SF Salsa Festival

This past weekend I went the first annual Salsa Festival in San Francisco. When I attended Cal Poly San Luis my mother and I would often go to salsa classes. Through Cal Poly my mother got really involved in salsa festivals. My mother went to a salsa festival in Palms springs last year and met Jon. Jon is a professional dancer in the bay area and put on the salsa festival in San Francisco. The festival was a two day event. During the day salsa workshops were held and salsa competitions and at night famous professional dancers preformed and afterwards everyone would dance the night away. I’m not the best salsa dancer but I do enjoy myself. My mom who emigrated from Colombia noted some differences between the dance techniques. According to my mother salsa dancers in Colombia place emphasis on the movement of the hips while in America there is less emphasis on the hips and more emphasis is on the movement of the arms and foot work is also faster in Colombian salsa dancing. I was taught Salsa at Cal Poly so I fall into the category of American Salsa. As a beginner what I noticed was not nessecarly the technique but the comfort level of dancing. It is very obvious if a person is comfortable or not and it shows in the way a person who leads. My family is Colombian and my mother seizes every opportunity to dance salsa. She befriended Jon mainly because they are both Colombian. This was second Salsa festival but I definitely was surprised to see a good amount of whites, Asians and gay couples. My favorite act was Eli and Yen, a gay couple. Eli and Yen are the first same gender professional couple and they participated in the 2007 ESPN dance completion. 

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Meghan Mccain is a blogger

I was watching CNN and on the Larry King Show, Larry King was interviewing Meghan McCain, Senator McCain’s daughter. I had never heard of her before and after watching her interview I was very surprised. In her interview she spoke of President Obama. As a young republican she supports the president and his actions though they might be inline with her views. She stated that any American should support their president regardless of their party affiliate. Through out the interview she kept referring to herself as progressive republican and the next or young generation of republicans. She expressed her opinions of Rush Limbaugh, who hopes the president will fail. While campaigning for her father she started blogging and recently joined Twitter. I was really surprised to hear this. It really hit me that younger people are really taking advantage of the internet and use the internet to express their ideas and opinions. As a political embodiment of the young generation I believe it is good of her to blog. She is only 24 and she can encourage young people to become informed in politics. She had a lot to say about the Republican Party. She claimed that the Republican Party is without a leader at the moment. What caught my attention was her mention of younger republicans. She spoke of the issues her and her father disagree on and mentioned the issues that the older generation of republicans and the young generation of republicans. I appreciate her opinion on politics; it is refreshing to see a young person voice their opinion on politics. Hopefully the young generation will become more engaged with politics.

This political cartoon in the New York Post enraged many. The cartoon depicts a monkey being shot with the run men remarking, “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill”. This cartoon mocks the stimulus bill, brings up racial issues and violence and compares the president to a monkey. While cartoon are playful in nature this cartoon is extremely offensive and poorly crafted. The New York Post claims that the monkey being killed is making reference to Travis the chimp of Connecticut. This would have been acceptable but entangling Travis the chimp with the drafting of the stimulus bill has a low blow. It is obvious that the monkey, a stereotypically image is African Americans is meant to poke fun a President Obama. It is sad to see that our first black president is mocked in such way. What I find to be more offensive then the cartoon it self is that the New York Post published it. As a leading newspaper publication the New York Post should have thought twice about publishing such racist imagery. This cartoon though extremely offensive would have not gained so much controversy if it were published through some other media. African Americans and other minorities are constantly mocked in the media and never is the content of such media questioned. I was very glad people questioned this political cartoon. I don’t believe racist content will be erased from the media but speaking out about such content is a step in the right direction.