4 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, December 11, 2001 OP/ED c~lr ffiichigtu 1Wig 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 daily. letters@umich.edu EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 GEOFFREY GAGNON Editor in Chief MICHAEL GRASS NICHOLAS WOOMER Editorial Page Editors NOTABLE QUOTABLE I don't want this to be seen as a Muslim mob attacking a Westerner for no reason. They had every reason to be angry ... If I had been them, I would have attacked me." - British journalist Robert Fisk, quoted by the BBC News, reacting to being attacked by Afghan refugees after his car broke down in Pakistan. Colley. p as aj: C..o&as dot' 4+e4 be s_ fi desTht or !VN)Fce Coaled ColuwcbeO% I I Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of the majority of the Daily's editorial board. All other articles, letters and cartoons do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily. 4 Taking stock of the Bollinger legacy GEOFFREY GAGNON G-OLOCY tanding just to the right of the podium yesterday in the Clements Library before the ceremony honoring President Lee Bollinger, I imagined that the whole event would feel like something I had seen before. I figured, only half jokingly, that as friends and colleagues stepped to the microphone dur- ing the University's official send-off for its 12th chief, they would shower Bollinger and his wife Jean with gifts and praise the way pro sports teams do the same when an aged hero announces his retirement. If you can conjure up images of the farewell tour of Laker-great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar a little over a decade ago, and if you can imagine old Kareem clutching his framed jersey or gushing over his new Rolls-Royce while grinning for the flash- bulbs, then you're not too far off from what I expected to see - except without the jersey or the Rolls. As the event began it became clear to me that this was more than a ceremonial send-off. The more I watched and the more I listened the more I came to realize that the Kareem com- parisons started and ended with the gifts and warm words. With apologies to Abdul-Jabbar, the University did not assemble last night to pay tribute to a hobbled veteran before they put him out to pasture, nor did they memorialize a man whose greatest work is behind him. Last night members of the University community simply gathered to say thanks to a leader who'll leave later this month at the height of his game, with his star shining brighter than ever. Yesterday's event made me wonder in the vain of the familiar phrase, if we had realized what we had before we lost it. What did we really think last December when The New Yorker said, "If you were called upon to invent a perfect university president, you couldn't do better than Lee Bollinger." The trustees at Columbia University cer- tainly wouldn't dispute that claim -- and nei- ther would anyone who gathered yesterday to pay tribute a man whose impacts at Michigan are difficult to judge just yet amidst the glare of his achievement. Later last night, after Bollinger had shaken the last hand and smiled for the last farewell photo, I strolled through the first floor of the Union along the corridor where the ghosts of presidential past are immortalized in black and white photographs. Just below the portrait hung yesterday of Bollinger, a plaque rests in which his four years as president are summed up in a few sentences that describe a series of. big initiatives that were begun under his watch. His time is marked by his projects and his tenure is etched in a metal plate as if his work has been completed already. His brief bio speaks of tasks just barely conceived from which his legacy will be completed some day. But where does that leave us now as we struggle to add meaning to what Bollinger's loss signals? As I considered Bollinger's plaque and the seeming need to have it completed before he ends his tenure here on Dec. 31, I wondered what it might say if I wrote it. I doubt that it would mention just the enormity of the Life Science Institute currently being constructed, or only the importance of the forthcoming Arthur Miller Theatre project. Rather, I'm sure I would talk about the morning last week when I watched Bollinger nearly drive off Thompson Street while waving at grounds workers who shook their heads as they waved back. Or I'd discuss the professionalism with which he treated the Daily, or the giddy stories passed like legend from students who were on South University on a chilly night in 1997 when the new president opened his house to a throng of frenzied Wolverines whose football team had just clinched a No. I ranking. I'd also describe the way he opened his home and talked with my friends and me on a sad Sunday in Septem- ber. My version of the plaque probably wouldn't capture the grandiose scope of Bollinger's term or the vision and fortitude that made him memorable. But my plaque would capture what makes him unforgettable - his charisma, sincerity and passion. Years from now when a clearer picture of his impact emerges in the shape of buildings and programs and successful projects, that plaque will mean more - and history will treat Bollinger with the same type of warmth and fondness he's shown the University. Geoffrey Gagnon can be reached via e-mail at ggagnon@umich.edu. Goonies, evasive wretches never say 'die' AUBREY HENRETTY NEUROTICA he mere sugges- tion that Chunk might be dead was too much for poor Mikey: "Don't say that! Never say that! Goonies never say die." I could barely read the first time I saw "The Goonies," but I under- stood Mikey's point: If Goonies don't say die, Goonies can't die. Like Mikey, I had already learned to fear certain words, "die" occupying a central position on the list - right between "teenager" and "base- ment." I supported Mikey in his decision not to say "die" because to say it meant to admit death was a distinct possibility. Once I realized people would go on dying whether or not I talked about it, I grew out of this. Some people never do. Some people still insist on saying "Uncle Stanislaus passed away last night." He stopped breathing, his heart stopped beating, his vital organs ceased operations and his brain now has fewer electric currents running through it than a bowl of lime Jell-O with a big plastic spoon in it. Who are these people trying to kid? He's dead. Dead, dead, dead. But some people don't like to say "die." When a veterinarian euthanizes a dying dog, it's called "putting the dog to sleep." But it doesn't work with people. You wouldn't tell a five-year-old that Dr. Kevorkian put Grand- pa to sleep. That sounds terrible, doesn't it? Same biological process. Different euphemism. In times of war, dead civilians become "collateral damage," we kill people unintentionally with "friendly fire," dead sol- diers become "casualties" and bombings become "military campaigns." Personally, I'd rather have bombings; somehow, our current Commander-In-Chief seems better qualified to bomb a country off the map than to run a campaign. But I digress. A euphemism's primary purpose is to obscure the truth. If somebody were to sever my left arm with a hacksaw, I'd be eligible to join support groups for people with "limb differences" (Note: This phrase is not a figment of my imagination. It is an an actual umbrella term that describes missing, altered or otherwise abnormal limbs). I could say, "I have a limb difference" instead of "I don't have a left arm." But I wouldn't. Why? Because talking around a problem doesn't make it less of one; no matter what I called it, I'd be missing an arm, and all the verbal gymnastics in the world wouldn't bring it back. Jumping rope without assistance would be a near impossi- bility. Further, "limb difference" would suggest that I had both of my arms, only there was something unique about one of them. Some- thing that distinguished it from other limbs of the same name. If I had an arm made entirely out of Spam or an arm with a built- in digital television and wireless Internet access, then I would say I had a limb differ- ence. Not before. There's nothing wrong with not having an arm. Lots of people don't have one or both of their arms. You could say they're unarmed. And it wouldn't be a euphemism. If anything, it would take away from the stigma. "Limb difference" is sterile and intimidating; puns are safe and (forgive me) disarming. More importantly, puns are direct; they are beauti- fully shameless, un-PC and easy to under- stand. . People looking to manipulate public opin- ion, win arguments and discuss unpleasant subjects design their euphemisms very care- fully. An effective euphemism is one that polarizes the issue at hand: Right and wrong, moral and immoral, progressive and Nean- derthal. Its words often avoid whatever both- ers people about the issue (e.g. neither "dead" nor "civilians" appears anywhere in "collater- al damage"). Linguistic dichotomy encourages a similar dichotomy of thought. It facilitates name-call- ing, closed-mindedness and sweeping-moral- statement-making. Abortion debate rhetoric is a prime example of this. If I am "pro-life" and you disagree with me, then you must be "anti- life" or "pro-death;" you must think killing babies is a great idea. If I am "pro-choice" and you disagree with me, then you must be "anti-choice" or "pro-fascism;" you must think the government should have 24-hour unrestricted access to my uterus, which should itself be equipped with a tiny surveil- lance camera and an alarm that would sound if anything unsavory was going on down there. Either way, you sound like a terrible person and I win. Don't let the sneaky semantics fool you; things are what they are, and there's no reason to be afraid of saying so as bluntly as possi- ble. Using, timid, substance-free language to describe what we do marginalizes even our most courageous acts; heroes do not laugh in the face of "passing away." Listen critically. Speak clearly. Don't be a Goonie. Aubrey Henretty can be reached via e-mail at ahenrett@umich.edu. I A V LETTERS TO TH EDITOR Race-based affirmative action 'simply creates a new' wrong To THE DAILY: I am writing in response to yesterday's letter "Raiji clouds real issues of affirmative action" (12/10/01) in which the authors state, "Even those minorities who are not impover- ished come to the admissions process with many disadvantages that white students could never understand." This is a dangerous statement. Basically, suffered in the early 1990s, when "Buy American" sentiment caused a largely forgot- ten (or ignored) anti-Japanese sentiment? What about the Chinese, Indian, or Arab stu- dent who watches jokes made about his cul- ture on television - jokes that, if applied to African-Americans, would be considered taboo? Have these people not endured disad- vantages whites cannot understand? Why, then, does race-based affirmative action not aid them in admissions? The "You just don't understand how tough it is" argument falls flat because race- based affirmative action decides who has suf- fered the worst past wrongs, and ignores the being clogged with complaints and defense of Sam Butler's Nov. 27 cartoon involving the Pope. For the first part, as was previ- ously pointed out, it was more of a refer- ence to Monty Python than an original piece of work and is more funny in context instead of in a poorly designed scenario that would fit in a comic panel. However this misses the larger point, which is the amount of space devoted to backlash. Nobody would have even remembered this unorigi- nal and unfunny cartoon were it 4ot for the large amount of people it seems to have offended. OK, we understand some people took offense to that. We understand that not allCatnlie tkP hisetrP t'en ov 0 A