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.