Garden State Reflections

I live in the gloriously dense and terribly misunderstood state of New Jersey.

So, other than being the punchline to most US state jokes, what’s important about the Garden State?  To be honest, I don’t really know. That’s a joke, New Jersey is undoubtedly of paramount importance to the United States and like other states along the east coast, New Jersey has a rich colonial history.

So, let’s take a look at how New Jerseyans are using the internet to push their political agendas.

First, a few things:

According to Mondo Politico, there are 12 active political parties in NJ.  These days the Democratic party dominates the NJ political scene.  Many consider NJ to be one of the most liberal states in the union today.  What leads people to this conclusion?

Well, for one thing, New Jersey governor, Jon S. Corzine (above) signed legislation in December of 2007 that abolished the death penalty and he recently signed a bill that reduced current death row prisoner’s sentences from “death” to “life in prison without parole.”  Also, polls show that NJ citizens are more accepting of same-sex marriages and most take a pro-choice stance in the issue of abortion.  But, of course, not all NJ citizens lean left.

Let’s take a look at Red Jersey, a community blog for conservatives across the state.  I like the setup of this blog.  It’s simple, organized, and the “Daily Round Up” quickly directs readers to new postings and popular discussions.

I’ve also come across a blog titled, Conservatives with Attitude! (CWA) which claims to be New Jersey’s best conservative blog.  In many ways, CWA is just like any other biased political blog, but take a look at this:

The founders of this blog are former pro-wrestlers and they ask,

“who knows more about ‘attitude’ then(sic) [wrestlers]”

The CWA makes it clear that they

…”believe the Conservative message is the only hope to save the United States, the Bill of Rights and our freedom.”

And in the other corner…

Blue Jersey covers “all the news that slips from the print”

To be clear, Blue Jersey is a popular political blog that may appeal to a more liberal audience.  I’ve only read today’s posting, “New Jersey: America’s Best Place to Raise a Family” but I can tell the authors try to be professional in making their arguments.

Unlike this guy, Pipistrello, who wants you to laugh.

We’ve just looked at Red Jersey and Blue Jersey, but  Green Jersey also makes a contribution to the NJ blogosphere.  This blog doesn’t get the traffic of the other two, but it’s the most complete green party blog I’ve found outside of the Green Party’s NJ site.

One more thing: If you didn’t know already, we do not pump our own gas in NJ.  It’s not a bad job, pumping gas.  The USA is a nation built to support the American love of the automobile.  If you ever find yourself in NJ with a car and you are short on cash, go to www.newjerseygasprices.com  and find the cheapest gas in your area.

 Before I post something concerning the use of the internet in the New Jersey political scene, I thought I would write about something else.  So, here it goes:

Dr. Penn, my PSYC 101 professor at UNC-CH, suggested that I check out a particular Frontline television episode.  Frontline is a television news series for the Public Broadcasting Corporation (PBS) and all of the episodes are available online for anyone to view.  The episode he wanted me to watch dealt with the impact of the internet on American youth.

I had never heard of Frontline at the time, but I decided to give it a look anyways.  As it turned out, I’m very glad that I took Dr. Penn’s advice.  The episode was filmed mainly at my high school in Chatham, New Jersey.  My friend, Greg, and my history teacher, Mr. Maher, had starring roles in the episode.  It’s always fun to see people you know on television, but the greatest part of the show was to hear Mr. Maher’s thoughts on the future of the internet use in the classroom.

Mr. Maher had always stressed the use of media in our classroom.  He assigned several video projects, he recommended the use of the Firefox web browser add-on Trailfire,  he used the SmartBoard as a regular part of his lectures, and he even created his own website forum, Maherpages.  He also started a wiki for our classroom.

You can watch “Growing Up Online” here:

Also found on the Frontline website is the text from Mr. Maher’s interview with the PBS journalist crew.

In his interview with Frontline, he had this to say:

“… I think it was Ben Franklin who said, with the printing press, we can change the nation. But now everybody has a printing press, and they have film editing, and they have sound editing right in their basement.”

What Mr. Maher said is obviously relevant to our studies here as Diplomats at BFTF.  We had our first class with Dr. Ross earlier this morning and his handout asks if the tools of the internet have created millions of Ben Franklin.  I think the answer is unquestionably, yes.

Below is a picture of Mr. Maher of Chatham High School.

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