4- The Michigan Daily - Monday, October 4, 1993
TheichIigan&Rlu
420 Maynard
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Edited and managed
by students at the
University of Michigan
JosH Dunow
Editor in Chief
ANDREW LEVY
Editorial Page Editor
. -_._I
Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the majority opinion of the Daily editorial board.
All other cartoons, articles and letters do not necessarily represent the opinion of the Daily.
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Health security. Cool. Heh-heh-heh.*
Of all the details in President
Clinton's health care plan, the media
seemed especially:
takenwith the idea
of a universal
Health Security
Card, the easiest
possible symbol
for the venture.
Who cares about
the actual details
of the plan, when
we can have an
easy tounderstand PEN
symbol? Jean Twenge
Call it the
"Beavis & Butt-head" theory of poli-
tics.
I can see it now: they're sitting
there in their heavy metal t-shirts and
see a clip on MTV about the new
health plan, featuring predominantly
(of course) the Health Security Card.
"Whoah," says Beavis. "Look - it's
like, a credit card. In case you swal-
low too many rats at the Ozzy
Osbourne concert. Hehheh. Hehheh.
Hehheh. Cool."
This is the scariest thing about
"Beavis & Butt-head" - you knew
guys like this in your high school. You
probably still know guys like this.
Guys like this can vote, and more and
more of politics is being aimed at their
level, devoid of details or real issues.
Then there's the older forms of
these types, epitomized by Homer
Simpson. I bet he likes the plan too.
"Mmmm ... credit cards," he's saying.
"And all you have to do is be a U.S.
citizen. Marge, get me another beer.
Mmmm ... beer."
This is why Ronald Reagan was
such a such a popular president. This
was the man who claimed that trees
were a major cause of pollution and
taxed unemployment benefits so it
would be "more unattractive to be
unemployed." As columnist Molly
Twenge is a Rackham student. Her
column appears Tuesdays.
Baker has a right to
oppose homosexuals
To the Daily;
In response to regarding
Regents' Bylaw 14.06 (9/29/93), the
new pro-gay University policy, I
would like to comment on
conservatives' right to free speech
which you seem to discount.
Specifically, I would like to defend
Regent Deane Baker, whom you
chastise for standing up for his
legitimate beliefs.
In order to understand this point,
we must look at what the Bible says
about homosexuals: "Women
exchanged natural relations for
unnatural ones. In the same way the
men also abandoned natural
relations with women and were
inflamed with lust for one another.
Men committed indecent acts with
other men, and received in
themselves the due penalty for their
perversion. Furthermore, since they
did not think it worthwhile to retain .
the knowledge of God, he gave
them over to a depraved mind, to do
what ought not be done. They have
become filled with every kind of
wickednss-evil- meed and
Ivins said at the time, you can't make
up stuff this good. But the guy could
spin such a good story that by the end
you'd forgotten it all. Of course, an-
swering questions when you're get-
ting into your helicopter and can't
hear a thing always helps.
The 1992 election was no better,
with Ross Perot and his infomercials:
"Chart please ... Ya see, the deficit
has been growing lately kinda like a
Texas Bubba who drinks too much
beer. If we keep hearing the giant
sucking sound of my money paying
for this TV time, I won't have enough
left to personally pay off the deficit.
Now, this graph right here shows the
decrease in jobs at the Texarkana
Dairy Queen ..."
And in another state known for its
craziness, Jerry Brown offered us all
the opportunity to call his 1-800 num-
ber and hear his dogma. "Wow, Beavis
- it's like a 976 number except it's
free. I wonder if you can get a chick
on the phone 'n talk dirty politics.
Hehheh hehheh. Cool."
I shudder to think what the future
will bring. Clinton's going on MTV
won him a good number ofvotes, and
all he really did was answer ques-
tions. What if we had a presidential
candidate who made rap music vid-
eos instead of campaign ads? "My
name is Joe Prez and you've got to
. see/That I'm the best can-did-ate that
ever will be." We can only hope that
whoever does it first will be a better
rapper than yours truly. ("Know what,
Butt-head? This rap song really
sucks.")
The problem is twofold: the poli-
ticians seem to talk to the lowest
common denominator more and more,
and the media continues to simplfy it.
We started with the Kennedy/Nixon
debates and ended up with "Hard
Copy," a show that makes the Na-
tional Inquirerlooklike the New York
Times.
This campus is not immune to this
over-simplified view. Last week the
campus Republicans put up a sign
advertising their first meeting: "God.
Country. Family," it read. This is a
gross oversimplification of the issues
worthy of "Hard Copy," a formula-
tion that makes Ronald Reagan sound
like Ted Sorensen.
But you liberals can stop smirk-0
ing, too. Someone of your persuasion
defaced the Republicans' poster,
scrawling "Mindless Dogma" across
it. The same black marker was
scrawled across another poster adver-
tising a fraternity rush ("Frats Suck"
was the ultimately intelligent com-
ment here.)
Though admittedly my own ten-
dencies run toward the liberal, this is
pretty childish, guys. If we're ever
going to get along around here, this
instant classification of people as ei-
ther conservative Greeks or P.C.-
pushing liberals has got to stop. It
seems that we're so sure we have
nothing in common that we don't see
the point of talking to each other. I no
longer wonder why Congress can't
get anything done.
It is not my intention to preach
universal love and peace here (my
youthful idealism left me around the
same time my mother stopped buying
my clothes-about three weeks ago.)
All I'm saying is look beyond the
Health Security Card when you con-
sider politics: look beyond the labels
and parties of candidates, look be-
yond the obnoxious poster, look be-
yond the tie-dyed shirt. When we go
beneath the gloss of difference and 0
discuss the real issues (you know,
those things they talk about on
"MacNeil/Lehrer") we may discover
we agree on more than we think. We
should at least find out what the other
arguments are, rather than writing off
the TV image without knowing the
issues.
We'll leave Beavis and Butt-head
wherewe found them recently, swerv-0
ing around in a car and saying "Hey,
let's find a deer crossing."
Coursepacks, royalties, and you
If a person believes that this
condemnation of homosexuality is
true, then surely they are permitted,
in fact required, to oppose such
behavior and such people. But to'
deny a person the right to do so is
to deny him or her the right to
believe in the Bible. In America, all
citizens are guaranteed the right to
believe that the Bible is God's
infallible word. Religious groups do
have the right to be selective about
those who will represent the word
of God. No policy, law, or decree
which attempts to uproot these
rights can be just.
JOHN DAMOOSE
LSA senior
President, U-M College Republicans
spech s agood thing
To the Daily:
Provost Whitaker's
announcement repealing the portion
of the Interim Policy on
Discriminitory Harassment which
applied to classroom settings strikes
a resounding blow for free speech,
ethnic slurs" and everything to do
with the harassment of legitimate
scholars by mean spirited,
politically motivated pedants.
Bravo, Gil Whitaker! Daily,
take a hike!
CLAYTON NUBNER
Business graduate student
0
By JIM SMITH
Over the last few years, 240-or-so
of America's largest publishing inter-
ests like MacMillan, McGraw-Hill,
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Simon &
Schuster and HarperCollins, have
been waging war against coursepacks.
Under the umbrella of their trade or-
ganization, The Association ofAmeri-
can Publishers, they are attempting to
stop the use of coursepacks by the
academic community by claiming that
using material in a coursepack with-
out permission violates the copyright
copyrighted materials, "...for pur-
poses such as criticism, comment,
news reporting, teaching (including
multiple copies for classroom use),
scholarship or research is not an in-
fringement of copyright." That is the
law.
The publishers' effort to say oth-
erwise is an attempt to make private
law through threats and intimidation.
The publishers' position is not sup-
ported by faculty and authors; they
agree with my view of the law. Nev-
ertheless, so far publishers' efforts
instance in which the copyright holder
wanted a class of 15 students to pay
$500.00 for the right to have a per-
sonal copy of Martin Luther King's
"Letter from Birmingham Jail."
Macmillan, Inc., one of the pub-
lishers suing my company for copy-
right infringement, will refuse any
request for 10 percent or more from
one of their books. So what if your
professor thinks 90 percent of the book
is not worth reading, MacMillan says
you must buy it anyway.
Publishers insist that allowing them
I