads to exhaustion (I’m praying for the former). This is my last year in school (assuming I can graduate on time), so I feel extra motivated to try my best at all I do. Wish me luck and be out on the look for more exciting posts coming soon! Cheers!

-ispycandy