4A the university daily kansan
opinion
wednesday,november 5,2003
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Michelle Burhann-Rombeck editor
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Lindsay Hanson and Leah Shaffer
Lindsay Hanson and Leah Shaffer
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ishaffer@kansan.com
Louise Stauffer and Stephen Shupe
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What is worse than an Illinois and a Minnesota driver is a Kansas driver.
if KU online were a person, I would take them outside and beat them with a bat.
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My friend and I just found out that our boyfriends are gay. Honestly, who does this happen to?
To the kid on campus who is wearing the Starter jacket: 1994 called and it wants its trend back.
My roommate eats plastic. Is this a cause for alarm?
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Does anyone else feel like Rocky after they have climbed the stairs behind Budig?
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I am a woman and I don't believe in the female orgasm people are talking about.
Slanderous statements.
Slanderous statements.
The Replay is not a gay bar.
I miss having my mommy.
Touch me non-sexually or I will eat
letter to the editor
Diverse exhibit still touring
I am writing to correct the wrong impression given by the Monday Nov. 3 article on the Day of the Dead ("Day of the Dead culturally diverse, passes without events at University," Kansan). While it is true that the lamentable closing of the public exhibits in the Museum of Anthropology last year made it impossible to open the Day of the Dead exhibit to the public, it is not true that there is no exhibit. A Day of the Dead exhibit (Nov. 1-Dec. 11) is open in Spooner Hall for tours of educational groups and classes, organized by the Center of Latin American Studies, with help from graduate students in Museum Studies and support from the Hall Center for the Humanities, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Department of Anthropology. These units also sponsored many events last year. A teacher's workshop was presented Oct. 25. KU Classes wishing tours should contact Kerry at marker@ku.edu; other groups should contact Adriana Sommerville at the Center of Latin American Studies, 864-4213 or adriana@ku.edu. This is an important cultural resource that teachers should know about. Thank you.
Elizabeth Kuznesof director Center of Latin American Studies
stayskal's view
Wayne Stayskal for Knight Ridder
perspective
Use your voice to speak truth, not commit fraud
COMMENTARY
This column contains my thoughts, in my own words. That's not as obvious as it should be. Lately, many items have been published in the opinion pages of newspapers that were not the work of their putative authors.
The Kansan is no exception. Last month, a Kansan columnist was discovered to have plagiarized much of one of his columns from several Web sites. This Monday, we learned that Kevin Hess was not the author of a letter bearing his name that had been printed in our Oct. 30 paper. That letter, criticizing a column by Matt Pirotte about the Pledge of Allegiance, was submitted to the Kansan by someone unwilling to take responsibility for his or her own words, who therefore claimed to be Hess. Our mistake wasn't recognized in either case, unfortunately, until after the fraudulent pieces were printed.
Irritated newspaper editors refer to these letters as "Astrotrof" because of
Rachel Robson
opinion@kansan.com
But the Kansan is not alone.
Every day, mass-produced political advertising constructed by pressure groups and falsely distributed as letters to the editor floods the inboxes of newspapers. If they were selling pornography or mortgages instead of the war in Iraq or abortion rights, it would be more obvious that these letters are spam. Identical letters bearing different signatures are thus being published in newspapers across the country.
their mockery of real grass-roots expression. Astroturf is more than an annoyance to journalists. It's an attack on American discourse.
Astroturfperpetrators span the political spectrum. Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin's Web site allows wannabe pundits to choose separate paragraphs from a menu and rearrange them into pieces difficult for newspaper editors to uncover. At ppwi.org, wannabe pundits can "choose a sample letter in the drop-down menu," then the site helpfully adds your contact information, which is required to submit a letter through the site.
"For every Planned Parenthood there's a conservative group doing the same thing," said John Taylor, president of the National Conference of Editorial Writers. The NCEW has established a listserv to help compare suspicious letters before publication.
Astroturf still slips in. A letter supplied by the Republican National Committee lauding President Bush's "genuine leadership" was published in more than 20 newspapers, all under different bylines, The New York Times reported last January. Three weeks ago, identical letters hailing American progress in rebuilding Iraq were sent to local newspapers across the country, each bearing the signature of a different soldier.
It is difficult for editors to tell authentic letters from phony ones and nearly impossible for newspaper readers to distinguish the work of their neighbors from that of a public relations hack.
"Be skeptical about everything," Michael Zuzel, the editor of a textbook for editorialists, tells readers.
I first wrote this column last January. I was suspicious of a letter published in the Jan. 25 Kansan, which a Google search revealed to have been published in The Hutchinson News days before. But that letter, which touched off an editorial page debate about abortion, was not Astroturf. The David Gittrich, director of Kansans for Life, who had signed the provocative letter on abortion had also written it. Gittrich then sent his letter to every newspaper in the state of Kansas — a few of which, including the Kansan and The Hutchinson News, had printed it. He did not claim credit for words that were not his own or attach others' signatures to a letter he had written.
"I totally disagree with Astroturf," Git-
trich told me. It's unethical, he said, and besides, "you really don't need the media to get the truth out."
The truth, Gittrich believes, will prevail because it's the truth. I disagree, and that's why I think this epidemic of plagiarism is so scary.
Our knowledge of the world is controlled by ever-fewer people, as media organizations merge into ever-larger conglomerates. A letter to the editor allows a citizen some unique voice in that increasingly monotone chorus.
Astroturf mocks that voice and makes it more likely that only banal, committee-scripted notions fill our newsaners.
But individual voices always have been the most likely to speak the truth. Bold, creative, true ideas are the products of passionate individuals, not of cabals of politicos pushing narrow agendas. Powerful people are already represented and quoted in the body of news stories on the front pages. They shouldn't be commenting on their own actions through the ventriloquist dummies of astroturf.
Don't concede our editorial pages to spammers. Write letters to the editor yourself. Read cynically, but write idealistically, as if your letter to some newspaper will make a difference. It will.
*Robson is a Baldwin City doctoral candidate in pathology.*
perspective
Government-corporation relationship spawns ideas
With today's release of The Matrix Revolutions, the Christ-like freedom fighter Neo is set to conclude his digitally enhanced adventures. In this final chapter of the trilogy, Neo battles the machines that have enslaved humanity as more and more humans wake up from the Matrix, a façade created by the machines that presents the illusion of free will.
But, thank God, that's not going to happen in the real world. (And remember, in these comprehensive times, "God" can mean Allah, Buddha or Halliburton.) The American people are never going to wake up and see through the Matrix, through the capitalist machine that strangles Lady Liberty while rendering the public's "representatives" powerless in the face of corporate lobbyists.
COMMENTARY
And why not? Because that's entertainment, folks. Movies such as The Matrix and its sequels would have no context if a true American democracy were put in place. Government's merger with corporations - what Benito Mussolini called "corporatism," the necessary element to fascistic control - provides filmmakers with a virtual goldmine of subversive concepts to enthrall the public with.
Stephen Shupe
opinion@kansan.com
Note the famous quote uttered by Orson Welles in The Third Man, Carol Reed's classic suspense thriller:
"In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
By the same token, American hegemony, the process by which citizens submit to a system that subordinates them, produces a society where artists can thrive.
HBO is exemplary in the idea that the real-life Matrix results in superb entertainment. K Street, HBO's new political series, is inspired by the Washington D.C., epicenter of corporate influence.
Where the illusion of the public's involvement in the political process ends, K Street begins. As reported in the Washington Monthly, K Street, located just a few blocks north of the White House, used to be a bipartisan haven where lobbyists campaigned on Capitol Hill exclusively for the interests of the corporations they represented. In 1994, a revolution began to take place on K Street that has climaxed under the Bush Administration.
K Street lobbyists are now overwhelmingly Republican, which means, in addition to corporate initiatives, they must meet the goals of the party. Sen. Rick Santorum has been charged with holding backdoor meetings with Republicans every Tuesday to fill top K Street corporate positions, and candidates include aides to the White House. This form of decision-making, strictly hands-off to the media and the public, may make a mockery of the democratic process, but it's great for entertainment and great for HBO and its viewers.
Filmmakers also benefit from the illusion of choice given to today's youth. In Suicide Circle, a cult-horror hit from Japan, director Sion Sono sends up the rebellious youth movement and its
trendy, marketable underpinnings. Sono presents suicide as the latest fashion, where the desire to be cool drives school-girls to extremes. In the film's opening scene, 54 girls link hands, plummet onto train tracks and get slaughtered by an oncoming train.
For a film that hits closer to home, there's Thirteen, Catherine Hardwicke's shocking youth-culture expose. The underage heroes of Thirteen model their entire existence off fashion ads that practically beg them to grow up fast and shop away their adolescence. In an age where much of the college population dresses up as mascots for corporations hocking "cool" shoes and clothing lines, Hardwicke suggests we are all culpable in the demise of youthful innocence.
Still, it's important not to take that message to heart, to maintain the illusion of choice and freedom, to save art. I hope America never wakes up from its personal Matrix, so keep all this corporate hanky-panky on the down-low. Pretend I represent a corporation that sell, cool stuff, and go do my bidding.
Shupe is an Augusta graduate student in journalism. He is associate editor of the opinion page.
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