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PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, JUNE 9, 2017 KeizerOpinion KEIZERTIMES.COM Do no harm To the Class of 2017: The easy part is over. People will say that if you can get through high school, you’re set. Except for college. Except for a job and a career. Graduates in every genera- tion say the same thing: “I’m glad high school is over.” Yet, many people say they remember their high school days fondly—the structure, the friends, the sports, the activities. All of that without thinking much about how it is all paid for. If you paid attention to your stud- ies you have exited high school with a solid base of education that will serve you well as you enter your col- lege days. For those foregoing further education in favor of the military or directly into the job market, your education will serve you well, also. One of the key lessons you learned through the past 12 years of school- ing is how to treat people, how to so- cialize with others. That’s important because the world is full of people. You will meet people at college, at work, in the military, on a mission. How you deal with other people will have a huge impact on your suc- cess. The Golden Rule may sound trite but it has always been true: when you treat others well, you will be treated well in return. Be polite. Don’t be nasty. Be helpful. Don’t be selfi sh. You know the rules, practice them out in the real world—the pay- off will be amazing. The world you entered at birth is so much different than the world you enter out of school. Everything seemed to be so innocent back when you were a baby. Ask your parents and grandpar- ents—they’ll agree. You are a generation that lives in a world in which terrorist attacks are common occurances. Terrorism can hit home (as the attack on Port- land’s MAX train last month attests), but for most of you terrorism is an item in the news—if you pay atten- tion to the news. You are joinng millions of others who are taking their fi rst steps into a post-primary education life. That life will include making good decisions for yourself and others. Too many bad decisons are fueled by alcohol and the mob mentality. Just this week Harvard University rescinded the ac- ceptance of 10 incoming freshman for exchanging obscene and racist Facebook posts. There is nothing so promising as a high school graduating class that en- ters the world. Everything is possible, there are rules and boundaries to test and stretch. The same ol’ doesn’t have to continue to be the same ol’. It is within your power to control the destiny of the planet you will inherit. And even if you are not going into medical school take a lesson from Hippocrates: Do no harm. —LAZ editorial A razor and an iron By LYNDON ZAITZ I come from a customer service background, primarily in food and beverage. Restaurant companies are serious when it comes to not only the cleanliness of their shops but also a clean, presentable staff. Companies in the 1970s and 1980s had dress and grooming guidelines. If you wanted a job you wore the uniform or you cut your hair or you covered your tattoos. A number of high profi le court cases put the scotch on such rules. And it shows these days. Far from a crotchedy ol’ man, I fi nd myself railing (in my mind) against the standards so many businesses seem to have adopted these days when it comes to how they allow their em- ployees to appear. Back in the 1960s parents and older people wanted to chase after and cut the ‘hippie’ hair of kids. Meh...hair styles come and go. I fi nd I want to chase after employees with a razor. I think to myself: commit to a beard fully or drop the whole thing and shave. The employee with a quarter inch, spotty beard, is a not a paragon of fashion or hipness in my book. Not every person who can grow some hair on their face should have a beard; mostly it just looks unkempt and sends a message that they don’t much care about personal grooming. I also fi nd myself wanting to chase after some of the employees I see working in custom- er service with a good steam iron. Wrinkles equal carelessness. I understand an em- ployee guidebook that allows beards, but I don’t understand where—in any employee manual— that it is perfectly acceptable to look like a slob. Wearing casual clothes when one works at Google or Uber is fi ne, wearing wrinkled clothes while serving fast food or working in a deli is quite another. Can the managers of the world tighten up their grooming standards? Please? on my mind (Lyndon Zaitz is publisher of the Keizertimes.) Backlash builds against Griffi n By DEBRA SAUNDERS By mid-week last week, comedian Kathy Griffi n had apologized for pos- ing for a photo with what looked like the blood-soaked decapitated head of President Donald Trump. “I went too far,” she said in a con- trite follow-up video. “I sincerely apologize.” But it was too late. Squatty Potty CEO Bobby Edwards announced that it was suspending an ad campaign featuring Griffi n as the Utah-based bath- room-stool company saw the stunt as “deeply inap- propriate” and “contrary to the core values our company stands for.” CNN also announced it was termi- nating Griffi n’s appearance on its New Year’s show, after earlier criticizing the photos as “disgusting and offensive.” Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., still planned to appear with Griffi n on a tour to promote his new book, Al Franken: Giant of the Senate. Franken called the photo shoot “a horrible mistake,” but said “she did the right thing asking for forgiveness.” The question is: What ever made Griffi n and photographer Tyler Shields think that it was acceptable, or even funny, for Griffi n to pose as an Islamic State terrorist would, hold- ing what looked to be the hacked-off head of a U.S. president? It is clear that the photo—posted earlier on TMZ—was not a sponta- neous gaffe. Griffi n and Shields pro- duced a video about the production in which Griffi n joked, “We have to go to Mexico. Because we’re going to prison, federal prison.” Radio talk show host Rush Lim- baugh likened the video to “the po- litical assassination of Donald Trump.” Tweeting Wednesday morn- ing, Trump said Griffi n “should be ashamed of herself ” for the photo. “My children, especially my 11-year- old son, Barron, are having a hard time with this. Sick!” And fi rst lady Mela- nia Trump issued a state- ment in which she said, “As a mother, a wife, and a human being, that photo is very disturb- ing. When you consider some of the atrocities happening in the world today, a photo opportunity like this is simply wrong and makes you wonder about the mental health of the person who did it.” Many conservatives believe left- leaning Hollywood has two standards one for Democrats who always are victims, and another for conservatives who get what’s coming to them. “Clearly there is a history of the Hollywood left feeling emboldened to make outrageous statements about conservatives,” former GOP strategist Alice Stewart observed. Stewart said she believes in free speech, but she also believes in con- sequences. She applauded Griffi n for apologizing and “my employer CNN for canceling her contract for New Year’s Eve.” When British fi lmmaker Gabriel Range made a movie about the as- sassination of George W. Bush during a 2007 trip to Chicago, he won an award. Then the fantasy of assassinat- ing a president was art, as Griffi n de- scribed her photo shoot. But when Republicans target other views Democrats in less direct fashion, they can be accused of inciting violence. Griffi n herself assailed former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Pal- in for releasing a map with targeted congressional districts in crosshairs. When a madman shot and critically wounded Rep. Gabby Giffords, D- Ariz., whose district was in the map, Griffi n tweeted, “Happy now Sarah?” Democratic strategist Maria Car- dona saw no need to condemn Grif- fi n. “Frankly I don’t think she mat- ters,” the CNN contributor wrote in an email. “I think Trump made a mis- take in responding to her because it elevated her and her disgusting antic to a level she doesn’t deserve. And sure, hypocrisy abounds on both sides. Ted Nugent threatened President Obama’s life and Nugent was invited by Trump to the White House.” In 2012, Nugent, a gun-rights ac- tivist, said Republicans “should ride into that battlefi eld and chop (Demo- crats’) heads off in November.” Comedian Will Durst took time off from working on Durst Case Scenario, his one-man show about Trump, to comment on the Griffi n controversy. “You know Kathy Griffi n is taste- less,” said Durst, who nonetheless re- fused to condemn her. “The guy who she is mocking and scoffi ng,” he said, has “laid a base of attack and bluster and baseless claims, so it’s a whole dif- ferent playing fi eld.” Former fi rst daughter Chelsea Clinton was not as understanding. “I hope we can at least agree that it’s never funny to joke about violence toward anyone, and particularly in this politically charged moment, toward our president,” she told “The View.” (Creators Syndicate) Exit from Paris climate accord is wrong Give or take a year or two, the In- dustrial Revolution began in earnest in Great Britain during the last decade of the 18th century. So, a mere 227 years ago on planet Earth, a relatively small-sized but somewhat unique, rocky world circling a comparatively small star at 4.5 billion years of age, the human species started to add signifi cantly to natural- ly-occurring air, water and soil contaminants, rendering them often-dangerous to the health, even survival, of many living creatures. Then, in the waning years of the last century (mainly the 1980s), hu- mankind began to notice that human activity was causing so much pollu- tion in every way that it was calculated as inevitable that, should the waste and wantonness continue, there’d be no certainty the planet would, before long, due to climate change and a mul- titude of other threatening conditions, allow its “smartest” species to survive, homo sapiens dating back by fossil- fi nds some 200,000 years. Down close to the present time, there have been fi ts and starts among the nations of the world to try to bring to a halt, or even, if possible, to re- verse, the serious threat to the air, wa- ter and soil for plants and animals on the planet. This concern resulted in the Paris climate agreement, co-signed and adopted by 195 nations on Decem- ber 12, 2015, to mitigate and control greenhouse gasses, scheduled to offi - cially get underway in 2020. Now, President Trump has an- nounced that the U.S. will with- draw from the agreement, joining Nicaragua and Syria, originally unable to sign. However, the nuts and bolts of the agreement, more accurately the money and power behind its rejec- tion here, have most to do with the fact that America’s powerful corpora- tions and super wealthy multi-national business interests, who can make or break Trump fi nancially, are those to whom Trump now bows. American bil- lionaires like Carl Icahn and the Koch Brothers can’t wait for the Trump administration to gut cli- mate and pollution con- trols at home and abandon international sanctions abroad so they can get back to drilling wherever they please for crude oil and other fossil fu- els currently restrained by some envi- ronmental regulations. Meanwhile, Trump supporters, his “core base” of voters who seem always to agree with him, commonly believe he’s pulling out of the climate pact because he believes climate science is a Chinese hoax. These same folks, in- cluding coal miners, oil-drilling rough- necks and others in declining blue col- lar American industries, view him as working in their interest to place them back to their f o r m e r jobs. What’s going on here in em- ployment oppor tuni- ties, however, now and into the fore- seeable fu- ture, look to disap- point many of those for whom T r u m p made prom- guest column Keizertimes Wheatland Publishing Corp. • 142 Chemawa Road N. • Keizer, Oregon 97303 phone: 503.390.1051 • web: www.keizertimes.com • email: kt@keizertimes.com SUBSCRIPTIONS MANAGING EDITOR Eric A. Howald editor@keizertimes.com ASSOCIATE EDITOR Derek Wiley news@keizertimes.com One year: $25 in Marion County, $33 outside Marion County, $45 outside Oregon PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY ADVERTISING Publication No: USPS 679-430 Paula Moseley advertising@keizertimes.com POSTMASTER Send address changes to: PRODUCTION MANAGER Andrew Jackson Keizertimes Circulation graphics@keizertimes.com 142 Chemawa Road N. LEGAL NOTICES Keizer, OR 97303 legals@keizertimes.com EDITOR & PUBLISHER Lyndon Zaitz publisher@keizertimes.com BUSINESS MANAGER Laurie Painter billing@keizertimes.com Periodical postage paid at Salem, Oregon RECEPTION Lori Beyeler facebook.com/keizertimes twitter.com/keizertimes ises. Meanwhile, serious persons seek- ing real work futures are advised to study U.S. labor market information and thereby seek education and train- ing in career-vocational-technical schools and programs. The sovereignty and cohesion of America has been threatened mul- tiple times but appear at present under greater strain from within and outside than ever before. Ripping up a global climate agreement fulfi lls the aspira- tions and determinations of the cor- porate interests and wealthy entrepre- neurs among us whose apparent need to make more and more money trumps all other considerations. In the mean time, the masses want to protect their loved ones from a planet gone totally- exploited for the sake of big bucks, with no care for the continuation of a livable world. (Gene H. McIntyre lives in Keizer.) Share your opinion Email a letter to the editor (300 words) by noon Tuesday. Email to: publisher@keizertimes.com
