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AND REGAN DETWILER
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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4 — Tuesday, February 9, 2016
E-mail FranniE at FrmillEr@umich.Edu
FRANNIE MILLER
Stop romanticizing exhaustion
Martin O’Malley 2020.
Yes, I just said that. The long-
shot presidential candidate just
dropped out of the race after fin-
ishing third in Iowa, and his dis-
mal 2016 campaign is now behind
him. He only secured 0.6 percent
of the vote in Iowa and burned
through his own money at an
alarming rate, while barely mak-
ing a splash among voters.
However, I support Martin
O’Malley. Any other year in a
presidential race, he would have
done quite well. Most of his ideas
were progressive, yet fell short
of socialism, and he has a proven
track record of working with the
other side of the isle. The only
problem for him was that this is
not a normal election year. With
Trump
stealing
airtime
from
every candidate, and Sanders and
Clinton fighting it out on the left,
there simply wasn’t enough space
for a third candidate for the Dem-
ocrats. It happened to be O’Malley
who drew the short straw.
Martin O’Malley is a quintessen-
tial Democrat. He embodies many
progressive ideas, and has a set
of 15 goals for the country that he
would have implemented if he was
elected this year. Some of them are
things I hold near and dear to my
heart. For example, O’Malley had a
goal of having a 100-percent renew-
able electric grid by the year 2050.
The environmental and economic
impacts of that goal would be mon-
umental for our country and our
world. He also wanted to cut the
youth unemployment rate in half
by bringing back job programs for
young people. This would make
college more affordable and would
put money back in the American
Infrastructure. This is a prag-
matic approach, proposing to put a
real plan in place to accomplish a
problem that everyone on the left
has been yelling about for many
years. Martin O’Malley is full of
plans like this.
Additionally, O’Malley has the
experience needed to run this coun-
try. He served seven years as the
mayor of Baltimore, and during
that time, he oversaw monumental
change. For example, he lowered the
number of homicides in Baltimore
to less than 300 for the first time in
more than 10 years. He also passed
one of the first municipal laws ban-
ning transgender discrimination all
the way back in 2002, something
many municipalities still do not
have. O’Malley cut crime and saved
money, all while revitalizing the
city of Baltimore. After that, he ran
for governor of Maryland, where
his progressive actions continued.
He championed criminal justice
reform, and passed the Dream Act
in Maryland, which allowed more
children to get a college education.
He passed marriage equality, and
included “Gender Identity” as a
protected status at the state level.
He even repealed the death penalty
and passed gun safety laws, some-
thing many other candidates have
not been so quick to support. Under
O’Malley, wages have gone up, and
graduation rates have, too.
O’Malley is also the frontman for
an Irish rock band, and was rated
as one of the most attractive men
in politics. He’s also the only candi-
date on the radar right now who has
any meaningful experience with
urban areas, which are a key part
of American culture. In fact, he has
promised to bring back America’s
cities and work with local leaders to
revitalize and restore our neglected
cities like never before. O’Malley
isn’t just a good leader, he’s the lead-
er we need. Nobody else will work
together with everybody in Wash-
ington to accomplish real progres-
sive change with people in mind.
I support Martin O’Malley —
because he can bring our country
together to accomplish progressive
reforms in a way neither Clinton
nor Sanders can. I strongly urge
him to run again in 2020, and to
hold strong as a Democrat and
reformer. 2016 may not have been
the year of O’Malley, but I firmly
believe there will be one soon. So I
say it again:
O’Malley 2020.
Kevin Sweitzer is the president
of “Michigan for O’Malley,” a club
that supports O’Malley. He can be
reached at ksweitz@umich.edu.
Martin O’Malley 2020
L
ast night, I had two committee meet-
ings, got done at 10 and then still had to
write my English paper!”
“Well, I stayed up until
5 a.m. studying for my
biology exam … ”
As I sat in Starbucks on
a dreary Saturday after-
noon, trying to fight my exhaustion and the
darkening half moons under my eyes with a
steady flow of caffeine, these were just a few
of the phrases I heard exclaimed by the weary
students around me. While listening, I noticed
a somewhat startling occurrence. It seemed like
everyone was trying to one-up each other over
the matter of how much sleep they neglected
for studying, or how much they could push their
bodies to the limit of complete debilitation.
In the past 10 years or so, with a rise in com-
petitive college applicants (and subsequent-
ly, students) across the nation, it seems that
being productive to the point of deteriorating
performance is the new vogue. A 2011 study
by the American Psychological Association
showed that students today are more anxious,
depressed and have poorer sleep patterns than
at any other time in this nation’s history. Psy-
chologist Gregg Henriques attributes this trend
to the economic and financial pressures of the
unstable job market and the obsession with
testing and grades in schools.
We need to constantly be on the go, not stop-
ping to make time for anything deemed “not
productive” — or else it seems we are worth-
less. Those rare humans who seem to never
have time even to breathe, who are slender from
a diet of meetings instead of meals, are held on
pedestals because we simultaneously glorify
slogans such as “no days off” and “the only bad
workout is a missed workout.”
This semester, I purposefully scaled back
on the strenuousness of my classes in order to
have more time for both running and exploring
extracurriculars. Though it was the right deci-
sion for me, it left me with feelings of uncer-
tainty that I wasn’t working up to my potential.
Throughout high school, I would often leave
my house at 7 a.m. and not return until late at
night. By the spring of my senior year, I was
completely burnt out. I wasn’t sleeping, racing
poorly and had little to no interest in academ-
ics. I couldn’t maintain my façade of inhuman
productivity forever.
Last night, I got eight hours of sleep due to
the fact that I have a manageable workload
and have finally figured out how to prioritize
my time. Yet, I was left feeling strangely guilty
about my decision to choose what worked best
for me, and ultimately, the fact that I was not
living up to society’s expectations of what a
truly “good” student does during the night
(spending it in the library). As I’m sleeping, I
thought, other people are out there working
hard to expand their knowledge and fulfill their
hopes and dreams — while I lie here like a rock
in my bed.
Instead of paying tribute to the things that
matter such as balance, self-care and emotional
well-being, it seems that our society has turned
toward romanticizing exhaustion and anxiety.
Coffee is not seen as a delicious beverage, but as
a way of pumping caffeine into one’s body after
too many hours studying into the late hours
of the night. Of course, every so often, a very
late night due to hours of work is inevitable —
and part of the college experience. I am by no
means declaring that students need to simply
stop studying so they can suddenly morph into
perfectly rested human beings.
However, we can only run on fumes for so
long. Our body does not function on lack of
sleep. Numerous studies have shown that over
time, low sleep levels contribute to higher rates
of anxiety, depression, poor academic perfor-
mance and even obesity.
In life, it is impossible to constantly be
going — we are humans, not energizer bun-
nies. Thus, pushing, pushing, pushing will
inevitably lead us over the brink of a total
breakdown. In competitive running, for
example, if you never scale back, you will
eventually wear your body down and expe-
rience massive declines in performance.
Though it is tempting to go out and pound the
pavement for miles and miles every single day,
desperately chasing a dream, it’s important to
listen to your body. Doing too much with no
recovery time is the reason a plethora of stress
fractures and other injuries leave heartbroken
runners pedaling sadly on the stationary bike
for large portions of their season.
Runners and, to a greater extent, all athletes,
are encouraged to take care of their bodies and
choose sleep over “cram sessions” and adequate
nutrition over missed meals. We know our bod-
ies will simply not perform at high levels if we
fail to refuel the energy we are taking out of it.
However, why isn’t this message of proper
refueling and balance being shared with all
students? Though we all use our bodies in
different ways, everyone has the same basic
human needs. At our very core, food, rest and
hydration keep us going — but a good laugh
with friends, a day of simply doing nothing but
watching Netflix and drinking hot chocolate
or a nice walk in the sun never fails to boost
my overall mindset. A strong GPA and work
ethic will take you far in life, but someone who
does not ever stop and cut back every once in a
while will inevitably burnout.
This belief in never taking a day off — even
amid injury or sickness, or days when you
simply feel like you have the entire world on
your shoulders — is twisted. That mindset is
how I ended up with two stress reactions in
my legs and mental burnout. The belief in “no
days off” that is supposed to promote success
and productivity, ironically halted my prog-
ress in its tracks.
Though totally transforming a recent social
phenomenon is unrealistic, it’s important to
know how to take care of yourself when you’re
feeling overwhelmed and stressed out. Instead
of frantically pressing on amid overwhelming
feelings of helplessness, take some time to slow
down and address the source of your stress. It is
not embarrassing to go to bed before midnight if
you’re completely exhausted. You are not a fail-
ure if you have to miss a club meeting because
you’ve shed tears over whether you’ll complete
a paper in time for the due date. The bags under
your eyes are not meant to be shown off like a
shiny new purchase, but rather an indicator
that you need to let yourself recover. Your body,
and your mind, will definitely thank you.
Kaela Theut can be reached
at ktheut@umich.edu.
L
ast week, Daryush Valiza-
deh, the Return of Kings
founder — known to his fol-
lowers as Roosh
V — announced
165 group meet-
ups,
includ-
ing one in Ann
Arbor.
Valiza-
deh
advocates
on
his
web-
site, Return of
Kings, for the
legalization
of
rape in private
spaces, and pro-
motes the view
that women are
solely valuable for their looks and
ability to reproduce. Valizadeh
has also published several how-
to books on picking up women.
The titles include: “Bang Lithu-
ania,” “Day Bang,” “Bang Iceland,”
“Poosy Paradise” and “30 Bangs:
The Shaping of One Man’s Game
From Patient Mouse to Rabid
Wolf.”
According to Valizadeh, he
planned the meet-ups to provide
his purportedly large numbers
of followers the opportunity to
“come out of the shadows and not
have to hide behind a computer
screen for fear of retaliation,”
and “signal to all that we’re not
going anywhere.” The meetings
were ultimately cancelled, pur-
portedly due to Valizadeh’s con-
cerns that he could “no longer
guarantee the safety or privacy
of the men who want to attend.”
Once I got past the irony that a
bunch of rapey, self-proclaimed
pickup artists cancelled their
Saturday night plans out of fear,
the whole story began to suspi-
ciously resemble a really awe-
somely
organized,
strategic
publicity stunt.
Through
announcing
the
meet-ups, Valizadeh got hun-
dreds of news outlets in multiple
countries to publicize his web-
site, simply by doing their jobs
and covering the story. The pub-
licity was free, wide-reaching
and effective. The website expe-
rienced such high web traffic
that it briefly crashed.
Manipulating the media to
attract attention — and conse-
quently paying customers — is
not a new marketing strategy.
American entertainment entre-
preneurs have been engineering
“bad” publicity to ignite con-
troversies and drive sales since
at least the mid-1800s. Donald
Trump’s presidential campaign
does it today; his skill in attract-
ing free publicity by spewing the
outlandish explains how he has
pervaded public consciousness
despite spending more than 99
percent less on advertising than
other leading candidates.
Return of Kings has certainly
benefitted
from
controversy-
driven publicity before.
The first time I heard of the
site was when it published “5
Reasons to Date a Girl With An
Eating Disorder” back in Novem-
ber 2013. Several friends had
posted it on social media, derid-
ing its foul message about a dis-
order that impacts an estimated
8 million Americans. Perhaps
unsurprisingly, I never heard
someone defend the article.
Even still, the article drove
new readers to the site.
Many probably didn’t like what
they found there; if they actually
did, the website may have even
attracted new, regular readers.
But the benefit of the newfound
public attention was certainly
for Valizadeh and his website —
not the ideology or “movement”
he
represented.
Web
traffic
largely determines online adver-
tising revenue. Additionally, his
expanding public presence may
have helped him sell copies of
his books.
The
announced
“meet-ups”
had a similar effect — though
on a much larger scale. Accord-
ing to a Google Trends analysis
of search terms trends between
January 2016 and February 2016,
the number of people search-
ing for “return of kings” and
“roosh v” relative to the total
number of Google searches has
increased by 4,900 percent and
962.5 percent, respectively. By
the same metrics and during the
same period, the popularity of
the search terms “mens rights”
and “pro-rape” have doubled and
tripled, respectively.
In hindsight, the announced
meet-ups seem destined to fail.
Just
as
Valizadeh’s
devotees
have the right to meet up and
promulgate
their
vile
views
about women, anyone else has
the right to show up and protest.
That’s exactly what many people
planned to do.
And while Return of Kings has
every right to propagate sexist,
vulgar nonsense tailored to meet
the demands of angry white guys
who can’t get laid, anyone can
respond by sharing countervail-
ing views.
Both actions merely play into
Valizadeh’s publicity ploy, help-
ing him and his site reach more
people
than
they
otherwise
would’ve.
The
media
firestorm
sur-
rounding the planned meet-ups
may be an intended outcome of
Valizadeh’s attention-grab. It’s
possible that he’s little more than
a shrewd businessman who’s
found a way to profit off a bunch
of insecure women-haters.
But his followers are real, even
if the meet-ups never were. The
misogynistic views he promotes
really do pervade some segments
of society.
At the extreme, the idea that
women are somehow morally
culpable for any dude’s unful-
filled sexual desires result in
events like the 2014 Santa Bar-
bara shooting, where a college
student killed six people to prove
his superiority over the women
who’d rejected him.
Ideas that rape is ever per-
missible or that a woman’s value
comes primarily from her beauty
and fertility — ideas capitalized
on, but certainly not pioneered by,
Valizadeh — permeate everyday
life. Given that one in five college
women report having been sexu-
ally assaulted and that women still
face unequal opportunities for
advancement at work, misogynis-
tic ideologies certainly don’t need
more advocates.
Tori Noble can be reached
at vjnoble@umich.edu.
Clickbait misogyny
TORI
NOBLE
KAELA
THEUT
KEVIN SWEITZER | OP-ED
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Flint community Sunday.
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