4 -- Friday, March 25, 2011 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com 4 - Friday, March 25, 2011 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com C 1 4e Michigan 43alb19 AL Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com JEFF ZUSCHLAG E-MAIL JEFF AT JE'FFDZ@UMICH.EDIU Wh tiit goooo for? Abuo- Look,asmuh a e appreciateyou 5A'teeue~ WoahIWhate you just keep declaringars lft nd rght!I'veedecedwar ne dictatr, inesalea.uya bhspi guys ig here? Afghanistan, Ira,Libya ...you'rein IcantCju stp THERE. A.5,d. enogh trouble a it is, Sam,. Isthat anothe a a v, e a Dn't rrSam,. W'eYu'e thelping, you have there, Samset.This here ryou.We an John BAl tsen itertal abuthhis UPI STEPHANIE STEINBERG EDITOR IN CHIEF MICHELLE DEWITT and EMILY ORLEY EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS KYLE SWANSON MANAGING EDITOR 0 6 I Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily's editorial board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors. FICOM TH L DAILY Save Hollywood North Snyder shouldn't cut Michigan film tax credits Part of Republican Gov. Rick Snyder's recently proposed bud- get cuts includes the termination of the popular Michigan film incentive. According to Snyder, this cut was just one of the many tax incentives that were slashed in order to "level the play- ing field." That creed may be applicable to other industries within the crippled Michigan economy, but to the film industry, this cut won't level the playing field as much as it will potentially eliminate it. A Black' Friday Implemented in April 2008, the Michigan film tax incentive has not only boosted the state's economy, but it has also singlehandedly brought a new industry to Michigan. The cred- its gave a substantial amount of tax incentives to those in the movie industry interested in filming in Michigan. This taxbreak - the larg- est of its kind in the United States - covered up to 42 percent of the production costs involved with the filming of a movie. In its three-year existence, the plan has resulted in more than 135 productions and has cost the state approxi- mately $304 million, only $96 million of which has been paid out, according to a Feb. 17 Free Press article. This, compared to the more than $649 million in revenue that the tax break has generated, is more than enough reason to ques- tion its recent termination. The recent slash of the film tax incentive will inevitably devastate the currently boom- ing Michigan film industry. At a time when most industries in the state are failing, the film industry has become what some have begun to call "Hollywood North." In its brief existence, this blossoming industry has cre- ated more than 6,763 film production-related jobs, along with more than 4,000 jobs for extras, according to the Free Press. While abandoned industrial buildings continue to plague the state, a former Pontiac car plant is being filled with the new, state-of-the-art $80 million Raleigh Michigan Studios, which plans to open this spring. This massive infra- structural improvement, along with two other smaller studios already in operation, is aidingthe Michigan economy. The state must also recognize the restau- rants, hotels and countless local businesses that have undoubtedly benefited from the tax incentives. The movie sets give an incredible economic and morale boost to cities, as wit- nessed in Ann Arbor during last week's film- ing of George Clooney's coming movie, "Ides of March." This recent production briefly employed many of our peers and inevitably helped the local Ann Arbor community. If Snyder wishes to implement much- needed budget cuts, he must do it in a reason- able fashion. Instead of examining the many Michigan tax incentives in a fine-tuned and reasonable manner, Snyder decided to blithely eliminate many of the tax incentives offered by the state. In some ways, these budget cuts are much needed, but the film tax incentive should be an exception. As President Barack Obama has repeatedly stated, we must make budget cuts "with a scalpel, not a machete." The elimination of the Michigan film tax incentive fully exemplifies what the president is trying to prevent. Someone call Don McLean - we'll be singing bye-bye to Miss American Pie very soon. It's said that McLean was talking about the day Buddy Holly passed when he wrote his 1971 song "American Pie." I say that's possible, but I - prefer to think that McLean was ERIC actually a time SZKARLAT traveler. After a trip to 2011, he came back and sat down to write about the day the music died - or, rather, the day that Rebecca Black wrote the song "Fri- day." The video was featured on Com- edy Central's "Tosh.O," where its notoriety began. It then went viral, exploding all over the world and being watched by people who merely wished to ridicule it. Black's lyrics, melody, voice and awkward dancing seeped into our brains and got stuck in our heads. To Black, the catchi- ness of the tune, and those who can't get it out of their heads, represents a sort of poetic justice - those peo- ple who've made fun of her deserve to have the most hated song in the world stuck in their head. To listen- ers, it's motivation for a homicidal rampage. (But don't expect that to hold up in court.) Maybe Black should've taken a note out of Ke$ha's book. Ke$ha is one of the most well known art- ists on the scene right now. Black could really benefit from following Ke$ha's example of ridiculous lyrics - many of which concern partying - boring melodies, annoying voice and heavy reliance on Auto-tune software. Ke$ha is a popular record- ing artist and Rebecca Black is a nothing. All she needs to do is take advantage of all the things Ke$ha's taken advantage of. Alright - quiz time. Have you studied? I'll give you the refrain from a popular song. You have to tell me: What is the most hated song of the following? A) LMFAO - "Shots" Shots, shots, shots, shots, shots, shots, shots, shots, shots, shots, shots, shots, shots, shots, shots, shots - EVERYBODY! (repeat) B) DJ Khaled - "All I Do is Win" Everybody hands go up - and they stay there, and they say yeah, and they stay there, up, down, up down. Cause all I do iswin, win, win, and if you goin' in, put your hands in the air! C) Rebecca Black - "Friday" It's Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday. Everybody's looking for- ward to the weekend, weekend. Fri- day, Friday, getting down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend. D) Ke-dollar sign-ha - "Tik Tok" Don't stop, make it pop, DJ blow my speakers up tonight, I'ma fight, 'til we see the sunlight. Tick, tock on the clock, but the party don't stop. (guttural sounds) E) Rihanna - "Umbrella" You can stand under my umbrella. You can stand under my umbrella, ella, ella, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh. The correct answer, if you hadn't guessed, is C. Did you pass? Good for you. You get an extra point added to your GPA. I'll let president Mary Sue Coleman know. Power of the press, and all that. What really sets Black's "Friday" apart from the other examples is her annoying voice. Wait - Ke$ha whines her way through "Tik Tok." But Black's lyrics are more bor- ing than the rest. Wait - LMFAO's "Shots" aren't exactly a pinnacle of lyricism. But her melody - wait. Almost every song on the list fea- tures passages where the vocal line rests continuously on one note. But her reliance on Auto-tune - never mind. Popular music has reached a new low. Well, now we've got a problem. What really makes Black unique? Why is she most hated? Ok, she spends the bridge of the song list- ing the days of the week. Yeah, that's it. She says, "Monday, Tues- day, Wednesday and Thursday, Fri- day, Saturday, Saturday to Sunday." Yeah, that's it. She is stupid because she sang that. Or was that the Black Eyed Peas? I can't keep them straight these days. Now it's starting to look to me as if Black is merely following the tra- dition of those brilliant artists who have preceded her. She's not the outlier. She's the culmination of all the music that has immediately pre- ceded her. She was merely raised on the music of the party. She is where the music industry is presently. We shouldn'thate her. We should glorify her achievements. Popular music, thy name is Rebecca Black. -Eric Szkarlat can be reached at eszkarla@umich. I EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS: Aida Ali, Will Butler, Ellie Chessen, Michelle DeWitt, Ashley Griesshammer, Melanie Kruvelis, Patrick Maillet, Erika Mayer, Harsha Nahata, Emily Orley, Harsha Panduranga, Teddy Papes, Asa Smith, Seth Soderborg, Andrew Weiner ERIKA MAYERI a -he Happy, Healthy Women: Anny Fang argues the need for affirmative action to protect Women. pod UiIumGo to michigandaily.com/blogs/The Podium ANNA CLEMENTS| Kiss me, I'm an immigrant A 'foolish' bill The Most Ridiculously Unconstitutional Attempt award for March was won by the New Hampshire Republican Party for its attempt to ban college students from elections. The state's Speaker of the House, William O'Brien, also takes the title of Most in Need of a Men- tal Filter with his astonishing comment that students are "foolish" and "vote their feel- ings" because they are "liberal," which was of course caught on tape and widely circulated on YouTube. His general position is that stu- dents in New Hampshire flood the polls and skew the results with their "plethora of the easy self-confidence that only ignorance and inexperience can produce." He would rather that college students vote according to their parents' residency status. College students aren't desirable voters, despite all attempts to mobilize them. Even in our liberal Ann Arbor, elections are timed to exclude college voters. While ostensibly mov- ing the election to October so students could vote, the city moved the primaries to the sum- mer - and in a one-party city, that's all that matters. Now, I'm still registeredtovote where I graduated high school, but to me this seems a little screwed up. If it weren't for these big universities with thousands of students, cities like Ann Arbor would be nothing but a blip on the radar. But apparently politicians don't see it that way, and they care more about pushing their interests through than factoring in the thousands of students who live there Septem- ber through May. Thankfully, O'Brien's bill has been killed, but New Hampshire's GOP leadership omi- nously promises that the issue will continue to be a priority. There are so many things wrong with this it's impossible to know where to start. For one, students generally live in their college town for at least eight months outof the year, which is plenty long enough for them to be more concerned about what happens there than in their hometowns. And calling some of the best-educated people in the county "fool- ish" demonstrates something about O'Brien's IQ. Yes, students are inexperienced, but so are housewives who have never left their own town - and we still let themvote. Just because you don't like how a personvotes doesn't mean you can take awaytheir vote. Maybe instead of attacking students, the GOP should try actual- ly listening to the concerns of students and, oh I don't know, try to attract that demographic. Yes, O'Brien gives reasons that he suppos- edly believes to be true as grounds for barring college students from voting. But truthfully, it's just a poorly veiled attempt to eliminate the votes of a demographic that doesn't tradition- ally support the GOP. For that matter, maybe he should advocate for repealing women's suf- frage because women also tend to support the Democrats. Somehow I don't think that one would make it through the legislature. But for me, perhaps the most ridiculous part of this cluster of a bill is that college students don't vote enough for this to be a real problem. They're constantly the least mobilized, least active age group in the nation. In the 2010 midterm election, only 19 percent of the under age 30 demographic turned out to vote in New Hampshire, according to CIRCLE. Col- lege voters are hardly tipping the scale. If any group is a threat, it's the retired set. But wait, retirees usually vote conservative. This plan seems to be nothingbut a targeted attempt to exclude supporters of another party from voting in elections. And the last time I checked, that's illegal and seriously frowned upon. We live in a democracy where, for bet- ter or worse, all citizens get to vote. If O'Brien doesn't like that then maybe he shouldn't be allowed to make laws. I, for one, hope that in the next election New Hampshire students turn out en masse to "foolishly" elect anyone who isn't a Republican. Erika Mayer is an LSA junior. On March 17 every year, Irish heritage becomes a point of pride for people across the United States and beyond. Particularly inthe U.S., where almost everyone has immi- grant ancestry, there's a certain dignity gained through the ability to identify percentages or surnames of rela- tives that indicate Irish ancestry. Having lived in Ireland briefly as a child, and having a mother who emigrated from there, have earned me social points for as long as I've been in school in the U.S. Since kindergarten, people have been excited to hear of my experiences and to share their relevant family background. The care that people take to preserve their Irishness seems almost inversely proportional to other immigrant groups (at least in their public images), who are often strongly encouraged .to assimilate. Does this seem at all hypocritical? An article by Gregory Rodriguez, published in The Los Angeles Times in 2007, titled "Illegal? Better if you're Irish," details the relative luxury enjoyed by contemporary Irish illegal immigrants compared with those of other nationalities. He explains that "Irish ille- gals do have a slight advantage. It's all in the stereotypes - race-based, language-based, class-based." This hasn't always been the case, however. In 19th century Detroit, some shops had signs stating "No Irish Need Apply," but there were fewer signs here than in the eastern states. In those days, the T-shirt slogans so common nowadays, "Proud Irish," "Irish Princess" and "I'm so Irish I Bleed Whiskey," to name a few, would have been absurd. Com- paratively, while it's possible to find "Everyone Loves a Latina Girl" T-shirts online, the concept isn't nearly as common as to become cliche, like Irish-American pride has become. The fact that Irish heritage is respected so much in this country means that it's relatively inoffensive to equate Irish culture with stereotypes that would other- wise have negative connotations - they're often thought of as traditional and superstitious, easily agitated, and above all, drunk. If they didn't enjoy such high social status in our culture, then joking about negative conno- tations associated with the Irish wouldn't be acceptable; if there were a "drunk Arab" stereotype, joking about it would still be unacceptable (or would at least be enor- mously disrespectful). Maybe part of the reason that it's acceptable to joke about the Irish has to do with their longstanding establishment here in the U.S. Historic discrimination may be a source of respect now. People are proud of the fact that they come from a long line of people who have worked to get their fam- ily where it is now. The "my family has worked hard for generations to get me where I am today" line gets used to excuse people from empathizing with mod- ern immigrants, whose ancestors may not have con- tributed directly to the development of this country - though with modern globalized political and econom- ic networks, people's actions affect foreign nations more directly than before. However, ancestral labor shouldn't be used to create a cultural hierarchy; if so, then we would become like the societies of old, with aristocra- cies based on history, rather than wealth based on labor and innovation. Many of the Irish immigrants came here before social security and food stamps and Medicaid and before labor standards prevented them from being used as cheap labor. The U.S. needed people to build railroads; the Irish needed jobs. Is it modern labor standards that have changed our attitudes toward immigrants (or rather, caused the difference between our retrospec- tive opinions of our ancestry and our current stance on immigrants today)? Though immigrants are still often exploited for their willingness to work for low wages, the practice isn't as socially and legally accepted as it was in the days of the Irish potato famine. Furthermore, once immigrants acquire a Green Card, they're eligible for social security, financial aid for higher education and other benefits. Though there are differences between current immi- gration to the U.S. - and the Irish immigration trends of the late 19th and early 20th centuries - we shouldn't forget their similarities. Both groups have been viewed as second-class citizens. Both are pursuing some sort of American dream, living out the hope which composes a I central part of our national identity (just ask President Barack Obama about that). And finally, both groups of immigrants are a crucial part of U.S. culture. We must not forget that, in taking pride in our heritage, it's this nation's history of immigration that we celebrate. Anna Clements is an LSA junior. _.