Young Weezy Baby

He’s a “young money millionaire, tougher then Nigerian hair” and is loved by anyone who knows anything about music. Apart from Lil Waynes unbelievable swag and ability to get “every girl in the world” he is a down right convict.

Due to lack of media exposure on Lil Wayne’s legal issues we keep quoting his genius lyrics on our facebook statuses, downloading his music, and supporting him as not just a rapper but as a person. We seem to know every song and lyric this man produces but when it comes to the legal stuff media hinders the issue as much as they can.

Oct. 22, 2009, was Lil Wayne’s most recent plea to felony gun possession in a New York courthouse. This plea was regarding an issue that took place back in 2007 when a .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol was found on his tour bus in Manhattan. There has been some spark in the media about this issue, but nothing compared to the full out fire it should be.

The best male hip-hop artist of 2009 according to BET and winner of 2009 Grammy for best song, performance and album is simply just too loved to be hated. The media most likely sees Lil Wayne as such a successful individual no tabloid or newscast is going to bring the beast down.

So you know he had a gun on his tour in Manhattan. Now for the real question, are you still going to go senseless when Lil Wayne is coming to tour in your town and most definitely buy a ticket to see Mr. Carter? Probably yes, I know I would. And funny thing is no one really feels threatened by his possession of a gun since media makes this topic so unimportant. The lack of media attention correlates with lack of seriousness.

Imagine Oprah Winfrey, who is also loved by the public eye, was found with a gun on her talk show. Every journalist, news station, and tabloid would be covering this story to its fullest. No individual would go to bed that night with out some twitter of this story passing them by. With Lil Wayne this situation can almost be expected due to his “thug life” image. The media just doesn’t care to cover it any more.

Lack of media attention creates lack of seriousness, which creates lack of care. Lil Waynes fans will simply love him even if he “should be hooked on phonics.” The man has “summer hating on [him] cause [hes] hotter than the sun,” not because he carries a 40-calibur semi automatic gun. Lil Wayne is simply the bomb like “tick tick.”

The Unheard of Nation, Ironically the First!

When we think aboriginal we think of the hard-core casino goers, drunks, smoke shop owners, and of course their luxury of tax exemption. If this is all we associate the aboriginals with we are ignorant and most definitely wrong! Many of us have this view because the aboriginal nation severely lacks media attention. We do not know anything or we know the wrong thing, simply because we never hear about it!

Darren Thomas, a gentlemen part of the Seneca bear clan, presented some history on his degraded nation to the journalism students of Laurier Brantford on Monday October 5^th. He brought many of his emotions to the table as he spoke to the students and wanted to stress his point that we “must take interest to know, or else [we] will know nothing about aboriginals.” All the negative stereotypes and demeaning news articles presented about aboriginals are drowning their reputation in Canada. He asked the Journalism students to think of one positive news story about the aboriginal community. In a class of over two hundred students only one individual could reference an article on aboriginals and nature, nothing very positive though.

The love and emotion he shared for his people, culture and Canada was very moving and definitely a motivation for the journalism students to get to know what is really going on. Thomas stated that “Canada is one of largest human rights violators in the world,” hearing this brought reality into the lecture hall. This is serious stuff! Its a shame that this is not made obvious to all Canadians, and when it is it certainly is a shock.

We should be praising the aboriginals for being the origin of this amazing country. Instead Canada sends their children off to residential schools miles away from home, easily strips them of their status, literally cages them into their reserves, and sadly forces the aboriginal community to disengage from Canadian society.

The cries of the aboriginal people need to be heard; there is no more time to waste on announcing their point of view on this violation. Yes they are aboriginals, but most importantly they are Canadians, and Canada needs to remember that!

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/91-003-x/2007001/figures/4129880-eng.htm

The link above will lead you to a graph from statistics Canada. This graph provides information of the aboriginal population in Canada for the years of 1996, 2001, and 2006. By looking at this graph we can come to the conclusion that the aboriginal population grows each year. Ironically the bigger it gets it seems to attract less and less media attention. This is a growing population people! We need to know more about them, we do live in the same country after all!

With proper media attention and coverage the struggles as well as joys of being an aboriginal will be heard. Our wicked stereotypes of the first nations people could have the chance to be corrected. We just need to know more! Perhaps the media feels like this issue is simply a lost cause and not worth the time to investigate. But I say it is! The aboriginal people started Canada lets give them the coverage they deserve!

What this blog is about...

We all want the truth, but the question is “are we really getting it?” The agenda setting process creates the list of “important events”. These are the events we will be informed about, think about and most importantly know the "truth" about. But what about all those left over stories? The ones that don’t go along with our morning coffee or seep into our brains as we sit in rush hour traffic. The little stories or maybe not-so-little stories need their recognition too. So that’s what I am going to do, I will give you the stories that the media doesn’t. I will be following this topic by being able to recognize things in society that are not on every other cover story or not what is being talked about at the water cooler. Also I will look into the one sided stories and bring you the other side. The stories that lie on the news room floor and never see their way onto the publishing desk will now be the winners! The little guys are finally making it big!