4A the university daily kansan
opinion
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friday, february 20, 2004
Free forAll Call 864-0500
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Apparently they don't have parallel parking in Texas because I watched a black Durango go back and forth a good 15 times and still she couldn't get off of the curb and into the parking spot. You gotta love it.
I think that this city should elect somebody to walk around with wet cement and fill up those damn pot holes because they are wrecking my car.
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President Bush is the man
term Massachusetts senator has the most "electability."
The girl that sits next to me in my African class and is a redhead is so hot.
term Massachusetts senator has the most "electability."
Hey naked guy across the alley: Close your blinds.
]
I was wondering: when is white history month?
term Massachusetts senator has the most "electability."
I agree we need patriotism back. I thought that these colors didn't run.
This is for the girl in my Anthropology 160 class that always talks to her T.A: I was wondering how old you are and if we can go on a date.
term Massachusetts senator has the most "electability."
If you are going to get high, don't forget to bring a towel.
I was just wondering if it is bad that you are considering buying drugs for your roommate's birthday.
Edwards: a charming alternative
DEMOCRATS IN DETAIL
United under the common mantra of "We must beat President Bush," Democratic primary voters have pushed John Kerry to the brink of a presidential nomination. The thought, according to exit polls of primary voters, is that the four-
COMMENTARY
Henry C. Jackson
opinion@hansan.com
To be sure, Kerry has an exceptional resume. He has foreign policy experience. (Have you seen him roll out a Vietnam veteran yet? Wisconsin just did.) He has substantial legislative experience. (But try finding a rel-
vant piece of legislation he's shepherded.) And, well, he's not going to get all angry like that meany Howard Dean and hoot and holler. (Or, you know, change his tone at all during a speech).
It's time, Kansans, Democrats, anybody who's tired of the tyrannical Texan using White House stationery, to ignore the Massachusetts senator's drumbeat toward nomination. He's too wooden, too vanilla.
Ladies and gentlemen, may North Carolina present John Edwards for your nomination.
Beyond cosmetics, there's also a geographic reality check. Kerry, all jokes aside, might be an accomplished legislator and politician. But he is an accomplished New England legislator and
Kerry's public speaking is, comparatively, plodding. When he walked to the podium after winning the Iowa caucuses and dully thanked Iowa voters for making him the "Comeback Kerry," you could almost see his speechwriters high-fiving behind the scenes. (Sorry guys, Bill Clinton used the Comeback insert-noun here construction in New Hampshire 12 years ago. And it was better.)
With deceptively boyish looks — he's actually 50 — Edwards is the anti-Kerry. He's naturally charismatic: When he gives his stump speech, an elegant appeal to bring millions of Americans out of poverty, he smiles, incorporates extemporaneous thoughts and works his audience.
Edwards demonstrated his ability to pull the Southern vote earlier this month and last month by winning in South Carolina and placing a strong second in Oklahoma, Tennessee and Virginia.
politician. In politics, the term "New England liberal" is a slur, as George H.W. Bush taught Michael Dakikas in 1988. The last successful Democratic candidate from the Northeast was John F. Kennedy in 1960.
Times have changed since then. To beat President Bush - and all other election goals must come secondary this election - a candidate needs to be able to be able to chip away at the typically Republican South. Because Northeastern states tend to fall neatly to Democrats in presidential elections, it makes sense to pick someone with a broad Southern appeal.
Taking chunks of the "Southern L," as these states are referred to, isn't just important, it's imperative to taking the White House back. Edwards, born in South Carolina to a mill worker, is a candidate who can maintain credibility with middle-class Southern voters, a demographic Democrats covet.
Zach Stinson for The University Daily Kansan
Certainly, there are knocks on the first term senator. His lack of extensive political experience, for example, would surely come up if he secured the nomination. But Edwards' record, first as a brilliant trial lawyer and then as an active, well-respected freshman senator, isn't any worse than the credentials President Bush had when he was elected. (One term governor and...uh...part-owner of Major League Baseball's Texas Rangers.)
Unlike the president, whose father made him a household name, Edwards, with a less-heralded reputation, will have to work harder to gain respect, and it may take the country a while to "get to know him."
But, as he showed in Iowa and Wisconsin by performing much better than expected and winning the endorsements of the states' biggest newspapers, Edwards can develop a fan base quickly.
Given the alternative — and considering the relative success of northeastern Democrats in presidential elections — Democrats should consider Edwards, if, as they say, "electability" is the buzzword of this primary season.
Jackson is a Long Valley, N.J., senior in journalism. He is the Kansan sports editor.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Senate columnist depicts inaccurate stereotypes
Radical, schmadical.
Jeff Allmon's column on the evolution of Student Senate coalitions, in particular Delta Force, is rife with baseless stereotyping and revisionist history.
Allmon, an unacknowledged KUnited groupie himself, desperately attempts to marginalize Delta Force through repeated references to its supposed "radical" past. Using words and phrases such as "hippie," "leftist," "freedom fighter," and "hell bent on revolution," Allmon attempts to paint an unflattering picture with broad strokes and flung mud.
Well I was there, I'm not buying it, and your readers shouldn't either. So, as John Kerrv savs. "bring it on."
If fall break, expanded student organization space, more campus email terminals, a new childcare center, residence hall polling sites, and freshman elections are "radical," it's no wonder Allmon is disappointed in the performance of the Senate that has been controlled by his buddies the past couple of years.
Clearly, there is and always will be a need for positive student-led change at the University of Kansas.
Jason Fitzell 1997 Delta Force President, 1998 graduate in history, and current KU staff
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tions to opinion@kansan.com.
MUSIC OF MY MIND
Death of Aborigine in Australia telling reflects racism still plaguing America
"I get down for my grandfather, who took my mama/made her sit in that seat where white folks ain't want us to eat./At the tender age of 6, she was arrested for the sit-ins/And with that in my blood, I was born to be different/Now n — can't make it to ballots to choose leadership/But we can make it to Jacob's and to the dealership/Swear I hear new music and I just don't be feelin' it./Racism's still alive, just be concealin' it...
— Kanye West, Never Let Me Down from the 2004 album, The College Dropout
Monday morning I woke up to news of Thomas Hickey, a 17-year-old Aborigine and resident of Sydney, Australia's Redfern neighborhood, who fell off his bicycle on Saturday and died as a result of his injuries in a hospital the next day.
In Hickey's neighborhood, as well as in other parts of Australia, clashes between police and Aborigines are frequent. Worse than the police problem, though, are the living conditions. Hickey's area of Redfern, a section called "The Block," is located minutes away from the upscale neighborhoods of Sydney from the gentrified urban core.
"The Block," a deteriorating neighborhood populated principally by Aborigines, stands in sharp contrast to its surroundings and is one of the clearest symbols of the Aboriginal inequality
COMMENTARY
Cornelius Minor opinion@kansan.com
At the time of his passing, it was speculated that he had been chased to his death by the police.
To be black is to watch others as they are carried by their privilege to good schools and better jobs.
that has persisted in Australia since Aborigines were chased from their lands when European settlers started arriving in 1788.
As news of Hickey's death spread, the anger and frustration with which Redfern residents live every day swelled to riotous proportions, and for nine hours after Hickey's passing, that portion of the city became a battleground. Groups of people battled the police, and in the end, 40 officers were wounded and the Redfern train station was torched.
Ill treatment for 216 years has a way of weighing down on folks.
Though not many people on this side of the ocean picked up on the news, reading about the incident left me with
a familiar feeling that I am still struggling to articulate. I thought about the people all over the world who live on third world islands nestled in the oceans of opulence and excess represented by first world cities. The news report was about Sydney, but in it I recognized Minneapolis, Minn., St. Louis and San Francisco.
As Black History Month comes to a close and as I reflect on the varied experiences of black folks in America, I think about what our countless years of struggle have meant.
For me, to be black in America is to watch people with an furious glare as they see Hickey across the ocean and talk about how bad colonialism and racism are "over there." To be black is to blink back warm tears from the anger of knowing that the racial tensions that boiled over in Hickey's neighborhood simmer daily in New York, Kansas City, Kan. and Atlanta.
To be black, for me, is to be intimately connected to the type of community that produced Hickey. It is to understand that sometimes those two states of knowing can occupy the same geographic space. To be black is to know the realities that my people face in neighborhoods all over this country and to live simultaneously among the kind of folks who seem to celebrate their ignorance of those conditions.
To be black is to watch others as they are carried by their privilege to good schools and better jobs. It is to bear your history and to be reminded of it each
As I lived and worked this week, I thought about the message that is silently communicated as inequalities persist. Our humanity is violated each morning when a child attends an under-equipped school, and when adults work more than 40 hours and don't even earn enough to live above poverty. For me, being black is recognizing that these issues are bigger than race. It is knowing that when it comes to policy and statute, these are issues of class, but we can't have that conversation, because nobody is ready for a poor people's revolution. It is realizing that in law and in practice, our lives are still worthless.
time you see yourself through the eyes of other folks as threatening, exotic or less than human.
To have that confirmed by the police in violent incident after incident is too much to bear. But we do it, because, to be black is ultimately to carry the death of Hickey and thousands of other dead brothers and sisters on your shoulder. It is knowing, seeing and living that burdensome reality on a regular basis mastering the art of swallowing it all masking it behind a smile, artistic expression or silence. For me, to be black is to know that there is something fundamentally wrong with celebrating our progress without working for continued change.
Minor is an Atlanta graduate student in American studies. He is the co-host of Voice Activated on KUJH Thursday at 7 p.m.
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