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Thursday, April 1,2004
Oregon Daily Emerald
COMMENTARY
Editor in Chief:
Brad Schmidt
Managing Editor:
Jan Tobias Montry
Editorial Editor:
Peter Hockaday
EDITORIAL
Bush desires
fort on moon
on April Fools'
The scene: A Washington, D.C., congressional room. This
is "The April Fools' Hearings."
A distinguished panel of guests sits against one wall,
while a chair stands in the middle of the room, facing the
panel. The panel consists of George W. Bush, Janet Jackson,
ALF, Barry Bonds and Simon Cowell.
The first person to give testimony before the panel is, of
course, Condoleezza Rice.
Bush: So, Condi, could we have prevented Sept. 11 ?
Rice: Mr. President, I don't know how to answer that.
Bush: Just say 'no,' Condi.
Rice: No.
Bush: Yes.
Rice: What?
Bush: No. Yes. Let's build a fort on the moon!
The next person to testify is Justin Timberlake.
ALF: Justi-i-fied, did you know the phrase "wardrobe mal
function" is the most-used new phrase in the English lan
guage? It's even more overused than" 1 -800-C-O-L-hE-C-T."
Jackson: Yeah. You ruined my career.
Timberlake: What? You ruined your own career. You're the
one who left your bra at home on Super Bowl Sunday. Be
sides, you have a new song out. You're going to be fine.
Where is the love?
Cowell: That rendition of "Rock Your Body" was ab
solutely the worst performance in the history of the Super
Bowl. I mean, I was in tears, I was so bored.
Bush: What? They sang? I was just looking at Janet's boo
bies. Ha ha! I said boobies!
The next person to testify is Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Bonds: So, Arnie, what are you going to do about this
steroid issue?
Arnold: No-ting. I take de steroids when I was building
muscle and all of dat.
Bonds: Yeah? Oral or injectable?
Arnold: Injectable.
Bonds: Oh, man, I hate that! I always take them oral. I
mean, I don't take them. At all.
Bush: The steroids issue is the most important issue fac
ing Americans today.
ALF: But Mr. President, what about our crumbling edu
cation system? What about all the American soldiers being
killed in Iraq? What about health care?
Bush: Are you kiddin' me? We need to find out if Bonds
was juicin' when he hit those 73 home runs! Go Rangers!
The next person to testify is John Kerry.
Bush: How's it hangin', wuss?
Kerry: Mr. President, I don't wish to engage in petty de
bates in this forum.
Bush: OK, wuss. How's it been defending our country
from imminent threats lately?
Kerry: Mr. President, I haven't been doing that lately. It's
been a while since I got back from Vietnam.
Bush: Oh, snap! No you didn't!
Kerry: Yes I did!
Bush: But seriously, as president, will you look for
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
Kerry: No. Maybe in the White House, though. Oh, snap!
Bush: Let's fly to the moon.
All in unison: April fools!
EDITORIAL POLICY
This editorial represents the skewed opinion of the
Emerald editorial board,and it is not meant to be
taken seriously. Responses can be sent to
get_off_of_our_back_treehugger@fake_e-mail.com.
Letters to the editor and guest commentaries are
encouraged, provided you agree with the editorial board.
EDITORIAL BOARcT
Brad Schmidt
Future ASUO president
Jan Tobias Montry
The "Caddyshack” gopher
Jennifer Sudick
Secretary of Defense
Ayisha Yahya
Supa-fine Nubian queen
Peter Hockaday
Master and commander
Steve Baggs Illustrator
Overworking obscenity
I was watching an NBA pre-game show
on ESPN the other day when something
surprising happened. During an interview,
a coach expressed his opinion that sports
journalists should not quote a source if
the source "doesn't have the balls" to iden
tify himself or herself in print.
The coach's comment wasn't all that
surprising. What struck me was that ESPN
bleeped out the word "balls" during a bas
ketball pre-game show. They censored the
word "balls" during a ball game.
It is now official: The obscenity police
have gone too far.
Oh, sure. Censorship absurdity was
rampant in the past. I can remember years
ago when MTV would bleep out the word
"pot." But MTV, despite its branding, has
never had a backbone — or balls, if you
prefer — when it comes to controversy.
What we are witnessing today is a funda
mental shift. Anti-cursing hysteria has
gripped this nation's broadcasters, and it
is going to get worse before it gets better.
Not even Christ is safe. ABC bleeped out
the word "Jesus" when it was recently tak
en in vain on "The View." And it wasn't
even used as an expletive.
What started all of this? Well, it's hard to
pin down, but it probably began with
Bono. During a live telecast of the 2003
Golden Globe Awards he said, "This is re
ally, really f-— brilliant." (That was exact
ly how the quote appeared on CNN.com.
I don't see why so many letters need to be
blanked out. I would prefer the more pop
ular "f—ing" or the artistry of the all
symbols approach: @$!&%A or even
better, %@$A&!#).
In October the Federal Communications
Commission ruled that Bono's use of the f
David Jagernauth
Critical mass
word was technically decent since he was
using it as an "adjective" to "emphasize an
exclamation." As Gene Weingarten would
point out in The Washington Post Maga
zine; the FCC was wrong: Bono was actually
using the word as an adverb, not an adjec
tive. Whatever the case, the FCC quickly re
versed its decision after it received nearly
200,000 complaints.
That wasn't enough for Congress, so it
developed legislation called the Broadcast
Decency Enforcement Act of 2004 that
would, among other things, dramatically
increase fines for on-air indecency. The
House version of the bill passed with a
391-22 bipartisan vote. Soon the Senate
will vote on its version of the bill.
In order to close any linguistic loop
holes, the bill lists eight words and phrases
that are always punishable if broadcasted
regardless of context or grammatical form,
including "hyphenated compounds" as
well as "verb, adjective, gerund, participle
and infinitive forms."
Gerund? Where is my Diana Hacker
"Pocket Style Manual?" Let's see here... "A
gerund is a verb form ending in -ing that
functions as a..." Ah, screw it.
There are eight banned words and phras
es — words I would list here were it not for
Emerald standards. However, some of the
words are f—, s—, mother-f—er, piss, ass
hole.. Since combinations of the words are
also banned, you couldn't say "piss-hole"
or the phrase popular with the kids these
days: "mother-assing."
We should leam two lessons from this
madness. First, human beings love to
scapegoat rather than deal with real prob
lems. Instead of talking about the issues
facing America's youth, we argue about
the word "piss." Why isn't Congress deal
ing with rampant child poverty and
homelessness, lack of decent K-12 educa
tion and physical and sexual abuse? These
are the real issues, not the phrase "asshole"
on television.
The second lesson we should learn is
that we need more people under 60 in
Washington, because only somebody
completely out of touch with the 21 st cen
tury could think young people care about
the amount of bad language on TV.
How about focusing on the amount of
bad television on TV first?
Contact the columnist
at davidjagemauth@dailyemerald.com.
His opinions do not necessarily
represent those of the Emerald.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Kucinich publicity
is good thing
It's nice to see Congressman Dennis
Kucinich finally getting some much-de
served media attention ("Kucinich speaks
at LCC," ODE, March 29). From the begin
ning, truly populist and anti-war candidates
like Kucinich, if mentioned at all, were triv
ialized with labels such as "long shot,"
"dark horse" and "unelectable." Instead of
demanding fair and balanced coverage of
all their candidates, the Democratic Party
elite eagerly contributed to the media feed
ing frenzy against so-called fringe candi
dates. Likewise, Howard Dean, an early fa
vorite with voters, was systematically
drummed out after it became apparent that
he posed a threat to the status quo. Last but
not least, the party encouraged candidates
to drop out early, long before most voters
(like you and me) had a chance to express
their preference.
Obviously, the Democratic Party was
not interested in discussing issues, particu
larly divisive issues like the Iraq war and its
impact here at home, or in hearing what
its constituents' priorities were. All the
Democrats wanted was to quickly narrow
the field and start serious fundraising for
the campaign against Bush.
In such an anti-democratic environ
ment, the anointing of centrist insider
John Kerry — and the re-emergence of
Ralph Nader as a countervailing force —
should come as no surprise to anyone.
What should shake us all to the core is the
Democratic Party's taking advantage of the
"anyone but Bush" mentality to give us
"someone like Bush" in so many ways.
Mary Forthofer
Longmont, Colo.