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Hey, big island man. Your sense of humor is shinning through. You're right, however. The moog synthesizer was terrible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msNi7Rj0WnQ

The work of Danish-immigrant reporter Riis, How the Other Half Lives, led to wider public knowledge and sympathy for slum residents. However, Riis was also criticized for the methods he used in creating his photographic exposé. For example, he illegally entered private residences and accidentally started fires using primitive flash photography in the confined quarters of extremely flammable tenement structures.

Riis's writing also reflects many of the prejudices of the time; he spends entire chapters characterizing and negatively portraying the Chinese, Jews, Italians, and Irish of the tenement district. Riis' middle class and Protestant backgrounds weighed heavily in his presentation. It instilled a strong capitalist idealism; while he pitied certain poor examined as worthy, others he viewed with contempt. According to Riis, certain races were doomed to failure, as certain lifestyles caused families' hardships.

An example of Riis's ubiquitous ethnic stereotyping is seen in his analysis of how various immigrant groups master the English language: "Unlike the German, who begins learning English the day he lands as a matter of duty, or the Polish Jew, who takes it up as soon as he is able as an investment, the Italian learns slowly, if at all."

It is worth bearing in mind here that Riis was writing for a specific audience, and was therefore playing upon the biases of that audience. Even in his most racially insensitive passages, he still writes with a genuine sympathy for his subjects.

In his autobiography, The Making of an American, Riis decided to allow his wife to add a chapter examining her own life. After letting her begin an honest and evocative biographical sketch over several pages titled "Elisabeth Tells Her Story", Riis decided his wife had had enough of the stage: "I cut the rest of it off, because I am the editor and want to begin again here myself, and what is the use of being an editor unless you can cut 'copy?' Also, it is not good for woman to allow her to say too much."