To laugh often and much is good for your health. To be made to laugh the way comedians make us do when they present news of all kind in humor gives us another option in receiving the news.

For some, it is viewed as entertainment as they do not see how something so funny can be taken seriously. Or on the other hand, making fun of serious issues does not always sit well with some people.

Comedians do not seem to be bothered with the no-win situation and just push topics to the limit. Some even think they cross the limit sometimes.

They talk about race, gender or religious issues in a fun way. They have been able to make fun newsworthy, educational and entertaining all at once.

Comedy provides the avenue where conversations can be held that go beyond the traditional discourse that most often takes place behind closed doors. That the facts, said publicly, are in jest, make them less likely to offend than appease.

 Subjects and issues addressed are varied, very challenging and in most cases considered taboo.

But to comedians, everyone is fair game as they make light of anything and everything. If they are seen to be neutral, regardless of the subject discussed, they hardly sound distasteful.

Just the other day a guest at one of the shows stated she is color blind at which point the host wanted to know what happens when she stops at the traffic light.

I do not know what the host would have said had she replied that she does not drive. But to say you do not see color when there are different shades of people will cause disparities between races to be ignored.

“Colorblindness eliminates race as a viable explanation for social injustices.” Lind,( 2013)

To say that the media is plagued with wide-ranging accusations is an understatement. The media gets a lot more credit than they deserve sometimes.

Media-driven myths and dubious or apocryphal tales connoting pseudo-reality, stories that often promote misleading interpretations of media power and influence have been exploited by questionable characters to spread fake news.

The media sometimes get it wrong, and the 2016 election is not an anomaly. But the media hardly propagate false news.

On the coverage of Katrina, a hurricane that made landfall causing tremendous destruction, much of what was reported came from the local administration, the mayor’s office and allegations of rape and mayhem are contentious to this day.

Some images of distressed citizens of New Orleans during the disaster were presented in a particular light, to portray one group of people struggling to survive as finding food, while others said to be breaking the law, were described as looters.

The Yahoo photo-report stirred a lot of controversy as to whether the two photos, one by an AP reporter and the other by AFP/Getty Images, feed the narrative that the media portray different races differently.

Say the name Iraq and all of a sudden, there is talk about how the war was sold to the public on factual errors and the press was more concerned about patriotism than presenting the facts.

The Iraq war started without exhausting United Nation inspections. It was as if Otto Von Bismark was relevant once more, rearing his head saying, “the great issues of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by blood and iron,” A.J.P. Taylor. Bismark The Man and Stateman( 2005)

We went to war in Iraq and found no weapons of mass destruction as was told to the public. I have read reports that suggest back then, even The New York Times applied self-censorship during the Bay of Pigs invasion.

The media have to at all times tell the truth and the myth that they make the news is just not correct. They are only messengers that always want to get it right. Getting it wrong can have tremendous consequences.

So how do you tell the fake from real news? One has to be media literate. That is, the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff. To not understand the distinction reduces capacity to contribute to any debate.

There have been many arguments about Native American mascots such as the Cleveland Indians’ Chief Wahoo saying it is all about race. Some have seen the continued use of Native American Indian symbols and nicknames in sports as an honor while others consider it an insult.

There is little or no doubt that the use of Native American mascots by teams is intentionally meant to offend anyone. That has not stopped some from getting annoyed over the use.

This matter has been litigated in the past but remains unresolved. Lately, lawmakers have tried a different method by introducing legislation in Congress that would amend the Act of 1946 to ban the term from usage altogether. We wait to see how that goes.

The contention has been that term words such as the Redskins are contemptuous terms used to refer to Native Americans. Parallels of such terms have been made with the N- word. The N-word is one that has baffled me because I hear some black people use it as a term of endearment among each other but found not acceptable when another race uses it.

As in the case of the utilization of the Redskins, the use of the N-word has been the subject of debate and disgust and unsuccessful moves had been made to erase it from the general lexicon.

The N-word presents a bit of a dilemma because unlike the Redskins, the word is frequently used by blacks especially the younger generation. Many rap songs use it without any hesitation.

The irony of this accepted usage with some in the black community is that when songs are sold, they are not just bought by blacks. Whites, Hispanics, and Asians also buy them. Given that it is common to see or hear people sing along with songs they like, will a black person find it offensive if he hears a white person singing a song with the N-word in it?

What’s in a name? People sometimes don’t take kindly when their names are misspelled or called incorrectly as if that affects or changes who they are.

It bothers me not if you call my name incorrectly as long as it was not done to alter it to give a bad connotation. A lot of names have meanings, and a lot of people take pride in their names or who they were named after.

That is when it deals with your individual name. In cases where the name attributed to you is one that reflects poorly on you such as being called a thug, a rapist or an illegal immigrant, then such framing takes up an importance of a different nature.

In the context of immigration which is among one of the hot topics of the day, to refer to anyone as an illegal immigrant is considered inappropriate since people are not illegal. Undocumented immigrants seem more like a better representation of who people are living here without permission or right.

 “The word we use to describe someone or something frame the situation in a positive, negative or neutral light and say as much about us as they do about the person being described.” (Lind 2013)

The media have framed the immigration story in various respects. There is the population which deals with the number of people who presently live in the country. Of these, some immigrate through official channels while others gain their entrance illegally.

Stories in the media across the country frame the immigration story to reflect concern over national security and border control.

The population of the country will be 420 million, 24% of which will be immigrants by the year 2050 according to the Census Bureau.

The situation is made severe by choice of words the media use in immigration debates such as “flood” or “invasion.” It is the responsibility of the government to protect the country from foreign and domestic threats, so concerns about national security and border control come into play that helps frame the narrative.

There is, of course, the human rights framework that expresses concern for human dignity, freedom, justice and peace.

How the media select and report stories depend on several factors that include their interest in keeping their position of hegemonic power.

What’s in a name? A lot.

As a sports fanatic, I watch all sports, even boxing on ice. I am referring to Ice Hockey where players with tremendous skills balance their acts while skating and expending a lot of energy fighting in a manner reminiscent of a boxing match but with different rules.

In this game, you win by scoring goals and scores are all too often settled by additional physical contacts.

Hockey is a contact sport punctuated by frequent collisions making it one of the most physically demanding and challenging games akin to football and boxing.

Soccer, on the other hand, is not as popular with guys here as any of the other games mentioned earlier. The reason being, perhaps because it is a game played with much less contact and players do not have to pad- up or wear helmets to minimize injuries or pain.

Invectives such as sissy have been used to describe it because the game requires little or no roughness.

The Federation of International Football Association (FIFA) had tried to popularize the sport in the U.S. by having us host the 1994 World Cup Soccer tournament. In the end, it is the U.S. female soccer team that has been able to gain prominence in the world, leading to a somewhat tacit endorsement of the sports in this country as one fit solely for women.

The unsuccessful bids of the men’s team at world competitions have not helped to blunt the “sissy sport” lampoon.

 Players of soccer are hardly padded; they depend on high skills to evade tackles, dribble past opponents sometimes with masterpiece footwork, outrun them and strike at the goal with anticipated accuracy.

 The adaptation of the use of feet to play the ball is the main enticement of the game.

 Why soccer, played mostly with the feet which are not accustomed to being used to handle things, thus requiring tremendous skill and tact is considered a female sport and basketball played with the hands is not, is not easy to understand. Soccer has more contact and has a longer duration than basketball.I am not knocking any sport but should we agree that soccer is a sissy sport, then one reason could be it is mainly played in a gentlemanly manner in which case the sissy moniker should be changed to the gentleman’s game. After all, we are all gentlemen, and that will be hard to reject.