Arguing is fun!

“Goddaughter” by Kelsey Hughes

While seemingly a photo of an baby in a Maryland onesie, this picture is much more. It is the press photo of the baby, Audrey – the youngest member of the University of Maryland’s football team. Randy Edsall and his scouters have been trying to recruit her for months and were just able to clinch her for the 2012 season. Oh, other large football universities tried to snag her – Ohio State, Illinois, North Carolina, UMiami – but she picked the Terrapins because Testudo gave her a warm and welcoming hug at last year’s Maryland Madness event that topped hospitality at any other university. Her gray-blue eyes are determined even as she delicately posed for her photo in August – she knows the Terps are counting on her this year.

Even as she poses, she’s batting at the camera. It’s an effective mechanism for the new Terps linebacker as she sits in the Pennsylvania grass. It defines the one thing the Terps know about Audrey: she is always practicing. The white headband is a sweat protector that matches her uniform (Audrey rolls in style, people) and keeps her always ready for any pigskin that may come her way. Danny O’Brien may be gone, but ladies and gentlemen, Audrey is in the house.

“Text from my Dad” by Benjy Cannon

A text received at 9:37 p.m. on Oct. 10 by Benjy from his father instead had nothing to do with protesting issues in the Jewish community and being the progressive face of his student organization JStreetU. Oh, no. Indeed, Benjy’s protests were cruel and unbased.

An advertisement on the DC Metro (typically on the Green Line, but oftentimes on the Red Line as well) depicts former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in a black suit, hands in his pockets, smiling nonchalantly toward the camera. Behind him are the several hundreds of issues for which he has taken a stance on a white background – everything from abortion to same-sex marriage to the economy. It’s common knowledge that Romney is anything but a flip-flopper and has a long list of his clear-cut conservative stances on every issue. It is not an inflammatory ad, merely an ad detailing the governor’s esteeming qualities in a bullet-point by bullet-point listing. The Washington Post ran an article about Metro’s good work in putting up these ads throughout its heavily populated lines. Voters are busy people, it reported, and often commuters, many of whom don’t have hours to devote to reading the issues at home or watching debates. For many of them, the Metro is the only time they can catch their breath.

But alas. Notice the “FORWARD” wallpaper on Benjy’s iPhone. Clearly, he supports the president in the upcoming election. And in his devotion for Barack H. Obama, Benjy has dubbed these simply informative advertisements as “blasphemous pieces of literature” and “abhorrent propaganda.” He demands they be torn down and replaced with photos of the president with a halo around his head. Judging by Romney’s heavy lead in critical swing states such as Ohio (in the most recent poll by CNN, Romney was at 89% and Obama at 11%), it’s no wonder Benjy is worried for the future of the incumbency.

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Beena

About Beena

Journalism and government & politics major at the University of Maryland. Member of Digital Cultures and Creativity honors program. Staff writer at UMD's student newspaper The Diamondback.

4 thoughts on “Arguing is fun!

  1. You saw through my ruse as easily as you saw through the text message’s box, which I thought obscured the Obama logo in my lock screen. Crafty Ohio Republicans…

  2. But alas, you are wrong! This photo is not, in fact, a photo of Maryland’s youngest linebacker but actually Maryland’s youngest student. She enrolled in the university at age 9 months after having passed the SATs with a 2390 (she lost 10 points because her name was illegible – she’s still working on her motor skills with her mommy.) She is currently double majoring in business and neuroscience, but she plans to go back and get several different PhDs in various fields, including chemistry, once she’s old enough to do labs involving fire. Being that she is extremely adorable, she instantly became a favorite among her classmates and regularly sits on their laps during lectures.

    Audrey is pictured here swatting at the camera because she opts to stay out of the limelight wherever possible – she is obviously hounded by paparazzi, being that she is a certified genius who many believe will discover the cure to cancer and start up a tech company that will trump Apple. Right now, however, she really just wants to be a normal baby, and spends a lot of time teaching basic arithmetic and vocabulary to her more esteemed peers at her after-college day care. Her more immediate life goals include taking her first steps and graduating from the sippy cup.

  3. But seriously, you could have not have been more wrong. The poster of one “Mittens Romney you are referring to was not posted in the DC subway, but in the New York one! Given my proximity to the Nation’s capital, it would have been rather illogical for me to protest something. Not to mention the fact that you have my political views completely wrong. My “Forward” background is a mockery of Obama’s socialist, post-colonialist, heathen worldview; it is clear to even the simplest American that he was to turn the USA into the USSR! My father, an immigrant from England, would never express proudness over my support of a Commie. The sign in question is, however, a Romney ad, indicating that Obamacare is a “government takeover of medicare.” I am protesting the sign because language is far too soft. Calling the Obama regime a government does not do justice to its violent, autocratic nature. It is an Commo-Islamofacist dictatorship. I am standing up for freedom, justice and the American way, and trying to tell the liberal, Mitt Romney, to man up and stop caving into to political correctness.

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