Although troy high may boast about its extremely diverse student body. It's faculty remains homogenized.  The average teacher is white, female, and in her late 20s, early 30s.  There seems to be an underrepresentauto in certain d groups of people that may create a questionable environment.  It's like the thing Ms. Valentino said about being the only white person at a basketball game:  it's a challenge not being represented, and it makes school life that much harder.  To be completely transparent (i.e. to acknowledge my priceless as a white person in America) I had never really paid attention to the faculty diversity until Ms. Valentino mentioned it- it's weird the things we can justify to ourselves in order to sustain our own image.  In the bigger picture of the American educational system, I'd suspect this situation is pretty similar, it's like that quote: "white men saving brown women from brown men" except ignoring gender and the saving is educational.

Dr. Seuss was (in addition to being a beloved author) a political cartoonist for the New York Daily newspaper .   From 1941 to 1943 he tackled racial issues as will as the world war that was currently going on.  

In this particular comic Seuss critsizes Americans late entry into the war.  The carefree bird (a charicurized Bald Eagle representing American involvement) sits leisurely on its tree as another bird (this one looking much more malevolent with its engraven swastika representing Nazi Germany) tears down the last standing tree other than the American one.   The Eagle says “Ho Humm!”  to show its apparent disconcern.  The colloquial language accentuates this.   The Eagle also shows is blatant ignorance by expecting immunity from the Nazi bird.  Situational irony exists in the the picture since we know the actions taken during the actual war.   Seuss propose was to encourage people to support the war.   He tried to get people to resist the atrocities occurring overseas.

I opened my window tonight- since the weather’s beginning to steer back to the nicer parts of the year- and about like 2 am-ish I heard some cat moan outside of my room.  Hearing something like this, in the secluded civilization we live in, is kindof a suburban taboo.  You associate it with some crowded and underfunded part of some anonymous town that’s too in debt to keep the street clean of their furry companions wayward cousins.  The noise forced me to stop the nonsense homework i was doing and try to listen, to evaluate, what’s going on maybe 30 feet and a floor down from my window.  It made me think: why is it was so unnatural to hear this animal outside, what gives me the right to be so pretentious as to put my focus of the cat’s cries.  Just as in Chet Raymo’s “A Measure of Restraint”, unchecked municipal advancement is unchecked and existentially creates a divide between us and nature-  just like that “what separates us from the animals” cliche.  There’s this any progress is good progress mentality that exists in society.  Maybe the safety and detachment of civil housing isn’t the best example of this, but the way we have isolated ourselves, like a giant “F you” to mother nature, is shockingly opaque.  Raymo warns about aesthetic advancement and consumer culture.  Who’s to say that the housing industry isn't like the radioactive toothpaste?  In our venture into bigger houses and cheap plastic we essentially kill the environment and then build walls around ourselves so we don’t have to listen to the pathetic screeches of the animals outside ourselves. I'm not calling for some primitivist return to nomadic culture since this just some random thoughts written down at like 3 am on some mediocre blog, I'm just trying to raise something i don't think is thought about in the society we live in.

Style

In his essay Videotape, Don Delillo juxtaposes the themes of innocence and the unpredictability of mortal life.  His narrative features a girl who rhetorically represents purity and innocence -like a young Jeannette Wallace - esque character before her encounters with fire.  Her protagonist roles are however challenged as the narrator introduces that the girl is just some wayward video enthusiast who's video some strange man is watching.  The weird dude represents some gawking American; he is a Lone Ranger in the boundless territories of his television.   As the video progresses to the inevitable murder it captures, the narrator describes the extent of the man's encapsulation with cooloquial “Janet, hurry up”’s to his wife.  In the crucial moments leading up to the man being “shot in the head,” the author directs the audience panicked and increasingly personally- in his hysteria his style takes a new form,  he transcends the boundaries of a formal essay and strives to blatently connect with his audience and mirrors the gravity of his essays content.   His narrative becomes so personal that it's now more of a memoir out of someone's diary than his essay.  

As Delillo relays his message in the Texas Highway Killer's murders, intimacy with the reader becomes fundamental to his rhetoric usage.   His sentences become tert and contemplative;  his closeness brings the excitement of a casino into the pages of his essay. While others may say this modernistic writing Is hasty and rushes his meaningful subject,  I would say that form meets content in his essay the way that his style matches the spontaneity of life.