It may as well be Mayday

What is with our fascination with ribbons? You know what I'm talking about, those different colored ribbons that are taking over our commercial world? Supposedly they're raising awareness for all sorts of noteworthy causes but really I think it's all marketing. Because you can't truly be aware of something unless it directly affects your life. I'm aware about autism in that I know its a condition that affects many people but I don't have any close friends or relatives who are afflicted by it. So I could say that I don't really know the first thing about what autism is like because I don't have to deal with it.

I suppose that's what those damn ribbons are supposed to be about, but the truth is it doesn't work. This whole post is inspired by the fact that October is quickly approaching and as of last week I've already seen the the army of pink paraphernalia invading grocery stores and gas stations. Save the boobies. Huzzah. The problem with the demi-god that is Susan G, Komen is that the pink brigade has infiltrated nearly every facet of our daily lives. Nobody I know has had to battle breast cancer, but even so I know about it. I don't need to be made aware through the medium of pink cookies, pink reusable shopping bags, (it GREEN! now were a fucking rainbow!!!!!), and pink logos on just about everything that can be bought in a store or given away at an "awareness" booth. And that is exactly the problem. These ribbon organizations are all about promoting "awareness", whatever that means, and not at all about solving the problem. They're worse than religious missionaries who go bothering people door to door. Breast cancer has become the marketing shtick that has latched onto our societies need to overcompensate for our guilt. You may be a big coorperate somebody who sucks money and jobs out of smaller companies but hey. We have pink ribbons on our pens so now were the nice guys, see, we don't want your wives and daughters to get cancer, aren't we altruistic?

And it works, because everybody likes breasts. Men like to look at them and women like to have them. There is no downside, and there is no opposition. The Susan G. Komen Foundation had achieved a monopoly on Cancer. Does anyone else think there's something wrong with that?

Questions

Upon reflection I don't feel that my Artifact Selection Essay fully addressed my hopes for the assignment. I chose to study newspapers because I have several huge beefs concerning what they have become. I touched on some of these in my actual essay but struggled to fully explain them within the style of writing which I had already wrote most of my paper in. I have chosen Newspapers partly because I am horribly offended by their content; both in regard towards the dumbed-down subject matter and also towards the poor language and mechanics of the writing in it of itself.

But the main and perhaps more interesting,(at least the less rant-inducing), reason for my choice is how radically our focus has changed from print newspapers, with well-researched and thoughtfully written articles, to politically charged, reactionary pieces which people usually prefer to view on an online news source. The news has become almost pornographic in that it is not at all about keeping oneself informed about the goings on of the world but has everything to do with getting the next "fix" of political bile. Also, why are people more inclined to read Yahoo news online than to pick up the Dallas Morning News? A classmate recently told me that she never reads the newspaper, that she doesn't even think about it. I wish now that I had asked her "why not?". I wish to, by the end of the semester, be able to answer the question "where is all this eventually leading us as a society?".