The hour badly spent

Tim Hadachek has spent all semester wooing his own doucherie. It’s pretty clear now that he’s fully in love with it and will never let it go, no matter what psychologists recommend. In the matter of HRC’s appointment to Secretary of State:

Hillary is burdened by the curse and blessing of her husband, Bill. On one hand, Hillary would not be where she is today if she hadn’t married a future president. On the other, Bill appears to still carry the lack of restraint that led to his impeachment.

A blowjob much too awesome for the nation to ever forget. Was it somehow special, or are all blowjobs really like this? Take some time to savor that question.

For example, compare the presidential campaigns of Obama and Clinton. Obama’s campaign was airtight; if there was internal conflict, we certainly didn’t hear about it. Some reporters even nicknamed him Barack "NoDrama."

Clinton’s campaign, by contrast, had more leaks than an old faucet. The Clinton camp might as well have invited the New York Times every time a senior adviser was fired. Often, these snippets of info took the form of a Hillary aid criticizing Bill for being reckless and uncontrollable.

Why should we expect Clinton’s gig as Secretary of State to be any different?

This election was an epic clusterfuck, the likes of which mankind has never seen before and will most certainly not see again for at least two years. Hillary ran a piss-poor campaign, but she had a job way before she became President of Harlem. Her goings-on there were probably far more relevant to her Cabinet appointment than some moronic off-the-cuff campaign-trail comments Bill made a zillion years ago that everyone’s forgotten about. We were sure the slinging of irrelevant mud would disappear after Nov. 4, that there was a glimmering hope for change we could believe in, but it’s almost as though one side has a vested interest in keeping political "science" at the level of finding the right table to sit at during lunch in middle school.

Obama has said he wants to assemble a "cabinet of rivals" in the same spirit as his hero Abe Lincoln. Indeed, there is much to be said for avoiding the current administration’s case of groupthink — it’s important to have different types of people advising you.

But Lincoln’s style is not one to be modeled. Civil War historian Chris Pinsker said Lincoln’s cabinet "nearly destroyed the president" and that they were a "plotting, feuding bunch."

Which is better for fostering democracy: an insular cabal of yes-men, or a team of opposing viewpoints trying to build a consensus? It doesn’t matter! To Hadachek, Democrats are wrong no matter what they actually do! Which leads to "critiques" without substance. This elephant is heckling at a game his team has already lost. Without anything constructive to add, wouldn’t it would be more fun if he just shut up and left the ballpark?

[Source: K-State Collegian]

Shortly after the election, feelings ran high on both sides of the political fence. Some of us were all, "suck on that, red-staters." The others reverted to the same tactics that cost their side the election in the first place. Case and point: freshman Josh Rodrick attempted a call for unity in a letter to the Collegian. But since he could not resist the chance to take a baseless swipe at the president-elect, he comes off as being divisive.

…To say people should unite under one president because it brings change is asking much of a society in which people cannot even respect or agree with their neighbors.

For this American society that voted for a president that flies a flag other than the American flag over his name, where is the unified organization?

The "Obama’s not really American" meme is like a bad neighbor who simply will not trim his encroaching weeds no matter what happens to everyones’ property values. Time and time again, people keep repackaging the old message with shiny new bullshit. There goes the neighborhood.

Our first black president will be the first and definite change, and while he coerced much of the United States to vote for him, we will see come January 2009 how much our nation will change.

There you have it. It’s unthinkable that our first black president would win in a fair, free democratic election. Rather, he "coerced" a majority of the population and the electoral college.

Do not unite under a president; unite together, unite under the American flag and the principles this country was founded on; find some middle ground or cooperation and let your voice be heard.

In making a worthwhile claim, Rodrock resorts to pettiness that undercuts his own message. Neocon doublethink was already rejected by the voters. It insults our intelligence and has no place in a democracy that requires honesty to function. Bitter red-staters should leave the calls for unity to someone who actually means them.

[K-State Collegian]

Mark Erbacher believes that memorizing Revolutionary War documents makes one person more American than others.

As U.S. citizens, we feel we are well versed in our nation’s history and knowledgeable of its laws and practices. However, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute recently found - for the third year in a row - that a great number of Americans know very little about this nation’s history and government workings.

According to americancivicliteracy.org, of the over 2,500 randomly selected Americans who took the 33-question test, 1,700 failed. The average score was a depressing 49 percent. Possibly even more frightening is the average score of the elected officials that were surveyed: 44 percent. That means, of course, that the average person, according to this quiz, is actually more versed in American history and the government than those they have chosen to speak for them.

Eh. Once the "No Child Left Behind" generation grows up, those test scores should fly as high as a bald eagle. Of course this means once we have enough smarties we can take them off the endangered species list and hunt them in defense of our 2^nd Amendment rights.

Some of the results are simply awe striking. More than twice as many people knew that Paula Abdul is a judge on American Idol than knew that the quote “government of the people, by the people, for the people” is taken from President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, that, coincidentally, President-elect Barack Obama quoted in his acceptance speech.

Is this surprising? Paula Abdul has been fine since the 80s. "Of the people, by the people, for the people" has not characterized government in at least eight years. God damn America.

Almost 40 percent of people surveyed believe that the president has the right to declare war, when he or she doesn’t. Of those elected officials who took the quiz, 30 percent were unaware that “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are inalienable rights referred to in the Declaration of Independence. Also, 20 percent of these same elected officials thought the Electoral College was established to supervise the first presidential debates.

That’s quite a bit of information. Gee, I wonder where he’s going with all this.

I might be biased; I am, after all, a political science major and have studied a lot of these things more than most, but these results absolutely terrify me.

Part of me thinks my life would be much easier if Mark Erbacher was the standard by which my intelligence was measured. Think it’s tougher than going up against a fifth-grader.

So America, do us all a favor: pick up a newspaper, or a book for that matter, and learn something.

Whatever; books are for coastal liberal elites, like Erica Hateley. Presumably, many of us are reading your column. It might be helpful, therefore, to explain in an entertaining way, what your field of study (lol political "science") actually is and what sort of interesting useful reaganisms you learned in civics this week. Conversely, supercilious gasbaggery really won’t do us any good.

[K-State Collegian]

After the election, bitter right-wingers like Mark Erbacher were quick to blame everyone for their loss except the obvious: the legacy of their own failed policies. The most obvious target would be manipulation from liberal coastal media elites. Right? Right.

The 2008 election clearly showed that the media lean heavily to the left. Even liberals must admit the mainstream media and its journalists threw objectivity and fairness aside and blatantly took the side of now President-elect Barack Obama.

According to www.telegraph.co.uk, the nonpartisan Center for Media and Public Affairs reported John McCain received substantially more negative news coverage during the campaign. The same article said the Pew Research Center, examining coverage of the last presidential debate, showed Obama’s coverage to be 36 percent positive and 29 percent negative.

Compare this to the staggering numbers of McCain: 57 percent negative to only 14 percent positive. There is some disparity between the parties; 82 percent of Republicans think journalists try to be advocates rather than neutral observers. This coincides with 56 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of unaffiliated voters concurring with their conservative counterparts.

Perhaps Obama’s positive coverage reflected a kind of campaign to which the Right was not accustomed? Perhaps McCain’s negative stories reflected the negativity of his campaign? Perhaps McCain really is the two-faced, hot-tempered scoundrel he seems to be? If you’d like to contemplate a double standard, consider how the media would have handled coverage of a candidate with a known temper problem, a candidate who talked out of both sides of his mouth and constantly went back on his pledges, a candidate that had cheated on his wife and then married into his fortune; now consider how the media would have handled such a candidate if he were black.

The Center for Media and Public Affairs studied 979 election news stories from 33 hours and 40 minutes of airtime from evening newscasts on ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX stations and found stories concerning Obama and Joe Biden recieved 65 percent positive versus 35 percent negative. This was more than double that of John McCain and Sarah Palin, whose numbers were 69 percent negative and only 31 percent positive.

Journalists must remain unbiased in their coverage of the issues. Their job is to objectively report facts so individuals can decide for themselves what they choose to believe

Heh, pretty surprised that he mentioned Fox News. Anyway, it’s about time for a concern near and dear to me: a basic journalism lesson.

According to right-wing gasbags, "objective" journalism occurs when the reporter writes down what one person says, then writes down what another person says, then prints that. By this logic, the substance of a claim does not matter, and it’s not your job to actually go verify the claim; if someone simply makes the claim, you print it. Reporters who actually care about the truth, however, know the difference between journalism and stenography.

Look at what Erbacher reports. Look at the level of doublethink involved in his reasoning. His contention is not specifically with whether any story was biased, but whether a bunch of people believe stories are biased. But how do the people polled even judge bias? What’s their criteria? Just because a story is "favorable" or "unfavorable" doesn’t make bias. It may turn out that historical "facts," or material reportable conditions actually favor one over the other. That’s what a journalist is supposed to report on. "Reality." It’s too bad reality has a well-known liberal bias.

[K-State Collegian]

Glancing over this semester’s collective Collegian front pages, it feels like Manhattan is going through a crime wave. Stabbing rape rape stabbing rape rape rape. "If it bleeds it leads, if it’s sex it’s next" was at first annoying, then just unsettling, then, once it set in that this is not a temporary spike and that Manhattan-Kansas is in fact the rapingest town I’ve ever lived in, a special type of long-iced-over indignation rolls in. "I don’t understand why more women here aren’t up in arms," Madeline said to me the other day.

Perhaps because locally, the most prominent discussion of this issue takes place on the level of a gaggle of hippies huddling together in the rain. The point of consistently reporting the ugly stuff of this town is to raise total social awareness. The other day, Whitney Hodgin penned a pair of pieces, in which two K-Staters told deeply personal stories of rape and its aftermath (in both cases, the legal system turned against the women.

Whitney is a thoughtful reporter, and always manages to get her subjects to say things that add meat and depth to the topic. The articles came out excellent. The Collegian put them on page five, right across from Tim Hadachek’s weekly rant against the government. What urgent topic of great social and political import ran on page 1? "Many students unable to make decisions without help from ‘helicopter’ parents." Of course they can’t.

Among men — men who describe themselves as chivalrous, good guys, men who are oblivious to chivalry’s inherent rapeyness — the conversation begins and ends at "If I found a rapist I would Kick His Ass," with everyone else sitting nearby nodding their assent and scarfing down their cheeseburgers or whatever. If these good guys were listening closely, they’d notice something off about a lot of the dudes at that same table. It’s in their persistent braggadoucherie, and it’s in way they talk about the female teachers they don’t like. You will not see these good guys cheering at Take Back the Night.

Last year, my buddy Eric would party every weekend, telling me about it Sunday mornings over bummed Parliaments. "Some girl got raped at the party I was at last night," he’d tell me. Every weekend. "Were you at TKE again?" was my usual response. Then what? I don’t know. What do you say after that, not really knowing anyone involved?

Then there’s this friend I have. Her rapist still haunts her, in every sense of the word. She’ll be out at Mae’s, or at Finn’s, or at some old place, and OMG look who shows up! This happened about five times in the space of two weeks. She always notices before anyone else, being especially attuned to the particular tones of his voice, and he’s talking especially loud just to get her attention (he usually tries to occupy the booth behind her or the barstool next to her while she steels herself to ignore him). What’s my role here? I consider introducing myself ("Hi, how’s it going? Raped anyone lately?") but she signals "no" with her eyes. An uncomfortable silence ensues. FOR TWO HOURS. She spends the rest of the evening in a quiet trance, staring long-faced at a dark corner of the room. Hours later, nursing a cigarette on her balcony, when she’s ready to speak, I’m still not sure I’m ready to hear it, even though it turns out to be only two words.

"I’m sorry," she mouths.

Of all the things to say, why that? I’m sure I’ll never understand. So am I, I say back.

[K-State Collegian]