The University Daily Kansan emphasizes the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech. or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
MONDAY, APRIL 30, 2007 WWW.KANSAN.COM
COMMENTARY: Brian Ervin takes a fantastic musical journey through the much-loved Massachusetts Street. See Kansan.com for more opinions and Free for All comments
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
OPINION
PAGE 7A
》 OUR VIEW
Carbon neutrality craze catching on
Soon to be gracing the esteemed covers of your favorite celebrity tabloid, along with celebrities' weight loss and divorce numbers: a given star's carbon neutrality statistics.
The newest crop of envirocelebs Clooney, Leo, Gore, et al. — is leading the charge for carbon neutrality, along with a host of businesses rushing to offset their own emissions by buying "credits" in environmentally beneficial operations. The result, in theory, is that your munificent donation to such an entity counterbalances your contribution to the destruction of the planet.
This trend, along with the popularity of the latest fashionable humanitarian crises and responses, indicates the rise of cause as commodity, in which our responses to assorted and impending problems is dictated in part by the status of that cause. This commercialization of altruism reveals itself in a variety of ways, be it through "Save Darfur" shirts or the support of arbor-replacement organizations.
Admittedly, commercial charity is preferable to the absence of charity. Given the potentially perilous state of our fragile environment, efforts at carbon neutrality and the "greening" of corporate America is an encouraging sign. But in our rush to embrace the latest humane endeavor, let us not overlook the core mission of these goals: to help those in need, not those whose suffering is timely.
Before carbon neutrality camp anti-deforestation efforts, solar panels, and hybrid cars. Before Darfur came Rwanda, Bosnia, and Tibetan freedom, the Ur-humanitarian trend. We are saddled now with Product Red, the brainchild of professional savior and sometime musician Bono, which seeks corporate synergy to help fight AIDS. A noble goal to be sure, but the results have been dismal, raising in charitable funds just a fraction of the massive marketing costs expended.
Modern charitable drives have begun to slip into peculiar territory as the sort of hot nightclub of activities, a venue in which to see and be seen. Opposing the horrific genocide in Darfur is not as important as being seen as opposing the horrific genocide in Darfur. Product Red shirts allow you to declare in the most expository of manners your support for the fight against AIDS, but allows for little else. The commodification of charity can unfortunately breed an atmosphere of symbolic contribution; the presence of a Livestrong bracelet, for example, indemnifies you from accusations of apathy and makes you a visual supporter.
Let's remember the roots of these causes, not merely their trendy consequences. The need for assistance, not just the appearance and figurative guise of assistance, is what's needed most. Consider bypassing the trendy crusaders' organizations entirely, and pledging your support instead to a direct assistance group.
FREE FOR ALL Call 864-0500
— McKay Stangler for the editorial board
the right to omit comments. Slanderous and obscene statements will not be printed. Phone numbers of all incoming calls are recorded
Free for All callers have 20 seconds to speak about any topic they wish. Kansen editors reserve
Next time you're in a parking lot, maybe you should watch for other people, assho!
Free for All, do you sleep on your stomach? No? Can I?
To the guy who just biked up Naismith Hill, you're awesome.
My crazy roommate Lauren just spit up oatmeal all over her pants.
I hate to burst everyone's bubble, but Free for All isn't a person, they never answer the phone, they can't send you a text message back, they will never call you back, and they will not come rub your feet, so find somebody
the Question and Answer session of the lecture: I hope the professor saw you and gives you zero credit, because you don't deserve it. And take that Bluetooth off your ear.
else.
I'm wasted right now and
I need a girl to have sex with!
Where is she?
To the person who came into
getting laid. Thanks a lot!
I would like to thank the Free for All for being cool, and also congratulate the Free for All, the UDK, the Jay Play, and the Chalk magazine for their continuing efforts in reminding me that I'm not
feline seldom moves or meows, even at the strangest stimuli. I've tried funny faces, dancing, singing cartoon theme songs, letting her smell my flip-flop and putting my phone up to her face while leaving friends voicemails. Nothing cracks the stoic beast. Try any tactic and she'll look at you with indifference, if not embarrassment, at your performance. Still, Alice is a Lawrence icon. Her face is even on T-shirts for sale inside the store. I've long suspected that The Dusty Bookshelf gets half of its business from who come in to play with the cat. I've certainly never gone in to buy something.
You know you're an alcoholic when your favorite game is soli-
What the hell is Nicolas Cage doing in all these action movies? He's not an action person. He's
just not
(Somebody reading, at near light speed, the entirety of last newspaper's Free for All)
No, we didn't let you play sports because you were a turd out there. You couldn't hit, you couldn't run, you were just a turd
Oh God, I've smoked my cat retarded!
There's a huge piece of dog crap I walk on every day on the way to class
--feline seldom moves or meows, even at the strangest stimuli. I've tried funny faces, dancing, singing cartoon theme songs, letting her smell my flip-flop and putting my phone up to her face while leaving friends voicemails. Nothing cracks the stoic beast. Try any tactic and she'll look at you with indifference, if not embarrassment, at your performance. Still, Alice is a Lawrence icon. Her face is even on T-shirts for sale inside the store. I've long suspected that The Dusty Bookshelf gets half of its business from who come in to play with the cat. I've certainly never gone in to buy something.
My honors chem professor just made a pickle glow. Take that, regular chem!
Grant Snider/KANSAN
Massachusetts Street is a downtown gem
>> COMMENTARY
I thought spring had come a couple of weeks ago and then it snowed. But with the recent return to warm weather, I decided to cautiously peek my head out of winter hibernation and reacquaint myself with life outdoors, starting with Massachusetts Street. First, I created an eclectic On-the-go play list on my iPod. With Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl" playing louder than necessary, I induced nearly-halucinogenic over-caffeination and took to the streets to catch up with the heartbeat of city, the essence of Lawrence's charm, the regulars of downtown. This is my story: from 11th Street to 6th Street and back.
Don McLean - "American Pie"
Cat Stevens ~ "The First Cut is the Deepest"
Even before Jefferson's wings, Massachusetts' bombardment of the senses starts with the music, which coincidentally, is not dead. Street musicians are a staple downtown. The corner of 7th and Massachusetts Streets houses the one-man-and-a-saxophone "Concert for Peace" several nights a week. While his smooth jazz is a personal favorite of mine, there are dozens of other regular acts up and down the street. A couple of times I've even seen a dreadlocked girl with a tip jar playing only the maracas. There's something for everyone
From outside The Dusty Bookshelf, you can watch the famous "Alice the cat" sleep in a green chair in the foreign language section. The festively fat
BY BRIAN ERVIN
KANSAN COLUMNIST
OPIONAN KANSAN.COM
Chumbawamba-
"Tubthumping"
Full of "whiskey drinks, vodka drinks, lager drinks and cider drinks," you'd be hard pressed to take a trip downtown without running into at least one drunk. You'll probably find some spitting, cursing miscreants spilling out of bars
and unknowingly jaywalking across the street to the Antique Mall to ride the miniature three-horse carousel
I still remember the first time I met the "Honk-4-Hemp" Guy in his all-hemp leisure suit as a freshman. Coming from smooty, conservative Johnson County and seeing him put that giant thumb to his nose in defiance of "the Man," I knew I'd made the right college decision.
The Beatles - "Lovely Rita"
The only local demographic hungrier for your loose change than Lawrence meter maids are the panchandlers. Despite appearances, some may actually be professionals. Confrontational self-starters committed to scraggling his or her beard and hair each morning can earn up to 6-figures of untaxed income in a year according to a drunk I spoke to at a party once. I was accosted once by a not-so-young urban professional in the middle of an intersection. He put his hands on my shoulders and shook me a bit, although to be fair he may have just been trying to maintain his balance. Something of an actor myself, I was
inclined to humor his performance, despite the sign changing to "Don't Walk" and my swirling thoughts about the Mercedes he had parked around the corner. He was charming in a not-getting-stabbed-may-be-wishful-thinking sort of way.
Backstreet Boys "《Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely》
As I secretly lamented not being born a decade sooner so I could have joined a boy band in the late '90s, I realized it was getting late and I was the only one left walking the street. I also realized being alone meant I could sing as loud as I wanted without judgment.
If Massachusetts Street is the heart of the city, then these happy men, women and animals are the oxygen-saturated hemoglobin proteins in the red blood cells. Carrying life-giving joy to everyone they pass, the Downtown All-Stars are a microcosm of Lawrence itself, on one condensed five-block strip. Hopefully these comfortable temperatures last and everyone can rediscover the wonders of downtown. It's almost May, but you can't predict the weather. The forecast on my iPod: John Legend's "Refuge (When it's Cold Outside)."
Ervin is a Kansas City, Mo., junior in theatre and film and psychology.
》 LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Pictures of aborted fetuses should stay off sides of semi trucks, public displays
While waiting at a busy Lawrence intersection, I was assaulted by the graphic images of dismembered aborted fetuses. The 27 x 13 images grace the sides of a fleet of semi trucks.
Regardless of your abortion stance, you have to admit this campaign does more harm than good for the anti-abortion movement. Extremist tactics will only serve to alienate many moderate anti-abortionists from the movement, not wanting to associate with the cause of zealots.
After visiting a Web site listed on the truck, I discovered these pictures were a part of a slick campaign
Laws exist to restrict access or viewing to only consenting adults in other forms of media, but fortunately for the Center, poor taste is protected by the First Amendment. Although the group's tactics run perilously close to being advertising speech — to which the First Amendment offers less protection — it is still legal.
designed by a California-based organization, the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform. Lawrence isn't the only lucky city to be graced by this group's presence. The trucks are a part of a traveling marketing campaign designed to make sure no American'eyes escape unscathed by these pictures.
I'm not hoping to bend the First Amendment, nor do I want to. All I'm asking is that you remain skeptical about this particular group's tactics; if you already support this group, I'd encourage you to examine what its actions really say about its values.
The next time you see these trucks drive through your neighborhood, rejoice that you live in a country where it's legal to drive around town with pictures of bloody, dismembered corpses on the side of a vehicle, but it's indecent to do the same with pictures of a naked human body.
Some argue the only way to show the "evils of abortion" is to show other Americans "what abortion looks like," while other proponents liken its images to those of concentration camp victims during the Holocaust. If this group cares so much for children, why must it dehumanize the fetus by displaying its mangled body for the entire
world to see, or for that matter,
display an image certain to disturb
plenty of young children? You see,
these people don't really care about
children; all they care about is causing a scene.
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Gabriella Souza, editor
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864-7666 or jweaver@kansan.com
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EDITORIAL BOARD
EDITORIAL BOARD
Gabriella Riebe, Nicole Kuele, Patrick Ross, Courtney Hagen,
Natalie Johnson, Alison Kieler, Tasha Riggins and McKay
Stangler
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