Thursday
Editor in chief: Jack Clifford
Managing Editor: Jessica Blanchard
Newsroom: (541) 346-5511
Room 300, Erb Memorial Union
P.O. box 3159, Eugene, OR 97403
E-mail: ode@oregon.uoregon.edu
EDITORIAL EDITOR: MICHAEL J. KLECKNER opededitor@journalist.com
Holy war on flame-haired comedians
LONE VOICE IN
\THE WOODS
BRET JACOBSON
With tensions running high
and tempers about to flare
out of control in the Middle
East, it seems that a nice little
diversion would go a long way to main
taining peace in the war-ready region.
Thus, as your humble, disaffected and
disillusioned young American columnist,
I have several ideas on small jihads that
could divert attention away from a situa
tion that could otherwise escalate to
World War III.
Now, for the uninformed, a jihad is a Mus- :<
lim holy war apparently called by religious
leaders when an attack is necessary to pre
serve or avenge their people. Obviously, I
advocate ineffective jihads, limiting the lia
bility to all parties, including myself.
For a little background, you should con
sider some warm-up jihads. A holy war
against the imperial forces of Luxembourg
might be a good way to kick off the festivities.
Or you may want to try to think globally and
act locally by calling for a jihad against your
local garbage men. Even a jihad against
swine farmers might be a nice unity builder
for the inflamed region.
Personally, I’d like to see the most aggres
sive anger aimed at perhaps the most de
spised character in America — nay. the
world — Carrot Top. Some may say that the
tyrannical likes of Pol Pot and Burger King
should be taken down first in the name of an
almighty deity, but I suggest Senor Top be
cause there won’t be any noticeable resist
ance, and success builds confidence for fu
ture undertakings.
But targets are surely not enough for a ji
had worthy of a top spot in the hereafter.
Just as important as a goal is a plan to exe
cute it. Here are a few steps of initiative I’d
like to see those in the Middle East, on ei
ther side of the Israeli-Arab conflict, put into
effect.
First, a would-be hero must bring three
forms of picture identification, with proof of
address, to the local munitions dump. There
the desk help will take the customer through
a step-by-step questionnaire to find exactly
what kind of weapons will be best put to use.
I recommend lots and lots of explosives.
Even if you don’t hit your exact target, it
makes CNN every time.
Next, rent or steal an unmarked primer
gray van. Such a vehicle is treated with the
same overwhelming disregard throughout
the world, and allows for maximum damage
during any attack. If you’re not seen, you
can’t be stopped.
Get as close as possible to your target. In the
instance of Carrot Top, you don’t need to be all
that close, because his gargantuan, flaming or
ange hair gives off a one-mile glow.
Finally, realize that all the preceding talk
was of a wry humor borne of weariness of the
never-ending real-world tension in the Mid
dle East. At some point this particular con
flict went so far beyond the pale of forgivable
human anger that it became sorrowfully
comical. But it’s only as funny as this col
umn. That’s sad.
Bret Jacobson is a columnist for the Oregon Daily
Emerald. His views do not necessarily represent those
of the Emerald. He can be reached at bjacobso@glad
stone.uoregon.edu.
The Nina, the Pinta, the Overrated Holiday
PAT PAYNE
Bloody explorers! You ponce off
to some bloody unknown
land, come home with a tropi
cal disease, a suntan and a bag
of brown lumpy things, and Bob’s yer
uncle, everyone’s got a picture of you
in the lavatory! I mean, what about the
people that do all the work?” — Rowan
Atkinson, “Blackadder II”
As you may well have guessed by the
quotation above, Columbus Day is right
up there in my holiday priorities with
“National Whack Your Neighbor With
A Salmon Day.” However, since people
on both sides have pressed the issue, I
shall chime in.
First off, why do we hail Christopher
Columbus as some sort of great explor
er? His claim to fame was that, in trying
to get to China, he found an extraordi
narily large rock in his path. He never
even got to the continent proper! He
discovered the Caribbean, for crying
out loud, not North America. Secondly,
he wasn’t even the first to make it to the
Western Hemisphere. Leif Eriksson, a
Viking explorer, landed in what is to
day Canada and established a small
colony about 500 years before Chris
was even a zygote. However, the
Vikings’ whole “burn everything in Eu
rope” policies left them with bad PR, so
there’s no Eriksson, Ohio. Almost
25,000 years before Eriksson, Indo-Asi
atic peoples came over a land bridge in
what is now the Bering Sea between
present-day Russia and Alaska, and set
tled on the two hospitable continents
previously unoccupied.
The only reason that we hail Colum
bus with a holiday is that he had the
good sense to actually record what he
was doing. His was a discovery by acci
dent, and a relatively minor one at that.
He just doesn’t rate a national holiday.
He should barely rate a paragraph or
two in history.
Yet the people on the other side aren’t
swaying me either, in their attempts to
demonize Columbus the man, instead
of his contemporaries. I doubt that
Christopher Columbus was a slave trad
er. It seems a little hard to swallow.
Historically, what were Columbus’
infractions? First, he unleashed dis
eases unknown in the Americas on the
people there. Shacking up with farm
animals for a thousand years gave the
Europeans immunities to these bugs.
Chalk this one up to the Europeans hav
ing no idea of medicine or personal hy
giene.
Second, he DID open the floodgates
to Balboa, Pizzarro and other conquis
tadors who heard the streets in this new
world were paved with gold, and were
determined to take everything they
could carry without thought to how
many natives they had to run through.
This also led to people like George
Custer, who single-handedly sparked a
war with Crazy Horse in 1876 to gain
silver in the Black Hills of South Dako
ta. Columbus was, therefore, indirectly
responsible for Andrew Jackson’s “Trail
of Tears.”
Still, what is disrupting a commemo
ration of a five-hundred-year-old event
going to do? How is banishing Colum
bus’ name from public discourse going
to undo the events that transpired? The
genie has been let out of the bottle.
There isn’t much that can be done now,
save the deportation of everybody com
ing to this continent after 1492.
But as for a day for Columbus? Keep
it, jettison it with extreme prejudice, I
don’t care. To paraphrase from the same
program I quoted in the beginning:
The return of Christopher “Ooh,
Look At What Big Ships I’ve Got”
Columbus is a matter of supreme indif
ference to me.
Pat Payne is a columnist for the Oregon Daily
Emerald. His views do not necessarily represent
those of the Emerald. He can be reached at
Macross_SD(g'hotmail.com
Letters to the editor
«
Cheney, Bush less moderate than they seem
Seemingly overlooked in the media evaluation of
Dick Cheney is his securing the votes of the extreme
right for the Republican ticket. The national press has
asked Cheney about his congressional voting record on
issues ranging from Head Start to cop-killer bullets. Ch
eney liberally alters his position on each controversial
vote, except his vote against a resolution in favor of
freeing Nelson Mandela.
In defending his Mandela vote, Cheney invokes
"communism." Mandela communist? Hardly — then or
now. Why does Cheney continue denigrating Nelson
Mandela? Because Nelson Mandela is black! Cheney's
stance reassures and secures the votes of the bigots and
racists of the extreme right.
Cheney creates a buffer between the extreme right
and Bush. Thus, Bush frees himself to appeal to fiscally
conservative, white middle-class voters who otherwise
will not tolerate bigotry. With Cheney, Bush gets the
vote of the extreme right AND finesses the vote of oth
erwise sensible, kind conservatives. The vote of both
groups is essential to his campaign success.
Perhaps the effect of this plan is what Bush means
when he talks about "Soft Bigotry." Except, in whose
cynical lexicon is bigotry ever "Soft?" The bigotry of the
Republican Party is as masterfully pernicious and pres
ent today as it was in 1988 when Bush-the-father in
voked Willie Horton. An antic for which Bush-the-fa
ther s campaign adviser (Lee Atwater) later apologized,
but Bush-the-father never.
Like father, like son. The fruit doesn’t fall far from the
tree.
• RoyB. Conant
Portland, Ore'.,