4 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, January 15, 2002 *I OP/ED e.x~Q~%Je.~ ~~ tbe £iiguu i'ai 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 ?