Task: Sentiment Analysis
Input (English): Oh Danny Boy... . First off, I love Dan Rather. He's a wonderful, passionate man whom I love to watch on the news. The problem is, he's not a writer. Not a very good one at least. This book is a noble attempt, but there is just so much that's wrong with it.    For one thing, there is just some bad writing in it. It has a lot of errors in fact and a lot of typos. Among others, he writes that Texas A&M University (rather than Texas Tech) is in Lubbock, and he says that Ryne Sandberg in in the Baseball Hall of Fame (he just should be soon). There is also bad grammar (this is beyond the Texas colloquialisms in the book which I think are fine-I'm a Texan myself). These are fairly small problems, but they are oftly annoying, and they are not good signs in a book written by a journalist who's supposed to report facts. Furthermore, he just has few narrative talents, at least not those required for a book. He tells the stories as a journalist on Headline News would--concise, to the point, and without much flavor. They're just there; the reader is rarely drawn in.    The most glaring flaw, though, is that there are a lot of flaws in logic in the book. For instance, one of the stories is about a ten-year-old boy who realizes that many of the underpriveleged at his school cannot afford school supplies, so he works together an organization that collects and disperses those needed supplies. This is all obviously a good thing. But then, Rather relates a joke told by the boy's mother who said she needed to haul the school supplies around so she "traded in [her] Lexus for a Durango, and now [she's] getting a Yukon because the Durango isn't big enough." My problem is the huge contrast here. On one hand, there are all of these kids lacking necessities and the heroes who are helping them are laughing about purchasing one expensive SUV after another for themselves. How is this inequality emblematic of the American Dream? How does this book manage to lament the rising poverty rates and terrible living conditions and still manage to promote excessive materialism? There are some people in the book who are praised for having overcome hardship to make millions (some of them stepping on other people's heads to do so) and others who are praised for having given up millions to help those in need. Frankly, these two "ideals" don't go together. Nevertheless, these people, according to Rather, have all attained the American dream. There are a lot of contradicting ideas expressed in these stories. Furthermore, I don't really think Rather has a great concept of what the American dream is. When Sister Sylvia Schmidt founds a homeless shelter in Tulsa, OK, I don't think she is following the American Dream. I think she's following dreams that go far beyond the American Dream, and I think she's rejecting the prevalent, primarily materialistic, concept of the American Dream of today's society.    I'm giving the book two stars because I like Dan Rather, and because some of the stories were rather inspiring. Neverthess, it's not a good book. I will continue to watch Dan Rather on tv, but I'm quite sure I won't read a book by him again
Output (English): NEG