4A - The Michigan Daily - Thursday, November 15, 2001
OP/ED
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ANN ARBOR, MI 48109
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NOTABLE
QUOTABLE
EDITED AND MANAGED BY
STUDENTS AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
SINCE 1890
GEOFFREY GAGNON
Editor in Chief
MICHAEL GRASS
NICHOLAS WOOMER
Editorial Page Editors
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.
I'm sorry. I'm
sorry. I just wanted
to go to the
bathroom."
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- Raho N. Ortiz, while being tackled
by three federal sky marshals on
Monday during a flight from
Pittsburgh to ashington, D.C. This
quote appeared in The Washington Post.
SJ &0",
The end of the world, part II: Abolish work! I quit!
JOSH WICKERHAM THIs Des ms WORLD
A
To the collective majority:
o, you're about to
win. That's easy
enough to see.
You're hard working.
You're entrenched. Your
Microsoft Word Office
Assistant assumed this was
a letter, thus assisting me.
And your McDonalds
made me throw up this afternoon.
Rest assured, your war makes me quiver
and cry and I won't do anything but run away
from it.
A great many minds have been won by
your consensus reality and you're pretty big on
this triumph.
You've got control over the indoctrination
systems and your media makes me want to hate
Eurasia because we've always been at war with
Eurasia.
Oh, don't forget you're draining the earth
like it's your capitalist playpen, leaving nothing
behind for your children.
Unless you're manifesting apocalypse,
you've got to wake up from your pathology.
I'm a pessimistic idealist, so this makes me
long for our collective death and (idealistically)
rebirth. But don't count on it.
And with your petty politics, you've disen-
franchised me.
Recently I've decided that the only patri-
archy I'll get on my knees for is the kind that
fills my mouth with phallic bliss. And boys,
you better be hung.
Everyman has no idea what freedom is
because freedom is mystical.
Reading this, you might think I'm preten-
tious because I think I have all the answers. I
don't even want to listen to your questions.
When the majority is wrong, the few
men of hubris have several options
(in no particular order):
1) The few can trust their senses and allay
doubt that the majority is wrong. These people
will go out to "make it" in the world. They
"buy" "it," stock options and all. Don't do this.
You know they'll rip your face off and sell it
back to you. Envision lemmings marching to
their graves. Cue Simpsons theme music.
2) They can drop out and ride the waves of
their solipsism. Warning: This leads to radical
behavior! It's likely that "the system" will
"catch up" to these people and they will be
eliminated.
3) They can give up and become consumers
of television, alcohol, coffee and pornography.
This means cultural death. These cattle can be
kept alive until it's time to suit them up for a
ground war.
4) They can become entrenched, active and
uncompromising. The men of conscience can
tell the majority to go fuck itself.
5) The few can join the marines and be
proud. (See category 1).
6) They can make lists.
There once was a man from Kennebunkport
Father loomed so large kiddie felt short
And son said with a grin, wiping oil from his chin
"Though my dad's not a tittie, he'll still comfort."
There is a place ahead of us where there
is no change. Maybe we'll pursue the
accumulation of knowledge to the end
of its worth and declare time irrelevant.
Wouldn't that just be the living end? Well, lit-
erally, it would!
Academia could probably whoop this
problem of history if it wanted to. It has
enough momentum.
Then I hung vaginas with Jim one cold
fall night after a bomber. I was trying to
come to terms with the scariness of the
female sex organ, which I copied from a col-
oring coloring book. When I taped them up
they were supposed to be some kind of Gaian.
vortex that ripped matter open to the source
of all life.
But back to the majority! Your CIA should
be abolished, because it deals in drugs for soft
money and killed Harlem with crack and hero-
in.
Has anyone else been listening to passing
rumor?
I hate you because your media did not make
me numb to violence, but all the more adamant-
ly opposed to it. At the same time I'm disem-
powered to do anything about it.
I should have no reason to be afraid or think
myself a criminal, except my studiomate is now
defined as a "domestic terrorist" under the anti-
terrorism bill because he was arrested in Wash-
ington, D.C. for an anti-globalization protest.
If we are going to get off this rock alive, our
idea of work has to be made into play. Other-
wise the men in their uniforms will march all
over the face of the earth.
My eulogy to that great horror:
Farewell to savage beast.
If one must work to get through life,
one always travels least.
A passing train reminds me of my dream to
be a hobo.
Structure.
There is still the sense of dread that you're
going to smite the undesirables.
I just want to be out of the system! Don't
you? Or did you all buy a flag and trust that it
would work for you?
Why does your society have to dominate?
Except in sex, there's no excuse for power.
Collective, you've inherited a "revolution
in underarm protection," which is probably a
registered trademark and not to be our lega-
cy.
So I stopped wearing deodorant. Maybe
you should too.
Josh Wickerham is a creatively -stifled and lon
time columnist rights advocate. He can be
reached via e-mailatjwickerh@umich.edu.
16
V LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Observatory Lodge
should be preserved
TO THE DAILY:
I hope the University is truly serious
about renovating Observatory Lodge, a
historically protected building constructed
in 1930 in the Tudor Revival style. Well
known for its squirrel weather vane, this
building is an excellent example of the
style and was the tallest of the few urban-
type apartment buildings constructed in
Ann Arbor before the Depression.
It has an irregular floor plan, many-
gabled slate roofs, half-timbered accents
and casement windows with occasional
oriels. The city's professional and educa-
tional elite were attracted to the variety of
unusual floor plans, large rooms and rare
amenities such as fireplaces. It has been
owned by the University since 1966 and
has been home to many in the community.
The weather vane has been a landmark to
generations of passersby.
Rumor has it that the closing is merely
a prelude to demolition. I hope this is not
the case. Not only would this show a lack
of respect for the city's architectural her-
itage, and a disregard for its historic des-
ignation, it would also eliminate even
more housingwon campus and create even
more of a problem for students and staff
alike.
The University should renovate this
building to a state of the art, energy-effi-
cient, up-to-date example of the reuse of
an older structure. This would send a posi-
tive message to others in the community
that preservation has its rewards - and
those rewards are many!
SUSAN WINEBERG
Rackham
Woomer misses
impact of U.S.-backed
Afghani liberation
arguably the worst theocracy known to man.
The picture on the front page of the Afghan
men smiling and rejoicing over being able to
do such simple things as shave their beards
made me feel so happy for them and it was
then that I realized what horrible lives their
"leaders" have forced them to live.
But this mood quickly changed as I read
Woomer's intro to his column, which hit me
like a ton of bricks. How dare he refer to the
liberation of the Afghans as a "murderous
invasion." It is obviously more important to
Woomer to be severely liberal and maintain
his anti-U.S. attitude instead of really giving
a damn about the Afghans.
It is also about time he opened his eyes to
the fact that the Taliban would still be in
power had it not been for theswift and
intense military action spearheaded by the
United States.
ELI SEGALL
LSA sophomore
Britney 's buddies
bust back
V IN PASSING
Military tribunals: A dangerous plan
On Tuesday, President Bush announced
that non-U.S. citizens accused of planning
or perpetrating terrorist attacks could be
-tried by a military tribunal. The military
hearings will be closed to the public, will
not require a unanimous verdict for convic-
tion, will limit the defendants' knowledge
of the evidence they are charged with and
will offer defendants little opportunity for
appeal. Furthermore, the President has sole
authority to determine who will be tried
-under these tribunals and they will be run
*by the Secretary of Defense.
If the U.S. seeks to create a broad coali-
-tion it is imperative that criminal proceed-
ings are conducted with transparency. With
or without justification, secret trials will
-raise the specter of government wrongdo-
.ing. The imposition of tribunals destroys
the crucial system of checks and balances
by narrowly vesting power withthe Presi-
dent and a small cadre of advisers.
While it is reasonable that some infor-
mation in a terrorist trial ought not to be
publicly released, the Classified Informa-
tion Procedures Act already provides for
this secrecy. Previous terrorist trials were
all conducted under the CIPA and did not
lead to the divulging of secret information
and future attacks. The administration's
action is disguised as an effort to prevent
terrorism but is nothing more than an
attempt to subvert judicial principles for
make it substantially easier to convict sus-
pected terrorists.
-- Zac Peskowitz
In Passing views are those ofindividual
members ofthe Daily's editorial board, and do
not necessarily represent the opinion of The
Michigan Daily.
Fan who 'really likes'
Britney finds CD
reviews 'exclusive'
To THE DAILY:
When I saw that Tuesday's Daily includ-
ed a review of Britney Spears' new album I
was pleasantly surprised since the Daily usu-
ally chooses to pretend as if pop music
doesn't exist and instead reviews albums of
obscure groups I've never heard of (Britney,
11/14/01). However, when I finished the so-
called review I was angry, as Sonya Suther-
land saysin her first paragraph that the album,
"doesn't even warrant a listen for review."
I am shocked that the Daily would there-
fore publish what she wrote. The caption at
the top of the page says "reviews of the
music industry's new releases," so one would
think that meant actually listening to the
album. Instead, Sutherland chooses to bash
Britney in any way possible, commenting
about her image, music videos and body.
What does any of this have to do with the
album itself?
Sutherland says, "Does it really matter if
the album is sonically unique or original
when one can simply flip on MTV and view
Britney's metamorphosis into a dripping wet
near-stripping dancer?" The answer is yes!
Sutherland is being such a hypocrite here, as
the mainrito nf artists who have videone n
the types of artists whose albums it seems to
exclusively review, but I guess I would pre-
fer it keep on doing this if t wasn't even
going to give other genres of music a fair
chance. Personally, I really like Britney's
new album and I'm not afraid to admit it. I
would have been happy to write a fair review
of it or any album for that matter, since
Sutherland is obviously incapable of doing
so.
JESSICA LEVY
LSA sophomore
Reviewer should
have first listened to
Britney's new CD
To THE DAILY:
I was very disappointed to read the
"review"of the new Brtiney Spears album.
Regardless of what the reviewer's preconcep-
tions were of what the album would be like, she
should at least have listened to it and written an
actual review. That is the job of any music crit-
ic, no matter what you are reviewing. It is not
very professional to merely judge an entire
record on the merits of song titles and one idiot-
ic video essentially.
Sure, everyone already knows that Britney
is nothing more than a packaged advertisement
for Jive Records, but that also does not mean