OPINION
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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 8 2008
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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
ed Press
Feminists use the same tactics they criticize
ASSOCIATED PRESS
My fellow feminists have me in a malaise over this election. More than once I have heard Sarah Palin criticized for putting her face over Rosie the Riveter's. This criticism comes from open endorsers of Barack Obama, who once put his own face over Rosie the Riveter's because the Spanish version uses his campaign slogan.
Where was the feminist outrage then?
Most feminists don't agree with Palin, nor should we; she would set women back a great deal. But shouldn't Obama's hypocrisy and sexist tone be a bone of contention between Obama's campaign and feminists? We feminists have not only given Obama-Biden a pass on their sexist treatment of Hillary Clinton and Palin, but we've sadly taken to adopting some of their existent tactics when we criticize Palin.
We forgot that during the primaries, Obama reprimanded reporters and surrogates for speaking ill of his male competitors, but found MSNBC's rampant sexism a non-issue. We are remised in letting all this go excused because we disagree with the person on the
Republican ticket who happens to be a woman.
Certainly, I don't endorse Palin. I disagree with her on nearly everything.
I do, however, feel that it's a massive mistake for feminism to pardon some of the most patriarchal campaigning we've ever seen because we disagree with the woman on the opposite ticket.
We feminists should be content to civilly disagree with dignity and say, "I'm proud that the Republicans have caught up with Democrats and nominated a talented woman for vice president. Now let's talk about the reasons she's wrong."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
How can you call Barack Obama an elitist?
An Oct. 7 column titled "How narrow victories will pile up for McCain" had many misleading statements and some that were just plain untrue.
First is this talk of Barack Obama as an elitist. Let's compare the candidates past and present and decide who the elitist is. Obama grew up with a single mother and was on food stamps for much of his life. He worked hard and put himself through school and law school at prestigious institutions. Until he wrote his first book and gave his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he and his wife were paying off student loans. Instead of taking a high paying job right out of Harvard law school, he moves to a lower income community in Chicago and becomes a very successful community organizer and motivate people to get involved in improving their community. He owns one house, and his family has one car — a hybrid.
John McCain grew up rebelling and not doing well in school and got into the naval academy on legacy. He served our country admirably in Vietnam — nobody disputes that. He had an affair after his first wife was badly hurt in a car accident, and then he divorces her for his current wife, who has a huge family beer fortune. Neither he nor his wife know how many houses they own. (For the record, it's seven.) They own 13 cars. They didn't pay taxes on their beachfront condo in La
Jolla, Calif., for four years and then paid the minimum on it to avoid it going on default.
McCain gets full disability benefits, $75,000 per year. He does deserve some disability pay although he is not hurting for money, but not full disability pay. The government has people getting disability pay followed to see whether they are getting their own groceries and will then cut their pay, but McCain takes well documented hikes and talks about how active he is. He says the middle-class consists of people who make $5 million per year or less. Not only does he have no clue about the average American, but he also wants to give more tax breaks to the wealthiest and the big corporations on Wall Street and the oil companies.
McCain's latest political stunt was this joke about suspending his campaign to go work on a bailout. What happened after he became the Republican nominee? He did not show up to the Senate for three months and missed more than 300 votes in a row. What happened to serving the American people? Elitism is a lifestyle, and McCain's lifestyle reflects it in every way. He is completely out of touch with mainstream America and has no idea about how people are hurting.
When calling Obama an elitist, think again. Just because he is running on the Democratic party's ticket does not make him an elitist. These unfounded personal attacks need to stop.
Matt Erickson is a junior from Eden Prairie, Minn.
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MAX RINKEL
What happens when breast isn't the best
The Gobfather is surely rolling over in its grave after People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals pitched a new flavor you can't refuse: the all-too-homemade taste of breast milk.
After realizing that human beings have much higher levels of cognition than other creatures, PETA decided logic and reason were "strange" as well, and promptly gave them up.
In a Half Baked scheme to alert the public to the wonders of human milk, PETA sent a letter to ice cream company Ben & Jerry's on Sept. 23 asking it to switch from cow's milk to breast milk.
In response to PETA's self-described "fabulously awesome" idea, Ben & Jerry's issued a statement saying, "We believe a mother's milk is best used for her child." It then considered bringing the flavor Bovinity Dovinity out of retirement, just for kicks.
PETA argued that although the public might find consuming breast milk "strange," it was even stranger that humans are the only creatures that drink the milk of another creature.
PETA isn't the only one thinking that breast is best. In September, authorities stopped Hans Lochen, head chef of Storchen restaurant in iberg, Switzerland, from serving dishes that contained breast milk.
Lochen, who sampled his dishes to unsuspecting friends, said that he didn't understand why everyone was upset and that breast milk was "the most natural thing in the world."
The chef claimed he merely wanted to help local young mothers make an extra buck — make that about $20 a liter. The international publicity that his stunt garnered was just iceing on his mother's milk cake, which his friends said was delicious.
Cow's milk has its fair share of problems. As PETA pointed out in its letter, it is technically not natural for human beings to consume milk. But over time, our genes have adapted to allow continued digestion of lactose after childhood.
Add to that the horrible conditions that the average dairy cow lives in, the assortment of disgusting extras not listed on milk's ingredients (should pus be listed before
or after trace antibiotics?) and suspected links to various health problems. And then cow's milk doesn't look so pure innocent white anymore.
But no matter how bad cow's milk gets, breast milk as a commodity is still Totally Nuts, Unless, of course, we're living in some sciifi horror story where PETA rules the earth and hooks thousands of meat-eating, fur-coat-wearing women up to breast pumps just to prove a point.
Until then, I'll dig into a pint of Imagined Whirled Peace.
McConnell is a Dallas junior in English.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
What Ike showed me about the media
As I entered the city of Galveston 10 days after Hurricane lke hit, the first thing that shocked me was the mile-high piles of debris. The beaches were wastelsand, a messy assortment of chairs, boards, desks and trash. Some buildings were completely gutted. Some houses were flattened. A rank smell of rotten food and waste filled the air.
A few miles away in Houston, the debris was not much more than a few sticks. When I first arrived 10 days after the storm, armed with my camera and questionnaire and ready to document disaster, I was a little disappointed. Branches were down and much of the city was still without power. However, no one paid much attention to the branches, which were mostly already cleaned up. Class at the University of Houston started the day after the hurricane, though any deadlines for papers due were extended into the next week.
I then realized that disaster strikes in degrees. Although reports of Ike said it wasn't as bad as expected, perspective is the key. Judgments cannot be made about a disaster when the degrees of damage to people's lives are as different as the debris in their yards.
Haddad, the University of Houston freshman from the suburb Sugar Land, who slept through the hurricane. There was the college student that professor Richard Armstrong watched throw a party, climb onto his roof, scream to the winds, and never lose power. There was Armstrong's own experience: He turned his several days without power into a romantic retreat with his wife where they read by candlelight. He said he wouldn't have missed it for anything.
For some, the debris has long since been removed. Others still woke each morning to piles of branches, or worse, of ruined furniture. For some, the debris of the storm constitutes their homes.
Across the city, the lack of power left neighborhoods eerily quiet, except for generators humming a low chorus. Those without power were frustrated - my taxi driver, a West African immigrant, pointed out the hypocrisy of this in a city of energy and oil.
Everyone had a story to tell, and I wanted to hear them.
Just like some of the city had power and some did not, the Houston experience of Hurricane Ike was divided. There was Sean
Houston wasn't destroyed, but I wanted to see the wrath of the storm. On my second day, I drove to Galveston. It took three and a half hours to travel the 45 miles. Roadblocks slowed the traffic of repair trucks and residents who wanted to see their homes.
Dave Scalera had driven five hours to see the state of his summer home in the area called San Luis Pass in west Galveston. His home could only be reached through several roadblocks.
He and his son were attempting to nail a tarp to the roof of their beach home. They had realized they could never use it again, and when they left that afternoon, they would probably leave it forever. The Sceleras lost their summer home, others had lost everything. I spoke to dedicated workers outside of the shambles of their restaurant. They had been there to clean up for three or four days, but you could hardly tell. The restaurant was still a catastrophe. The deck was only accessible via a ladder. But the workers there had no choice. They were going to rebuild.
In searching out the hurricane stories, I learned to grow wary of newspaper headlines. How can one over-arching statement describe the varieties of human experience? I had to go to Houston and Galveston to find out what it was really like.
One glance at a pile of debris couldn't tell you what's in that pile.
And neither can the experience of a hurricane's passage be summed up with one phrase: not as bad as expected.
Dalderph is a Lawrence junior in journalism and French.
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It's not that hard to have sex with something. Just don't be awkward.
Someone asked me on campus if I should hug monk or monk hug. What does that
--don't be racist
Farts stink.
What the crap is this?
--don't be racist
--don't be racist
I do not appreciate you calling me at 3:30 in the morning. Please don't do this again.
I hate clouds.
Tonight I saw a frat-er open up a can of dip and stick the entire thing in his mouth.
BYOB: Bring Your Own Bible!
Is that silver van bulletproof?
--don't be racist
I just saw one of my professors do a snot rocket right outside of Target. I'm not even kidding.
This girl just tried to convince me that she wasn't drunk. Then she told me that her shoes weren't walking right.
--don't be racist
I thought that I was just going to drop off a couple of kids by the pool. I didn't realize that this was going to be like a clown car. I think 20 kids just jumped out of my ass.
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Oh, it beeped!
I don't need sleep,just brownies.
--don't be racist
Anybody who votes for Sen.
Pat Roberts should be shot
and buried.
I love making Free for All in the paper for random shit that I said on a whim.
--don't be racist
You're the man now, dog
Whenever I see the acronym FFA,I think Future Farmers of America
--don't be racist
Make the scary Republicans go away.
--don't be racist
The boy who works at the Underground: thanks for telling how rare it is to,"hear an Asian with a perfect American accent." Get out more and don't be racist
--are over.
It should be compulsory for all people larger than an A cup to wear a bra. The 1970s
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