Favorite Blog Post

My favorite blog post from this quarter was the one about the episode of 30 Days that we watched in class. I thought it was an interesting post because it related to what we were talking about in class, addressed our society as a whole, and it touched on the first blog post I did this year. I think my blogging has improved over the year. Unfortunately, I was not as consistent this quarter perhaps due to junior theme and the fact that we were in the middle of a very busy soccer season. Overall, blogging has been a good experience and I really enjoyed this type of informal writing.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Joannie Rochette

Just this past Thursday in Joannie Rochette of Canada won the bronze medal in women's figure skating. Of course, winning a medal is a huge accomplishment, and I don't want to take anything away from what she achieved, but it is certain that she would not have received as much press if her mother had not passed away due a sudden heart attack the previous Sunday. It seems like there always has to be some tragedy or horrible accident in these athlete's lives as if to prove their strength. This also makes her front-page news instead of the girls who won gold and silver.

An article I read on CNN mentioned them briefly, and mentioned quickly that Kim Yu-Na broke the record with her long program and total score, but that was it. I think this is unfair because not only did she break the record, she shattered it; her total was a 228.56 and the record before that was around a 215. To top it off, she had the weight of an entire nation resting on her shoulders. Throughout her performance, the commentators kept saying how anything less than gold would be a disappointment, and when she had come in second at previous competitions she had received emails and letters asking her why she didn't win, rather than congratulating her on a good performance. So why isn't Yu-Na front page news? Probably because her story isn't tragic, and she won't be receiving anymore emails asking why she didn't win. To top it off, Mao Asada, the silver medalist from Japan, was the first women to land two triple axels in a single competition, and I believe the commentators said she was the first person (male or female) to land three. This was not even mentioned in the article.

Why does the media focus on what's going on outside the arena more than the actual performance? And why do you think tragedies get more focus than happy endings?
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1 comment:

  1. ShirleyFebruary 27, 2010 at 2:49 PM

    I believe that part of the relative focus on Joannie Rochette was the fact that she is Canadian, and the audience of news you receive are English speakers who will likely feel more attached to a story about a Canadian than to one about a Korean or Japanese.

    To answer your questions - people, in general, like to feel as if they are a part of a celebrity's life, as if they actually know the person. The average person can not truly relate to the incredible difficulty of Ice Skating at the level of any one of this Olympic's medalists, but they can relate a bit to their personal lives. To the second question - I think tragedies get more attention because of a common, basic, and morbid human need to see others suffer more than they do themselves, so as to see that their lives are just fine (at least in comparison).

    (I can't help but hope I am wrong about that last part, but I get the feeling I am not wrong at all.)

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