“Devil’s Bait” by Leslie Jamison brings up the topic of empathy and how it relates to mental illness, or just illness in general. This piece of writing covers the author’s experience at a conference for people with Morgellons disease. Morgellons is a disease where the person affected believes they have bugs crawling under their skin and fibers coming out of sores and blisters all over their body. Many doctors do not believe these people when they come in begging for help, and believe it is all caused by a delusion not a skin disease like the person believes. According to all the people at the conference it can be extremely isolating, and the conference provides them with a sense of community where they can be with people who truly understand what they are going through. She brings up the concept of there being a fine line between understanding and empathizing with someone and being just like everybody else, full of disbelief and doubt. This piece raises the question at issue, does our knowledge of someone having an illness, whether it be physical or mental, affect our ability to properly empathize with them? This is an important question to answer because it causes us to think about what brings us to feel empathy. Do we only feel empathy for people with an illness because we are aware they are affected by it? The case discussed in this text brings about this issue because it displays that people find it difficult to truly empathize with someone when we cannot directly relate to what they are going through, or just do not understand what is going through their minds that make them believe they have bugs crawling underneath their skin. This is the case with a lot of mental illnesses. For example, it may be hard for some people to understand and empathize with people who have anxiety because they can not imagine feeling the same way in certain situations. It is similar for serious physical illnesses, such as cancer. It may be extremely difficult for someone to understand the physical and emotional toll the illness has on a person unless they have directly gone through the same experience.

Works Cited

Jamison, Leslie. “Devil’s Bait.” The Empathy Exams, pp. 27–56.

Jon Ronson’s expose entitled “God That Was Awesome” discusses the aftermath of Justine Sacco’s racially insensitive Twitter post, wherein she was met with the loss of her job and a worldwide social media attack ultimately comparable to a public stoning.

The controversy began when Justine Sacco, a PR worker, made a post on her personal Twitter profile which read, “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” (Ronson, 68). Seemingly the moment the post hit the web, Twitter users everywhere launched a heated backlash against Sacco for this racist remark. The severity of this backlash was truly remarkable as it ultimately obliterated the positive reputation of Sacco’s personal and professional lives, and fatally wounded any future career prospects. A crushed Sacco pleaded to Ronson that she meant her comment as a satirical joke, which she intended to “make fun of [the] bubble [that Americans live in]” which relieves them from thinking about plights which “exist” in the world outside their borders (Ronson, 73). Ronson claims that any reasonable person would realize the fact that Sacco’s comment was a joke, but instead of disregarding it as bad humor, the world unanimously chose to indict Sacco as if she had committed an injustice which demanded rectification. Ronson compares this harsh treatment of Sacco to the conduct of Texas Judge Ted Poe, a man who chose to serve outlandish punishments intended to ridicule, dishearten, and embarrass the accused. Despite Ronson’s opinion that the Judge’s actions are cruel and unusual, and makes the his court into a “theater of the absurd” (Ronson, 84) which flies in the face of punishments befitting their crimes. However, the testimony of Mike Hubacek, sentenced to humiliating punishment by Judge Poe after committing vehicular manslaughter, contests that the severity of the Judge’s seemingly absurd punishment gave him a purpose and a means by which to prevent others from making the mistakes he did.

This piece begs the question of whether or not the public has a right to act as judge jury and executioner in instances as seemingly trivial as Sacco’s Tweet, as well as why this public behavior seems to be completely devoid of empathy. Social media has fundamentally changed the world. It has empowered individuals with a globally heard voice on any issue imaginable. However, as Sacco’s misfortune proves, sometimes this voice can be used for evil. The comments denouncing Sacco began as well intentioned rejections of racism, but soon escalated to scathing remarks devoid of empathy and intended solely for destructive as opposed to constructive purposes. In addressing the peculiarity of this social phenomenon, Ronson points to the concept of cognitive dissonance to explain the decision of Sacco’s aggressors to dehumanize her in order to feel justified in their zealous attacks. The most apt indication of this zeal without regard for Sacco’s humanity can be found in the words of a common Twitter troll describing her globally dealt ridicule: “God that was awesome” (Ronson, 70)

Works Cited:

Ronson, Jon. So you’ve been publicly shamed. Riverhead Books, 2016.

In John Ronson’s “God That Was Awesome”, we are given a story about Justine Sacco, in which she tweets an offensive joke referring to the AIDS epidemic in Africa right before she travels to Africa. The tweet blows up while she is on the plane and she receives an overwhelming amount of backlash that ultimately ruins her career and pairs her name with that racist tweet permanently. Ronson is intrigued by the humility she receives and wants to know more about humility being used as punishment, so he goes to an expert in this area, Ted Poe. Poe is a judge from the Houston area who is known for sentencing people to punishments that humiliate them rather than give them time in a correctional facility (Ronson, p.67-90).

The most interesting part of this work is the effects that one tweet had on Justine’s life. It wasn’t a slip of the tongue on her part, but it wasn’t intended in such a negative manner either. Justine fell victim to the powers of social media. The platform she used, Twitter, seemed to unanimously turn against her and punish her for her actions. Her actions were clearly wrong, but did her life deserve to be ruined for them? I’d like to focus on the idea of this humiliation paired with fairness. How fair is the punishment she received? To further that question, whatever you think is fair, should be applied to everyone who does something of similar nature. For every bad joke that has been told referring to a serious issue, that person should receive the same punishment as we find Justine deserving. This doesn’t just mean AIDS jokes, these go for any religious jokes, any jokes about a disease, and anything else that could have prejudice against a group of people. I’m by no way condoning these offensive remarks, but what I am trying to find out is what the punishment should be and how we should enforce this punishment. It seems very clear to me that people in a position of power can say things that are prejudiced on Twitter (perhaps a leader of a country or an athlete) and don’t suffer the same consequences that Justine did. I also don’t think this should apply to just social media, saying something like this out loud would likely be more degrading and prejudiced. At the same time, can we punish everyone for their bad jokes? I’m sure everyone has said something that they wish they could take back at one time or another, why don’t you deserve the punishment Justine received. Ultimately I would like to know what punishment Justine deserved and how we should go about universalizing such punishment.

Works Cited

Ronson, Jon. So you’ve been publicly shamed. Riverhead Books, 2016.

For the second formal assignment, we will be working as a class to develop a question at issue about a topic based on each of the three assigned readings from this section of the class. You will then choose which question you want to write about. After discussing developing research questions in class today and reading the final assigned reading, your job for this blog post is to select the topic that you want to work with for this assignment, develop a potential research question for that topic, and locate at least two scholarly sources that look like promising sources for an essay on this topic. So, consider the next 2 blog posts two parts of a larger single assignment to prepare you to write Formal Assignment 2:

Blog Post 4 – Moving from topic to question
Using the specific popular text that you are working with, introduce your chosen topic and explain how this topic raises the question at issue. Imagine an audience who has not read (or listened to) the text. Use a brief summary of that text to both pique the reader’s interest in this topic and raise the issue that you will research and answer for your second formal assignment. In addition, make it clear why this is an important question that should be answered.

Blog post 4 should be about 300-500 words, and is due by the beginning of class on Thursday, October 12.

Blog Post 5 – Looking for answers
Revised 10/18
For this post, introduce the question at issue that the class settles on for your chosen topic, identify the two scholarly sources (name of author[s] and title of source) you’ll be using as you complete this assignment, and summarize these sources–making it clear how these sources are addressing (in whole or in part) the question at issue you and your group have settled on.

Include full Works Cited entries for all sources used in these posts (there should be at least 3 between them, but there may be more). Blog post 5 should be 500-700 words, and is due at the beginning of class on Tuesday October 24.*

In the movie A Time to Kill, directed by Joel Schumacher, the viewer finds oneself immersed in the town of Canton, Mississippi, and immediately witnesses the beating and rape of 10 year old Tonya Hailey. Her father, understandably upset and outraged at the men who committed the crime, goes and kills them as revenge. From there, it is Jake Brigance’s job to convince an all white jury that his black client is innocent. Although it is not his plan, Jake invokes empathy in the jury that allows Carl Lee to walk out of the courthouse a free man.

Jake Brigance knew when he took Carl Lee’s case that he wanted it because he knew he would have done the same thing to those men if they had gone after his daughter. He felt terrible for Carl Lee and recognized the position he was in, thus feeling bad and taking action to help. Carl Lee was able to recognize that if Jake was helping him because he felt bad for what had happened to his daughter, the same feelings needed to be felt by the jury so that they would help him and decide he was innocent. Jake was not aware of this, but ultimately was able to do this with his closing speech as he described the brutal acts that Tonya endured.

He begins by telling the story of “a little girl, walking home from the grocery store one sunny afternoon” (TK 2:16:17- 2:16:26). He does not state that the girl is Tonya or that she is black, but due to the conditions at the time of the story- there had been much talk about her rape throughout the case- they know that he is telling them the story of her rape. He continues to describe in vivid detail what occurred, including how “[the men] tie her up, rip her clothes off her body… shattering everything innocent and pure” (TK 2:16:52- 2:17:13). As Jake describes more and more of the horrors that the girl went through, it becomes clear that members of the jury are truly feeling upset and sorry for the girl in the story, and even begin to cry because they feel so badly for the girl (TK 2:18:02). He finishes describing all that had happened and forces the jury to reflect on the state of the girl, which is what Tonya’s family saw when she was found after being beaten and raped.

From there, Jake forces the jury to recognize what Carl Lee went through. He had to see his daughter beaten, raped, covered in blood and broken to the point where she was barely alive, and he is able to get the jury to see Carl Lee’s perspective simply by saying “do you see her?” (TK 2:19:22). This was how Carl Lee saw his daughter, so by allowing the jury to stand in the same position, they could potentially understand the emotions that Carl Lee had felt.

At this point however, this empathy is not real, as it is just a hypothetical situation in their mind. Yes, they knew he is ultimately talking about Tonya, but they do not feel bad because it happened to her, a black girl, but rather because of the atrocity of what had happened. This empathy becomes real when Jake says “now imagine she’s white” (TK 2:20:21- 2:20:24). The jury knew he was talking about a black girl, but when they imagine the same thing happening to a white girl, they are able to connect to her much more and feel awful for her, not just disgusted at the actions that took place. By connecting Tonya’s story to the white jury, they were able to understand why Carl Lee felt and acted the way he did. They were able to truly empathize with him and Tonya, and felt moved to find him innocent.

Works Cited:

A Time to Kill. Dir. Joel Schumacher. Warner Bros. Pictures, 1996. Digital Campus. Web. 20 September 2017.

In A Time To Kill, the scene of Jake Brigance’s closing statements to the jury is the most significant evocation of empathy throughout the entire film. In this scene, Jake asks the jury to close their eyes and imagine his following words. He then goes on to vividly describe the brutal rape, attack, and attempted murder of Tonya Hailey, daughter of Carl Lee Hailey— the defendant.

Jake simply asks the jury to “picture this little girl [walking home from the grocery store one sunny afternoon]”(ATTK 2:16:20-2:16:29). He does not define the girl in any way, but that she is little and a girl. He does not give her name, her age, or her race to the jury. Most of the jurors know that there had been a rape, but they hardly know even half of the story. Jake’s deliberate method of leaving out details about the little girl creates a blank slate in the juror’s minds. This way, the little girl is more relatable to them, and the rest of the story will have more meaning.

The rest of the story is a description of Tonya’s rape— Jake does not hesitate to leave a single detail out. He graphically describes how the two assailants shattered everything innocent about the little girl, piece by piece. After sharing with the jury how the men had snatched Tonya off the road and tied her up, he continues with: “Now they climb on, first one then the other, raping her, shattering everything innocent and pure— vicious thrusts—  in a fog of drunken breath and sweat” (ATTK 2:16:35-2:17:21). This sensory imagery is so unsettling that it helps evoke a sort of startling discomfort in the jury— they come to realize the true brutality of the attack. This realization brings with it a new sense of empathy, of feeling deeply for the Hailey family. Many of the women in the jury and in the courtroom are shown to be crying, visibly disturbed.

This new sense of empathy, however, does not become the true, deeply internalized emotion of empathy until Jake’s haunting last line: “Now imagine she’s white” (ATTK 2:20:21-2:20:23 ). This line truly works to transport the jury into a place of understanding— a place where each and every juror can feel Tonya’s pain and Carl Lee’s pain— because they are finally seeing Carl Lee’s case through their own eyes and hearts. Throughout Jake’s closing statement the empathy invoked in the jurors has been real, but it is during this line that the brutal reality of the situation truly strikes them.

Thus, the feeling of real empathy invoked in the jurors is also coupled with guilt. There is guilt for their close-mindedness— they themselves may realize that they are only able to care about a little girl’s life when she is white. The end of Jake’s summation serves as sort of an epiphany for the jury— they come to a startling conclusion not only about Carl Lee Hailey, but also about themselves. They come to terms with their own blind racism, and find it within themselves to overcome it by declaring Carl Lee Hailey innocent.

Works Cited

A Time to Kill. Directed by Joel Schumacher, Regency Enterprises, Warner Brothers, 1996. Digital Campus. Web. 20 Sept 2017.