This week, Rose Scholars Cafe invited Associate Professor in the Department of History, and House Fellow at Flora Rose House Aaron Sachs to speak about the humor that has come from different circumstances, many of which are fairly serious. He begun his talk by mentioning stories about his deceased Jewish grandfather and how he inspired him through humility and jokes. After, he mentioned that as humans, we categorize information into concrete versus abstract ideas. For instance it is clear in our minds that Sach’s grandfather passed away, but as to weather he was Jewish, humble, and funny are all open to questioning. This was followed by watching various video clips of parodies about issues that our country faces economically, politically, and socially.

I had personally never realized how some of the funniest propaganda articles and tv commercials get my attention because the topics being exaggerated are true, to a certain extent. Issues such as discrimination, separation of church and state, and new political policies are occurrences that should not be taken lightly. However, it is not really until producers in the media make fun of these issues that they get the publics attention and cause people to consider the importance of the situation. Also, it is surprising how of the many “gallows humor” that  has gained popularity as of late, there are no references to climate change in particular. In terms of fracking, global warming,  deforestation, and many other issues affecting our environment, there really aren’t any sources that have taken the time to joke about this topic. Is leads to questioning if perhaps the public does not take matters of climate change seriously because the degree to which they could affect the world had not been exaggerated enough to grab the publics attention.

As a communications major, this discussion related a lot to the topics covered in my class and how media plays such a large role in the spreading information fast and vastly. With all of the new avenues of social media, it will be interesting to see how communicating serious matters that affect our environment will soon begin to change in terms of the amount of new information that is available to everyone and the processes of getting the message across.