“The Early Years” and “TV and Politics”

Hello, everyone!

Today I’d like to reflect on the information that I learned from the two episodes with Walter Cronkite — “The Early Years” and “TV and Politics”. I should admit that almost all information presented in these two episodes was new for me, that is why the videos were educational indeed. At first I’d like to highlight some new facts that I learned:

“The Early Years”

- I learned about the phenomenon called bootlegging and the existence of speakeasies that appeared during the Prohibition. I think people always can find ways to do what they wanted to do despite the restrictions of the government.

- I was surprised to hear about the racial discrimination: random black people were arrested for uninvestigated crimes. Learning new facts about racial discrimination makes me think each time about some impolite Afro-Americans nowadays. There are Afro-American people who suspect everyone in treating them in a bad way and infringing their rights. This summer I met such people and, moreover, I had to deal with them, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience at all, But still I can understand their behavior at some point — this nationality suffered a lot throughout the history and they don’t want it to happen again.

- There were many unfamiliar names for me, such as Woodrow Wilson, Raymond Hamilton, Sarah Hughes and was great to learn some fact about them.

“TV and Politics”

- I learn many facts about a popular American broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite, his life and family.

- It was exciting to learn about John Kennedy, his attitude to television and his attempts to create the “right” image on TV.

- I realized that TV has a great impact on politics and that these things are interconnected.

- I was shocked by the info about Kennedy’s assassination and the details presented in the documentary.

Moreover, in these videos there were many useful vocabulary items to keep the conversation going about politics.

The second episode impressed me the most and even left me speechless for a couple of minutes. Such cases like John Kennedy’s one prove that being a politician is dangerous indeed. Political figures should take a proper care of themselves and concern about their safety (and especially apolitical figures -remember the recent events in our country?). I believe John Kennedy’s assassination influenced the country’s views on the government’s safety a great deal. It’s interesting that the death of a public person is such a controversial topic that causes so many different versions of how it happened. For example, some people thought that Kennedy’s had died due to the U.S. government assassination, some of them suspected the president in conspiracy, and some people didn’t even believe that he died indeed that day. And the topic of his assassination will be discussed for many years, because it went down in history. Besides, I understood that TV-hosts work really hard to find out information about the latest events and sometimes journalists even investigate the issue themselves. I realized how difficult it can be sometimes for them to talk about frustrating and depressing news (about terrible crimes, deaths, etc.). But true professionals, like Walter Cronkite stay cool-blooded and do their job even though it seems impossible to hold tears.