4 4 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, September 21, 2004 Opinion ~I~ie £kuttn & 420 MAYNAR STREET ANN ARBoR, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily. corn i EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 JORDAN SCHRADER Editor in Chief JASON Z. PESICK Editorial Page Editor Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of the majority of the Daily's editorial board. All other pieces do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily. NOTABLE QUOTABLE We made a mistake in judgement, and for that, I am sorry. - CBS News anchor Dan Rather, concerning the validity of documents used in a 60 Minutes report relating to Bush's ser- vice in the Texas National Guard, as repored yesterday by The New York Times. CZR OUN'4TRY ~t TEgAiNEtPTO sPREA1O tWM '~AND tr COt4OMC rPOGRESS PINt FWCt CM NS TH& PiLEFNAIVE~S -ro HATREDZS, RF-SBNMENTs AND -frfRRORtST vOcLEX-t\CE-% a u~r USI ECONOMyI C poRES COLIN E).LY U NTi~ \ IY 0 I OK, so there's this skunk ... STEVE COTNER RED ALERT K, so there's this skunk that lives outside my x apartment. Every night I go out on the stoop to have a cigarette - and no, I shouldn't smoke, yes my grandpa died of it, yes I'm going to die. But it's this illegal war and this president who doesn't believe in science and these 15 per- cent of Americans who believe the Rapture Index indicates "Fasten your seatbelts" - level prophetic activity, and this feeling I get, whenever I fill up my car and drive, that I'm dragging an Iraqi's body behind me. Every morning I get up and run on a different road as far as I can go before I collapse, and every other morning I go to the CCRB and get on this machine and row like a Viking. Every day I read "the Nation," "Mother Jones," "Harp- er's," "Le Monde," "The Guardian," the Wall Street Journal, the "New Internationalist," and I buy books one after another, and read until my legs go numb. But at the end of the day, I've had enough glasses of water and pro- tein and gingko biloba, I've seen enough kids driving by blasting '80s music like they're not really here and everything's a frigging joke, and I just need a frigging smoke. So around 10 at night I sit out on my steps, and every time I flick my lighter, there's this little rustle in the leaves, and then this hairy black and white thing comes out and looks all cute at me for a minute, until I make a noise: I swing the screen door or stomp my feet or click my tongue against the roof of my mouth, and this thing gets all skunk on me and turns around and rubs its legs together like it's going to go bio-chem. So I have to get up and hide inside and smoke through my screen door, and I know it freaks people out to see someone smoking through their screen door with a porch light on, but I don't want the whole neighborhood bleeding through their eyes, so I do it. And it's this great courtyard I have, little pink and white flowers all along the little side- walk, and yellow leaves, and this tiny poplar that's trained to a big maple with a string, and I just want to sit out there and look at the four or five stars I can see between the buildings, and forget about the Human Rights Watch reports of U.S. operatives rap- ing women with guns in South America, but I can't, because Pep6 Le Pew wants to mess around. So I'm stuck inside my door, breaking the no-smoking contract I signed with my landlord, with the battery on the coun- ter instead of in the smoke detector, and puffing like a prisoner who passes notes between cells, ashing through a crack in the door. And finally it leaves, even though I can still hear it behind the shed, tearing through a trash bag. So I sit down with my ears pricked, and accept that I can't enjoy myself. I remember every time I ever smelled a skunk-bomb on the road, and I think about how the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency warned of the "security implications of nuclear and radiological materials that may no longer be under con- trol" in Iraq, and how we Shocked and Awed them anyway, and grabbed 200 state-owned companies and gave them to our business friends, and let everything rot except for the oil pipelines. And I'm wondering if radio- active fallout feels better or worse than a skunk in your eyes. And then I think of all the nuclear weapons that we have, and the cluster bombs and missiles and tanks and fighter jets, and how we go around the world digging in people's trash and making every decent person a shut-in who wants nothing more than for us to leave. And I think, what a crappy life, being that skunk. What a terrible way to live out your days, as this vagrant animal who scavenges around in place after place, and when things get bad it has no choice but to gas and run. And maybe it wants to be good. Maybe it just wants to snuggle up and rub noses. Maybe it hates the fact that it is what it is, but it has no other choice. Maybe Americans really do want to do good in the world. Maybe we wish we could hold a real conversation with a Euro- pean, let alone someone who doesn't look like us, or walk softly through a mosque with bare feet, or do anything that can't be likened to bingeing and purging. But we weren't made like that. We have all these weapons coming out of our ass, and we just can't help it. When things get tough, we lose all ability to speak, to think; we get nervous, our legs tense up, and we just let it rip. We cut and run and leave a big toxic thank-you note. Just ask Afghanistan And I wonder, after all this time, why we can't smell it ourselves? God, I need a smoke. Cotner can be reached at cotners @umich edu. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Daily insensitive in reporting student's death TO THE DAILY: It has been with great disappointment that we have read the Daily's report on the pass- ing of Kristi Sprecher, a resident of Cam- bridge House (Student found dead in dorm, 09/07/04). Not only were we shocked and dismayed by the Daily headline on the first day of class, "Student Found Dead in Dorm," but we were further disappointed by the Dai- ly's insensitivity to the memory of Kristi. It is apparent that instead of respect- fully informing the campus communi- ty of the passing of one of their fellow classmates, the Daily chose to sensation- alize an unfortunate occurrence with an overdramatic headline. The random collection of quotes meant to memorialize Kristi in the follow up article, "Campus Reacts to Student's Death," were neither appropriate nor thoughtful. The passing of a student is a difficult time for the University as well as for family and friends, and we believe that the Daily did not consider this in its reporting. AMY KELLER AND JEFF SOUVA Keller is the president of the Residence Hall Association and an LSA senior. Souva is an executive assistant to the Residence Hall Association and an LSA senior. Bush's corporate capture bad for environment TO THE DAILY: I've wondered why I've heard nothing of the envi- ronmental record of President Bush, the worst record of any president in history. I was blaming environ- mental groups, but now I know the real reason. The corporations who finance his campaigns, whose former employees he appointed to run the federal agencies designed to protect us and our public lands from them, own the media outlets, or threaten them with lawsuits or lost revenue. General Electric is the parent company of NBC, one of the most-watched news outlets. It's responsible for a number of Superfund toxic waste sites around the country and is the company who destroyed the Hudson River with PCBs, among other things. It is facing billions in cleanup costs for it. The biggest story of this election should be the corporate takeover of the federal government and the "air waves" that by law are supposed to be owned by the public for the good of our democracy. Go back to the months prior to Sept. 11, when the Bush administration's obvious agenda from the beginning was suspending every Clinton-Gore environmentally friendly action. There was the National Energy Policy written by the still secret task force composed of energy company execu- tives and lobbyists. Sept. 11 explains why we started the War on Ter- rorism. We may never know the real reasons for starting the war on Iraq. However, both of these have been perfect "smokescreens" for the corporate take- over of our government and liquidation of our natural resources for cash. They are newsworthy stories, but I keep thinking about that movie the "Wag the Dog" with Robert De Nim and Dustin Hoffman. The biggest threat to democracy is not terror- ism, but corporate takeover. Please read Robert Kennedy's new book, "Crimes Against Nature," especially chapter 10. And hurry. It's getting late. Then, please tell others and vote. RAY MATH IS Reader 4 VIEWPOINT 'Fad liberalism' redefined 4 BY ADAM BLOCK AND MASON THALHEIMER Last week in a column titled, The Prob- lem with Fad Liberalism (09/13/04), D.C. Lee, in one fell swoop, baselessly accused college liberals of being a mindless, cliqu- ey bunch of conviction-less clowns. The three crude arguments espoused by Lee's article were as follows: First, the notion that "Bush-bashing" is used by an uned- ucated group, known to many as college liberals, second, that colleges and univer- sities engender this supposedly "unedu- cated" bunch because "the majority of college professors are registered Demo- crats" and universities, for some bizarre reason, believe in extending opportuni- ties through affirmative action. Finally, to foreign policy, in which the resources of diplomacy, intelligence and economic sanc- tions are fully utilized before unilateral military action becomes a viable option is fad liberalism, then call us fad liberalists. Today, approximately one million stu- dents are dropping out of high school every year. Moreover, because the price of college has risen by 35 percent over the last three years, 220,000 qualified young people were priced out of college last year. Kerry will offer a college tax credit for up to $4,000 every year for tuition and will provide financial aid to states that keep tuition down. If refusing to be complacent with the inadequacies and inefficiencies of the cur- rent education system and supporting a new vision of reform for our schools is fad liber- type of conceivable benefit. If desiring the assurance that our generation will obtain jobs and other benefits after college is fad liberalism, then call us fad liberalists. Kerry is a man who knows the impor- tance of faith, but more importantly appre- ciates that the core value upon which our great nation was founded is the separation of church and state. If understanding the importance of spiritual ideology in private and secular values in public defines fad liberalism, then call us fad liberalists. To say that Democrats in the Univer- sity arena succumb to passing whims and fancies is to indict not only the students, but also the intelligentsia - professors, lecturers, and administrators - of our community, who provide the foundation hViii! 4~,l~ :; 7 TTi4 dFd J 1,1# 712 . '; Il, LY 4sR. 4 .#r # K xi. Y Y,: {. F i.A a.ii.R K '*.F . .3 '' ' '' ' Ii