OPINION
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2004
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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OK, I just went to pick up my stupid basketball tickets. They have the stupiest people working there. I give them my roommate's ID to type into the thing and this lady is looking at my roommate's picture on her ID as she hands the tickets and ID back to me, looks me right in the face and savs, "Thank you, Megan." "I'm not Megan, my roommate's Megan! Go have long, dark red hair? No!
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Yeah, to the guy who's not moving to Canada so he can stay and start a revolution: That's not gonna happen, either.
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Whoever hung that trash up by Potter Lake in the trees, I'm assuming you consider that art, but it looks like crap.
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I just want to send a big shout-out to the curly-haired girl in the pink sweatshirt. I'm really sorry your life sucks right now, I hope it gets better.
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I'm sitting in Budig and just read the affirmative action column and I'm glad somebody finally pointed out that affirmative action is wrong. The better-qualified students should get in professional law school.
an opportunity to respond. Outfoxed uses and exploits all these tenets of bad reporting in an effort to expose what it calls bad reporting. Then it goes further to stretch the truth.
Who was the genius that scheduled biology for 8:00 in the morning? I mean, come on, how are we supposed to handle genetic engineering when we're barely conscious?
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I parked in a red parking zone with no red passing park ha, ha, ha, ha, ha Ha! ha, ha
an opportunity to respond. Outfoxed uses and exploits all these tenets of bad reporting in an effort to expose what it calls bad reporting. Then it goes further to stretch the truth.
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Hey, crazy neighbor: Don't call me at 5 a.m.
and tell me there's a deer in my lawn. I don't care
Hey, bus drivers. Don't leave when I'm 10 feet away from the bus.
an opportunity to respond. Outfoxed uses and exploits all these tenets of bad reporting in an effort to expose what it calls bad reporting. Then it goes further to stretch the truth.
I'm watching a squirrel eat roadkill. I think it's a mole. It makes me wanna cry.
an opportunity to respond. Outfoxed uses and exploits all these tenets of bad reporting in an effort to expose what it calls bad reporting. Then it goes further to stretch the truth.
Loving country music is probably something you should keep to yourself.
Be a bumblebee. not a grumblebeel
My teacher just said "uh" 114 times in a 50- class.
an opportunity to respond. Outfoxed uses and exploits all these tenets of bad reporting in an effort to expose what it calls bad reporting. Then it goes further to stretch the truth.
Did it rain this morning or something?
Because I just sat in a huge puddle on the bus benches outside McCollum. My pants are soakin' wet! I don't remember it raining.
Wh?
How come the buses never seem to stop at the Jayhawk Bookstore even though you wave them over? It really annoys me.
an opportunity to respond. Outfoxed uses and exploits all these tenets of bad reporting in an effort to expose what it calls bad reporting. Then it goes further to stretch the truth.
Rather's politics ignored while Fox News attacked
Now that Bush has been decisively re-elected, despite Dan Rather and CBS's best efforts to thwart his campaign, we still wait for Rather to step down as anchor for CBS after reporting on George W. Bush's military record with fake documents.
Few journalists are afforded the opportunity to correct an error before it's too late. Rather was given this privilege, and he still ran with the story, only to drop the ball several yards short of the touchdown he had hoped for.
Kathleen Parker, Tribune Media Service commentator, reported that some analysts within CBS said that the documents it had received could not be authenticated and warned Rather and CBS producers about it. But the story went anyway.
The odd part about the whole scandal is that for all the talk in this election cycle of how slanted Fox News is for the conservatives, there is little backwash going against CBS and Dan Rather for its much clearer slant for the Democrats. His and CBS's 60 Minutes II strikeout fueled the fear that Rather is no longer reporting the news, but he's making it instead. It was not Rather's first dubious decision. He launched a verbal joust with then-President George H.W. Bush, and has been donating money to the Democrats ever since.
Rather gave a half-hearted apology but has hardly been held accountable. CBS as a whole has come under relatively little scrutiny, at least relative in terms to Fox News, which was assaulted during the election cycle from the auspices of a Robert Greenwald "documentary" called Outfoxed. Since the release of Outfoxed, MoveOn.org, a clever Web site that window-dresses a voter registration drive to a liberal agenda, made sure everyone knew about it. After all, the organization should promote it; the organization paid for portions of the film's budget.
The University of Kansas was certainly listening as the film was screened on campus and even in classes. Even more amusing is the fact that it was shown in journalism classes.
BEELER'S VIEW
These are the same classes that teach students to avoid unnamed sources, to be wary of relying on former employees for accurate information and to always give the other side
STEVE SPEAKS, IT MUST BE SO
STEVE VOCKRODT
opinion@kansan.com
Seemingly solid evidence of the station's tilt in its news coverage was taken too far. Somehow, Outfoxed distorts the meaning of an internal memo from John Moody, senior vice president for news. Taken from March of this year when the 9/11 Commission Report was about to be released, the memo read: "This is not what did he know and when did he know it stuff. Do not turn this into Watergate."
It might seem that Fox News was going to bat for the president, but then the Report reaffirmed what Moody already said. The Report absolved President Bush of direct, or even indirect, wrongdoing in the Sept. 11 catastrophe.
Despite the greatest efforts of Outfoxed and CBS, conservatives weren't disciplined and Bush was reelected in the process. Maybe that's saying something. Perhaps what it's saying is that 60 million voters aren't going to allow another entity to do the thinking for them.
And the Report was anything but a Watergate-type situation to begin with. Moody's clairvoyance was warped into prejudice by Outfoxed. None of the other broadcasters, even CBS, could turn it into Watergate. Maybe because it wasn't there to begin with.
Nate Beeler/KRT CAMPUS
It's not wrong of Rather to have his views, but it is wrong to allow his views to interfere with his news coverage. It's possible Rather would feel more at home in an opinion talk show, and maybe that's where he belongs.
But Outfoxed isn't about to let these details get in the way of the film's objective to think for the viewers.
Vockrout is a Denver senior in journalism and political science.
Sexiness sells calendars-period
The 2005 Women of KU calendar is out, giving a fresh crop of women an opportunity to "feel feminine," as Miss December put it.
COMMENTARY
Get serious. The last time I checked, feeling feminine had nothing to do with feeling like a sex object.
Mouths open, cleavage spilling out and bodies contorted into provocative poses, these women are selling sex. So why can't they just admit it?
LOUISE STAUFFER
opinion@kansan.com
Any woman can do what she pleases. But proponents of swimsuit calendars forget, or pretend to anyway, what the purpose of these pictures is. They are for men to consume, nothing more, nothing less.
The real question is, why do these women really do it? Ann Cudd, professor of philosophy and director of women's studies, says it's appealing for these women to appear in calendars because of the many payoffs: Compliments from men and women possible dates, envious looks from other women, etc.
Opportunities to meet and network with wealthy and important men are possible, she says. The downsides of appearing in swimsuit calendars are minimal to them as individuals. The disadvantages mainly accrue to women as a group, who are stereotyped and degraded as a result of this kind of behavior, she says.
So, Women of KU, when you show the whole world what you look like basically naked, it's not just affecting you. It's affecting every woman.
"It's a good reason to keep our grades high." she said.
The biggest laugh came when I read in a University Daily Kansan story that one of the models said she was chosen for the calendar because of her involvement with intramural volleyball and her grade point average.
Let's get this out of the way: Posing with a few square inches of lycra stretched across your breasts is nothing but an old-fashioned beauty contest.
Right. What this calendar has is boobs, not brains.
So, does that mean smart women
In addition to listing each model's GPA and other academic information, the biography section of the calendar shares their hobbies (some listed wine, working out and changing their hair color!). This is the pathetic way that the calendar tries to give each objectified women a "personality" beyond T&A.
with cellulite and bad skin can pose for the calendar next year? Let's get this straight. When this calendar is hanging in some guy's dorm room, the last thing he's thinking about is the A the calendar girl got in organic chemistry.
Cudd cited a phenomenon called "the tragedy of commons." Each individual can benefit herself by behaving in a way that, when many individuals do it, harms all of them collectively. When a few women pose as sex objects, whether in calendars, magazines or ads on television, it affects everyone's world view. More and more women want to look that way. This is evident in the rise of plastic surgery, especially in young women.
From 2002 to 2003 the number of girls 18 and younger who got breast implants nearly tripled, from 3,872 to 11,326, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. Among all age groups, cosmetic implants have skyrocketed in popularity, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Last year, according to the ASPS, about 247,000 women got implants for breast augmentation, compared with only 32,000 in 1992.
fessor of anthropology and women's studies at Vassar College, said she saw a problem with women's access to the public eye being only through beauty.
These young women think that appearance is key, not only to happiness, but to getting noticed.
"I'm concerned that, for example, we can't get an audience for the WNBA or an audience for Women's Soccer League. Those are also stages for women.
In a recent television interview on CNN, Colleen Ballerino Cohen, pro-
"That's the crux of the issue," she said. "Is that how you get attention?"
Getting attention for one's looks can feel good. After shedding my baby fat and braces in high school, I found myself elected to homecoming court (a shameless popularity contest). I bought a dress, got my hair done, and rode around in a convertible during half-time with my sweaty, footballplayer male counter-part-elect. I wasn't elected because I was on the school newspaper or ran track. Homecoming queens are popularity and beauty contestants. Did it feel good then? Sure. Do I look back now and see how stupid it was? Definitely.
Like many women I know, I don't go around in sweats and refuse to wear makeup. But when we get to know someone, whether it's a potential mate or a future employer, we don't want them to judge us on whether we would look good on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swim-suit issue.
Getting noticed for your looks has little to do with you as a person. Rather, it's saying you think your body is the only good thing about you.
Viewers of the calendar are not focusing on GPAs and hobbies. It's more like, "Nice tits, nice ass." Think about what some guys do with these images. They sexually satisfy themselves. Is that what being "feminine" is all about, being someone's sex object? Leave that to the porn stars. The key to a women's success and happiness has more to do with brains than boobs.
Louise Stauffer is a Holland, Mich., senior in journalism. She is Kansan opinion coeditor.
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