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. DUDE RSTATr, . t"./IF NO 9 NO U14 a MUG v 30, 0Wil J 1 kv 1 { DWDE(STADTS I I.'ER5TAIDr'S 9 0, 1 0 0C a - Ua 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