Kanye’s publicity stunts overshadow his artistry

Musician Kanye West may be better known for his ego and Internet presence than his music at this point. In the midst of the release of his new album The Life of Pablo, West went on a days-long Twitter rant about a multitude of topics, including his personal multimillion-dollar debt, discrimination of people of color in the music industry and even a claim that comedian Bill Cosby is innocent of rape charges.

West has become a household name and every year it seems mainstream media changes their mind about him. The world hated West when he took the microphone from Taylor Swift at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, but then began to embrace his overconfident ego after his 2013 album Yeezus dropped.

Now, West is using the exact same tactics as presidential candidate Donald Trump is to get support: shock everyone and say ridiculous things to make headlines. Former Lamron editor-in-chief Maddy Smith ‘14 tweeted, “Kanyes PR team is now cackling together over salad in LA about the ingenuity of the monster theyve created.” She’s exactly right.

West—like Trump—knows exactly what he is doing when he tweets ridiculous things. Every single post is calculated in order to get more and more attention––and it’s working beautifully for him. It’s rare to see one of West’s tweets get fewer than 10,000 retweets, meaning more and more people see his absurdity every day. Trump—who may be more popular than West at this point—often gets fewer than 1,000 retweets, albeit with just 6 million followers compared to West’s 19 million.

There is a lesson to be learned from West’s foolishness, however: We as a society value shock over artistic skill and reason. Whether we’re supporting, criticizing or just laughing about West’s current persona, we’re still putting his music on the backburner and giving attention to his act. This is a dangerous trend and will lead to potentially devastating things if we cannot reverse it.

Super Bowl ads replace creativity with lazy humor

What might be even more famous than the Super Bowl are its highly anticipated—and usually over-the-top—commercials. While people who are uninterested in sports often say, “I’m only watching the Super Bowl for the commercials,” we think—after seeing the commercials this year—that that notion might be more of a spectacle that the football game itself.

Super Bowl commercials increase in ridiculousness and desperation every year. Instead of trying to sell a product in a clever and attractive way, many commercials rely on absurdity and base humor in the hopes that the consequent attention on social media will be the better advertisement. Capitalizing on young consumers’ “addiction” to smartphones and viral Internet videos may sound like a smart tactic, but in practice, it leaves us feeling patronized, confused and uncomfortable while we watch ads such as Mountain Dew’s “Puppy Monkey Baby.”

Mountain Dew’s commercial is the epitome of the “viral video” tactic advertisers are increasingly starting to adopt. For this ad, a weird, unsettling hybrid creature of a puppy, monkey and a baby does not make sense for selling a soda drink. A strange commercial that garners media attention may not necessarily lead to an increase in product sales—if it’s weird enough it could even lead to a decrease—but at least people are talking about Mountain Dew.

Reebok produced a Super Bowl commercial in 2003 called “Terry Tate: Office Linebacker” based on an existing marketing campaign. The commercial followed Tate around an unassuming office where he tackled his coworkers for taking long breaks and playing solitaire. The ad was hilarious and smart, completely different from this year’s ads. Now, companies like Mountain Dew are appealing to our lowest senses and expecting similar results.

If companies spend millions of dollars a year on commercials that last only a minute on our television screens, we expect them to be good. Maybe it is time the weird ones will inspire us to care less about the capitalization of the Super Bowl and just enjoy the game instead.

Iowa Caucus exemplifies frivolity of American politics

The Iowa Caucus is not only famous for its importance as a predictor of candidate success, but also as an odd spectacle of American political tradition. This year’s caucus highlighted the importance of the coin toss—a tradition used to break ties in precincts that award an odd number of delegates, according to NPR.

Candidates Hillary Clinton and United States Sen. Bernie Sanders were separated by only 0.3 percent after many precincts performed coin tosses to award delegates. This system is a bit confusing, which is probably why the results of the caucus were met with such backlash.

It seems that criticism of the coin toss system took the form of accusing Clinton of cheating or fraud. CNN reported that coin tosses were used back in 2008 and is a Democratic Party tradition, yet the practice seemed unheard of by many on social media who were suspicious of the Clinton campaign. It is remarkable that Clinton and Sanders were only decimals apart from winning, but the coin toss was not a sly move by the organizers to give Clinton an unfair advantage as words spread across the Internet were implying.

Ignorance of the political and electoral process is common and not exactly something to be ashamed about. A coin toss seems like too crude or lazy a policy for something as important as a presidential election and not something the average American may realize is actually legal and practiced. Primaries are relatively straightforward—people can just vote for the candidate of their choice in their aligned party in a closed primary or both parties in an open primary.

The coin toss isn’t even the oddest part of a caucus. For the Democratic candidate, voters must stand on opposite sides of a room in support of particular candidates, get others to join their side and eliminate low-count candidates until the viable winners are revealed.

The simple voting style of primaries seems like an easier and more organized option. When examining the caucus system, it seems it is only still in practice for the mere excitement and spectacle rather than actual efficiency. It may be time to retire the traditions and move toward a political system that is easy to understand and easy to keep clean and accurate.

America's election practices need discipline, restructuring

It is officially 2016—the year we elect the new President of the United States. Before we reach November, however, the presidential election pomp will kick into full gear and campaigns will—somehow—be more dramatic and obnoxious than they’ve been so far. As we’ve previously witnessed during party debates, speeches and even “Saturday Night Live” sketches, this current presidential election has been an embarrassing rollercoaster for the U.S. Our election process showed major flaws in July 2015 when a 15-year-old candidate under the name Deez Nuts was able to file an intent-to-run form with the Federal Election Committee and actually polled at 8–9 percent in three different states.

As Donald Trump gains more support in the polls with his controversial and offensive comments, the chance of Trump earning the Republican candidacy looks less like a passing joke and more like an actual possibly.

If America’s presidential election cannot be taken seriously, how can we expect to be taken seriously as a country? Our election revolves around sensational journalism and candidates one-upping each other for the next viral hashtag. When our election season goes on for basically two years, there’s a lot of room for frivolity.

Canada, on the other hand, recently endured one of their longest campaign seasons ever—and it only lasted 11 weeks. A typical Canadian election lasts about 50 days. The first truly meaningful day of our election comes on Monday Feb. 1 with the Iowa Caucuses—more than 280 days before Election Day.

While Americans may think 50 days isn’t enough to get to know a candidate, perhaps America can create a happy medium. By now, most Americans probably know who they want to elect as each party’s candidate and probably for the presidential position itself—even though we still have to endure another 10 months of caucuses, primaries and insufferable debates.

Perhaps in the future, we could change our policy to limit campaign seasons to, for example, no longer than six months before Election Day. Major media outlets who gain a lot of advertising and marketing revenue from election coverage may vehemently refuse a change, but it would make the rest of our lives much more pleasant.

CollegeHumor video gives unique, educational metaphor for sexual assault

Comedy website CollegeHumor created a video starring five popular male celebrities to bring awareness to the stigmatization and misunderstanding of sexual assault. In the video, the five men realize there is a bear in their house—and according to their statistics that mirror sexual assault statistics, one in five men get eaten by bears. “New Girl” actor Jake Johnson is the main character who tries to belittle the situation of getting killed by a bear, which parallels with the common belittling of sexual assault victims.

“[The bear] isn’t going to eat all of us ... Statistically, that doesn’t mean one of us, it means one in five people,” Johnson said. Johnson thinks of bear attacks as something that happens to other people and not something that could happen to the few people trapped in house with a bear. Sexual assault is something most people do not believe will ever happen to them, despite its common occurrence.

Additionally, Johnson said, “Hey, what happens between you guys and the bear is none of my business,” a common excuse people have when ignoring sexual assault. Because sex is involved, it is treated as if it is a private issue that others should not get involved in.

The video—while humorous—addresses multiple points in the fight against sexual assault. CollegeHumor is obviously directed at college students and sexual assault is a huge problem on college campuses. Both men and women are affected by sexual assault and they can both misunderstand the issue. The video is a good way to attract the right demographic to an issue that directly affects them.

Sexual assault is a serious issue, however, and humor is not always the best way to go about it. While we as college students may act immature sometimes, we are still adults and old enough to understand right from wrong. College students shouldn’t need a funny video with popular comedians to tell them sexual assault is serious and wrong.

The video shows an understandable and clear metaphor for sexual assault in a way that portrays its immediacy and seriousness, but humor shouldn’t be the preferred method of bringing awareness to sexual assault.

Staff Editorial: Shameful Planned Parenthood defunding jeopardizes healthcare

The United States House of Representatives recently passed a bill to take away federal funding for Planned Parenthood for one year. The motive of the bill, of course, is to prevent Americans from easily obtaining abortion services. The demonization of abortion doesn’t just threaten abortion services itself—it now threatens access to healthcare for millions of Americans who rely on Planned Parenthood’s health services.

There is no way to accurately measure the amount of abortion services Planned Parenthood provides, but it is estimated that abortion services make up three–12 percent of the organization’s total services.

Planned Parenthood dedicates the rest of its existence to providing contraception, sexually transmitted infection testing and cancer screening to millions of Americans. Federal funding is allocated to provide these health services—and not to abortion services.

The demonization of abortion has led to the demonization of Planned Parenthood itself. Recently, anti-abortion activists released strategically edited videos that seemed to indicate Planned Parenthood sold aborted fetuses and body parts to medical researchers for a profit. While outcry came from both sides of the abortion debate, most people didn’t even take the time to question the validity of the claims.

We must question our government’s legislative practices when—time and time again—personal and emotional appeals hold authority over American citizens’ basic rights. Legalization of same-sex marriage was prolonged for years because of politicians’ personal condemnation of it. The same is happening to Planned Parenthood and its services because of the abortion debate.

Abortion is a legal practice and should be treated as such. It is ridiculous that in desperate attempts to limit this legal practice, millions of Americans who rely on Planned Parenthood’s other healthcare services will suffer.

We need to remove personal and religious belief from government legislation to prevent Americans from being denied access to legal medical services. It doesn’t matter if lawmakers are pro-choice or pro-life—they shouldn’t use this political stance to endanger and inconvenience millions of Americans who need health care.

Staff Editorial: Institutional Islamophobia shamefully threatens students

Fourteen years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, America continues to perpetuate the discrimination and fear-mongering of Muslims. Islamophobia and unjust violence against Muslims can even violate the rights of children. Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old high school freshman from Irving, Texas, was arrested in school and accused by police of building a “hoax bomb.” Mohamed actually built a homemade clock and intended to show his engineering teacher his impressive work. It was apparently well known in the school that Mohamed was a student interested in creating inventions and who wanted to attend Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the future.

Teachers at the school immediately saw a Muslim boy with a homemade clock as a threat, ostensibly as a result of profiling. Teachers who are supposed to encourage and support students completely failed at the hand of their dangerous internalized biases.

It is incredibly shameful that creative and smart children like Mohamed are being discouraged from scientific and engineering fields early on in their lives because of America’s misunderstanding and fear of Muslims. Students like Mohamed need to be supported, understood and protected by their teachers.

It is unacceptable that Islamophobia is so ingrained in our law enforcement that when seeing a Muslim child was the suspect, a police officer said, “Yup. That’s who I thought it was.”

Fortunately, Mohamed’s story became viral for positive reasons. Overwhelming support for Mohamed flooded social media as people shared the iconic photo of his arrest and spread the hashtag #IStandWithMohamed.

President Barack Obama—whose middle name “Hussein” was bait for many Islamophobic micro-aggressions by politicians and the media over the years despite him not even being Muslim—tweeted in support of Mohamed: “Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.”

The majority of responses to this event have been supportive and positive. It seems hopeful that Islamophobic violence—at least against children—may be prevented in the future. But we cannot just address community paradigms about Islamophobia; we need to address the problem in our law enforcement.

American citizens may cry out against injustice against Muslim children as much as they want, but if we fail to acknowledge the serious prejudices and biases in America’s law enforcement, we might as well not be crying out at all.

Staff Editorial: Skewed media coverage of candidates detrimental to electoral process

Journalism, media and politics have always been dangerously intertwined. The current presidential race is a perfect example of how journalism and the media greatly influence the reputations of political parties and political candidates.

When Donald Trump first announced his campaign for president, the real estate developer and host of “The Apprentice” was not initially taken seriously. It seemed doubtful that he would gain any political traction. His reputation of being a celebrity with bad hair seemed to fuel more jokes than campaign support.

But media coverage of Trump does not need to support or denounce him to be any more or less significant. CNN reported that since the first Republican debate, Trump has received more media coverage on major television networks than all 16 other Republican candidates combined.

This editorial is written tongue-in-cheek. By writing about Trump, The Lamron is, in theory, contributing to the problem. The issue at hand, however, is the boost that mainstream media coverage is giving Trump in the Republican primaries.

Trump currently leads the polls for the Republican candidate. The Washington Post suggests his heavy media coverage is responsible for his growing popularity. When all presidential election coverage centers on Trump, it becomes more difficult for any other candidate to win over voters. No amount of commercial airtime can replace in-show coverage on a major news network. This is not a campaign finance issue.

Even when websites like Huffington Post mock Trump and put him in the Entertainment section, they are still giving him the attention that his campaign is after. If a certain media outlet does not support Trump, they should focus on putting the spotlight on other positive attributes of the other Republican candidates instead of mocking Trump’s negative qualities.

When we receive information about campaigns and candidates almost exclusively from newspapers, television and the Internet, we must question the media’s actual influence. Trump’s campaign has transcended the line between reality television and reality. A recent SurveyUSA poll revealed that Trump would beat top Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton or United States Sen. Bernie Sanders if they were matched up in the general election.

This isn’t a matter of whether or not Trump is a suitable candidate for presidency. This is an issue of media being an influential force that can seriously alter election results like a form of propaganda. People won’t support candidates they know nothing about and, unfortunately, the media are doing a fairly effective job of throwing the other candidates into the background by focusing primarily on Trump—whether in a favorable or a harsh light.