Benjamin Reiss - Presentation

Thursdays discussion and presentation brought to us by Benjamin Reiss brought a few things to my attention.  During the class discussion I discovered that Reiss did not want to declare his opinion on the media and its impact on society.  The author had truly meant to leave it up to the reader to decide his own opinion. I felt like this was such a unique opportunity for us as a class to hear the story directly out of the horses mouth.  We also learned that he was not actually a historian, but author and a teacher of sorts.  So in this way I'm sure Reiss has strong feelings towards how the media impacts society, however he does not wish to impose his opinion on his readers. In addition to his opinion he also brought an interesting historical occurrence in his presentation.  His talk about doctors and their ability to "diagnose" certain problems with sleep, and claim that there were correlations between race and sleeping ability was quite shocking.  To think that doctors would buy into the evils of racism and incorporate them into their diagnoses.  For instance, some doctors believed that ludicrously racist factors were a way to legitimize certain illnesses or disabilities.  It makes me wonder whether or not we should completely trust doctors today.  So in all, I learned not to take everything at face value, even from trained medical professionals, and also that Reiss truly values his readers' opinions.