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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 7, 1998)
COHTACTIHG US NEWSROOM: (541)346-5511 E-MAIL: ode@oregon. uoregon.edu ADDRESS: Oregon Daily Emerald P.O. BOX 3159 Eugene, Oregon 97403 ONLINE EDITION: darkwing uoregon.edu/-ode EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Sarah Kickler EDITORIAL EDITOR Mike Schmierbach NIGHT EDITOR Carl Yeh THE PROFIT MARGIN By selling to Diana’s grave, the Spencer family is fueling the absurd spectacle of celebiity Forget about Walt Dis ney World and Dolly wood; fora cool $16.50 each you and the whole family can take a gander at Princess Diana’s grave. That’s right. In one of those weird cosmic twists that one can usually only find in an episode of the Simpsons, the Spencer family Kameron Cole announced on Monday they will open their home to the public and sell tickets to view Diana’s grave site. I mean, one would think that Diana’s family, of all people, would think she deserved more than to have her final rest ing place become a stop on a package tour. But then why should they? After all, Elvis’ fami ly turned his home into a mecca for slack-jawed tourists. And they have a gift shop. The Spencers say the money raised will go to Diana’s favorite charities, which, in all fairness to '.'SEE HER FINAL BESlWfr PlflCt N' * them, is probably true. But come on, Diana mania is still in it’s prime. 1 here are any number of ways to raise money without resorting to such dubious measures. So let’s strip away the nonsense and be honest. The reason Princess Di ana’s family is turning her grave site into the Graceland of Great Britain is a very simple one: be cause they can. Skeptical? Within 20 minutes of opening phone lines, more than 10,000 ticket requests from around the world overwhelmed the 221 phone lines set up by the Spencers. No doubt about it, The Di Death Tour will be the hottest ticket in town. I feel the need to pause here and offer a few words of explana tion. I made a firm resolution to make the Princess Diana affair my own personal Titanic — to sink it and banish it to the bottom of a figurative ocean. But there are some things that just won’t stay down, that are so mind-boggling that to not comment on them would be unthinkable. This is one of those things. This latest chapter in this sometimes sordid, always twisted tale begs myriad questions, not the least of which is whether the British are now officially as crazy as Americans. But at the heart of this issue is a deeper, more press ing question: Has the collective fascination with celebrity finally overwhelmed all common sense? How far are we willing to go to get a piece of a celebrity? Are we really willing to pay good money to hover like ghouls over a grave? And if we are, why? As usual, the media is part of the problem. By engaging in a CHRIS HUTCHINSON/Emerald symbiotic relation ship with movie studios, record labels and anyone else out to hype a product, the news me dia have all but erased the line be tween themselves and the enter tainment media. By deifying people, we elevate them to a position in society that they are often ill-suited for. We assign labels like “voice of a gen eration” or “role model” to people based on criteria like wealth and recognizability rather than actual contributions to society. In doing so, we are setting a trap for future generations that they may not be able to extricate themselves from. Consider this: Studies done on how children and young adults perceive celebrities have con cluded they often equate media exposure with respectability. In other words, kids find strangers more deserving of their respect and admiration than people whom they interact with every day, such as teachers, by virtue of nothing more than the num ber of times they ap pear in magazines or on television. Aside from being profoundly sad, this phenome non manifests itself in more in sidious ways. Nowadays, anyone can be a celebrity. Actual talent is no longer a prerequisite. If you break enough rules, kill enough people or appear on Jerry Springer enough times, you too can be come a cultural phenomenon. There’s nothing wrong with ad miring a celebrity. There’s noth ing wrong with being a celebrity. The problem lies in how we as a society respond to them. Celebri ty status does not make someone an inherently superior person. The most important thing is that we not let our admiration over ride our dignity. Kameron Cole is a columnist for the Emerald. Her ivork appears on al ternate Wednesdays. Her views do not necessarily represent those of the newspaper. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Donations help corporations Some important information was lack ing from the Emerald article, “Rally targets corporate donors,” (ODE, Dec. 4). The increased corporate donations to the University are part of a broader and systematic pattern of strategic corporate philanthropy that is directed at universi ties. Since 1980, corporate investments in universities have tripled from $235 mil lion to $1.2 billion. Two major laws, Small Business Patent Procedures (P.L. 96-517) and the Recovery Tax Act (P.L. 97-34) fa cilitated the intensity of corporate invest ments in universities. The small business act and the 1983 executive order allowed universities to sell patent rights derived from research to corporations. In addition, the new law and the executive order al lowed for increased corporate tax deduc tions for any contribution made to univer sities (Lawrence Soley, “Leasing the Ivory Tower”). Therefore, the general pattern of increased corporate donations must be un derstood in this context. These donations provide massive benefits in the form of technology transfers for corporations. As James O’Connor has pointed out in the “Fiscal Crisis of the State,” corporations may socialize their costs by having the public (taxpayers and students) pay for the research and development costs. In the specific case of the Nike investment (com bined donations from Penelope and Phil Knight, the Knight family, Nike Inc. and Nissho Iwai American Corp., a company for which Nike has acquired all marketing rights), the return is development of a “new field of study,” sports marketing that the Oregon Foundation proudly advertises in its glossy publication (“Celebrating Achievement: The Oregon Campaign”). As James Warsaw, former president of Sports Specialties Corp., points out, he created the endowment for the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center because “he knows the industry can benefit from the application of university-level research and education” (bizuoregon.edu/sports mark/jimwarsaw.html). In 1993, Sports Specialties was acquired by Nike. This is a point that the Emerald “infomercial” (ODE, Dec. 8) failed to mention. Phil Knight knows the importance of cheap university research because "a local de sign student at Portland State University” received a mere $35 to develop Nike’s swoosh logo (Forbes, “You are what you wear,” Oct. 13,1996). According to Nike’s 1996 Annual Report, image is extremely important and accounts for $1.3 to $1.7 billion of Nike's assets. The University’s marketing will contribute to this image. As Steadman Upham, vice provost for re search and the dean of the University Graduate School, points out, “outreach is not just a word in our mission statement; it is the tangible result of aggressive tech nology-transfer programs. ... The Univer sity of Oregon reaches out across space and time to the very frontiers of knowl edge,” and “it involves blazing a trail across the interface of athletics and capi talism ’ (“Special Advertising Supplement to the Business Journal: Gold Behind the Glitz and Glory,” Inquiry, www.uore gon. edu/~uocomm/inquiry). As Soley points out, corporate funding in universities is siphoned away from ed ucation and channeled back into the re search and development for corporations and into the funding bureaucracy of the fund-raising institutions. One of the most recent marketing developments that has come from the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center is a registered trade market — The Sports Executive Retreat (FastBreak, Fall 1997). Do you think the students and the public will benefit from this retreat? Julia Fox Sociology instructor
