THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2011
PAGE 5A
opinion
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The term "internship" is really beginning to rattle my chain.
I've come to the conclusion that it's gonna be way too cold to go to class. My reason is my brain doesn't function properly when frozen.
The flux capacitor reminds me of my girly parts.
Leaving the comment "Insert passive comment here," on a sticky note in response to my previous passive-aggressive comment seems a little passive-aggressive.
Hello Ladies ... I'm the man your man could smell like.
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person who learned how to use an inside voice.
I think we need to pitch in and buy the team fingernail clippers.
What is Justin Bieber doing at a concert? Shouldn't she be in the kitchen?
KANSAS WINTER POEM: It's winter in Kansas /And the gentle breezes blow /Seventy miles an hour /At five below./Oh, how I love Kansas/
When the snow's up to your butt/
You take a breath of winter/
And your nose gets frozen shut
Had Jesus taken Ritalin, I imagine he could've pulled off some fancier parlor tricks. Water into wine? Weak sauce, Jesus. How about water into whiskey?
Boys are like parking spaces; the good ones are taken.
J618 First Amendment & Society + chewing tobacco = America. TFM
I just spent two hours watching Backstreet Boys, N'Sync, Aaron Carter and Hilary Duff music videos instead of showering and doing laundry. No regrets.
My favorite person to stalk on Facebook just deleted their account...
Drunk girls know that love is an astronaut. It comes back but it's never the same.
I'm mega stoned, eating cookie cake and watching "Casper" right now. Life doesn't get much better than this.
Why do you choose the FFA's about people complaining about the hook ups on FFA????? Chose funny ones!!!! Editor's Note: Perhaps it is a hint to stop trying to hook-up on Free For All and to start posting better comments.
Almost Valentine's Day. Don't worry if you've been dumped, there are plenty of fish in the sea. Just kidding, the oil spill killed them all.
POLITICS
Even when she gets it right, Palin still spells 'debacle'
I suppose it would be asking too much to expect Sarah Palin to deliver a speech remotely connected to reality.
The half-term Alaska governor always displays an impressive ability to confound the pointy-headed eggheads among us with her willingness to make things up.
There was the rambling resignation speech she delivered two years ago, portraying "lamestream" media criticism of her tenure as an insult to American soldiers serving overseas.
We learned, via her Facebook page, that health care reform would force her aging parents and disabled child before a "death panel" of Obama administration bureaucrats.
And she notoriously accused critics of her trigger-happy rhetoric of "blood libel" in the wake of the Tucson massacre, somehow managing to make herself a victim of a rampage in which six people, including a 9-year-old child, were slain.
So Palin's contribution to the past week's hagiography - otherwise
BY LUKE BRINKER
Ibrinker@kansan.com
known as the Ronald Reagan centennial celebration – seems relatively mild in its disregard for the facts, at least when compared to some of her greatest hits.
Speaking to the Young America's Foundation, a conservative group headquartered at Reagan's ranch in southern California, Palin bowed at the altar of the right's patron saint.
There was no mention of the 40th president's funding of Central American death squads, support for the apartheid regime of South Africa, malign neglect of the growing AIDS epidemic, or callous indifference to income inequality.
After all, unless you're a fake American
from some highfalutin' metropolis, Palin isn't in the business of bursting your bubble.
The Gipper's genius, she said, lay in his canny ability to see through the antipoverty programs of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Reagan's opposition to the welfare state came to define Reaganomics.
"Reagan saw the dangers of L.B.J's Great Society," Palin said.
While it's an article of faith among adherents of laissez-faire economics that the Great Society was a miserable failure, it's worth re-evaluating the legacy of a set of policies antithetical to the B-list actor we lionized last week.
When Johnson assumed the presidency in 1963, 22.2 percent of Americans lived in poverty. By 1970, increased federal support for public housing, education, health and other welfare programs brought the poverty rate down to 12.6 percent.
The few Reaganites who can be bothered to acknowledge such stubborn facts respond that for all its success, the War on Poverty engendered laziness and
(It's now 14.3 percent.)
complacency.
Using coded racial language, Reagan denounced the "strapping young buck" fully capable of work but content to simply live on the federal dole.
Rep. Paul Ryan charged last month that the safety net has become a leisure hammock. I can just see the food-stamp recipient in south-central Los Angeles: "Ahh, the pleasures of subsistence living!"
For Palin, the notion that a society should help the disadvantaged offends her rugged individualist credo. Economics is a morality play, not something based on what works.
So Palin was right. In her speech, she said the nation is on the "road to ruin." A political culture that won't step outside of the Fox News bubble into reality can only be headed off the cliff.
Brinker is a sophomore from Topeka majoring in history.
SOCIAL MEDIA ETIQUETTE
Is it O.K. to unfriend your ex on Facebook?
Remove from Friends
About eight months ago, I was single and desperately willing to get over my ex-boyfriend.
After going through the oh-sopathetic extremes like labeling him in my phone as "jerk, don't" (as in: don't call, text, or answer, you idiot), I made a wise, executive decision.
I know, big move right?
I unfriended him on Facebook.
I know, big move right?
But in all seriousness, the more I noticed how much Facebook was holding me back from getting over him, the more I realized this was a necessary move.
I noticed Facebook did a damn good job of reminding me of his existence (considering I didn't see him ever in real life because he lives in that God-forsaken state of Missouri). I realized that the moment he was finally off my mind, he would pop in on newsfeed or I'd see his little picture on Facebook chat, always causing my feeble heart to sink a little lower and want him all over again.
Not only would it remind me of him, but against all better judgment, it caused me to click his name and start mindlessly scanning through photos, creeping on his wall, and convincing him subconsciously I wanted him again.
BY MANDY MATNEY
mmatney@kansan.com
So, finally, I hit my wall of tolerance. I swallowed my pride, scrolled to the bottom of his profile, and deleted him, digitally.
De-friending an ex doesn't mean that you are too weak to resist him or that you have a hatred so strong you wouldn't even consider them a Facebook friend. It means you are willing to maturely remove yourself from the person and throw in the towel.
It also puts the ball in their court, by forcing them to admit fault and re-request friendship when they want to creep through your photos for once. It's quite a liberating feeling.
Matney is a junior from Shawnee in journalism. She is associate opinion editor.
Cancel
let's be honest, we're all guilty of unfriending someone on Facebook
guilty of unfriending someone on Facebook at least once. Stalkers and family members aside, most of us are quick to click the "unfriend" tab on our ex-boyfriend or girlfriend, just after the not-so-private relationship status change and the tacky, passive-aggressive "likes" that follow.
But I must insist this is not good social (network) etiquette. Deleting people off Facebook is, more often than not, a cry for attention, and you don't want to seem weak, do you? All unfriending does is show that the break up has had more affect on your emotions.
This is exactly what your ex wants you to do, because, not only does he now think you cared about him more, but now that ex can post a new profile picture of the new and improved you, which you most likely can't enlarge and scrutinize. The ex knows you hunger to read his latest status, to know what he was doing eight hours ago via iPhone, where he has checked in and who has posted on his wall recently asking
BYJAMES CASTLE
jcastle@kansan.com
to hang out because she "misses (him), dude."
Be smart. Block your ex from your posts and tagged photos; that way, he can't see your latest thoughts and activities, and you seem mysterious, all while you can still creep his every cyber-move. If he asks, just say you blocked everyone from your posts because you wanted privacy, or say there was a "mechanical issue."
P. S. Admitting this will only make you seem neurotic and creepy, so shhh...
Castle is a junior from Stilwell in political science & human sexuality.
POLITICS
It looks easy on TV,but politicians can't get it right
Boy, those fat cats in Washington have sure done it this time! I don't know what "it" is, but I'm sure they screwed up something.
How can I be sure? Because according to pretty much every political speech I've heard in the past two decades I've been alive, Washington, D.C., is full of bureaucrats, bean counters and other synonyms who are more interested in winning re-election than they are helping average Americans.
For example, look at the fictional President Josiah Bartlet from the hit television show "The West Wing." He's funny, he's smart and he's got gravitas coming out his ears. He's all business, except when he brandishes his cowardly wit to make observations about his eclectic staff that are as hilarious as they are insightful.
I don't understand why Congress has been broken since its inception more than 200 years ago when politicians in film and television make it look so easy.
BY LOU SCHUMAKER
lschumaker@kansan.com
Toward the end of the fourth season, he gives his second inaugural speech and declares a new doctrine of force. What does he say in the speech? Who knows! What are the consequences of the speech? Who cares! Was it a good idea? Absolutely.
ing paragons of human achievement?
That's Washington for you: always failing to be perfect in every way.
Why can't more politicians be tower-
If Democratic eggheads in TV shows you never watch aren't your cup of tea, then take a walk across the aisle and check out President Thomas J. Whitmore in the film "Independence
Day."
Based on what little you see, he's actually kind of a terrible president. According to the pundits you see on TV, he traded his idealism for business-as-usual politics and other buzzwords.
But then aliens attack, and he steps up to plate by doing awesome stuff like dramatically firing his secretary of state, demanding to see Area 51 and killing an alien.
Actually, he doesn't do that last one, but it was still cool.
Toward the end of the film, he gives a stirring speech, promises victory over the invading aliens and declares a new Independence Day that celebrates, not freedom from the British, but freedom from annihilation.
Does that make sense? No, it does not. But making sense isn't important when you're a sitting president about to hop into a fighter jet and lead a massive air attack on an alien mothership.
Really, though, there is a fictional politician for everybody. Maybe you like
Maybe you want to support President Mackenzie Allen from the TV show "Commander in Chief," who spent much of her presidency getting low ratings and then being cancelled.
The point: stop paying attention to politics and instead watch political TV shows and movies that pretend to be realistic.
Maybe you like Senator Jefferson Smith from the film "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," whose passionate idealism is mocked throughout pop culture.
Or ... Wait ... What was my original point? I forget. My concentration has been wrecked from watching all these TV shows and movies.
Schumaker is a junior from Over-
land Park in film and media studies.
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THE EDITORIAL BOARD Members of the Kansai Editorial Board are Nick Gerik, Alex Garrison, Kelly Stroda, D.M. Scott and Mandy Matney.