Opinion

JENNIFER CALFAS

EDITOR IN CHIEF

AARICA MARSH 

and DEREK WOLFE 

EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS

LEV FACHER

MANAGING EDITOR

420 Maynard St. 

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Monday, February 16, 2015

Claire Bryan, Regan Detwiler, Aarica Marsh, Victoria Noble, Michael 

Paul, Allison Raeck, Melissa Scholke, Michael Schramm, Matthew 

Seligman, Linh Vu, Mary Kate Winn, Jenny Wang, Derek Wolfe

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

W

hat my friend and fellow film writ-
er Conrad Foreman, LSA junior, 
wrote about “Son of God” applies 

to “American Sniper”: “Jesus 
is back. And he’s white. 
Again.” But John Wayne is 
also back. And he’s killing 
savages. Again. In short, 
Chris Kyle, the all-American 
hero of “Sniper,” gives god-
fearing Christian Americans 
the orgasm they’ve been 
waiting for: Jesus, mixed 
with John Wayne, carrying 
a gun, killing A-rabs.

All this controversy over 

whether “American Sniper” 
is U.S. propaganda will be resolved when we 
recognize the film for what it is — just another 
Hollywood Western.

The classic Westerns, as anyone who’s seen 

them knows, weren’t too friendly to the Native 
Americans. See, when the European Ameri-
cans had finally settled the American West 
(that is, settled on top of the Native Americans’ 
already-existing settlement), the European 
Americans, who had thus far been nothing but 
settlers, didn’t know what to do or who to be 
anymore. So when the caravans reached the 
Pacific Ocean, and it seemed that there was no 
further west for the Manifest Destiny to take 
them, the ex-settlers decided to make movies 
so they could remember what they used to do 
and who they used to be.

But when these early filmmakers remem-

bered what settling was like (that is, when 
they looked at the historical record), they 
realized that, at best, the true story wouldn’t 
sell movie tickets and, at worst, would get 
them accused of treason. So instead they 
produced movies that made the genocide the 
European Americans committed against the 

Native Americans appear justified.

By the time Clint Eastwood put on his pon-

cho and cowboy boots, it was no longer “cool,” 
as the kids say, to portray Native Americans as 
demonic savages. It was still all right to por-
tray the cowboy as a fair-haired, fair-skinned 
pseudo-Christ on a crusade against something 
… just not against the so-called savages. So 
Eastwood went to Italy and filmed some new 
Westerns and people called them spaghetti 
 

(that is, “spaghetti Westerns”).

Now, with the coming of Chris Kyle and 

“American Sniper,” Eastwood has invented a 
new kind of Western — the hummus Western. 
(One of Kyle’s comrades literally says that 
Fallujah, Iraq, the site of Kyle’s first tour of 
duty, is “the Wild West of the Middle East.”) 
All the taboo, classic Western stuff East-
wood couldn’t do in his spaghetti Westerns, 
he’s finally done in the hummus Western. In 
“American Sniper,” the Iraqis have replaced 
the Indians. Unlike the all-American cowboy 
Chris Kyle and his comrades, the Iraqis have 
no backstories. We can watch Kyle slay doz-
ens of them because the film renders them 
as non-persons. Spoiler alert: But when it 
comes to Kyle, who the film portrays to us as 
a fleshed-out human being with a wife, family 
kids, etc., seeing his death would be just too 
brutal, so it’s censored.

Eastwood’s overall project appears to be 

the same as the project of the classic Western 
filmmakers: rewrite history so that the white 
people look justified killing brown people. But 
there’s an important difference: America is no 
longer interested in settling like they were in 
the American West. The ideological useful-
ness of the concept of “Manifest Destiny” has 
expired: She no longer aspires to gain new ter-
ritory. The result is far more cruel and vicious. 
The savages today aren’t savages because they 
impede upon the United States’ divine right to 

The hummus Western

V

oting has been delayed on a set of bills in the Michigan 
State Senate that would alter the existing legislation for 
criminal penalties in cases of animal cruelty and neglect. 

The bills would create three different degrees of killing or torturing 
an animal, which would increase the maximum prison terms for 
first- and second-degree offenses. The legislation would also make 
it easier to prosecute breeders and pet-shop operators who are 
repeat offenders, and to monitor cases of animal neglect and cruelty 
that include large numbers of animals. These amendments are 
nuanced and work to protect animals and create safer communities 
in general, and as such should be passed and enacted as soon 
 

as possible.

Currently, under the Michigan Penal Code, 

all cases of animal killing and torture are 
classified under the same offense and are 
subject to a four-year felony charge. These 
bills would create first, second and third 
degrees of animal killing and torturing. 
Also, those accused of killing or torturing an 
animal, or threatening to do so to exert control 
over a person, would be subject to a 10-year 
felony charge. The amendments would create 
a penalty for breeders and pet shops that 
have incurred five or more prior convictions 
and introduce a mandatory minimum of five 
years of probation for cases of animal neglect 
or cruelty that involve 25 or more animals, 
among other things.

Researchers have found that threatened or 

perpetrated animal abuse or killing is common 
in abusive relationships, with around 71 percent 
of women with pet-ownership histories 
entering domestic violence shelters reporting 
that their abusive partner had threatened or 
committed violence against their pet. These 
amendments would address this problem 
and protect victims of abusive relationships 
by imposing harsher punishments for this 
emotional abuse and manipulation. Moreover, 
studies have indicated a link between animal 
cruelty and other forms of violence. Therefore, 
taking animal abuse more seriously could, 
through rehabilitation, help prevent other 
violent crimes.

These bills would also help create safer 

communities by imposing a minimum five-
year probation for large-scale animal neglect. 
This change, at the discretion of the judge, 
would enable animal hoarders to be put on 
mental health watch and potentially allow 

for mental health treatment. This solution 
would be effective, considering animal neglect 
as the result of animal hoarding is often 
unintentional, and is indicative of a problem 
that will not go away without treatment. 
Codified 
understanding 
of 
the 
mental 

components at play in situations of animal 
neglect, however, should be extended to other 
areas of the law.

Lastly, these bills work to protect valued, 

yet vulnerable members of society — pets. 
Violence toward these animals can be viewed 
as damaging to families and communities. The 
tiered system of punishment for killing and 
torturing these animals is logical, as it reflects 
how penal codes deal with other instances of 
violent crime. Blanket treatment of violent 
crimes, and therefore of animal abuse, fails 
to consider the range and complexity of these 
crimes, creating disparities in the severity 
of its punishment. Furthermore, a four-year 
felony charge is simply not enough to deal 
with the crime of animal torture and killing, 
especially considering that this charge doesn’t 
always result in prison time. Since many non-
violent crimes, such as drug use, result in 
more jail time, it is fitting that these violent 
crimes should be taken more seriously. These 
amendments would help to create a criminal 
justice system that results in punishment 
more fitting to the crime committed.

The existing legislation regarding animal 

cruelty needs change, and these bills offer 
balanced amendments that consider the 
complexities of animal abuse and neglect. 
If Michigan wants to treat animal cruelty 
seriously, the passage of these bills should be 
a priority.

L

ast Wednesday, your net-
work covered the Univer-
sity’s Inclusive Language 

Campaign, 
a 

$16,000 effort to 
educate students 
on 
the 
impact 

behind 
common 

phrases like “I 
want to die” and 
“That’s so gay.”

Amanda McLit-

tle, coordinator of 
Diversity 
Educa-

tion in University 
Housing, told the 
Daily in Septem-
ber that the program was an attempt 
to improve campus climate, after 
events last school year like Theta 
Xi’s “Hood Rachet Party” evidenced 
a serious need to do so. The program 
went into effect at the start of the Fall 
2014 term.

Your coverage of the program 

was fantastic, managing to stir up 
controversy over an innocuous Uni-
versity program five months after it 
launched. Your video caption, “Uni-
versity is dictating what students can 
say,” met every standard for a click-
worthy phrase — incite all of the 
drama, include none of the facts.

A public university “dictating” the 

speech of its students?! Now there’s 
a story that’ll rile up those First 
Amendment defenders.

And that’s how your business 

model works. You fill a niche in 
the market. As of January 2014, 
38 percent of Americans self-iden-
tify as conservatives. Yet accord-
ing to a 2002 study, 20 percent of 
journalists said that they leaned 
“a little to the right,” and just five 
percent “leaned pretty far to the 
right.” I wonder how many in that 
 

five percent work for you.

Your ideology-driven model is 

working. Forty-seven percent of 
conservatives list you as their main 
news source on all things political. 

Your median primetime viewership 
in 2013 was higher than those of both 
CNN and MSNBC combined, and 
was the only major cable network 
to see viewership grow between the 
first quarters of 2013 and 2014.

I’m writing to you because you’ve 

covered quite a few stories about 
my University recently, most of 
which centered on issues of speech 
freedoms. I can’t say they were 
 

terribly accurate.

Your recent coverage of the Uni-

versity’s Inclusive 
Language 
Cam-

paign was shared 
on social media 
by students who 
were outraged by 
the 
University’s 

attempt to “stifle” 
their freedom of 
speech, as one 
student 
posted 

online.

And really, who cares that the 

initiative was based on student feed-
back and aimed at creating a more 
harmonious campus community? 
Painting the program as an absurd, 
double-think government plot to 
indoctrinate American students into 
not being able-ist or homophobic 
assholes free to speak their mind is 
a much better way to ensure high 
 

web traffic.

All you had to do was splash 

“Trouble with Schools” across the 
screen in punchy graphics, and find 
a student eager to give an interview 
full of nice, quotable sound bites 
that corroborated your viewpoint. 
The end result was a well-packaged, 
social-media-friendly story likely to 
be shared by those already holding 
the views it promoted.

In a digital era where publications 

compete for continually diminishing 
advertising dollars, the most success-
ful stories are those that generate 
the most attention, and consequent-
ly, page views. And so for that, Fox 

News, you deserve a gold star, a 
medal of distinction for your contri-
butions to the industry.

And, if I were a liberal, I would 

also owe you a big thank you. The 
right gets more of their political 
news from you than from any other 
news source. There are several issues 
today that would strongly benefit 
from cohesive conservative policies 
and leadership. But because it is con-
suming the stories that your analysts 
and writers deem likely to help you 

retain your vast 
market 
power, 

the 
party 
is 

instead focused 
on meaningless, 
non-actionable 
items like fake 
free 
speech 

violations at a 
Midwestern 
university.

Eventually, 

your poor fact-checking and fail-
ure to adhere to journalism’s ethi-
cal standards might come back 
to haunt you. Maybe some other 
Republicans will start to realize 
that your manipulative tactics do 
more harm than good for our party. 
Maybe your faulty reporting will 
produce a story so big and inac-
curate that it will create a scandal 
similar to the one experienced by 
Rolling Stone earlier this year. But 
hey, in the meantime, your antics 
are sure to drive profits, and that’s 
all you seem to care about anyway.

And so I commend you, Fox 

News, for your relentless effort to 
push journalism into an age of click-
worthy content devoid of facts, and 
your unapologetic pursuit of profit at 
the expense of the party you appear 
to support. But, next time, would 
you mind doing it at the expense of 
someone else’s school?

 
— Victoria Noble can be 

reached at vjnoble@umich.edu

A more humane society 

Michigan State Senate should pass animal cruelty laws

Love for all, hatred for 

none TO THE DAILY: 

I’ve always felt safe in America. 

Granted, growing up as a Mus-
lim American in the post-9/11 
era poses its challenges, but I’ve 
always maintained the “it won’t be 
me” mentality. That is, until Tues-
day evening. The news reported 
that three innocent Muslim stu-
dents were brutally murdered in 

their home near Chapel Hill, N.C.

Muslim students. Just like me.
Their assailant was a vocal anti-

theist whose heinous act adds to 
the growing list of Islamopho-
bic sentiments, protests and hate 
crimes in America.

Let’s not forget that Duke Uni-

versity rescinded its initial deci-
sion to allow the Muslim call to 
prayer after threat of financial boy-
cott from the likes of Franklin Gra-
ham, or that anti-Muslim threats 

tripled following the release of the 
movie “American Sniper.”

The only combatant to this big-

otry is tolerance. I call upon my 
fellow Americans to stand togeth-
er as one, regardless of race and 
religion, and share in acceptance. 
In a phrase, I proclaim my Muslim 
community’s motto of “Love for 
All, Hatred for None.”

 

Ibrahim Ijaz
LSA freshman

Send letterS to: tothedaily@michigandaily.com
LETTER TO THE EDITOR 

Dear Fox News

Manifest Destiny: they are savages 
simply for existing. Andrea Smith 
got it right in her essay, “Indige-
neity, Settler Colonialism, White 
Supremacy:” America has marked 
Arabs as inferior and deemed them 
to be constant threats to the well-
being of the American empire. So 
unlike the classic Western, the 
hummus Western attempts to jus-
tify killing of savages and occupa-
tion of their land on the grounds 
that the mere fact of their existence 
constitutes a threat.

Nonetheless, some people might 

ask, “Was Chris Kyle, the one who 
lived and breathed, a real American 
cowboy?” That’s like asking, “Is a 
Disneyland castle a real castle?” 
A Disneyland castle is physical, 
material manifestation of a fan-
tasy castle. No castle ever really — 
materially speaking — existed that 

looked like Cinderella’s. Likewise, 
Chris Kyle, the one who lived and 
breathed, was a physical, material 
manifestation of a fantasy person 
— the American Cowboy. No cow-
boy ever really existed materially 
that looked like the Ringo Kid. So 
what does that make the movie-
version Chris Kyle? The imitation 
of a person who was the imitation 
of a fictional character. This cycle 
of representation entirely excludes 
any reality principle.

But still, was Chris Kyle a real 

American hero? The question is 
nonsensical. Hollywood invented 
the concept of an “American hero” 
(which I interpret as more or less 
synonymous with “American cow-
boy”) to help sell movie tickets. 
That is to say, an “American hero” 
exists only in the world of cinemat-
ic fiction. There can be no “real” 

American heroes because an Amer-
ican hero, by definition, can only 
be fictional. But there are certain-
ly character archetypes, like the 
American cowboy, who inspire peo-
ple who live and breath. To borrow 
Jean Baudrillard’s phrasing, when 
“the map engenders the territory,” 
it creates something hyper-real — 
something materially existing but 
based on a fiction (e.g., a Disney-
land castle or the living, breathing 
Chris Kyle). Thus, ironically, the 
fictional Chris Kyle played by Brad-
ley Cooper is far more an American 
hero than was the living, breathing 
Chris Kyle.

So, with all this in mind, I ask 

sincerely: Who would want to be an 
American hero anyway?

— Zak Witus can be reached 

at zakwitus@umich.edu .

ZAK 
WITUS

VICTORIA
NOBLE

P E R S P E C T I V E S

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SEX. 

 DRUGS. 

BRIAN WILLIAMS.

LET’S TALK.

Edit board: Every Monday and Wednesday at 6 p.m. E-mail: opinion@michigandaily.com

And, if I were a 

liberal, I would also 

owe you a big 

thank you.

