OPINION
11B
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2, 2008
COMMENTARY
Heckling: 'Merican as warm apple pie
Once upon a time, a friend of mine scored some sweet behind-the-dugout tickets to a Royals game. However, the seats did not overlook our hometown heroes, but the opposing bench.
I saw an opportunity.
Many see heckling as a negative thing. People say, "Corban, they're just men putting in a hard day's work" or "Give them a break, they have enough pressure put on them as it is."
Frankly, hypothetical detractor, I don't buy it.
When I slap down $20 (and in some cases, much more) to see grown men make hefty paychecks for hitting small rawhide balls and jogging lazily, I am also purchasing my right to criticize their move.
It's in the Constitution. Somewhere toward the end.
Miguel Tejada, the previous year's American League MVP, strutted up to the plate and immediately popped out in foul territory a few baby steps left of third base. As Tejada was slinking back to the dugout, the very dugout I was sitting atop like a Supreme Court Justice, I hurled a deliciously sly "MVP!" his way.
Let me put his response this way: If they had aired the exchange on TBS, Tejadawould've said, "Flunk you, britches."
I don't know which was more disturbing: the vitriolic eye contact or the fact that a prominent, supposedly "professional" athlete couldn't handle a comment from a freckled, lanky teenager whose athletic prospects are minimal at best.
I felt empowered.
Look back to the 1920s and '30s. Baseball was king. It was our soccer before the whole Champions League exploded.
Sure, many of the best players to have ever pulled on long, ungody uncomfortable wool socks weren't allowed to play, but hey! Baseball still reigned until the late 1960s.
Now we are a segmented sports culture with too many
professional sports to consume. Even at this University, we can't handle two successful sports teams at once.
Remember when our football team was in the home stretch of their historic season? Hardly anyone went to the Kansas vs. Arizona basketball game.
Heckling is the answer.
Sports fans, we pay outrageous sums just to attend sporting events. Go to StubHub.com or Ace Sports on 23rd, and you'll know what I'm talking about.
Heckling, something that has gone on since cavemen first slammed rocks into other rocks, can revive the great national pastime of baseball by injecting some solid, truly invasive heckling.
My younger brother, Clark, is a tremendous heckler. He has an incredible knack for discovering most obscure gaffes that many Major Leaguers stuff into the far recesses of their cranium.
Prom dates? Unbelievably racist MySpaces? All of these things are fair game to him.
When heckling becomes our greatest national sport, I will be on the sidelines when Clark wins the Golden Notepad at the first Heckling National Tournament.
Last week I was in Las Vegas, and I ran into Pete Rose, who hangs out in Sin City a lot, apparently (a presence that I'm sure helps his Hall of Fame chances).
He was signing baseballs for the low, low price of $99 a pop. I offered him $10 for a hug and flashed me an eye-rolling grimace. What a guy.
People say, "Professional athletes are just like us," but they're not.
Professional athletes have been trained to act like this since the first time they ever showed a flash of prodigious talent. This makes for some seriously imbalanced, eccentric people. The generosity of Pete Rose. Michael Vick. I once read that Andy Roddick was scared to tears by a guy wearing a bunny suit. Does this sound normal to you?
Let's bring these Richie Riches down to our level. It's democracy!
Goble is a Mission Hills senior in English.
>> TALK BACK TO THE KANSAN OPINION DESK
As the green movement comes into more general acceptance, politicians are placing higher importance on environmental issues.
What should Lawrence do to fight global warming?
But where does the responsibility to take care of our planet fall?
Even though global warming is an issue that will need international solutions, where should the fight start?
Send your thoughts to kansanopdesk@gmail.com. Replies to this week's Talk Back topic will be printed on Friday.
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GUEST COLUMN
GUIDELINES
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Darla Slipke, editor
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COMMENTARY
Guns don't kill people; recent House bill does
Max Rinkel
Want to legally own a sawed-off shotgun or silencer for the multiple firearms you own? If your answer is no, then call your state legislator. If your answer is yes, don't do anything because I'm too scared that you'll shoot me.
There are always the two sides to gun control. No one will ever be able to persuade one to the other or vice versa. I could care less about convincing gun nuts to agree with me. My goal is merely to crush this bill with the help of other people who, like myself, really don't want to be shot silently or with a sawed-off shotgun.
A State House bill passed March 28 that allows citizens to legally own machine guns, sawed-off shotguns and silencers. The bill is an answer to a bill that went through the Kansas Senate that made it a felony to remove serial numbers on a firearm. Usually I'd crack a joke of some sort, but I find that terribly hard to do at this time.
If you want to own a machine gun, fine. You have rights. You can blow a robber or possibly your child away in the middle of the night trying to protect your home.
None of these items are needed in a normal individual's life. I can understand the machine gun.
But when it comes to sawed off shotguns and silencers, I take a different stance. A normal citizen needs neither of these items.
Cool. Do it. Live it up.
If you want to collect sawed-off shotguns, I'm sorry, but I draw the line there. This is not the movie
"Evil Dead." If you want to shoot zombies up close, use a machine gun or another gun. No one needs a sawed-off shotgun.
Gun enthusiasts are probably calling me a leftist Castro wannabe, and that's fine.
The idea of legalizing silencers makes no sense whatsoever.
I'm sorry for "impeding on your rights." I just don't want someone to shoot me. Is that too much to ask?
Guns are loud and this is good because people should know when a gun is fired. Guns aren't used in everyday life for little things. I don't cook a burrato for two minutes with a gun, like I do with a microwave oven. People don't need to know when I use a microwave oven, because microwave ovens aren't made to kill people.
If you agree with me, please call your state representative or senator. If you are registered in Lawrence, your state represent is Barbara Ballard and your state senator is Marci Francisco. Their contact information can be found on the Kansas Legislature's Web site at www.kslegislature.org.
If guns cooked burritos and didn't kill people, I could see the necessity in making them quieter.
Stewart is a Wichita junior in journalism.
>> LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Pressures of masculinity drive men to commit school shootings
Columnist Josh Anderson wrote a column addressing the underlying issues behind the epidemic of school shootings. The column was admirable and its proposals commendable.
To elaborate on the dialogue begun, the full reasoning for the massacres at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois needs to be acknowledged because popular media is not doing so.
After each tragic incident, issues of our violent youth, access to firearms, violent media and peer pressure are all blamed or defended by students and parents. One factor continues to escape notice.
As Jackson Katz, one of the foremost leaders in the anti-sexism movement, said, "What these school shootings reveal is not a crisis in youth culture or among young people, but a crisis in masculinity."
Men commit the overwhelming majority of school shootings.
He notes that if the killers were all female, the issue of gender would be at the forefront of public discussion. But now, these men and their struggle with the rigid guidelines of a masculine culture go unnoticed.
how to submit
Although all of the concerns listed above are undoubtedly relevant, if they were the "primary issue," as Katz puts it, then we would see similar aggression in women — who are subject to the same violent stimuli and exclusive peer environments — not only in our high schools and colleges, but also in society in the form of assault, rape and violent crime.
Submit letters to the editor at kansanopdesk@gmail.com.
Comment on all Kansanstories at kansan.com.
The pressures unique to men are built upon the construction of the ideal male: strong, independent, aggressive and heterosexual. Men who do not conform to these arbitrary guidelines are subject to ridicule and humiliation by their association with two groups: women and homosexuals.
It is becoming apparent that masculinity is not defined by what it is, but rather by what it is not. As a society, we need to ask ourselves, do we really want notions of manhood to be so firmly rooted in sexism and homophobia?
the perpetrators were subjected to the extremes of masculine pressure. How did they deal with this?
Stereotypes and prejudice are being actively — if subtly — built into our lives and behaviors. We need to vigorously deconstruct false notions of acceptability and open our minds to the unique and valuable differences among us. That means recognizing that women are strong and independent, men are vulnerable and intimate, and sexual preference is no more an indicator of individual virtue than the color of skin.
To be a true man, we are taught, means to swallow our emotions, toughen up and carry on. With no viable outlet for frustration, isolation and humiliation, these young men tragically turned to the one acceptable reaction for the genuinely masculine: violence.
For a solution, it is assuredly appropriate to take Anderson's column's words to heart, "What is needed is a radical approach: a counter-culture tearing down the walls that an apathetic world forces us to build." I would add that the world is anything but apathetic.
In cases of violence from Columbine to Northern Illinois.
Rehaan Shafie is an Overland Park senior in creative writing.
editorials around the state
Community corrections curtail inmate increase
There is at least one top ranking Kansans are happy to hand off to another stat
— holding the most people behind bars.
While it is easy to argue that
criminals deserve little sympathy from taxpayers, it is not so easy to find a black-and-white answer on what to do with convicts once they have paid their debt to society.
It should be easy to agree that surrounding ex-convicts with dedicated people tasked
In Kansas, doing just that has curtailed the need to build additional prisons.
with helping them navigate through society is a far better solution than leaving them to their own devices.
- The Hutchinson News March 25 editorial
To contribute to Free For All, visit Kansan.com or call 785-864-0500. Free For All callers have 20 seconds to talk about anything they choose.
I'm sitting in the library and I just watched a guy pick his nose for three whole minutes look at it, and then eat it. I can't decide which is more disgusting: the fact that he did that or that I watched it.
San Antonio.
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I had to drag my Ethernet cord across the dorm room to write this,which is exactly why I'm voting for United Student
Dear Jon, it's my birthday on Friday. If you couldn't go to the Final Four, I would have gotten to go, and it would have been the best birthday weekend ever. But you killed it because you're going to
Wireless in the dorms was proposed two years ago by ignite. It's a pork project that's unlikely to happen anytime soon and nothing to get excited about.
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To the gorgeous door guy at the Ranch on Thursday, ask me on a date already.
Tuesday?
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Hey basketball team, why don't you win the national championship so we don't have to come to school on Tuesday?
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Wireless campus in the dorms has been pitched by more previous Senate coalitions than I can count. It's a $15 million project. More fee increases from United Students, honay
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Lisa Ling speaks on Thursday.
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Please don't judge all gays based on the flags on campus. Not all of us love rainbows and have lips.
Michael Beasley is staying at K-State. April fools!
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To the person who wants to litter: That's dumb.
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I want to have sex in the stacks.
Jones Soda gets me through these grueling times of early morning classes and late night trips to the library.
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I'm as happy as a clam at night water.
The toilet paper in Watson's bathrooms suck.
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