LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
The Michigan Daily - Monday, July 25, 2005 - 5
Beyond diversity
MARA GAY C( \'),-!SENSE.
Shirvell doesn't
deserve NYPD
TO THE DAILY:
No pizza for Andrew Shirvell!
I was rather stunned by Mon-
day's story (Gay pride sticker sparks
controversy at pizzeria, 07/08/05)
largely because of the intolerance
of one of the article's protagonists,
Andrew Shirvell. Even a quick
read of the article made Shirvell's
duplicitous intentions clear.
Let's review: Shirvell decides that
an abstract visual symbol - the
rainbow flag - has a specific
meaning, an endorsement of
homosexuality, rather than an
signal that the business is gay-
friendly or gay-tolerant. Based
on that, he decides to encour-
age people to boycott New York
Pizza Depot - one of the ulti-
mate consumer intimidation tac-
tics - in the name of protecting
small businesses from intimida-
tion! Then, he misrepresents the
views of the business owner, Mau-
rice Grillo, whom Shirvell claims
was pressured to post the sticker
when Grillo himself denies that
assertion.
At least Shirvell could have had
the courage to clearly acknowl-
edge that anything "gay-tolerant"
is offensive to him and make plain
that he's willing to use strong-arm
tactics to inflict harm and contro-
versy on a business that attempts
to be gay-friendly. Thus, Shirvell is
not just small-minded but dishon-
est in his approach. Such an indi-
vidual simply doesn't deserve to
have the best pizza in town. NYPD
should feel great about not having
his patronage, or that of those who
agree with him (I had a slice there
today and enjoyed it thoroughly).
Marc Lavine
Alum
Bring on the
summer babefest
TO THE DAILY:
Jesse Singal's allegation (The
new news, 06/20/05) that televi-
sion news is uninformative is a
bit off the mark. One can glean
all the information one pleases
from such outlets as CNN and Fox
News, provided one has learned to
calibrate the day's reporting.
One rule of thumb I find use-
ful: The hotter the white girl, the
more vile the Bush Administra-
tion activity going unreported.
Take the "Runaway Bride" -
good bone structure, obviously
keeps in shape. Particularly for
those partial to brunettes, hourly
updates of her saga were more
than enough to keep the viewers
from having to hear about docu-
ments leaked from the highest
levels of British government that
appear to implicate the Bush
administration in a conspiracy to
deceive the American people and
Congress into supporting an ille-
gal invasion of Iraq.
But now that the Downing Street
Memo has finally surfaced in U.S.
media (a good month after its first
publication in U.K. papers), we
are reassured by Republican polit-
ical analysts and "liberal" news
editors that the now-demonstrable
fraud for which over 1,700 of our
soldiers have died is "old news."
Perhaps that is why they saved the
blonde girl for June, when concern
about the Guantanamo Bay facili-
ty and its accordance with interna-
tional law is becoming bipartisan.
As long as we have to watch
live news feeds coming from the
Caribbean, cute damsels in dis-
tress are certainly more palatable
than bearded men chained to the
floor in fetal positions and cov-
ered in their own vomit, not to
mention the company we keep by
allowing such measures.
None of this should be reason
to change the channel, however.
Under court order, the government
will be forced to make public pre-
viously unseen pictures and video
footage from the Abu Ghraib pris-
on. I am looking forward to a veri-
table summer babefest!
Matthew G. Walker
Rackham
Freedom Tower
design is a 'funny
little proposal'
TO THE DAILY:
Surely, they must be joking.
The new "re-design" for the
Freedom Tower is a funny little
proposal, one that has little to do
with being a memorial or a "bea-
con of freedom," as they may call
it. This must be a ruse - a sharp
little jab into the ribs of architects
designers, urbanists and human
beings all over the globe.
But I've got the sneaking suspi-
cion that it's not.
What Childs and Co. have pro-
posed as the "new and improved"
replacement for the World Trade
Center is a total and utter catas-
trophe - a complete disgrace that
they should be ashamed to even
present with such bold reverence.
They've stripped the innovation,
elegance and respect that Libe-
skind's design took to heart and
inverted it, making an utter mock-
cry of the site and those who losta
their lives on that fateful day.
I would expect more for such a
prominent and important site, but,
unfortunately, they've delivered
the ultimate let-down. The A meri-
can public will never respect the
creativity and the fervor that
goes behind the design process
if Childs and Co. subvert it and
allow such garbage to be built in
its place. They had the opportu-
nity to do something spectacular
but, instead, turned it into the
unfortunately mundane.
It's an embarrassing state of
affairs; they should be absolutely
mortified. The American people
and the world deserve better.
Jason E. Roberts
Alum
very liberal
has a dirty lit-
tle secret, and
mine is particularly
scandalous: I am sick
and tired of hearing
about diversity. True,
it was the University's
catchphrase in 2003
that helped preserve
affirmative action in
the Supreme Court. But even as the Uni-
versity basks in the glow of last month's
substantial victory - a new freshman
class with a higher number of students of
color - affirmative action, the mechanism
that helped generate this greater diversity,
remains as much in peril as ever.
The deceptively named Michigan Civil
Rights Initiative battles on unabashed, its
2006 ballot proposal threatening to ban
affirmative action in the very state where its
constitutionality was first affirmed.
To make matter worse, Sandra Day
O'Connor announced her retirement from
the Supreme Court last month. O'Connor
often sided with conservatives, but she
understood the importance of equality in
society and supported affirmative action.
Her ill-timed exit from the nation's high-
est bench leaves in its wake a vacancy that
conservatives will most assuredly try to fill
with someone hostile toward affirmative
action and its principles.
For many students of color at the Univer-
sity, it is evident that diversity provides an
inadequate argument for affirmative action.
Everyone wants to know what I got on my
SATs; sorority girls do not offer me flyers
on the Diag inviting me to informational
sessions about their houses; and my picture
lies embedded in this column, my melanin
threatening to pull the credibility out from
underneath my words, betraying me as
self-serving or, worse, uneducated. If rac-
ism is able to thrive on Michigan's campus
it surely exists in the nation's high schools,
far removed from Ann Arbor's politically
correct bubble. Affirmative action cannot
be defended without acknowledging the
racism that continues to produce such gross
inequalities in our society.
Two years after the Grutter v. Bollinger
decision, affirmative action remains as
controversial and incendiary an issue as
ever - not because Americans are bad
people, intent on upholding a 300-year sta-
tus quo of disenfranchisement and discrim-
ination, but because those who understand
the importance of affirmative action as a
tool for overcoming historic (and current)
inequities in our society have largely failed
to convince Americans that the system is
necessary and that it is just.
Arguing that affirmative action is impor-
tant because it is vital to achieving diversity
is not a winning strategy in itself. Diversity
may have been (barely) enough to convince
the Supreme Court of affirmative action's
significance, but it is a murky, difficult-to-
define concept. For some diversity is about
ethnicity, but for others it's about different
ideologies. Recently, for example, the right
wing has demanded what they call "intel-
lectual diversity" on college campuses,
claiming that universities are rife with lib-
eral-leaning professors and curricula.
The civil rights movement of the 1960s
enjoyed great success because it focused on
creating awareness of racism and weeding it
out of our society. Today's debate over affir-
mative action is unproductive and hurtful. It
continually puts minorities on the defensive,
allowing students ofcolorto bear the burden
of proving their worth to their classmates.
Poorer minority students are often seen
as unqualified while wealthier students of
color are seen as unfairly benefiting from
affirmative action. White students, mean-
while, seem to have credentials beyond
questioning; they can be secure in the belief
that what they have accomplished is a direct
result of how hard they have worked. Even
those who accept that racism unfairly dis-
advantages minorities are blind to the fact
that it unfairly advantages whites as well.
If we are truly committed to achieving
real diversity on campus, we will need to
look beyond the borders of diversity's com-
fortable margins and face the ugly, stubborn
roots of the issue.
Diversity is a nice concept. It is politi-
cally correct and looks good on snazzy bro-
chures. But it cannot explain why we live on
the segregated campus that we do. It does
not account for the classmates who can ask
me for notes and my high school grade-
point average in the same breath. And it
will not succeed in defending affirmative
action from those who work ceaselessly to
see its demise, jaded in the false belief that
the defeat of affirmative action is a victory
for civil rights.
Gay is a member of the Daily's edito-
rial board. She can be reachedat
maracl@umich.edu.
Parallel universe punditry
JESSE SINGAL
t can be hard to
follow the news
these days if
you're not a fan of
obscene manipula-
tion, bizarre dou-
blespeak and the
shameless exploita-
tion of a brain-dead
Floridian woman. So
when I get tired of Mission Accomplished.
the culturewarandSen.Bill Irist (orshould
that be "Dr."?) I pl ayi little gue that
helps me to retain what's leit of my sanity.
It's called What Wouli They Sa 'y?," and
the rules are simple: T"ake something ridic-
ulous from the world of politics that's hap-
pened in the past few years (which is like
saying "find a drunk kid at a frat party").
pretend there was a Democrat rather than
a Republican in the White House, and then
imagine what your pundit of choice would
say or write in response to said incident.
Seriously, try it - it's fun and quite
cathartic. If you come up with a good one,
e-mail it to me. I've written a few to help
get you started. Here's Parallel Universe
Bill O'Reilly commenting on the outing of
a formerly undercover CIA agent by John
Kerry's top political advisor:
"In tonight's Talking Points Memo,
the Valerie Plame scandal continues to
snowball as it is revealed that President
Kerry's chief political strategist, Corey
Haim" - it's my parallel universe, not
yours - "was responsible for leaking
the identity of Plame to Time Maga-
zine's Matthew Cooper. This, folks, was
a vicious act of political reprisal, and if
Kerry hopes to salvage any of the dig-
nity of his office, he will get rid of Haim
immediately. By revealing the identity of
someone who had honorably served over-
seas in a covert role, H aim played games
with the lives of thousands of innocent
Americans. This is simply unacceptable.
Firing Haim is the only real option Kerry
has at this point. And that's the Memo."
Parallel Universe O'Reilly seems
pretty heated. But it's not as though the
Pluame affairhas been the only od recent
occurrence in the White House. Remem-
ber that Jelft Gannon guy? I know, me
neither - the meiidi idn't really follow up
on that one. I e was the reporter ("reporter"
in the same sense that Gatorade is "fruit
juice") who somehow got into the White
House press corps under a fake name and
asked President Bush questions that made
Regis Philbin look like a Guantanamo
interrogator. Oh. and it also turned out that
he was a gay escort. I imagine that Paral-
lel Universe Ann Coulter would have hada
thing or two to say about this in one of her
measured, strictly analytical columns:
"So it's clear that, in a Democratic White
House, you need to meet one of two crite-
ria to be a member of the press corps: You
need to either be a well-respected journal-
ist with years of experience and a penchant
for asking tough questions, or, barring that,
a gay escort who will treat the resident like
one of your clients. Whereas conservatives
see the press as a liaison between the peo-
ple and the government, liberals see it as
merely another opportunity to circumvent
the war of ideas (which they are about as
likely to win as Jeff Gannon is a lifetime
achievement award from Focus on the
Family) and viciously attack their oppo-
sition with cheap propagand and tawdry
media manipulation. The only surprise is
that he was only gay - imagine if he'd
been gay, black and an atheist! It would
have been that much easier for liberals to
accuse us of coring down on him'just for
who he is.' Maybe next time, guys."
Ann, as usual, is right on point.
Finally, here's Parallel Universe Sean
Hannity with some words on another
unfortunate incident:
"'Bring it on"? What really worries sie
is that the president would view the lives
of American troops so cheaply. This is a
war, not a game of pickup basketball. Does
he actually want insurgents to attack our
troops? It's badenough President Kerry got
us into this war for no reason whatsoever,
but for him to provoke the insurgency as an
act of political grandstanding is completely
uncalled for. This has, unfortunately, been
part of the liberal agenda all along: It's not
about what's best for the country; it's about
what's best for them. What would be best
for the country would be a president who is
humble, modest and honest about the situ-
ation in Iraq, because that would put our
troops in the best possible position to suc-
ceed. Unfortunately, he's more interested
in using their deaths to prop himself up for
cheap sound bites."
Singal can be reachedat
jsingal@umich.ed.