BY BRIAN SHAW
Tip from a Waitress
An admonition to ask better questions
L
ate last month, a study conducted by the
Project on Excellence in Journalism proved
what anybody with access to the American
press already knows: Running for president is about
getting the press to focus on how you run for presi-
dent. The study found that 60 percent of stories
were on the political and tactical aspects of the
race. Recently, the press got what it had coming,
even if it won’t make any difference. A waitress in
Iowa called the media “nuts” for spending airtime
and column inches on whether or not Hillary’s cam-
paign left her a tip. “There’s kids dying in the war,
the price of oil right now — there’s better things in
this world to be thinking about than who served Hillary Clinton at Maid-Rite and
who got a tip.” Snap!
Also this month, two of the political machine’s most distinguished components
appeared to actually agree with this widely held sentiment. Lee Hamilton, the for-
mer congressman and co-chair of the 9/11 Commission, and John Bolton, former
ambassador for the Bush administration to the U.N., took the stage at Schnitzer
Concert Hall in Portland for the 25th annual Tom McCall Forum. The liberal, played
by Hamilton, and the conservative, as ren-
‘Nuclear weapons offer us dered by Bolton, agreed on two important
nothing but a balance of points: 1) We should be demanding that
for the presidency provide a
terror, and a balance of candidates
comprehensive foreign policy agenda be-
terror is still terror.’
fore anyone gets elected; and 2) nuclear
— George Wald proliferation should be at the top of the
page no matter who ends up in the oval of-
fice. But they didn’t agree on what the next president should do about it.
Hamilton held to the wisdom of diplomacy, treaties and surveillance of fissile
materials as the way to insure that our kids could plan for a long life, a fat mort-
gage and the future of their children. Bolton told us that the only way to avoid a
return to the bejesus fright that was the Cold War is to vote for somebody in 2008
who understands the necessity of pre-emptive war when dealing with nations
we’re not willing to let into the nuclear club.
After the debate, I cracked open a copy of journalist and media critic Norman
Solomon’s new book, Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s
Warfare State. Given what I had just heard, a harrowing line jumped out, “I think
that what we are up against is a generation that is by no means sure that it has a
future.” It comes from George Wald, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist. Wald’s is a
frightening idea because it touches uncomfortable truths. It’s easier never to
speak the names of global conditions that render parents helpless, and children,
not yet fools, hardened and dark. Having just heard radically different visions of
what should be done about the insidious expansion of nuclear weapons, I found
the line an appropriate caption to either. Given that Wald was speaking in 1969, it’s
hard not to wonder if the horse race reporting on presidential politics, this prac-
ticed ignorance of how the candidates see the future, is the evolution of nearly
two generations who accept that they won’t have one.
T
he view from the current generation is clearly rendered by another Wald
quote: “Nuclear weapons offer us nothing but a balance of terror, and a
balance of terror is still terror.” Consider the teetering scales we now
know. Bolton understands how much trickier things are nowadays. But the nature
of his remarks throughout the debate suggested he was serving not the god of
high analysis but the chances of victory for Republican X in the general election
(he has, after all, gone back to work for the American Enterprise Institute). Frankly,
I’m surprised he hasn’t come up with logic that’s a little less tortured. He describes
a long list of bad actors, both sinister nation states and nonstate evildoers, which o
his mind suggests a foreign policy of shoot first and threaten somebody else later.
But he ignores that the Cold War’s mutually assured destruction was, by compari-
son, a stable scenario. To be fair, he accepts retaining diplomacy and international
agreements on the list of options. But he appears comfortable abandoning these
less violent methods when their success is not quick and absolute.
This is why it is so important that we take the message of a waitress from Iowa
and demand that the media cover presidential issues more important than the
generosity of campaign staffs. Its also why we should take Bolton’s advice to de-
mand that a candidate’s foreign policy is clearly understood before the primaries,
let alone the general election. Because it is altogether possible that if we don’t, the
next president will be taking Bolton’s advice on how to conduct that foreign policy.
Brian Shaw is a journalist and the director of Town Hall Media, radiotownhall.com
4 NOVEMBER 21, 2007
TO THE EDITOR
NAYSAYERS HAD IT RIGHT
Contrary to Isabell Norman’s Nov. 9
letter, defeating Measure 134 actually said
“hello” to meaningful downtown develop-
ment. I just returned from Ft. Collins,
Colo., a town close in size to Eugene and
home of Colorado State University. I found
a vibrant and active downtown filled with
locally owned restaurants, bars, boutiques,
antique stores, etc. — all thriving without
the aid of big-city developers and national
chains. Ft. Collins did not require large-
scale plans, motivated by huge tax breaks,
to create an environment that appeals to
their citizens.
Eugene has made numerous mistakes in
the past, rushing to transform the down-
town area into … who knows what, to
serve who knows what purposes. This
city has all the creative resources neces-
sary to develop our own downtown envi-
ronment, suited to our own needs. What we
need is good central coordination and tax
incentives for “local” entrepreneurs that
will provide support until people are drawn
back into the center of the city for food, en-
tertainment, shopping, etc.
That famous line, “If you build it, they
will come,” holds true here. Yes, it will
take time, but slow development will not
be as disruptive, will provide more local
input and will allow more selective and
healthy growth of our city.
Neal Miller
Eugene
GIVE US OUR LANE
On Saturday, Nov. 10, I was innocently
biking on Willamette (going south between
24th and 29th) when I was accosted by a
woman in a huge black SUV telling me to
“get the fuck out of the road.” I am so sick
of this behavior. Before you verbally attack
an innocent cyclist, why don’t you educate
yourself on the rules that you and your
hideous gas-guzzling SUV are breaking.
When there is not a bike lane in Eugene,
bikers are allowed a full lane. Not half of a
lane. Not a third of a lane. Not a teeny por-
tion all the way to the right of a lane filled
with potholes, twigs and rocks. A full lane.
So give us our lane.
It’s your fault I am stubbornly biking,
anyway. I am trying to counteract the detri-
mental effects your vehicle has on my en-
vironment.
So how about you “get the fuck” out of
your car and start making a difference.
Christelle Munnelly
Eugene
ADS DO THE JOB
It’s not the cookies that made me fat, or
the steaks that gave me a heart attack — it
was my “lifestyle of eating.” How idiotic
does that sound? About as idiotic as saying
it’s not the meth that ruins people’s teeth,
it’s the “lifestyle.” Chris Fanshier’s letter
(11/8) concerned me: While on the way to
said eateries, was this person walking,
driving or biking with their eyes
CLOSED? I see a lot of those scarred, de-
crepit women cowering in dark corners, all
over town. Maybe they’re easier to ignore
in person than in print.
This month, I have been four years
clean and sober. And I’ll tell you, I don’t
give a rat’s patoot if it was technically the
“chemical makeup” of meth or the lifestyle
that destroyed my teeth, neurons and part
of my soul. I just know it’s expensive,
time-consuming and frightening trying to
heal, to get them back.
If these ads are grossing people out,
they’re doing their job. Shine some light
on those scratches, scabs, dying eyes and
dark corners — maybe we can keep more
folks out of them.
Thank you for running these ads, and I
hope you continue them.
Sarah Stevens
Eugene
UNNATURAL GROWTH
As an ecologist with 15 years experi-
ence restoring forestlands, I find Tim
Hermach’s “one size fits all” views on