Opinion
The University Daily Kansan
Laura Roddy, Editor
Sarah Hale, Managing editor
Kristi Ellott, Managing editor
Tom Eblen, General manager, news gdvisor
Shantaue Blue, Business manager
Brad Bolyard, Retail sales manager
Matt Fisher, Sales and marketing adviser
Scott Valler, Technology coordinator
Tuesday, February 29, 2000
Steve Sack / TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES
Editorials
McCain victorious in fair fights; open primaries are not to blame
In the wake of John McCain's victory in the Michigan primary, many people in the Republican party were quick to point out the lack of true Republican support for McCain. George W. Bush had captured a large majority of those voters who claimed to be Republican, but lost the primary because of a record influx of Democrat and Independent voters.
This loss calls into question whether open primaries, such as Michigan's, are subject to what Bush called a "hijacking" at the hands of troublesome Democrats.
The problem with the open primary seems to be that one party's members can sabotage another by voting for an unattractive candidate whom they have no intention of voting for in the general election.
Establishment's complaints about non-Republican voters are hypocritical, unweighty
The question then is whether open primaries are to blame.
The Michigan results paint a picture of widespread support for McCain, not widespread dirty tricks by Democrats. While Democrats certainly helped McCain, it is the support of Independent voters, who made up 35 percent of the electorate, that put McCain over the top. With closed primaries, these independents have no choice in the primary system. It is exactly these voters who are crucial to a candidate's win in November.
In the end, the important thing to remember is that Bush is the ultimate establishment candidate. It is the establishment that created open primaries, and it is the establishment that can close them. If the Republican Party doesn't want this kind of primary, it will close them. The fact is, these primaries were originally created to entice so-called "Reagan Democrats" who overwhelmingly supported the last two-term Republican president.
While there is a certain amount of truth to Bush's claims of foul play, there is not enough to complain about. The idea that one can rally much of the electorate to vote for someone it doesn't like — when it's hard to get many people to vote in the first place — is quite far fetched. All's fair in war and politics, and in this battle, score one for McCain.
Jeff Engstrom for the editorial board
Feedback
Castro, Cubans legitimate in resisting U.S. imperialism
Some statements in Rupali Limaye's Feb.22 column were not fact, but instead stereotypes of a country that has not received fair representation in the United States for 40 years.
The blockade against Cuba is not based on human rights violations. It is a political move based on the U.S. attitude of world domination and control because Castro never gave in and instead stood strong and refused to be "one more Latin American leader 'sold out' to imperialism." The United States has gone out of its way to oustacize Cuba from the world with economic and military threats.
Yes, there were the executions of batistasan after the Triumph of the Revolution that were met with criticism. But this was met with outrage by Castro. He stated in 1959, "What was done at Hiroshima and Nagasaki?" In the name of peace, two cities were bombed and more than 300,000 human beings killed. We have shot no child, we have shot no woman, we have shot no old people."
The United States is breaking international law by withholding food and medicine from the Cubans.
Limaye says, "One reason to keep Elian in the U.S. is the lack of protection of rights in Cuba." This is unfair. Cuba is in a state of war against the constant U.S. battling, and, if one does the homework, it's seen that the same measures have been instituted in the United States when a state of war has been declared. The revolution would not have triumphed if the people had not wanted it. Castro is backed in Cuba, and it's the opinion of the Cubans that matters most.
The last thing Cuban independence needs is poorly researched articles such as Limaye's. These articles perpetuate the false conceptions of the Cubans. I was definitely disappointed.
Breeze Luetke-Stahlman
Olathe junior
Debates should include candidates of all parties
The criteria for inclusion in the 2000 presidential debates announced Jan. 6 by the Commission on Presidential Debates may unfairly exclude candidates with a serious chance to win.
The commission charged with deciding whether anyone other than the usual Democrats and Republicans would be allowed into the debates is headed by Paul Kirk and Frank Fahrenkopf Jr., the former heads of the Democratic and Republican national committees. Isn't that a bit like letting Roy Williams and Quin Snyder decide who should play in the Big XII Tournament championship game?
strate 15-percent support in polls to be included in the debates, but such a high threshold could lock out someone with a realistic chance for victory. For example, Independent Gov. Jesse Ventura was polling at 10 percent in Minnesota in Sept. 1998, before being invited to the debates. Ventura went on to win in November with 37 percent of the vote. This proves that debates can alter the outcome of an election.
The commission has decreed that a third-party candidate must demon-
That's why the debates commission should offer voters a broad spectrum of legitimate candidates, instead of promoting their own self-interests. What could be more unfair than debate rules that shut out the next potential president?
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Broaden your mind: Today's quote
"Political image is like mixing cement. When it's wet, you can move it around and shape it, but at some point it hardens and there's almost nothing you can do to reshake it."
reshape it." — Walter Mondale
Perspective
Jazz music can reshape views on music, life
"Man, if you gotta ask, you'll never know," Louis Armstrong said once when asked what jazz was. This is also what I told a friend of mine at
an open mic night last week at Hashinger Hall. "I guess I'll never know then," she said.
"I guess I'll never know then," she said.
I paused and re-thought my approach. This was not the message I wanted to get across.
"Well, musically I don't understand any of it," I conceded to my friend who is a violin player in the KU orchestra, and better at reading music than I'll ever be.
"But I think he was talking about the basic feel of it, and that's something anyone can understand."
Luke
Wetzel
columnist
opinion@kansan.co
I shrugged and continued listening to the music, satisfied with my explanation.
My interpretation of Armstrong's words may have been more liberal than a cult leader interpreting scripture, but I think I had a point. Jazz music has an important presence in American culture and is widely respected. But something so universal and energetic should be more than just respected. It should be enjoyed.
found out that Charlie Parker, Kansas City's source of musical pride, hated the city. But by this point, the accuracy of my grade school history lessons didn't matter. Like drummer T.S. Monk told the audience at the Lied Center Feb. 19, "Jazz is a now thing."
Jazz today often only is present in the mainstream as a soundtrack to TV commercials or sampled beats on hip-hop tracks. A lot of people I've talked to say they would like to listen to more jazz, but they wouldn't know where to start. This I understand. On my first trip to buy a jazz CD, I felt like a kindergarten wandering in the wrong hallway. But after a few suggestions from friends, I was able to expand my collection beyond "The Beginner's Guide to Swing."
Growing up in the Kansas City area, I was always taught to view jazz from a chief historical perspective. In grade school, we learned about Charlie Parker, Count Basie and the clubs where they performed. Although it was interesting, jazz seemed like something stuck in the past, the type of music my second-grade teacher put on the record player to demonstrate the Charleston. But after a few of my friends played some of their jazz CDs for me my freshman year of high school, I really got in to it.
When I read Miles Davis' autobiography.
Once I decided that I wanted more out of music than what 311 and Metallica had to offer, jazz reshaped my views about not only music, but life as well. Jazz can be wild and brash as well as cool, and like all music involving improvisation, good jazz musicians can convey this energy to their audiences. Jazz mirrors the complexities of life while drawing on the spontaneity necessary to fully enjoy it.
I was fortunate enough to have taken Professor Dick Wright's Introduction to Jazz class before he passed away in November. The class has since been retired, but there are many other options to either learn about or hear jazz on campus. The jazz festival at the Lied Center this weekend is a good example. Otherwise, I recommend listening to something by John Coltrane in the morning or putting on a Miles Davis album late at night.
Jazz music might not be for everyone. No kind of music is. But if you're interested in jazz, I encourage you to view it not as intimidating, but as an enlightening and satisfying art form — an important dialect in the universal language of music.
Wetzel is a Westwood freshman in English and journalism.
Political pundits promote frivolity, lack clear focus
Every Sunday many of us are treated to a smattering of talk shows featuring prominent senior columnists such as George Will, John McLaughlin, Robert Novak and Cokie Roberts.
These senior journalists, a.k.a. the "punditocracy," are excellent at creating media frenzies about distorted issues as they all relentlessly repeat the same fetid mantras — free market, national interests, insiders and outsiders
ests, misters and outsiders — with the same mindless repetition.
Programs such as Meet the Press and Crossfire arose out of government licensing regulations that required networks and local stations to devote a certain number of hours each week to "public service" programming.
Acting in good faith, the government was operating under the guiding principles of deliberative democracy, which stipulate rational discourse and public deliberation as a necessary condition
Ben
Embry
guest columnist
opinion@kansan.com
to maintain and secure a viable democracy. What they failed to realize, of course, are the limitations of public discourse inherent in the television medium.
"It is the nature of the medium that it must suppress the content of ideas in order to accommodate the requirements of visual interest; that is to say, to accommodate the values of show business," he writes in his 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death.
Sociologist Neil Postman, taking a cue from media critic Marshall McLuhan, has argued that the medium of television has conditioned us to tolerate visually entertaining material measured out in spoonfuls of time, to the detriment of rational public discourse and reasoned public affairs.
Reasoned public affairs of course can have recourse to television, and the zealots of the punditocracy have not always eschewed the guiding principles of rational thought. But the conundrum of tele-discourse usually resolves itself at the expense of public debate.
Dominating other journalistic media through its greater power and market share, television imposes its distorted, entertainment-based vision of the world by demanding a certain kind of content — namely, a theater of the absurd.
What does this mean for "public service" television? Can public discourse as a driving force of democracy survive its commodification and trivialization as something akin to a steamy soap opera?
As a result, tabloid values are vaulted to the forefront of journalistic media, altering the fundamental structure of public discourse. This structured social space, constituted by entertainment values, thus defines the basic perceptual habits that determine what journalists see as newsworthy.
4. Divination: This is paramount. To give predictions on next week's political happenings is a critical aspect of the profession, despite your lack of knowledge on the subject of discussion. Rule of thumb: The less you know about something, the better off you are.
3. Overstatement: This can't be stressed enough, because, after all, talk shows cultivate hyperbole and polarization. Remember, being noticed depends on making preposterous claims that have absolutely no basis in reality.
Let's face it: Talk is cheap.
Embry is a Kansas City, Mo., graduate student in journalism.
This habitual way of seeing results is a form of unconscious censorship that, in turn, poses a higher level of burden on journalists who want their stories and views to be socially productive. This is precisely why pundits have reduced politics to a spectator sport and political journalism to theater criticism.
1. Competitive glibness (a phrase coined by journalist James Fallows). It is better to make glib, irrelevant comments than to drone on about substantive policy issues that actually affect people's lives.
Instead of discussing substantive social issues or political ideologies, pundits prefer to ruminate on the astute fashion choices of Al Gore or the sexual pecadilloes of Newt Gingrich. In a clause, pundits are entertainers who have sacrificed public discourse at the altar of profits and info-tainment.
2. Predictability: Mindless repetition and posturing is essential. People tune in to see familiar faces displaying familiar personality traits. If a liberal, always a liberal, and vice versa.
Indeed, pundits are a polytheistic sect spreading the gospel of neo-liberalism; that capitalism equals democracy; that the "free-market" system is both objective necessity and the democratic expression of free will; that competition promotes diversity; and that any resistance to the prevailing Western model of scientific rationalism must be irrationalist fundamentalism.
According to the gospel of the pundit, these are the four steps between heaven and hell. To be ordained into the pundit priesthood is not as easy as it sounds, though. After all, as entertainers teach us every day, presentation is everything. As a dedicated civil servant, to help out those who are interested in pursuing a career in punditocracy, I have devised a list of necessary attributes required of the aspiring pundit:
How to submit letters and guest columns
Letters: Should be double-spaced typed and fewer than 200 words. Letters must include the author's signature, name, address and telephone number plus class and hometown if a University student. Faculty or staff must identify their positions.
Guest columns: Should be double-spaced typed with fewer than 700 words. The writer must be willing to be photographed for the column to run.
All letters and guest columns should be e-mailed to opinion@kansan.com or submitted to the Kansan newsroom, 111 Stuffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit, cut to length or reject all submissions. For any questions call Nadia Mustata or Seth Hoffman at 864-4924.
If you have general questions or comments, e-mail the page staff (opinion@kansan.com) or call 864-4924
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