M

y adolescent years were weaned on 
Tumblr, a website that stole too much 
of my middle school free time and 

taught me words and phrases such as “queer,” 
“neurotypical” and “social justice warrior.” These 
were the days before celebrities such as Halsey 
and Zendaya took social justice from the hid-
den corners of the Internet and made it trend on 
Twitter. Back in middle school, there was no Amy 
Schumer to tell me I could love my body even 
though stretch marks painted my thighs, no John 
Legend to explain to me that #BlackLivesMatter 
doesn’t mean that other lives don’t matter, just 
that Black lives matter, too. No, social justice and 
political correctness were self-taught classes back 
in middle school, and I was the star student in my 
class of one.

Yet, as the world began waking up and social 

issues found themselves on the front cover of 
renowned magazines and newspapers, it seemed 
the people immediately around me were still fast 
asleep, Sleeping Beauties stuck in a past era. Din-
ner table conversations were hopelessly lopsided 
as I struggled to educate my family on topics they 
just couldn’t understand. There was no malice 
in my friends’ voices when they expressed shock 
about a fellow classmate’s change in pronouns or 
their fabulous fuchsia dress at prom, just confu-

sion. “I just … don’t get it,” my friend said once, 
upon learning that Laverne Cox was transgender. 
“How can you just feel like a different gender? Isn’t 
that just being, like, a tomboy? What’s the differ-
ence between being a tomboy and a transsexual?” 
“Transgender,” I corrected gently.

Teaching my friends and family to think oth-

erwise was a challenge. After all, they’d grown up 
in conservative homes in a perfect cookie-cutter 
Midwestern town: Troy, Mich. Cis and trans were 
chemistry terms, and gender was as binary as a 
base-two number system. I’d learned in Troy that 
it was easier to stay quiet and “stick to the status 
quo.” Online, I could safely rock the boat and dis-
cuss police brutality, but in real life, it was easier 
to just nod with a tight smile when my co-worker 
condemned abortion and “homosexuals in the 
government.” I was waiting for my community to 
catch up to the social activism on the internet, but 
it just seemed hopelessly stuck.

Stepping foot onto the University of Michigan’s 

campus during Summer Orientation was like 
Tumblr coming to life around me. As my orienta-
tion leaders introduced themselves by their names, 
majors and preferred pronouns, my jaw dropped 
to the ground. I’d never heard anyone state their 
preferred pronouns in person before. This min-
ute detail made all the difference in welcoming 
anyone who may not identify as male or female 
with open arms. The Educational Theater Com-
pany performance only reinforced the culture of 
inclusion and diversity as the players danced and 
sang about topics I’d always considered “taboo” 
in real life: mental illness, gender roles, racism, 
sexism and feminism. Awestruck in the dark 
auditorium, I realized that staying quiet wouldn’t 
inspire change in the community around me. I 
couldn’t just wait around for my family and peers 
to “catch up;” change needs a catalyst, and a voice 
is the first spark.

Emboldened by the spirit of activism on the 

University of Michigan’s campus, I returned 
home a bolder woman. The change was small, 
but it was a flicker where previously there was 
none. When my co-worker denounced abortion, 
I replied to him, offering many reasons women 
choose to abort and control their own bodies. I 
may not have changed his mind, but I offered him 
the perspective of a woman in the pro-life debate, 
a necessary viewpoint which he lacked. When 
my mother fretted over the length of my skirt 
before I left to hang out at a boy’s house, I ques-
tioned why promiscuity by females is so condem-
nable but promiscuity by males is celebrated. And 
when my well-meaning friend called a celebrity 
“weird” because “she tweets stuff like ‘hashtag 
feminism,’ ” I, with the help of another friend, 
explained to her that feminists aren’t all angry, 
man-hating monsters.

These steps are little, but they are the result of 

a single weekend on campus. I can only imagine 
how much more I’ll learn after one year, and then 
four years. “College makes students liberal,” my 
government teacher had stated as if it were some-
thing terrible, but I don’t think college pushes 
students one way or the other. Rather, college 
students are allowed, for the first time, to experi-
ence social issues unfolding right in front of them. 
On a college campus, students can form their 
own opinions and views without the overhang-
ing influence of family, and they are wowed to see 
that they, too, can inspire change.

—Ashley Zhang can be reached 

at ashleyzh@umich.edu. 

Opinion

SHOHAM GEVA
EDITOR IN CHIEF

CLAIRE BRYAN 

AND REGAN DETWILER 
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS

LAURA SCHINAGLE
MANAGING EDITOR

420 Maynard St. 

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at 

the University of Michigan since 1890.

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board. 

All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Thursday, September 8, 2016

T

he city of Detroit has long been a great 
American city that has gone through a 
lot as our nation has developed. Over 

the past few years, Detroit 
has had its fair share of 
struggles, having filed for 
bankruptcy in 2013 and 
seen a monumental decline 
in population over the last 
few decades. Pundits and writers from as close 
as Michigan and as far away as other countries 
are always lining up to take shots at Detroit and 
its identity as a city.

However, the problems with Detroit didn’t 

start in the last 10 years. Decades of systemic 
racism and inequality have allowed privileged 
white people to move to suburbs as far away as 
Ann Arbor, while stranding low-income minority 
populations inside the city with less and less 
resources available to serve the city.

Even this last year, Detroit Public Schools 

were reborn as the Detroit Community Schools 
as part of a deal worked out in the Michigan 
legislature — a deal that I have already spoken 
out against. Despite the fact that Detroit is 
the largest city in Michigan, enrollment at 
the University of Michigan features a sparse 
population of Detroit residents.

To add onto all of this, Republican presidential 

candidate Donald Trump still found a way to 
call Michigan, specifically the manufacturing 
sector of Detroit, a “disaster.” Michigan students 
frequently have a litany of bad things to say about 

the city. Even students who have never been to 
Michigan ask if they are safe to visit the airport, 
which is located 20 minutes outside of Detroit 
city limits.

Despite all of this, I still have hope. Detroit 

is an amazingly diverse city, with pockets of 
areas made up of a majority of Muslim or Latino 
people. The culture and spirit of Detroit can’t be 
crushed, and I firmly believe that things will only 
go upward from here. All across the city, people 
are coming together to do what the city motto has 
instructed the city to do for hundreds of years. 
“Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus,” the 
Latin mottos on the city flag, say we shall hope 
for better things, and that those things shall rise 
from the ashes. 

That motto is something I can believe — not 

for a “new Detroit” only for wealthy suburban 
residents or downtown trustafarians, but 
for a Detroit that rises from the ashes for all 
Detroiters. I highly urge all Michigan students 
to visit Detroit via the free Detroit Center 
Connector and to explore all that the great 
things the city has to offer.

Finally, I urge everyone to keep abreast on 

issues in the city. While it may be easy to ignore 
developments about the ongoing school concerns 
or the unfair tax foreclosures that are taking 
place across the city, it is incredibly important to 
stay up to date on what is happening.

— Kevin Sweitzer can be reached 

at ksweitz@umich.edu. 

Just 40 minutes away

M

y sister is sitting straight 
up on the end of our 
living room couch, her 

eyes 
refus-

ing 
to 
waver 

from our large 
flat-screen 
TV. She’s been 
binge-watching 
“House of Cards” for nearly four 
hours now, and in this particular 
episode, President Underwood is 
threatening his own wife in the 
most overdramatic, Machiavellian 
manner I have ever witnessed. My 
sister is hanging on the fictional 
president’s every word in pure awe 
of what she believes is a dramatical-
ly accurate picture of the dark side 
of American politics. Meanwhile, 
I sit there in utter disgust at the 
almost insane depiction of Ameri-
can politics. I hate political dramas.

In total truth, I have seen nearly 

every major political drama put to 
TV, Netflix and HBO. Being high-
ly interested in politics naturally 
leads me to watching a fictional-
ized version of my obsession. Yet 
the current political climate has 
brought me to begin to despise 
these shows.

Americans distrust our govern-

ment, and our current election 
cycle clearly shows that. Candidates 
on both sides of the aisle have vowed 
to work against the establishment 
and the typical government bureau-
cracy that they say has failed the 
American people. To add to this 
distrust, the public also lacks a basic 
understanding of the functions and 
responsibilities of our government. 
For example, the Annenberg Public 
Policy Center reported that a little 
more than a third of Americans 
could name all three branches of 
the U.S. government. This funda-
mental lack of understanding of our 
complex government, paired with 
a growing distrust of politicians, 
leaves us in today’s chaotic presi-
dential election.

The public’s “imagination” of 

what politicians do within the 
upper echelons of government 
can be somewhat attributed to 
the emergence of American politi-
cal dramas. Shows like “The West 
Wing,” “Scandal” and “House of 
Cards” are truly terrible guides to 
the way our government operates 
and how our politicians work. Yet 
these shows are extraordinarily 
entertaining and addictive. They 
carry massive audiences through 
multiple seasons, winning awards, 
securing excellent ratings, all at 
the expense of shaping false mis-
conceptions of the politicians of 
our country. The shows person-
ify politics to a crippling degree, 
oversimplify the policy making 
of our massive bureaucracy, and 
most importantly, cast politicians 
as these scheming sociopaths who 
manipulate and warp the system 
for their own benefit. These fac-
tors culminate to a false representa-
tion of our government within the 
minds of millions of Americans, and 
as the current election cycle shows, 

unorthodox candidates can capital-
ize on this ignorance.

America got its first taste of 

political drama in 1999 with the 
NBC series “The West Wing.” 
Though 
the 
show 
was 
well 

received 
from 
an 
entertain-

ment standpoint, many of the 
more politically informed view-
ers were disappointed with its 
“personality-driven politics,” to 
quote an article from The Atlan-
tic. It portrayed a false image of 
what happens within the levels of 
bureaucracy in our government. 
Individual characters tackled mas-
sive responsibilities and challeng-
es that have been unsolvable for 
decades. For example, the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict is solved in a 
matter of a few episodes, prompt-
ing this idea that major conflicts 
can be solved through some per-
sonal “heart to heart” negotiation 
and compromising policy between 
understanding individuals.

But who could blame NBC? “The 

West Wing” was only entertaining 
when the cast was able to solve 
the unsolvable through their hard 
work and dedication. What audi-

ence wants to watch an Israeli-
Palestinian compromise descend 
into failure? Or see a debate over 
what entitlements to cut for poor-
er Americans? Or listen to presi-
dential candidates speak about 
banning entire religions or how 
much the United States will tor-
ture its military prisoners? Well 
unfortunately, that is the reality, 
and these dramas only add to mak-
ing that reality worse in the fact 
that viewers are led to believe in 
a false possibility within the over-
personified and simplified politics 
of shows like “The West Wing.”

Yet, the more prevailing effect 

that TV political dramas have on 
their misinformed viewers is con-
vincing them of a darker reality in 
which politicians operate. To put it 
simply, to be a politician within this 
country, one must also be a socio-
path. The political drama “House 
of Cards” bludgeons this point to 
death. Within America, Kevin Spac-
ey’s character seems to have molded 
the archetype for politicians: an 
apolitical madman who uses pol-
icy and his position solely for the 
advancement of his power.

What’s more is the contrast 

between the U.K. and U.S. ver-

sions of “House of Cards.” In the 
U.K. version, the main protago-
nist’s self-interest and desire to 
gain and hold power is rooted in 
the fact that he believes his poli-
cy agenda and legislative ability 
will come to benefit the country. 
His ruthless acts are thereby a 
means to a rational end. In con-
trast with the U.S. version, the 
protagonist comes off as almost 
apolitical throughout the entire 
show. His ambitions are simply to 
become the most powerful man in 
the world. This presents the idea 
that the problem with American 
politics is not borne of a particular 
party or ideology, but rather the 
American political system itself 
— that, in fact, our political land-
scape is dominated not by partisan 
hawks or doves, but by a power-
hungry class of elites competing 
for influence and domination. 

Yet these shows are made for 

one purpose, for my sister to sit on 
the edge of our couch hanging on 
every word. Is it the responsibil-
ity of TV networks and producers 
to ensure an accurate representa-
tion of American politics is deliv-
ered to their audience? Of course 
not — these are TV dramas meant 
to capture massive audiences and 
achieve high ratings. The writers 
and producers of these shows are 
simply capitalizing on the igno-
rance and disdain toward the 
American political machine.

Besides, some may argue a posi-

tive effect is that these shows have 
helped push more people to become 
involved in the political landscape 
of America, due to their newfound 
interest these shows have fostered. 
Does not the benefit (a more politi-
cally interested public), outweigh 
the costs (a few inaccuracies and 
over dramatizations)?

No. Though these shows indi-

vidually may have a few inac-
curacies or oversimplifications, 
their aggregate effect relates to 
the overall problem that is the 
reason why these dramas have 
become a success. These shows 
capitalize on how the present-
day American citizenship is too 
misinformed, untrustworthy and 
divided toward its government 
and politicians. Add in the rising 
intensity of partisanship, and this 
lack of pragmatism leads to strict, 
often ignorant, blind party ideol-
ogy alignment.

Most importantly today, this 

phenomenon allows for the emer-
gence of unorthodox candidates 
capitalizing 
on 
this 
growing 

hatred. These shows that add to 
this negative perception can only 
lead to further missteps within our 
political system. How much will 
the misrepresentations and inac-
curacies affect the voting decisions 
of the general public? It appears as 
if the presidential election cycle of 
2016 has answered that.

—Michael Mordarski can be 

reached at mmordars@umich.edu. 

Against political dramas

MICHAEL 

MORDARSKI

Claire Bryan, Regan Detwiler, Caitlin Heenan, 

Jeremy Kaplan, Ben Keller, Minsoo Kim, 

Payton Luokkala, Kit Maher, Madeline Nowicki, 

Anna Polumbo-Levy, Jason Rowland, 
Lauren Schandevel, Kevin Sweitzer, 

Rebecca Tarnopol, 

Ashley Tjhung, Stephanie Trierweiler

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

KEVIN 
SWEITZER

No longer in a class of one

IN CHAN LEE Email in Chan at tokg@umiCh.Edu

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sometime — we’d love to talk to you about joining our staff. 

“The more 

prevailing effect 

is convincing 
viewers of a 

darker reality in 
which politicians 

operate.”

