4 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, January 15, 2002
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OP/ED
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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
((Mother, I
should have
listened to you:
Always chew your
pretzels before
you swallow."
-President George W. Bush in a speech at a
John Deere factory in East Moline, Ill., as
quoted by The Washington Post. Bush
passed out Sunday while watchin
football and eating pretzels, because of
according to the White House, a pretzel
that went down the "wron way."
o 0 0 ~~ig'No
-- sri r'"' 4
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.
0
Where to stick your rejection letters
AUBREY HENRETTY NEUROTICA
Shot down. Denied.
Dismissed. Flipped
the metaphorical
bird. Admirable - per-
haps even commendable
- but not group X materi-
al. The terminology is col-
orful; the envelopes are
not. They are small, white
and nondescript. Their
words are as toxic as any powdery act of
postal terrorism, though more painful and
slower to kill.
No matter which minced words and
canned phrases grace the official stationery
inside, rejection letters always say the same
thing: "Dear insignificant speck," they say.
"You suck." They're signed, "Snarky Over-
lord, Assistant to the third sub-secretary of the
Vice President of Public Affairs." Or. at least
stamped.
Some VIPs with word processors have
taken it a step further, thinking it clever to put
a different name at the top of each letter.
Apparently, they hope to fool everyone who
didn't make the team, qualify for the loan, get
into the school, win the contest or get the job
into thinking they spent hours with each letter,
agonizing over every "regretfully" with
utmost sincerity and concern.
Speaking as something of a rejection let-
ter connoisseur, I wish they wouldn't do
that. I know a mass-produced rebuff when I
read one, and the sight of my own- lonely
name in close proximity to the phrase "not
selected at this time" has never been a great
source of comfort to me. If all I'm worth to
them is a two-cent photocopy, the least they
can do is provide me with.a list - right
there at the top where I can see it - of
everybody else in my shoes. I might want to
meet them for coffee later so we can talk
about how we didn't really want this stupid
thing, anyway. Or how we did.
Getting a rejection letter is a lot like get-
ting dumped: You pine away for a while, send
the object of your affection some wistful
glances and/or an application. Bat your eye-
lashes. Wait violently while he makes up his
mind. Before long, you see the little envelope
("It's not you; it's me") and ("regretfully") it's
all over. So if you're going to get dumped,
wouldn't you rather it be in the form of a cold
shoulder from the cutie in Wednesday lecture
(knowing a bunch of other people have seen
this exact same shoulder) than the guy who
took the time to get to know you, then deemed
your personality too volatile for his liking?
Nothing fosters camaraderie quite like
unrequited love. But not to worry: Even with-
out company, there's plenty you can do to take
the sting away from your rejection letters. For
starters, keep them. Tape them to the wall
right next to your desk. Memorize them. Re-
write them in iambic pentameter, reminding
yourself that Albert Einstein got kicked out of
school because they thought he was an idiot,
that countless professional actors, athletes,
musicians and artists had to spend a few years
sleeping on benches before they struck it rich
in their professions of choice, that 28 different
publishers rejected Dr. Seuss' first book
because they thought it would never sell.
Imagine the publishers telling Dr. Seuss he
was no Einstein. Laugh maniacally.
Deferral letters add a whole new dimen-
sion to the fun. When group X tells me
they've got my information on file should
they need me in the future, I amuse myself for
hours imagining what I'd write back if I ever
heard from them again ("Thank you for your
interest in me. I am sorry to inform you that
out of the many, many acceptance letters I
received, yours was the worst. Really. If
acceptance letters were cities, yours would be
Newark, N.J. You are worthless to me at this
time. Best of luck in the future").
Ultimately, such creative acts of revenge
would probably meet the paper shredder
before they met the people with the signature
stamps. Even if my juvenile tauntings did
manage to get past the overworked underlings
and their sophisticated junk-mail filing sys-
tems, I doubt my rejection would affect the
higher-ups the same way theirs affected me;
I'm sure they spend more time worrying about
a little anthrax in the air than what other peo-
ple think of them. Yikes. What sad, boring
lives they must lead.
Aubrey Henretty can be reached via
e-mail at ahenrett@umich.edu.
Hollywood says 'let's roll'
GEOFFREY GAGNON G-OLOTGY
fter postponing
release dates for
some films and
scrapping others entirely,
Hollywood studios found
themselves with a tough road
to hoe in the weeks after the
September attacks. It's been
a fine line to tread for Tinsel
Town execs who've bal-m
anced, on one hand, a need
to comfort Americans with the need, on the other
hand, to avoid commercial exploitation in the form
of simple flag waving, feel good products that
belie the magnitude of the tragedy. To that end, its
been a reserved bunch of Hollywood producers
during a hesitant time in Tinsel Town that have
collectively stayed away from bringing any aspect
of this past fall's terrorist story to film. That is,
until now.
After a self-imposed embargo on creating con-
tent based on the War on Terror or the attacks that
spawned it, CBS officials announced that the net-
work was developing a made-for-TV docudrama
exploring the final minutes of the United Airlines
Flight 93 that crashed in rural Pennsylvania on
Sept. 11.
On the heels of this announcement from CBS
came word last week that two other studios had
began development on projects based around the
attacks. One such company, Canada based
Alliance Atlantis Entertainment, who plans to
explore the lives of the terrorists prior to their
attack, told The Washington Times that they were
proceeding with caution - well aware of the grav-
ity their story. It's difficult to imagine a fictional-
ized version of the events being as dramatic as the
actual experience, company president Peter Suss-
man told the Washington paper.
No doubt this is the reality that CBS officials
are considering as they move forward with their
plans to tell the aptly named tale of the Pennsyl-
vanian crash when they unveil "The Real Story
of Flight 93." Reportedly, the producers - who
include the filmmakers who brought the stories
of JonBenet Ramsey and O.J. Simpson to the
CBS miniseries format - have decided to focus
their picture on "official action" rather than the
speculative accounts of how passengers may
have foiled their hijackers.
That notwithstanding, I wouldn't expect CBS
to miss a chance to bring to screen the story's
media-made hero, Todd Beamer, whose fateful
quipping of "let's roll," heard on a cell phone
before the plane went down, has become more
than a motivational moniker. Beamer, who some
speculate had a hand in bringing the plane down
outside of Pittsburgh rather than in Washington as
experts feared the hijackers had planned, has
received the lion's share of attention while the
media has salivated over the inspirational battle cry
he's reported to have delivered before the passen-
gers stormed the cockpit.
The story is the stuff producers must dream of
- a potential script wrapped up in notions of
courage and drama so convincing and so real that
that it can't miss. But in the rush to bring Sept. 11
to the screen that we're about to see, how much tin-
kering with history will we accept? CBS is right to
take an approach that doesn't attempt to piece
together events that would take liberties with the
truth - after all who knows the complete truth
about what occurred in those fateful minutes above
Pennsylvania? But in the subsequent films that are
sure to be made where we see terrorists plot and
perhaps even buildings fall, how much creative
license will society allow on topics that touch so
many so deeply?
Creative interpretations are hot topics these
days in Hollywood when we talk about the
"truth." Just last week Richard Willing of USA
Today told readers the story of how films like
"Titanic," "The Hurricane," "The Perfect Storm"
and even the current "A Beautiful Mind" have
fallen prey to critics who've found an alarming
pattern in Hollywood studios taking liberties in
their adaptations of "real" events. Saying nothing
of the obvious flair for revisionist history dis-
played by some filmmakers like Oliver Stone, stu-
dio brass are increasingly sweating films that only
mildly tweak history or change details. This sum-
mer a federal court in Florida will hear arguments
from the ex-wife of the character played by
George Clooney in "The Perfect Storm," the 2000
film that allegedly harmed the man's reputation.
But making movies about Sept. 11 and the
emotions that come with it is different than
telling the story of an ill-fated fishing boat and
its unheralded captain. This is a story we all
seem to own and these are historic events we're
less willing to see tweaked.
The point is, in an era when people see
money made from their deceased loved-ones or
reputations impugned by films eager to cash in
on the real-life stories of courage and heroism,
recreating history isn't as easy as it once might
have been. With that in mind, CBS and the other
studios bent on bringing the "realities" of Sept.
11 to a miniseries or theater near you would be
wise to tread lightly before dollar signs having
them saying "let's roll."
Geoffrey Gagnon can be reached via e-mail at
ggagnon@umich.edu
0
V LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Zahr fails to address
context of profiling
TO THE DAILY:
There is no question that the new and unfa-
miliar vigilance at American airports since the
events of Sept. 11 demands thoughtful intellec-
tual examination. The use of racial profiling in
any location under the jurisdiction of the U.S.
Constitution should be a profoundly distressing
issue for any American that values his or her
civil liberties.
Amer G. Zahr's column on Jan. 14 ("I
guess I fit the profile") rightly confronts this
pressing topic, but unfortunately, his self-serv-
ing indignation and narrow moralizing tragical-
ly simplifies an extremely difficult and layered
subiect. I find it hard to believe that Zahr did
searched because on Sept. 11, 19 terrorists
hijacked four commercial airliners, destroyed
the World Trade Center and killed nearly 4,000
American civilians. Zahr has every right, even
the responsibility to question the validity and
constitutionality of his search, but acting like
there was no "good reason" for the inspection,
acting like we live in the same country that we
did on Sept. 10, is intellectually fruitless. Of
course Zahr has the right to feel abused, but as
a columnist, Zahr must ground his argument in
the ambiguous, deeply traumatized social land-
scape of post Sept. 11 America. Not doing so is
acutely disrespectful and wholly unproductive.
YoNI BRENNER
LSA senior
'Best of 2001' list
tirades aganist the commercial machine that is
the mainstream music industry, I was suprised
to see such sameness arise in your top-tens.
Dustin Siebert picked all hip-hop. Rob Brode
picked nearly all major-label, commercial
releases, with Jay-Z making the list two con-
secutive times. That I don't like Jay-Z doesn't
matter - I'm disappointed because I thought
that Daily Arts was interested in expanding the
musical horizons of its readers. Perhaps it
should begin with expanding the horizons of its
staff.
There were seven albums listed more than
once among the remaining lists. This was sur-
prising to me - it seems like there were many
more albums to choose from artists besides The
Strokes, The White Stripes, Radiohead and
Jay-Z. Nowhere did I see a jazz album, an artist
from a different country (e.g. Femi Kuti, who
nut out an excellent album last year). a classical
?