4A - The Michigan Daily - Thursday, November 15, 2001 OP/ED f £ irb~igtt d 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 daily.letters@umich.edu 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." "' Cod 41 hc h t - ' ' a ;, ;. y -5 ~t1 A tfl04acca Ie onl - 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