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4A - The Michigan Daily - Thursday, November 11, 2004
OPINION
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ANN ARBOR, MI 48109
tothedaily@michigandaily.com
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
''Senator,
pistols or swords ?"
- New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd,
after U.S. Sen. Zell Miller (D- Ga.) strongly crit-
icized her on the "Imus in the Morning" radio
show, as reported yesterday in the New Yors
Post. Dowd was referring to Miller's challenge
at the Republican National Convention this sum-
mer to TV host Chris Matthews that they duel
Co0IN DALY .TiFh t :i ti A I-
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Faith-based voting
JORDAN SCHRADER P(RT HI TA)TIEMENT
ome of the people
who turned out at
the polls last week
to do their civic duty are
now asking: What's the
point in voting?
Not me. I'm asking:
What's the point in
writing?
A more daring journal-
ist might leave the rest of
his column blank after asking that question,
but let me instead give an example explaining
my disillusionment.
An LSA sophomore recently shared with
the Daily a view that must be common to mil-
lions across this country when she explained
her faith in President Bush:
"We as students need to realize that the
government always knows more than we do,
because we hear things from indirect sources
and the media misconstrues things. We need
to put faith in our government and intelli-
gence agencies to make informed and proper
decisions."
Those words summed up for me why the
election had left me questioning the value of
the career I had chosen to pursue. Journalism,
with its mission of "comforting the afflicted
and afflicting the comfortable," holds the
promise of exposing wrongdoing and empow-
ering readers. But what if the newspaper shines
a light and readers shut their eyes?
What if the media shout and no one hears?
A partial list of things that the media have
reported, and apparently "misconstrued," over
the past four years would include:
The sudden and overwhelming interest in
a dictator the United States had disarmed and
emasculated with years of sanctions;
The tenuous connection between that
dictator and the terrorists who attacked us on
Sept. 11;
The fruitless search for the weapons the
dictator was supposed to have at his command
based on the prognostications of those vaunted
intelligence agencies;
The torture chambers where U.S. sol-
diers brutalized their prisoners, encouraged
by official policy aimed at subverting the
usual rules of war;
The profits made from war by a com-
pany whose former chief executive helped
run the war.
Each of these is a scandal that the main-
stream media have - sometimes inaccurately,
often belatedly, usually timidly - exposed.
Take whatever positions you want on them,
it shouldn't be denied that the debate on each
issue was both relevant to the election and
waged in the media.
But voters overlooked all those things last
week, preferring to focus on the candidates'
moral values and toughness. They weighed
what seemed to be an alcoholic turned born-
again Christian crusader against what seemed
to be a veteran and protester turned flip-flop-
per. In the end, the electorate fell back on
the same party identities that determined its
votes in 2000.
Perhaps voters believed that personalities,
impressions and partisan loyalties were all
they could consider, because the media had
misconstrued all the real issues.
So why should any of us go into journal-
ism, if all the words in the world can't make
a difference?
It gets scarier. The media hear their readers
and viewers. They listen to them and give them
what they want. So you can expect less inves-
tigation - which no one trusts anyway - and
more of what we already have seen taking over
political coverage.
More personality assessments. Dean's
screams mean he's a man on the edge. Bush's
mangled speech means he's stupid. Kerry's
drone means he's condescending.
More wedge issues. Gays and abortions
make great headlines.
Above all, more about the process. Who has
more money? What do the polls say? Who's win-
ning over the coveted Hispanic Nascar uncles?
It's a world I enter with a heavy heart and a
profound uncertainty, trying to come to grips
with a nation that may have more faith in its
government than in its journalists.
Schrader can be reached at
jtschrad@umich.edu.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Adams correct, history is
on liberals' side
TO THE DAILY:
Daniel Adams was spot-on in his column
(The anger of a drowning man, 11/08/04), and
his detractors in the paper seemed to have let
the point of his column just whiz right over
their heads.
Put in the simplest terms, to those seeking to
amend the constitution to ban same-sex mar-
riages, the end result can be determined today,
here, in this very newspaper:
You will lose.
Didn't sink in? Pause for dramatic effect,
and try again.
You will lose.
This is simply not a fight you will win.
Kick, scream, claw, for every inch along
the way all you want, but I can predict
the future. And I don't even need special
powers to do it - a library will suffice. It
has nothing to do with the Left, the Right,
Christianity, ethics, Bush, San Francisco
Mayor Gavin Newsom or any one else who
has weighed in his opinion on the issue
- 230 years of precedence in U.S. legal
history hold the answer. The U.S. Consti-
tution, the very foundation of this country,
establishes the United States as a democ-
racy - in essence, rule by the majority.
But, at the same time, there is a precedent
of checking the inevitable tyranny of this
majority over minorities.
Dim memories of time spent in high school
history courses should slowly come back,
recalling the stories of various civil rights
movements throughout history.
Reminded of names like Elizabeth Cady
Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, most will
recall some time spent studying the women's
suffrage movement, these women's struggle to
gain the right to vote and 80 years later, the
eventual 19th Amendment to the Constitution.
This amendment guaranteed women the right
to vote - to have a voice and not be discrimi-
nated against, as a "minority" in society.
Similarly, blacks, as well as other minori-
ties in society, were denied the right to vote,
along with a slew of other basic human rights.
They and their supporters stood up and
fought, for decades. Despite decisions by the
U.S. Supreme Court against their position,
they eventually received what they wanted,
what they needed. It took not one, not two,
but three amendments to the Constitution,
but they were guaranteed their rights, and
11/09/2004) seeks to trivialize by compar-
ing amendments to taxation policies and
codes.
It may take 20, 30, 50 years or more, but the
fact remains that history is on the side of same-
sex marriage's proponents, as Adams asserts.
The majority can fight over what is moral and
what is ethical in this country and the petty
definitions of words, but the final arbiter of the
fate of all people in this society is not a god by
any name or any form, but the words written in
the U.S. Constitution.
Ted Matherly
LSA junior
Letter writer defended
discriminatory policy
TO THE DAILY:
I'd like to start off by saying that I, like
many of the readers of The Michigan Daily,
am opposed to the way the paper tend to
generalize groups of people (especially
conservatives). I am in agreement with
Zachary Emig (Gay marriage opponents
made reasonable choice, 11/09/2004) when
he said that many people who cast conser-
vative ballots were very informed and very
intelligent.
However, I am also sure that there were
people on both sides of the political spectrum
who were not educated about their votes, and
I find it very hard to believe that the majority
of people who voted for banning gay marriage
did for reasons other than homophobia, and
this is where I must disagree with Emig. First
of all, I find it amazing that he could compare
banning gay marriage to progressive taxes or
mortgage interest tax deductions. Emig tried
to make the following point; he tried to say
that banning gay marriage was equally hateful
to making higher-income families pay higher
taxes than lower-income families. The part of
this I find most disturbing of his argument is
that he believes that the actual taking away of
people's freedom is the same thing as making
people with higher incomes pay more taxes.
The progressive tax system is in place because
even though the actual monetary values are
different, the percentage of income is roughly
the same. However, by banning gay marriage,
we are taking away people's rights. In the Dec-
laration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson
wrote, "We hold these truths to be self-evident_
that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalien-
the most is to "protect the sanctity of mar-
riage;" however, no one has yet been able to
give me a straight answer with compelling
arguments as to how homosexual marriage
will hurt marriage. As for the argument that
gay marriage is un-Christian, just because
homosexuality is looked down upon by the
religion doesn't make it any less hateful.
During the Spanish Inquisition, many Jews
were killed by the Catholic Church in the
name of religion, yet that didn't make the
act any less hateful. And yes, I realize that
was an extreme example.
In conclusion, let me say this to Emig: I
understand where you are coming from in
your complaints about the newspapers on
this campus. They are very quick to gen-
eralize. I agree that people on both sides
of the spectrum should start to look at the
positives of the recent election. However,
your arguments for choosing to eliminate
gay marriage were discriminatory, and the
examples you gave to defend your beliefs
were irrelevant. I won't use the word hate-
ful, but no matter how you phrase it, the tak-
ing away of people's rights will always be
discriminatory.
Andrew Daar
LSA freshman
Conservatives should care
about wood in nature
TO THE DAILY:
I feel I must take it upon myself to expose
an inherent, not-so-implicit hole in Michael
Vasell's argument published on Nov. 10 (Dem-
ocrats need to clean up election materials) in
response to Steve Cotner's column (When is
a good time to start living?, 11/09/2004). Vasell
writes in his letter that "politically active lib-
erals have destroyed all the wooden trunks on
campus," and "people are turned off by the
Left's disrespect for public property." Is the
air not public property? Are oceans and for-
ests and, indeed, national wildlife reserves
not public property? Your chosen party has a
criminally bad history of exploiting, destroy-
ing and manipulating massive amounts of
"public property" to personal, economic
advantage. Granted, the wildlife reserves in
Alaska that your chosen president is attempt-
ing to open up to oil drilling are not "in your
backyard," and perhaps you do not see ugly
Kerry stickers pasted on bears and pine trees
creating the dreaded eyesores you speak of.
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