OPINION
Coming Monday, December 3..
Editorial: Evaluating Student Senate's performance this semester.
Minster: Paying for the expenses of having a baby without the help of insurance.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WWW.KANSAN.COM
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30,2007
PAGE 5A
SENTIMENTAL HYGIENE
News outlets focus attention on American television, not world tension
Media giving front page to television writers' strike seems inappropriate in light of global problems in demanding need of attention
So I've been inexplicably receiving Entertainment Weekly for a few weeks now. I didn't order the thing, and god knows I didn't
pay for a subscription.
But for some reason they keep sending it to me. I don't know why. The last thing I want to read about is Oprah's YouTube channel and Jack Black's
new hair color (youtube.com/
oprah and blond, respectively,
in case you wanted to know).
But as it turns out, one can
discover quite a bit about our
culture from perusing the pages of
magazines like EW.
A recent cover article, for instance, was about the Writers Guild of America strike. In case you didn't know, screenwriters all over the country are on strike
for a higher percentage of profits and, pretty soon, there will be nothing but re-runs on TV (daily shows have already ceased production) and movies in 2009 will be severely hindered. Reading the article, one got the impression that this event was disastrous on an epic level, second only to Armageddon, maybe. We might not get new episodes of "The Office" every week! Tina Fey is angry! Jon Stewart won't be on to give
Don't we know that there's a war going on? That 3,100 people were killed in Bangladesh this month by a cyclone? (That's more than were killed on Sept. 11.) That Pakistan is under martial law? That Burmese monks
For example: A few weeks ago, I wrote an article that took a couple of half-serious potshots at the sacred cow of local music. Previous articles on Darfur, Iraq, and Holcomb power plants received little to no response, but this one set off a wave of mail, angry comments and letters to the editor, the amount of which I had never seen before. It didn't bother me—some people didn't understand the satire, apparently—but it only proved what I had hoped was not true. Our priori-
But then I saw the front page of the New York Times, and then the BBC. Guess what was the leading story? The WGA strike.
were brutally put down after protesting an oppressive dictatorship? The world, as usual, is in chaos, and news outlets, including the University Daily Kansan (Nov. 8 and Nov. 15) are freaking out about television. Entertainment. Blame it on the media, and blame it on ourselves.
Don't get me wrong, I like TV as much as anyone else. I am an apathetic college student, and I share the blame. I want to be entertained. I'll even entertain myself with songs about the pathetic irony of that attitude, like "Smells Like Teen Spirit." So if this article doesn't apply to you, then I am very glad. But I expect this self-examination will find some empathy within the KU community.
us the real news! (Well, come to think of it, that actually is bad.) I was ready to build a fallout shelter and stock it with DVDs of "Arrested Development" by the time I was done reading.
Well, ok, I thought. That's their beat. Someone's got to report about celebrities. It is called Entertainment Weekly, after all. Nothing to be worried about.
I'm not going to make any cliché comparisons between the "good old days" of Ward and June Cleaver versus the mad United States of iPod in 2007. Maybe it was better back then, but odds are that it really wasn't. Even so, it still doesn't justify this contemporary "entertain me" mentality, nor does the fact that most all of us are
ties are badly distorted.
guilty at one time or another. Has college become just an exercise in killing time? An adventure in missing the point? Football and beer seem to have a higher place on the hierarchy than community and altruism. We work hard for our classes and at our jobs, but hardly any of us actually take a moment to comprehend the rampant materialism that silently governs how we live and the media messages that reinforce it.
But I think that perhaps this TV pseudo-blackout will be good for us. Maybe we'll be forced to, god forbid, watch the real news now. Read newspapers. Perhaps a book? Maybe that's pushing it. Book on tape, anybody?
Petterson is a Prairie Village junior in English.
FREE FOR ALL: 864-0500 OR KANSAN.COM/FACEBOOK
Free for All callers have 20 seconds to speak about any topic they wish. Kansan editors reserve the right to omit comments. Slanderous and obscene statements will not be printed. Phone numbers of all incoming calls are recorded.
To the kid I copied off of: you are dead!
Two days in a row, FFA? Wow,
you really do love me!
Kerry Meier needs to play basketball too. That's all I'm saying.
The opening scene of the movie "Saving Private Ryan" is loosely based on games of dodgeball Chuck Norris played in second grade.
To the overly enthusiastic drummer at the KU basketball games, I love you! Will you be my little drummer boy for Christmas?
To the cute guy in my political science class: I hope I see you after the semester ends.
Jessica thinks that the people that post on FFA are all tards. I think not!
My roomate leaves her door open so that she can watch the thermostat, so I've started opening the windows, no matter how high she turns up the heat, it's 20 degree outside so it will still be cold in here, the only problem is.
now im freezing too.
Free for All, I really like this guy who thinks he is leading me on. I'm not ready for a relationship either. Thank him for calling me amazing. I blushed.
I'm glad Engineering isn't going to the plus/minus system! An A minus will still be an A!
To the football player who copied off my econ test, I hope you have fun failing. I saw you looking at my test so I put all the wrong answers and changed them after you left.
Econ 142 boys smelling good?
Are you serious? They are a bunch of vest wearing, cocky frat boys who need a brain!
I wish SUA scheduled more Texas Hold'em Tournaments. Hollar back if you agree.
Those girls who walked like Egyptians were pretty baller!
The Templin elevator smells like syrup.
All I want for Christmas is you!
Today I received my English paper back today with an A-. Maybe the long nights, the horribly long reading assignments, the quizzes, the an ancient names, maybe it's all worth it.
Maybe not! Let's smoke.
Students who don't like the grading system change are probably the ones who will be getting D+'s instead of C's from now on.
Grades are way too inflated the way it is right now.
If you're awkward but cute and you sit across from me in POLS 110, you should really consider asking me out.
Victory is slowly becomming mine. Little does she know each time I walk by, I lower the temperature!
FFA, you don't know how pissed I am about the grading scale change!
Free For All, you've been bombing lately.
Boys hitting girls, girls hitting back Male abuse victims increasing while social norms allow the'weak'woman to be violent
Our society does not tolerate violence within relationships. From children, we are branded with the notion that hitting is bad, and most often when we think of spousal and relationship abuse, we envision battered women fending off fist-swisting boyfriends or husbands who failed anger management. The visions of men with slap-stained cheeks and puncture wounds from Jimmy Choo stiletto slip through the cracks as the number of male abuse victims so unsnoticed.
Despite the gender equality movements of the past, the existence of a weaker sex still plagues us today, evident in the skrocketing rate of females that find no problem hitting members of the opposite sex. While our mothers spent their whole young adulthood trying to defeat the weak woman stereotype, we are now banking on that very
BETSY MCLEOD
same bias, confident that our female slaps and high-heeled kicks won't be returned. It's a cultural law: Boys can't hit girls, even in self-defense.
I beat my ex. I used him as a punching bag any time he upset me, and he would stand there with a pathetic look on his face, either unsure of what to do or afraid of what would happen if he fought back. He was six-foot-three and 200 pounds compared to my five-foot-eight and 135 pounds, a fact that made me assertive, not abusive. A girl is proud when she can say she slapped a guy into next week for being unfaithful because she's proven herself alpha, powerful and strong. The guy never says anything because it would emasculate him, and the girl never learns the kindergarten lesson about using words instead of violence.
Statistically, women are victims of violence more often than men, and according to the Department of Justice, every year in the U.S. 835,000 men are victims of physical assault in an intimate relationship compared with 1.3 million women. I once spent a magical evening unconscious in the emergency room when I got too close to a testosterone-pumped angry girl wielding a metal baseball bat. Female victims of reported violence are undeniably far more prevalent than their male counterparts; I'm not denying that. My point is that when women attack men it's empowering, but when that man defends himself and hits back it's a crime, and that's not fair.
I hate to go back to kindergarten, but having been on both ends of the abuse spectrum, I feel quite confident in saying that violence doesn't solve anything. Men should never hit women, but in the same breath women
should never hit men, either. I'm guilty, I admit it, but I paid the price and now I keep my fists to myself. When it comes to violence our society has a tendency to crucify one sex over the other. We may be physically smaller, but women are vicious, and are much more likely than men to attack someone with a foreign object, anything from a table lamp to a rolling chair. We bite, we scratch, we kick and we pull hair. We may be less muscular but that in no way means we are weaker.
It may be easier to beat the hell out of your belligerently drunk boyfriend than have an intelligent argument, but please, ladies, use your words.
McLeod is an Overland Park senior in journalism and Middle Eastern studies.
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Erick R. Schmidt, Eric Jorgensen, Daria Slipe, Kelsey Hayes, Bryan Dykman, Brandon T. Minister, Angelique McNaughton and Benjamin P. Smith