4 -The Michigan Daily - Friday, October 29, 1993
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Edited and managed
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University of Michigan
JOSH DUBOW
Editor in Chief
ANDREW LEVY
Editorial Page Editor
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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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Media bias shown
By PHILiP SAVAGE Judeo-Christiar
I was pleased to see that you prefer to see the
deemed Cal Thomas' lecture on ethics and valu
campus to be sufficiently news she did not knoN
worthy to appear on the front page ing that this Un
of the Daily. I am certain you desire an ethics major
the front page news stories to be the commentsc
accurate and objective. Unfortu- article of Octob
nately, Mike Newman's para- He also sug
phrases of some of Cal Thomas' dent, being as
comments could give readers inac- ethics, and not
curate impressions of just what it for her own v
was that Cal Thomas said. Further- refund from th
more, the article failed to provide aftertheexchan
the complete context for some of did Mr. Thoma
these paraphrased comments and student's educa
direct quotes. plete.
The article states that "Thomas The article s
became indignant" when a Univer- mas "compare
sity senior "questioned his views." sities to commu
Mr. Thomas did not become indig- this comparis
nant when his views were ques- Rather, I recall
tioned, nor did he immediately claim commenting on
that the student had been "poorly War and the fal
educated" student in a pointed dis- the former So
cussion about ethics and values. Eastern Europe
The student courageously opined the few places
that Mr. Thomas and Citizens For people who vie'
Family Values should not attempt exemplary so
to impose whether the student was Beijing and in s
an anarchist. Upon replying nega- versities.
tively, she was then asked what The article
alternate set of values (other than those attending
by The
n values) she would
e source of her own
es. She replied that
w. Then, after learn-
iversity student was
, Mr. Thomas made
quoted in the Daily
ber 12.
gested that the stu-
senior, majoring in
knowing the basis
alues, apply for a
e University. Only.
ge recounted above,
as conclude that the
tion may be incom-
stated that Cal Tho-
d American univer-
inists." I don't recall
son being drawn.
[l that Mr. Thomas,
nthe end of the Cold
ll of communism in
viet Union and in
e, said that among
one can still find
w communism as an
cial system is in
ome American uni-
also stated that, of
the lecture, the vast
e older couples." Of
oblem here is that
er" are comparative
mas lecture,.
terms that carry different connota-
tions to different readers. Did Mr.
Newman mean that the couples in
attendance were older than he? My
wife and I are in our early 30s, and
we attended the lecture. Were we
among the "vast majority" of
""older"" couples he saw there?
Since "older' is comparative, the
reader must interpret this term. The
impression I got from reading this
phrase was that nearly all of the
interpretations of the words "vast"
and "older". This impression would
be incorrect. The group at the Power
Center did not just hop off an AARP
tour bus. Rather, the group com-
prised a diverse cross-section of the
University and Ann Arbor commu-
nities.
Finally, and perhaps most im-
portantly, the article did not clearly
report the basic thesis of Mr. Tho-
mas talk and comments. He argued
that the root causes of the key prob-
lems facing society today are not
political and economic, but rather
moral and spiritual.
Therefore, solutions must be,
sought in the moral and spiritual
realm. He argued thatwe need more
people with integrity and strong
moral values (moral courage as Mr.
Newman accurately reported) to
assume responsibility for them-
selves, their families, andtheir com-,
Savage is a professor of Chemical
Engineering at the University.
majority... wer
course, the pre
"vast" and old
American and Israeli
hit men
To the Daily:
Ron Meisler and his ilk have sunk
to a new low. Representing himself
as a Palestinian American who
hadn't yet formed an opinion on the
Palestine question, he asked me if we
could meet for lunch so that he could
learn more about the facts I presented
in my editorial, "Real peace starts
with real Palestine," 9/27/93. Feeling
it a duty to educate the community as
much as possible on the issue, I
obliged him for not one lunch but
two. Meisler never revealed his real
identity (Israeli American) or the
purpose of the meetings.
Next I open the newspaper to find
an attack on things that I supposedly
said during our discussions
(Deconstructing the myths, 10/25/
93). Not only did Meisler quote me
inaccurately. More importantly, he
did not have my permission to quote
from our conversation at all.
At best, Meisler was deceptive
and unethical; at worst, he was
acting as a spy and a slanderer for the
campus chapter of the American
Movement for Israel.
Mr. Meisler, I was the victim of
propaganda - anti-Palestinian
propaganda. Before a year ago, I
believed as you do that there is
violence on both sides, the
implication being that the
Palestinians and Israelis are equally
at fault. But since then I have learned
as much as I could about the
situation, both here and there, from
Jews, Arabs and others. (No, I didn't
speak to Israeli Jews in the West
Bank. I don't generally discuss
politics with neonle who have their
international guests. All a person has
to do is talk to a refugee family who
were run out of their town (which
you later visit in ruins or find built
over by arrogant immigrants from
Ann Arbor or wherever), talk to a
former political prisoner who was
beaten and threatened with rape by a
prison director and check out the
preponderance of the evidence on
who's killing whom and who's
stealing what from whom.
The facts speak for themselves,
Mr. Meisler. When you have the
truth on your side, you don't have to
stoop to dirty tricks.
I won't be meeting with anyone
for lunch.
KATHERINE METRES
LSA Senior
Spanish department
needs diversity
To the Daily:
First of all I would like to thank
Nate Hurley for his well-balanced
article last month ("Spanish lecturers
accuse 'U' of hiring unfit
replacements" 9/21/93) on the
problem with the lecturers in the
Spanish Dept. However, Mr.
Hurley's article left the impression
that the problem was something
which occurred only this year when
actually it has been a recurring
problem in the department. The
Spanish-speaking world is large and
varied, but the department seems
determined to limit the possibility of
diversity by hiring only lecturers of
mostly European extraction. The
overwhelming majority-of the
lecturers, almost to exclusion, are
either from Spain or from countries
teaching experience. Yet hiring
practices seem to be based first on
the racial or ethnic background of the
applicant, followed closely by
whether or not they have a friend in
the department. There are several
notorious cases of lecturers now
teaching in the department who have
neither the required education nor
any teaching experience whatsoever,
yet they have been hired in the last
few years based solely on personal
friendships.
I wish it could be even longer to
list all of the underhanded dealings in
the department. The end loser in all
of this is the undergraduate student
and that is one of my main purposes
in writing it. If we are going to have
a language requirement, our students
should expect to have well-trained,
well-educated, experienced teachers
who represent the many and diverse
cultures of the Hispanic world.
JON HEATON
Rackham student
The 'U' parking scam
To the Daily:
I would like to make the
community aware of a money-
making scam that is being
perpetrated by the University
administration on employees who
use University parking facilities.
University parking permits
require the display of both a decal on
the windshield and a "hang tag" from
the rear view mirror. Because the
hang tags interfere with driver
visibility, most people leave them on
the front dashboard, where they are
still clearly visible from the outside.
Last week the University started
issuing parking tickets to these
people, claiming "improper display
of hang tag." The University knows
$iliiyin a garage window
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