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In the 1930s, Americans listened to radio four to five hours a day. What did radio mean to them? A lot, apparently.

1.) Vaudeville comedian Eddie Cantor divulged his shirt and sock sizes on the air, fifteen thousand fans sent birthday gifts;

2.) Amos and Andy complained they could not afford a typewriter, NBC received 1,880 machines from listeners wanting to help their radio friends.

3.)Thousands of letters were mailed every week to radio's musicians, announcers, domestic advisors, and soap opera characters. Some offered advice, some asked for help, and some simply said thanks. "You are not giving us a fairy story," wrote an admirer of the eponymous heroine of The Story of Mary Marlin, "You are giving us Life" (71).

Shake the blues away

Modern readers may think imagining an intimate relationship with voices on the air is nuts; Bruce Lenthall concludes otherwise. Reading the letters collected in radio archives while doing research for his dissertation, Lenthall saw irony, not insanity. Depression-era Americans, he reminds readers, felt overwhelmed by change. On guard against distant forces of government and commercial empire that increasingly mattered in their lives, Americans relied on one of the leading change agents of mass culture, broadcasting, to personalize an impersonal and potentially threatening public sphere, even imagining ways that the medium could help them count and perhaps be noticed by those wielding power in the broader world. Yes, readers should question the adequacy of this remarkable use of radio, Lenthall allows. But he asks us to appreciate how and why so many found radio useful for humanizing mass society.

Airwave romance

Lenthall begins with the concerns of public intellectuals in the 1930s who provide him with his theoretical frame. Some, such as the economist William Orton and the Marxist journalist James Rorty, feared that mass culture would overwhelm individual voices and choices, cordoning off public speech to all but the powerful, who would use the airwaves to engineer a mass mind. Cheerleaders for radio countered that the commercial nature of radio's ownership guaranteed that ultimate power over programming lay with the masses. Lenthall assesses these claims through a series of case studies analyzing important understandings and practices that developed around radio. Examining the ethereal relationships listeners formed with radio characters--the radio democracy exemplified by Roosevelt's fireside chats, the faith in popular radio champions such as Father Charles Coughlin and Dr. John Brinkley, the birth of media studies, and the hope that radio could make art matter--Lenthall concludes that neither critics nor defenders got the significance of radio completely right.

Balance of culture

The meaning of radio, argues Lenthall, can be found "in some delicate balances" between individual authority and centralized mass culture (210). If Americans learned to accept the new rules of mass culture, such as the power of corporations to control broadcast programming, they also found ways to push back as individuals, leaving their stamp on the culture they inhabited.

A welcome development in recent years is that a number of scholars have set out to update Erik Barnouw's classic three-volume work, A History of Broadcasting in the United States. Lenthall's book is less comprehensive and descriptive than Susan Douglas's Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination. But advanced students will find it valuable for its clear and undistracted focus on important analytical questions raised by the rise of mass culture.

Elderly have troubles finding jobs with discrimination

I always thought it was annoying when I played the computer The Sims 2 when I would have an elderly Sim who was down on their luck but couldn't get anything better than a low paying part time job. The same job the teenage Sims would get.


Mortimer Goth from the Sims 2. Photo from Google Images

Though the Sims is just a game, it illustrates the discrimination that is going on in today's work force.

Walk into the Rock Hill Chick Fil-a on Cherry Road and you will see at least three of their employees who are over the age of 60. The elderly people serving us our eight count chicken nuggets are working the same job and skill level that any 16-year-old high school student could work.

Photo from Google Images

As our economy is failing, many retired people are having to return to work but have found it increasingly hard to get a job because of their age.

Joanna Lahey said in an article written for the Retirement Research at Boston College entitled "Elderly Workers Face Discrimination," that as more 'baby-boomers' retired, they are relying on Social Security Checks along with the population over the age of 65. Social Security is dwindling and many Americans find themselves having to work longer and retirer later.

One of the reasons for discrimination is not because older workers have a lower skill level than younger workers, said Lahey. Elderly might leave jobs with higher wages to go to another job. The elderly worker is expecting the same high pay they might have had at their old job, but since they can not exhibit the same expertise and skills they had in the past, they will not have an equally high pay.

Another reason for age discrimination is that the person hiring for the job is as old as the elderly person applying, said Richard Posner in his book "Aging and Old Age." Posner said that this causes them to forget that they are capable of doing the job.

It is unreasonable for someone hiring applicants to base the person's abilities off of their own, whether the applicant is older or younger. No two people are alike, so it is hard to judge working abilities off of age.

Regardless of the Social Security money issues, elderly people need to be provided for somehow before they go into financial ruin due to the economy.

It isn't expected that an older person will get a job as an engineer at Michelin, but it should be better than what they are generally being given now.

Working the customer service counter at Belks Department Store would be better than working the drive-thru at Chick fil-a.

First person feature story video

Greek life reminicent of segregation of the 1950's

Photo by Rebecca Macias of the University of Southern Mississippi

Schools like Winthrop University shout diversity and celebration of culture. But when it comes to segregation blacks and whites of Greek organizations, it seems that someone never heard about Brown v. Board of Education (1954) which integrated black and white schools.

The school year begins, the freshman arrive and the sororities and fraternities pounce on the new students like lions pouncing on a zebra.

Winthrop University has convocation every year which displays the different religious groups, clubs and Greek sororities and fraternities.

While walking through the vast amounts of tables during the convocation picnic, when one comes to the Greek tables the members are either predominantly black or white.

Little or no integration of race is practiced when it comes to sororities and fraternities at Winthrop.

Very few black students are in the predominately white fraternities and sororities while there are equally as few white students in the black Greek organizations.

It is ironic that Winthrop has this problem when they frequently boast the the goodwill and harmony different races will enjoy on the culturally diverse campus.

Winthrop University is not the only college that has this issue.

The New York Times discusses a similar issue at the University of Alabama in 2001.

The article, "Alabama university attacks fraternity bias," states that of the 37 white fraternities, no black members were accepted during the pledge season.

With statistics like this, one would think that Governor George Wallace was still spouting pro-degradation speeches on campus steps.

The president of the school, Andrew Sorensen, demanded that sororities and fraternities needed to accept black members into their clubs or they would face punishments.

But should Greek clubs have to face punishment and threats to accept different races into their groups? Shouldn't they be welcoming them in with open arms?

An article from the student newspaper The Student Printz of the University of Southern Mississippi, stated that many of these groups justify that the segregation is based on the historical background of the clubs.

"Racial integration in Greek life lingers," says that some of the black fraternities that were formed in the early 1900s say that their club was a product of segregation in the early part of the century when it was founded.

Though organizations have been predominately black or white for decades, is no excuse for their lack of racial diversity today.

We are living in a generation that walks on their tip-toes to constantly make sure they are politically correct.

Talking in speech to avoid offending different races is not the same as actions that bring these races together.

Sororities and fraternities are supposed to be the pinnacle of college society that some students might look to for an example.

An example needs to be set in regards to integrating fraternities and sororities before the two races are once again ripped apart by separation.