OPINION
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2008
5A
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Free for All kills respect, campus accountability
Although the University Daily Kansan's Free for All feature has been around for less than 10 years, it's already become a great KU tradition. Summing up Free for All's virtues in a brief letter is difficult, but I'll do my best.
First, since it's obvious that women have far too much power, Free for All is a valuable forum for preventing further oppression by feminists. Think that women are bitches, sluts and whores? Call in now; the Kansan staff is there for you. Maybe you're interested in humiliating women who don't fit social appearance standards? Even better! In the Kansan, there's always room for another anonymous attack on those awful fat chicks who take up too much room.
FREE FOR ALL
Tired of the University's emphasis on diversity? So is Free for All! During the Spring 2008 semester — which some call Free for All's golden age (sorry you missed it, freshmen) — the online version of Free For All was the place to go if you're a victim of multiculturalism. Students logged in to say
they hated Asians, that African American communities are breeding grounds for STDs and that Native Americans are ugly. If you're wondering why these comments were rewarded, that's your problem. Get off your politically correct high horse and lighten up!
Yes, it's clear that the Kansan staff gets it — in higher education, high standards are boring. Free for All celebrates the eventual elimination of personal accountability, responsibility and mutual respect on campus. The sooner that crap is gone, the better off we'll all be, and I'm thrilled to see that the Kansan and all those brave, wise Free for All callers are leading the crusade.
Why bother working harder in class or visiting your instructor during office hours to solve a problem? Maturity and responsibility are for losers. Using Free for All to insult a professor or GTA (particularly her/his physical appearance) is for winners.
Ray Pence is a lecturer in the American Studies program.
@KANSAN.COM COMMENTS ALREADY ONLINE
Call-in rants appear in many newspapers, not just The Kansan. To be fair, many times the call-ins are dope. But such sections are grassroots opinion, which does have some value in a society with a free press.
— excerpted from a comment by Indiana
I think that interest in the Free For All has been diminished by the Facebook application that lets you comment online. No longer do the editors have to pick up the phone and listen to the funny messages
left by KU students. Students no longer have to look in the paper or online to see if their comment was published. All you have to do is go to Facebook and check to see what people have written, which is the main reason for Mr. Pence's issues. Eliminate the Facebook application, and bring the integrity of Free for All back.
— comment by jayhawktraveler
Editor's note: Free for All comments are taken from both the phone and online.
Republicans aren't playing by the rules
The "higher prices" he refers to when discussing fair trade in many cases amounts to less than a dollar increase for us, while they can account for as much as a 500 percent increase in profit for those people living on less than a dollar a day. The clear, McCarthy-esque implication of his article is that all people who treasure fairness are communists.
I was appalled at the unabashed slander against the Democratic Party by Tim Hadachek in Friday's University Daily Kansan (Column: What do Democrats and tee ball have in common?) His argument that "if you are rewarded for failing, society never progresses" struck me as poignantly ironic with all of the Republican support for the hundreds of billions of dollars it will take to bail out the financial sector which, incidentally, failed despite all of the Republican deregulation.
Clearly, fairness is not about communism — it is about ending inequalities we are
DBKING @ FLICKR.COM
burdened with at birth brought about by ills of society such as racism and sexism (which, believe it or not, still exist), as well as being born into extreme poverty.
Hadachek postulates that Democrats would have us all play a "meaningless" game of tee ball. I contend that he would have us play a game of baseball without rules, like how many outs each side gets, because these enforce disdainful things such as "fairness." Also, if one team cannot afford the equipment necessary to play the game, like bats, gloves and uniforms, that side should pull itself up by its bootstraps, assuming it can afford boots.
- Alexander King is a junior from Wichita.
@KANSAN.COM
COMMENTS ALREADY ONLINE
Democrats calling out Republicans for not playing by the rules. Pot meet kettle.
Democrats calling out
Guess what? No one plays by the rules!
—comment by kunomu
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MAX RINKEL
Correcting rumors about Sarah Palin
Since the announcement of her nomination, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has faced unprecedented public scrutiny. This is necessary, but when a relatively unknown candidate is thrust onto the national stage, the door is open to spread vicious rumors and outright lies.
Apparently the door to her personal e-mail is open as well. In a particularly reprehensible, not to mention illegal act, one of Palin's detractors hacked into her personal Yahoo! e-mail account.
Once word got out, more critics put their morals and ethics on the shelf and went digging, hoping to find evidence that she had been conducting state business on her personal account.
So what was found? Pictures of her children, some prayer requests from friends and some correspondence with her lieutenant governor about a talk show host.
Most rumors have been about Palin's social views and were started as an attempt to paint her as some irrational religious zealot.
Brace yourself Dems, this attempt to defame Palin is about to blow up in your face.
Palin probably believes that abstinence is the only sure way to
--prevent unwed pregnancies and that God created us in his image. However, her record shows that she is willing to put her personal beliefs aside to act in the state interest.
Palin does not advocate abstinence-only education. In her own words, as reported by the Los Angeles Times Sept. 6, "I'm pro-contraception, and I think kids who may not hear about it at home should hear about it in other avenues."
She also does not want evolution taken out of schools. As governor, she never pushed the state Board of Education to add creationism to the required curriculum. She does, however, think that students should not be prohibited from discussing any theories that may arise.
Poole is a Wichita senior in political science and psychology.
So if our "religious fanatic" hasn't been pushing her beliefs all over Alaska for the past two years, what has she been doing during her tenure has governor?
I am as confident in a McCain-Palin ticket as I can be, and about as confident in an Obama-Biden ticket as, well, loe Biden.
It hasn't been social issues at all, but rather energy development and ethics reform that have been atop her list of priorities.
Work has begun on a natural gas pipeline, which would provide a stepping stone into the next generation of energy.
She not only battled corruption within her own party while on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, but she also passed sweeping ethics reform upon
becoming governor.
She has a comparable level of experience to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, (although hers is executive and his is not), and yet she is the vice-presidential running mate for a candidate who has much more experience than either of them. Perhaps vice presidential candidate Joe Biden provides the experience that Obama is lacking. Then again, Biden himself has already told us he should never even have been chosen for the ticket.
How Palin's campaign made me appreciate Hillary Clinton
Q: "What's the difference between a hockey mom and a bulldog?"
A: "Lipstick!"
Huh?
That's a joke Sarah Palin, the new bane of my Democratic existence, has been telling. You see, Palin is like a bulldog, as she is running for vice president, but she wears lipstick. Or maybe it's that she's a hockey mom who doesn't wear lipstick, making her a bulldog.
I don't know. I just work here.
Sexism has been a big issue in this election. It's been an issue since Hillary Clinton first tried to get the Democratic presidential nomination, or at least since she realized that she might not win.
With that, and with the sudden ascent of Sarah Palin up the political ladder, both parties, as well as the mainstream media, have been falling over themselves trying to figure out how to handle a woman in presidential politics.
To really get a good idea of where sexism is in our society, let's look at what it can mean. One definition has it as buying into gender stereotypes, like the idea that women are constantly emotional, that men celebrate sloth or that anybody doing anything normally associated with the opposite gender means they have issues of
images or are homosexual.
The other definition for sexism is a bit more relevant to recent debates in the political world. It seemed, for some time, like one of the major political parties would, for the first time in history, have a female candidate for president.
As a man, I would have a problem if I didn't spend all my time thinking about sex, beer and football. I find this offensive, as it both paints the male gender as rather unambitious but also criminally excludes baseball.
Others have run for the position, but none had the credible chance that Clinton did. And once she was in the race, the debate about sex in presidential politics began. "Can a woman lead the country?" "Are Americans ready for a female president?" "Is Clinton feminine enough?"
Before we go on, the answers to those questions are, respectively, "yes," "most of them" and "Lord knows."
But back to business, when the issue of a woman running for president came up, Clinton's campaign took notice and responded. When her cold demeanor was blamed for an early primary loss, Clinton would make an appearance where she would break down and cry in front of the press. When she was deemed too weak and "feminine," she would have a photo taken of her rather awkwardly downing a shot of whiskey.
Through it all, many of her supporters cried "sexism" at those who did not support her campaign. The bait was set, and the country took it hook, line and sinker.
Now the GOP has given us Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a former beauty queen with five children. The GOP has used her as a tool to keep throwing the issue of gender at the Democratic Party, which has settled on the man who kept Clinton from achieving the feat of being a female heading a major party's ticket as their champion.
Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and his party must be weary of debating gender, and putting Palin on the Republican ticket prevents them having a respite from it.
Of course, Palin is nothing like Clinton. The majority of her exposure to national politics has come in the few weeks since she was put on the ticket.
She had no straight answer for ABC's Charlie Gibson in a recent interview when he asked her for her opinion on the Bush Doctrine and what it is. She's also never had to debate somebody like Obama's running mate, Joe Biden, a man who isn't afraid to tear his opponents a new one.
What Palin doesn't do is challenge Obama the way Clinton's candidacy did. Rather, it shows us the other end of the spectrum of gender roles.
Although I was never a fan of Clinton as a candidate and still think Obama was the better of the two, the GOP's newest superstar has made me look back at what Clinton's campaign meant and have some new appreciation for what she brought to the table.
Cohen is a Topeka senior in political science.
To contribute to Free for All, visit Kansan.com or call 785-864-0500.
For all of you who weren't aware of this, the left hand lane is for passing, not going the speed limit.
Dear floor eight, please quit spilling my shit on a daily basis. Thanks.
To the guy who spilled your drink on me last night: I boned your girlfriend.
--game.
The tee ball analogy is bad, and you should feel bad.
I was too drunk to recognize Bill Self. I'm sorry.
--game.
There's so many reasons why I love KU. One, it's gameday. Two, it's 11 a.m., and just saw a woman walking her dog with a handle of tequila. Rock Chalk.
I've decided that the Star Spangled Banner is a sobriety test. If you're too drunk to stand, you shouldn't be at the
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These walls are not soundproof, dear. Stop yelling. Some people would like to
Did that girl just pick her butt?
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I'm so hungry that I am eating grass right now.
Girls look so much better when I am hammered.
Have you seen my cousin?
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To photographers who chase fire trucks on campus: My friend had a seizure the other night and as the paramedics carried her out on a stretcher to the ambulance, there you were, taking pictures of her. The poor girl doesn't need that. Go away.
Why don't we cut the crap and just set up a personals section in the UDK?
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Free for All, you are the reason I can't study in my room
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To the gay guys in the Sex on the Hill section: I hate you both for being so hot.
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The UDK depicts sex about as accurately as "The Flintstones" depicts the Mesozoic Era.
How do I love my major but hate my classes?
I have a BlackBerry and a Facebook. What the hell happened to me?
@KANSAN.COM
Want more? Check out Free for All online.