4 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, April 11, 2006 OPINION aiie£Idijnag DoNN M. FRESARD Editor in Chief EMILY BEAM CHRISTOPHER ZBROZEK Editorial Page Editors ASHLEY DINGES Managing Editor NOTABLE QUOTABLE We are America. - Displayed on signs and chanted by proti tors at yesterday's National Day of Acti for Immigrant Justice in Washington, reported yesterday on washingtonpost.co I EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com COLIN DALY TAEi MICIGAo~N D~lUY ST $ ty -qF ,eAL NA'rIN :JLV~fg&t3ON SeAq()L4-) wtP io VegWtpljAJ US A t)/AM7Al1 I asa 'es--- I AGG-.. ?CH jJA,4s'"7m ! /: _. n . 0 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. WANTA A SUMMER COL~UNO T ciG ABUT ioiN DALY OPIN*m1? E- .L GLc~upaw Coming clean SAM SINGER SA.M'S CiU For one day each year, usually sometime in late December, Washing- ton Post political col- umnist David Ignatius does something fairly remarkable for a man in his line of work. x I Ignatius turns his dis- cerning eye inward, to his own writing, and for the full length of a column he takes himself to task for a year's worth of mistakes. As if writing from a confes- sional, Ignatius owns up to each and every one of his miscalculations, failed predictions and broken arguments. Then, with a professional courtesy otherwise unknown in his field, he apologizes. Ignatius apologizes not because he has to, but because he's of the old-fashioned convic- tion that a byline still carries with it some degree of personal accountability. I happen to agree with him, but I won't pretend for one minute that anyone would care enough to try to hold me accountable. Ignatius writes for an international audience, and his opinion car- ries prominent weight in the policy world. He competes on a national field, with writers who move markets with the stroke of a keyboard. I compete with a crossword puzzle. Still, I've always found something thera- peutic about atonement, and though my mis- takes may not breed controversy like those of a nationally syndicated columnist, they're still worth some reflection. So stay with me - bearing in mind that this could just as easily be 800 words of wistfulness and stale farewell advice. I'll start where my conscience is the heavi- est. In a column last November (Preying on confusion, 11/01/2005), I grumbled about excessive speculation in the media's coverage of the CIA leak investigation. At that point, the federal probe extended only as far as former vice presidential aide Scooter Libby, who had just been indicted for disclosing the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to reporters. Libby uncovered Plame's identity as part of a broader campaign to damage the reputation of former ambassador Joseph Wilson, Plame's husband and a longstanding critic of the Bush Administration. Commentators on the Left were reaching for anything - anything at all - that might be construed to tie Libby's leak to the Oval Office. It all seemed like overkill to me. The chro- nology of the investigation, which dates back to early 2003, was already perplexing enough. The story simply didn't need another angle, especially not one grounded in innuendo. I guess that's why I was so angry with Frank Rich. The venerated New York Times colum- nist had written a colorful piece back in Octo- ber that equated the Plame fiasco with the early stages of the Watergate scandal. To the best of my knowledge, he was the first commentator to utter the "W" word. I couldn't understand why Rich, a man well aware of how loud his voice echoes in the mainstream press, would risk peddling tabloid-quality rumors. I do now. Last week, we learned that Presi- dent Bush authorized the disclosure of top- secret intelligence estimates of Iraq's WMD capabilities as part of that same campaign - previously understood to be confined to the lower ranks of the administration - to under- mine the credibility of Wilson and other war critics. Though there is still no evidence that Bush had prior knowledge of the Plame leak, Libby's testimony does implicate the presi- dent in an under-the-table smear campaign of which he has thus far denied any prior knowl- edge. In fact, Bush has actually promised to lay off any White House official discovered to be involved. Whoops. This is a huge story, maybe the biggest of the year. If what Libby told prosecutors is accurate, the president has been deliberately and methodically lying to the public for three years now. That's pretty awful, and I sincerely regret questioning the character of a journalist who had the foresight to realize it. Mr. Rich, if you're reading this - and something tells me you're probably not - my apologies. Of course there have been other, arguably less weighty, slip-ups. I may have suggested in a December column (The Ides of March, 12/13/2005), for instance, that there was a decent probability Israel would launch air-to- ground attacks on Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities sometime in March. The article was outwardly speculative, a connect-the-dots piece that presented a collection of statements from Israeli defense officials that seemed to suggest steps toward a more aggressive military pos- ture. Well, April is here, and so is Iran. A couple of summers ago I predicted, with embarrassing self-assurance, that the Democratic Party would reclaim a Senate majority in the 2004 elections (Closing ranks, 07/19/2004). As you probably know, Demo- crats were routed in those elections. Repub- licans actually widened their majority. And while I'm tempted to blame my imprecision on an erratic and unreliable electorate, that would be ignoring the sad reality that I had no idea what I was talking about. I apologize if I got anybody's hopes up. There are many more - too many, in fact, to acknowledge in such limited space. I would, however, like to finally address the flood of angry e-mails I received around this time last year concerning Squirrel huggers (4/12/2005), an article examining the Michigan Squirrel Club and its general value on campus. Club members didn't appreciate my conclusion, which posited that the organization actually operates to the detriment of local squirrel populations. They accused me of deliberately sabotaging their reputation. They called me ignorant and condescending. They told me I didn't know the first thing about urban ecol- ogy, or squirrels for that matter. I still think they're just in it for the T-shirts. VIEWPOINT Affirmative action is not a reward Singer can be reached at singers @ umich.edu. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Send all letters to the editor to tothedaily michigandaily.com. BY WYNTER MCGRUDER Despite the controversy surrounding the Daily, I still look in its pages while I am moving between classes. When I am reading, my eyes often find the articles written to the Daily from my fellow classmates. I am always interested to know what other people think about important issues. I was reading the Daily when I came across a letter that invoked some very raw emo- tions in me, and I felt that I had to write some- thing in response. The letter was The only moral issue about MCRI is racism (04/10/2006) by Robert Scott. He talks in the letter about "arbitrarily reward- ing certain individuals based on their skin color" and "the disgusting, demoralizing institutional- ization of racially preferential treatment." I have two major problems with his argument. The first is that affirmative action is some kind of "reward" for being a minority or a woman. Affirmative action was set in place to try to combat the centuries of economic and educa- tional oppression that still (yes, still) plague this country today. It is not a reward for being a minority or being a woman; it is compensation for not being the right color or gender. I am a black woman, and even though I know I deserve to be here, I pay the price for all this so-called "preferential treat- ment." I pay the price when I sit in my engineer- ing classes and all the other students refuse to sit next to me because they do not want to be associated with the black girl. I pay the price for affirmative action every time my groups try to give me the secretarial work for our team proj- ects. I pay the price whenever I, as the only black girl in the room, have to be extraordinary when I answer questions in class in order to be taken seriously when everyone else can live by the standards of mediocrity. Secondly, who came up with this idea that I receive some kind of preferential treatment because I am a minority at the University? As far as I know, Ittake the exact same exams; I have the exact same books with the exact same homework assignments. I do not have professors on either side of me giving me hints while I take a test because I am a recipient of affirmative action. The second I set foot on this campus, I am just as much on my own as my white male counterparts. Finally, I just want to say that though I am a strong proponent of affirmative action. I do not believe it to be a permanent solution. I believe it is a temporary fix to an extremely complex problem. How does one overcome the two cen- turies of oppression that have faced both women and minorities in this country? It would take the total reconstruction of the educational and eco- nomic system of America to make things "fair and equal." It could take another two centuries before things are set right. So I ask the question: While we wait for the federal government to provide "public education that provides equal opportunity for every Amer- ican child, regardless of socioeconomic status or region," what are we supposed to do? By "we" I mean the collective "we" of Latino/as, Afri- can Americans, women, Native Americans, etc. who are the beneficiaries of affirmative action. Are we supposed to sit around and continue to be denied our rights to higher education and employment until some government think tank comes up with cost-effective and speedy ways to combat the years of oppression imposed on us since the founding of this country? I do not think so, and an America that wants change and appreciates the true concept of diversity and equality should not think so either. I personally hope that America stops excus- ing itself from the table of change. The time is for action, not for debate, because while liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats are sitting around arguing about how to fix the screw-up that is the past 200 years, millions of American children are being left behind. McGruder is an Engineering junior. Letters show the need for R&E requirement To THE DAILY: Sometimes I feel like writing letters to a brick wall, so here it goes. LSA Student Government has recently voted to make the "race" in the Race and Ethnicity requirement no longer, well, a requirement. Not one, but two letters in the Daily last week evoked deep confusion and hostility to the idea that race has and continues to funda- mentally affect one's life in America (Affirma- tive action misses economic realities, 04/06/2006, Affirmative action should address socio-economics, 04/06/2006). Dealing with the historical disparities between whites and blacks by granting affirmative action only to poor people regardless of color - which is already the case - or, say, dealing with the festering wound of race relations in America by talking about "diversity" is like trying to prevent sunburn by fighting global warming. In other words, there are very specific reasons for black and white disparities in America that aren't so true of the income gap at large or similar for any other group - conditions that affect even middle and upper-class blacks to this day. These include redlining and housing segrega- tion, white flight and the subsequent collapse of property values, employment and bigotry - and stereotypes like black people as dumb or lazy and "bitches and thugs," believe it or not. (I know, I know, it doesn't happen in Michigan and espe- cially not in Detroit.) Any person who "doesn't see where race fits into the equation," wouldn't see where an equal sign fits into an equation. This isn't to say that we shouldn't try to address poverty at large or intolerance of all kinds. All I am saying is that it would make some people in America more than happy to make America's racial minorities wait for justice until the day that intolerance and economic inequality of all kinds cease to exist (which is never). Keep the race requirement in race and ethnicity, and keep minority affirmative action. Michael Smith a major deficiency in the article. Although the author included some of the smaller programs in the University, the School of Nursing was ignored. The nursing school has historically been one of the highest ranking schools within the University, currently listed as third in the nation. As is so often the case on campus, this neglect not only hurts the nursing school, but it also damages the entire pro- fession of nursing. Nurses make a difference every day, and in light of the current nursing shortage, I think it may have been more responsible for the Daily to encourage and support this profession instead of ignoring it, thereby implying that it is insignificant. Rochelle Weller Nursing sophomore Daily ignored Relay for Life, but covered Dance Marathon To THE DAILY: I was very upset yesterday morning when I saw that Relay for Life, the American Cancer Society's 24-hour fundraiser, was not included in yesterday's Daily. More than 2,100 University students participated and more than $224,000 was raised. Such a dedicated effort should be not ignored by this campus's main source of informa- tion, especially since Daily staff were present at the event. Part of what makes the University such an incredible environme'nt is the commitment of its students to charitable causes, and Relay for Life's success should be valued and recognized as Dance Marathon was last month. Diana Parrish LSA sophomore Writer validates stereotypes instead of discrediting them To THE DAILY: While reading Madison Moore's article in The Statement last Thursday (Fabulous is not a crime, 04/06/2006), I was amazed at how unabashedly he spewed out prejudice, racism and stereo- "squishy little box" for another one, and yet still has the arrogance to criticize everyone else for "uniformly following the pack:" And if the worst instance of homophobia Moore encountered at the University was feeling like he stood out after a football game while everyone else wore yellow and he wore Dior (as he so proudly mentions), then I would say that this campus is thankfully not so homophobic. I agree that homophobia is an ugly problem, but how can we expect to live in a world where everyone accepts everyone else for who they are when the same people who know what it feels like to be a minority are so quick to dish out their own prejudiced criticisms of others? Perhaps if Moore were to reevaluate himself, he would find that he's not so "utterly fabu- lous." He's just utterly hypocritical. Christy Connelly LSA sophomore Hidden 'truth' about Sept. 11 must not be ignored To THE DAILY: I really do not even care whether this gets pub- lished. All I want is for the beacon of journalis- tic integrity that is The Michigan Daily to shine through amid the fog of fascism. I direct you to an interview with Charlie Sheen done on the Drudge Report in which he demands the truth about the real story behind Sept. 11 (http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/ march2006/220306mediablackout.htm). This story was swept under the rug almost immedi- ately by the mainstream media, even though there is no misinformation and his accusations are not far-fetched. Sheen simply implies that the truth is very far removed from what we've been told by the Bush administration. I am not leaning toward one side of the politi- cal spectrum, nor am I particularly active in poli- tics. I am simply a student who ran across a large amount of very credible information that was very obviously covered up or edited by the powers that be. The interview story can be found on that web- -:1n i 1- - - n a t ori~ n nn ir c tt Editorial Board Members: Amy Anspach, Andrew Bielak, Kevin Bunkley, Gabrielle D'Angelo, Whitney Dibo, Milly Dick, Sara Eber, Jesse Forester, Mara Gay, Jared Goldberg, Mark Kuehn, Frank Manley, Kirsty McNamara, Suhael Momin, Rajiv Prabhakar, Katherine Seid, Gavin