4 - The Michigan Daily - Friday, March 10, 2006
OPINION
be 3irbiluual tig
DoNN M. FRESARD
Editor in Chief
EMILY BEAM
CHRISTOPHER ZBROZEK
Editorial Page Editors
ASHLEY DINGES
Managing Editor
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tothedaily@michigandaily.com
NOTABLE
QUOTABLE
How can we
expect children to
respect teachers on
Monday morning,
when they spend
their weekends kill-
ing cops?"
- State Rep. Kathy Angerer (D-Dundee),
speaking on Monday in support of a reso-
lution supporting a boycott of the "25to
Life" video game, in which players earn
points for killing police officers, as reported
on Tuesday by The Ann Arbor News.
GEOFF SILVERSTEIN MISTER MAYoi0 AND fiRENDs
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Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily's editorial board. All
other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their author.
01
'Crash'-ing America's benighted party
IMRAN SYED DE1MAG:oGUEs DEBUNKED
Perhaps this col-
umn will irri-
tate some of my
fellow fans of cinema.
That is unfortunate, but,
as my editors here at the
Daily have often told
me, just because say-
ing something bothers
someone doesn't mean
it shouldn't be said.
A massive upset took place at last Sun-
day's Academy Awards. I'm sure you've
heard about it. No, no, I don't mean "The
Chronicles of Narnia" taking down "Cin-
derella Man" for "Best Achievement in
Makeup" - I mean the other upset.
Though "Crash" had its fair share of cham-
pions, no one in his right mind (OK, no one
except Roger Ebert) expected the controver-
sial film to walk away with the best picture
award over "Brokeback Mountain," or any
other nominee for that matter. Yet "Crash" did
win, leaving its filmmakers just as stunned as
clearly sloshed presenter Jack Nicholson.
First of all, let's get this nonsense about
"Crash" not being a worthy pick out of the
way. Every nominee was a worthy pick, but
there can be only one winner. This being
true, "Brokeback Mountain," "Munich" or
any other nominee would have been a justi-
fiable choice - just as "Crash" is.
I loved "Crash," and I am the only writer I
know who feels this way. I tried afterward to
identify with what my "Brokeback"-loving
friends must have been feeling. I guess I under-
stand - it was probably a bit like I felt when
"Shakespeare in Love" trumped "Saving Pri-
vate Ryan" or when Bush v. Gore went to Bush.
But detractors of "Crash" have it all
wrong: Years from now, we will look back
at this pick as one of the most courageous
in Oscar history, and for good reason. The
win does not embody, as most critics have
argued, the Academy's failure to make a
statement by giving the award to "Brokeback
Mountain." Instead it is a brash statement
from the Academy that even in the face of
the conflict in the Middle East, censorship
and homosexuality, racism is still America's
most pressing issue.
Many among us are uncomfortable even
admitting that racism still exists in our
America. The fact that minorities face
unfair odds in even the most mundane of
daily dealings is easy to turn a blind eye to.
Even many subjects of discrimination have
learned to live with it, because those who
speak up are seen as manipulating circum-
stances by playing the "race card."
I suppose this is the reason so many peo-
ple disliked "Crash." It makes racist atti-
tudes seem universal, perhaps implying.that
there are no good people in the world. Two
black men grumble about always being ste-
reotyped as hoodlums - before proceeding
to carjack someone. They run over a Chinese
guy, spit out every expletive in the Far-East
book and then attempt to stuff his body into
the back of a van - only to find it crammed
with the now-revealed slave-trader's cargo.
There are prejudices against those of the
Middle East, Latin America and, of course,
white people. "Crash" is overwhelming in
the sheer volume of prejudices it manages to
churn out in its 113 minutes. But does this
invalidate what it has to say?
The film challenges us to accept that
racism is all around us and probably even
within us. Those among us who claim to be
open-minded should at least accept this as
a possibility. Next, the film contends that
our racial prejudices guide our everyday
actions - unconsciously of course. This is
harder to accept, if only because the film
magnifies the nature and extent of these
prejudices. Characters in "Crash" are will-
ing to go as far as kill someone based on
racism, something (I hope) none of us would
do. The storylines, conflicts and outcomes
are grossly exaggerated, but consider for a
moment: To what effect?
Films can never be a straight-out represen-
tation of real life. If they were, the two gay
cowboys would have had almost no chance
of ever meeting. Life, in its most wonderful
property, is completely random, embodying
random spurts of unlikely moments, mak-
ing them meaningful in ways we appreci-
ate years later. In a two-hour film, this can
never be accurately portrayed. (Anyone up
for watching Truman Capote snore for two
hours? He slept every night, after all ... )
Films are always biased in that they only
show the moments they want to show, and
we usually have no problem with this.
"Crash" is contrived, overstated and
blunt, to say the least. But is it so much so
that the message is lost? The honest answer
is no. By breaking down the big, scary real
world into'just the events surrounding the
subjects of one random car crash, the film
shows the many forms racism in America
takes, though obviously never at once.
This selection by the Academy is not a cop-
out; in many ways, going with "Brokeback"
would have been the cop-out. "Brokeback"
was clearly an easy choice for the largely
liberal Academy, while racism has always
been the most explosive issue in our society.
Under fire, the Academy stood up and hon-
ored a deserving work too hot for most to
handle. In the future, we will be thankful.
Syed can be reached at
galad@umich.edu
el
Inventing precedent
Activist courts take people's right to choose
What Sept. 11 meant
JESSE SINGAL STEM THE TIDE
No State shall (...) deprive any per-
son of life, liberty, or property, with-
out due process of law; nor deny
to any person within its jurisdic-
tion the equal protection of the laws.
- Fourteenth Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution
The 14th Amendment was rati-
fied shortly after the Civil War
to explicitly grant blacks citi-
zenship and basic rights. Read the text
a few times: It is simple, elegant and
unambiguous. But in Roe v. Wade and
similar cases, the U.S. Supreme Court
decided that the passage quoted above
really means there is an inalienable
right to privacy, and that no state can
deprive any woman of an abortion, for
any reason, ever. I've tried using my
decoder ring and squinting really, really
hard, but it's just not there.
As most people already know, the Roe
decision rendered most types of abortion
invulnerable to the democratic process.
Instead, unelected people in black robes
with lifetime tenure and uncontestable
power decided that they knew what was
best and, without any grounding in law,
imposed their beliefs on everyone else.
I'd expect that from Iran, but in Ameri-
ca, I prefer democracy.
With a South Dakota law banning
abortion set to climb up the judicial lad-
der, hopefully the Supreme Court will
correct its mistake and return legislative
power to where it belongs - with the
people and their elected representatives.
As Justice Antonin Scalia regularly
points out, Roe does not guarantee
rights - it curtails them. Where
there are no constitutional restraints,
legislative power is in the hands of
the people and their legislatures.
If we believe something should be
legal, we can convince the major-
ity of our fellow citizens and make
it legal. If we believe something is
harmful and unethical, we can con-
vince our fellow citizens to make it
illegal. In effect, Roe takes away our
right to choose. Furthermore, if we
believe a concept is so fundamental
that it should be enshrouded in the
constitution, our founding fathers
gave us a number of means to put it
there (oddly enough, the amendment
process doesn't mention a living con-
stitution or penumbrae).
My colleagues on the Daily's edi-
torial board complain that the South
Dakota law was legislated specifi-
cally as a test, but I don't see the
problem. These days, the constitu-
tion doesn't mean what it says or say
what it means, so how else are people
to know what's in there?
Furthermore, I don't hear any com-
plaints about test cases such as the
Brown v. Board of Education case that
integrated schools. Assuming most
people agree the Brown litigation
was a positive thing, isn't it hypo-
critical to then argue other test cases
are unacceptable - ostensibly only
because they fall outside a specific
political ideology?
When judges read what they want
into the law, nobody wins. Bush v.
Gore should not have been decided
federally, but it was anyway. Simi-
larly, a recent case decided that the
Fifth Amendment - which allows
private property to "be taken for
public use" - actually allows gov-
ernment to seize private property and
give it to other private parties. Roe is
just another example of judicial over-
reach, and it should be overturned.
Frank Manley is an LSA junior and a
member of the Daily's editorial board.
n Tuesday,
Republican
senators and
the White House
reached an agree-
ment regarding the
Bush administration's
domestic spying pro-
gram. It takes the
form of bills that will
"impose new over-
sight but allow wiretapping without war-
rants for up to 45 days," as The New York
Times reported. Republican senators Chuck
Hagel (Neb.) and Olympia Snowe (Maine),
the two Senate Intelligence Committee
members most critical of the administra-
tion's actions, signed onto the agreement,
which means there will now be no full
investigation of the wiretapping program.
Many feel the program was - and is -
illegal, but this agreement takes us one step
closer to having no one held accountable for
that possibility.
The Times also ran an editorial this week
about Guantanamo Bay. Thanks to a lawsuit
by the Associated Press, records from some
of the hearings held there have been made
public, which serves to reveal the identities of
some of the detainees (a long-held administra-
tion secret). It seems as though many of the
people we are holding indefinitely and deny-
ing due process have little or nothing to do
with al Qaida or the Taliban; one Pakistani
claimed to have been a chicken farmer when
he was scooped up by U.S. forces in 2002. Our
government continues to refuse to give prison-
ers like Abdur Sayed Rahman access to the
resources they would need to properly defend
themselves against allegations of terrorism
- prisoner rights guaranteed by both U.S. and
international law.
How did we get to this point? The key to
understanding just where our government is
headed dates back, as is so often the case, to
Sept. 11. President Bush made it clear that the
attacks changed everything; they marked not
an isolated attack, but rather a massive para-
digm shift with monumental implications for
U.S. foreign policy and preparedness. This,
more than anything, has been the central claim
and motif of Bush's post-9/l1 presidency, and
we as citizens have completely failed to criti-
cally evaluate it.
Thanks to our inability, even several
years after the fact, to view Sept. 11 with
any degree of perspective or depth, Bush,
his administration and his party have been
able to shamelessly exploit the attacks -
from every imaginable angle, from sched-
uling the Republican National Convention
to coincide with the anniversary of the
attacks to, as Peter Beinart reported in The
New Republic, having top officials like for-
mer Attorney General John Ashcroft and
Director of Homeland Security Tom Ridge
make apparently false claims about possible
attacks, even raising the terror level.
And then, of course, there's the wiretap-
ping, the torture and the illegal imprison-
ment, all of which the administration has
guarded with the utmost secrecy. And the
war in Iraq, started by an administration
filled with individuals (Dick Cheney, Don-
ald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz) who had
been pushing for action against Iraq since
long before Sept. 11,pturned out to have less
to do with the fight against al Qaida than a
Pakistani chicken farmer.
President Bush is claiming Sept. 11 meant
that it was time to completely overhaul our
foreign policy, long-held standards of due
process for prisoners, long-held standards
regarding torture and several sorts of basic
civil liberties. He is dead wrong. What
Sept. 11 meant was that we needed to try
to defeat al Qaida, improve our ability to
defend against and respond to terror attacks
at home and seek to understand the ideolo-
gies that gave rise to those who murdered
nearly 3,000 Americans. (Not, as Karl Rove
so despicably put it, to give them "thera-
py," but rather to understand the forces that
motivated them and prevent it from happen-
ing again.) Other than our dispersal of al
Qaida, we have failed on every count. It's
hard to make any argument involving Sept.
11 and overreaction - obviously, it was a
singularly horrific event in American his-
tory - but by failing to understand its true
implications, and by letting Bush and his
administration tell us what the day meant,
we have endlessly multiplied the body
count and failed to salvage anything from
the rubble.
0
0
Singal can be reached at
jsingal@umich.edu
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Send all letters to the editor to
tothedaily~michigandaily. corn.
Faculty should help
depressed students
TO THE DAILY:
and a substantial percentage of students
identify their illness while in college. One
in 10 will consider suicide at some point
during their college career.
as those made yesterday only serve to rein-
force the isolation so many depressed stu-
dents already experience.
As the recent suicides on campus demon-
I