Friendly Fire

War of Words

2008-07-08T21:07:58Z

A "clash of civilizations" could become self-fulfilling prophecy, especially as politicians and partisan pundits use anger at Muslims to redirect attention from domestic failings. Americans and the Muslim world are polarizing increasingly. Consider the manner in which Investor's Business Daily (subscription only) subtly conflates "Muslims" and "enemies" in a July 3, 2008 editorial on Pakistan and Pervez Musharraf:

Rewind to 9/11 and imagine the strongman of a Muslim country sheltering bin Laden and dictating to the White House the terms of how we can bring him to justice... If we were reliving those raw days -- back when we were still pulling bodies from Ground Zero -- we would justifiably tell this Muslim leader to stand aside while we invade the territory where our enemy's holed up. And we would withdraw not a moment before we flushed him out of hiding and put his head on a pike... Ultimately, the commander-in-chief must decide who's running this war against Muslim terrorists -- him or a Muslim general.

Imagine if the word "Muslim" were replaced above by "black" or "Jewish" -- you would find it hard to believe that the writer would escape a sharp rebuke.

This piece also shows that the newspaper's editorial board is obviously unaware that Musharraf resigned from the army more than six months ago; and the piece revealed great ignorance on many other issues too. I wish that they would all sit down to carefully read Steve Coll's Ghost Wars before they attempt to make sense of who caused what in that part of the world.

Seeing Green

2008-07-07T23:07:22Z

Building green has struck a chord with college students across the board. Thus, it's only natural that university campuses and officials follow suit.

The University of California system instituted a policy in 2004 mandating that all new and renovated buildings be eco-friendly, and has subsequently saved up to $5 million. The Los Angeles Community College District is currently undergoing its "Go Green LACCD" program, designed to construct 40 buildings and facilities that will employ only renewable energy. And nearby Santa Clarita University utilizes natural ventilation in one of its buildings: the floors are raised 14 inches above the ground to encourage air circulation through yarn carpet-tile floors, and the building also includes a glass "solar chimney."

Indeed, California universities and campuses throughout the nation (including University of Michigan and Warren Wilson College in North Carolina) are jumping at the opportunity to build green, eco-friendly and energy-efficient dorms and facilities. The Green Building Council has even developed the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification system to measure their progress.

My home turf, UCLA, has been recognized for its LEED-approved science building, La Kretz Hall, and is currently in the process of renovating one of its dorm buildings along those same guidelines. Last quarter, my history professor, Scott Bartchy, discussed how he designed his sustainable and energy-efficient house in Ventura County, utilizing architecture for solar heating and natural air-circulation cooling.

It's a strange and recent phenomenon that "going green" has become such a hot topic among college students. Perhaps we're simply trying to mimic the social revolutionary fervor of our parents' generation, and we're scrambling to institute some type of lasting change - whether that change be social, political or environmental. Perhaps it's because environmental studies has now become effortlessly ingrained into our traditional education - often allowing students the option to replace their standard Biology or Chemistry classes with green education. Or perhaps this is just a sign of the modern age: we've come to the realization that the energy resources and raw materials of our parents' generation will not be readily available to us in the future, and it's simply time for us to adjust.

Whatever the reason may be, I am overwhelmingly impressed by how my generation is responding to the green movement. Recently, UCLA students passed The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF) referendum, which would raise student fees by $4 every quarter to fund student-led environmental projects. And while this post may come off as extremely wide-eyed and hopeful for the future, it's comforting to know that my peers are responding to some issue - any issue - that impacts us on the global scale.

Interesting links:

Go Green LACCD

California Energy Commission

UC Ranked Top Green Public System

The Green Initiative Fund

My professor's eco-friendly house

Global Warming -- SOLVED!

2008-07-07T20:39:05Z

I don't know why I get letters like these, but alas, I do. From today's inbox:

Chris, I am an 88 year old man and I am trying to write a book relating to global warming but I have not been able to find out what the height and position of the pollution belt is. I am very concerned about the effect the pollution is having on the Earth. I need that information because of the two possible solutions I have for eliminating the pollution belt. The first is to fly space ships through the belt with collecter devises that would pick up the pollution. I need that information because I am not sure if the space ships could fly at that elevation. My second idea is to explode an atomic bomb in the pollution and the chain reaction would destroy the pollution. BUT I do not know the height of the belt and do not know if the radiation fall out from the bomb would contaminate the Earth. I would appreciate it if you could help me in any way to find that information.
--Name and withheld to protect the well-meaning but frighteningly delusional

Obama Never, Ever Said No to Bush on Iraq

2008-07-07T20:23:45Z

"Let me be clear: There is no military solution in Iraq and there never was. The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq's leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year -- now."
Senator Barack Obama said that on December 12, 2007 in a speech in Clinton, Iowa. At the time he was still one of the pack of Democratic presidential candidates jostling and elbowing trying to get a knock out edge over the others for the Democratic presidential nomination. That included first and foremost Hillary Clinton. He mercilessly pounded her then and afterwards in speeches for backing the war and dutifully voting for war appropriations.

Nine months later things had radically changed. Obama was no longer jostling with Hillary and the others for the top Democratic presidential nominee spot. He was now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and he said this: "I have always said I would listen to the commanders on the ground. I have always said that the pace of withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability. That assessment has not changed.

His very public record of his very public pledge to end the war NOW in stump speeches the year before he said that had changed, and his words and voting record on the war had changed too. This has caused much grief, anguish and disappointment among fervent Obama backers. The war was the single biggest reason why many of them bought his sale that as president he would do what no other Democrat or Republican in the White House would do and that was to immediately end the war. That was more than enough for them to flock to his banner, lustily cheer him on, and furiously hector anyone who dared poke at his twists, turns, shifts, and deep knee bends on Iraq.

But even the most cursory look at Obama's words, votes, and campaign pirouettes on Iraq paint a far different picture of a candidate for which Iraq was never the clear cut issue that many believed, or maybe wanted to believe. The Iraq flips started long before his Iowa pledge to get out now. It started even before he was in the Senate. At a Democratic forum outside Chicago during his Senate campaign in 2003 and 2004, Obama lambasted Bush for waging the war. He flatly said that if he had been in the Senate he would not have voted for $87 billion more to bankroll the war. Or, as he put it in an earlier speech, we have to say 'no' to George Bush." Once in the Senate that no quickly became yes.

He promptly voted for four separate war appropriations that totaled more than $300 billion. A year before he pledged in Iowa to get the troops out now, he opposed a proposal by Senator John F. Kerry to withdraw most combat troops from Iraq by July 2007. Obama didn't just cast a quiet vote against Kerry's troop removal proposal he added the veiled chastisement that an "arbitrary deadline" could "compound" the Bush administration's mistake. A year later he joined with Republicans and backed their resolution that the Senate would not cut off funding for troops in Iraq.

But money and votes aren't the only issue in which Obama sent a different message then the impassioned get out of Iraq now speeches he still thundered before audiences. The other issue was when to withdraw. Obama backed up his end the war now rhetoric with another public demand that a firm timetable be set for withdrawal. In fact, a timetable with a specific withdrawal date was set by a Democratic senator. But that senator wasn't Obama. It was Kerry. His bill set the goal of withdrawing combat troops from Iraq by the end of March 2008. In contrast, Obama's withdrawal plan did not set firm deadlines and would keep troops in Iraq if the Bush administration and the Iraqi government met a laundry list of benchmarks.

March has long since passed, the troops are still there and big buck spending with the Senate's approval continues with no visible end in sight to it.

Meanwhile Obama has added yet another wrinkle to his Iraq drama and that's that he'll go to Iraq and listen to what the commanders on the ground and military brass there have to say about where we need to go with the war.

This sounds less like the hard line one time verbal antiwar advocate named Obama speaking then a certain Republican presidential rival named McCain speaking. But then again Obama has been consistent from the start on one thing on Iraq and that's political expediency.

Incidentally, some things at least rhetorically don't change. An excerpt of Obama's Iraq antiwar speech (cleansed of his Iraq war removal now call) is still on his official website. http://www.barackobama.com/issues/iraq/

Go-C Wall-E

2008-07-06T05:16:29Z

Bored already this holiday weekend? Make it a point to see Wall-E, Pixar's latest neo-animation instant classic. Wall-E is a quasi-Luddite affair, an ironic but skillful use of groundbreaking cinematic technology to warn us about the dangers of this very technology. Indeed, it uses technology to caution us about technology better than any less technological vehicle could have done.

The movie observes how we "inhabit" a world in which we can customize our environment exactly to our liking, to the point that we neglect our actual environment and our actual community of human beings.

I saw that lesson displayed before even the opening previews, as the man ahead of me in line yammered on the phone, oblivious to most everything beyond his phone call. He initially requested two tickets for Hancock. When informed by the cashier that the movie hadn't opened yet, he and his date slowly scanned the list of movies as though they were the only people in line. All the while, the man focused mainly on carrying on his conversation with the disembodied voice brought to him by Verizon; the movie cashier may as well have been Wall-E the robot.

Once inside, the movie proceeded to reveal what happens when you take such a technological development to its not-so-natural conclusion. Watch it and think anew about our new virtual world, in which it is so easy to shut out the real world, thanks to iPhones, iPods and a growing willingness to treat the people around us as though they were machines.

McCain Has One Chance to Match Obama With The Media, Do a Rap Duet with Shaq

2008-07-02T15:07:04Z

Sorry Bridget, the media hasn't been fair to anything but profit and sensationalism since Congress went along with Reagan's dump of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. Since then the public, and yes voters, have been fed a steady diet of Britney, Lohan, Paris, celebrity chit chat, murder, rapes, fires, floods, disasters, car chases, brain dead, unfunny sitcoms, anything but reality shows, miles of blaring commercials and endless heated debate over political fluff (Hillary's hemline, Obama-Michelle's fist bump, Edwards $400 hair cuts, McCain's hot temper). This is what purports to pass as intelligent, reasoned, discussion of the issues.

Don't kid yourself Obama is only getting the overkill media attention because he's a political oddity. He's a young, black, hip-hop looking presidential candidate who can play basketball and dance. In short, he's tailor made copy for the stuff that the media has feasted off of since the dump of the FD. McCain has one chance to equalize things with Obama. Do a rap duet with Shaq.

The MSM Is Unfair -- Get Over It.

2008-07-02T00:29:16Z

It's true, as Mariel notes, that there's no conspiracy among MSM types, but that doesn't mean there isn't a bias -- shared attitudes and values among a class that's rather politically and culturally homogenous. That bias has come out in some of the breathless pro-Obama coverage we've seen this year.

While Jonathan's right that some pundits have griped about Obama's shifting positions, that's different from the reporting about him, which has bordered on hagiography.

No, Bridget, McCain won't get fair treatment from the MSM. But then, presidential candidates who whine about the media -- see Clinton, Bill and Hillary -- remind me of sad-sap sports fans who complain about the referees. Life's not fair, get over it.

Presidential campaigns have an army of consultants and millions of dollars to get out their message. If McCain proves unable to do that, it will be nobody's fault but his own.

Amusing ourselves to political death

2008-07-02T00:04:53Z

Bridget raises a valid point about how we tend to focus too much on the wrong things. But I disagree with her diagnosis and prescription.

Most journalists are indeed liberal, as surveys indicate. But the media's tilt in its coverage is not toward liberal orthodoxy, it is toward trivia and titillation. Fixations on Rev. Wright and flag pins hardly signify an unfair tilt to Obama. Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business has proven, 23 years after its publication, to still be the best analysis yet of how politics, religion and education all now worship at the altar of entertainment.

I also doubt that Americans want constant policy comparisons and endless debates. They claim to care rather about testing a candidate's general character and vision -- while actually paying attention only to scandal and gossip. This, not an ideological unfairness, is what fuels the media engine in our day.

Press Bias for Drama & Farce

2008-07-01T23:54:57Z

The press is unfair? True. They love Obama and ignore or criticize McCain? Unsurprisingly, I see the coverage skewed in exactly the opposite way from Bridget.

Obama moves to the middle on Faith Based initiatives, FISA and endorses the Supreme Court's decision throwing out gun ban in DC. These are covered in detail and with some hysterical concern that he is "diluting his brand" and could lose his core supporters--the true believers. (Okay I'm one hysterical core supporter).

McCain gets a pass on reversing positions on torture of prisoners, off-shore drilling, warrantless wiretaps, Veteran benefits and the eponymous McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill--that he introduced before he was against it.

The press, in general, like McCain and his accessibility. Obama has the energy, but his people tightly control access. This, the press doesn't like.

Substance? Never, when gotchas and gaffs grab more eyes.

The Young and the Restless

2008-07-01T23:51:13Z

I think Bridget brings up a good point about journalistic equity and integrity when covering the 2008 elections. In theory, there would be equal news coverage for both Obama and McCain, but the reality is that the way we get the news today is leaning more toward Obama's direction. And by "we" I'm referring to my generation--the one with the short attention span, and the detrimental ability to feverishly multitask.

But that's not to say it's all good press. Most of my peers and I get our news from campus newspapers or news search engines like Google. And those sources tend to highlight the news with the greatest hits (i.e. the greatest drama). Lately, the buzz about Barack Obama involves his wife, Michelle.

Michelle Obama has become the Jane Fonda of the '08 Elections - she says what she thinks in order to create the greatest shock value. Everything from her comments on American patriotism, her wardrobe choices (gossip websites predict her to be "the next Jackie O"), and her appearance on The View have added to the entire political frenzy surrounding her husband - the biggest draw is that these stories usually have absolutely nothing to do with politics, and are sometimes completely unrelated to Barack Obama.

I see the bias, and hopefully it will calm down now that Obama is the definite Democratic candidate for '08. But, until then, the media frenzy could work to Obama's career advantage, especially among the teenage-to-mid-twenties demographic.

Hey, it worked for Paris Hilton.

Bias, or fickleness and laziness?

2008-07-01T23:16:34Z

Bridget wonders if there will be fair coverage in the Obama-McCain race. I say, it depends on your definition of "fair."

I'm always amused when people see vast conspiracies is media coverage, as if there's some daily memo from "them" that goes out to all the mainstream media people saying what we're going to write about. As if we could be that organized!

The truth is that what so many people chalk up to institutional bias is more about institutional laziness and fickleness. So many of the stories are the ones that are easy and sexy (politically speaking). And if Obama is doing/saying something sexy enough to write an easy Page 1 story, he gets the coverage. Same goes for McCain. We journalists are a fairly simple people.

Does this all translate to fair coverage? Not in the sense of same amount of words or news play every day. But it's fair in the sense that we don't discriminate against anyone who wants to make sexy news that's easy to write and get us good play. Honestly, it's not all that different from reality TV programs like "American Idol." Who gets the best press? The weirdos, the loudmouths and the winners -- not the talented.

Fair coverage, or same ol' bias?

2008-07-01T21:40:21Z

For the past few months, the news from the campaign trail has been focused on the photo finish in the Democratic Party. But now that it's just down to Barack Obama and John McCain, will the media coverage even out as it should?

Don't count on it. Obama's every move still grabs enthusiastic top billing. When McCain does make the headlines, it's usually hinged to Obama's latest move, like Obama responding to a McCain policy point or statement that didn't make page one in the first place.

We're past the point of gushing about sunny hope, inspired youths and vague promises of undefined change. We need a stark comparison of the candidates' platforms. Voters might see a clearer picture if Obama had agreed to the nine other town-hall meetings proposed by McCain, but in an ethical world the media should be bringing to the people the equitable coverage and unbiased reporting that would truly aid in making an educated ballot decision.

Did Bubba Go All Shaq on Obama?

2008-07-01T16:57:20Z

On the way into work this morning, I heard reports on the radio that Bill Clinton had said Barack Obama would have to "kiss my ass" if he wanted the former president's help in the campaign. And immediately, all I could think of was Bill taking the place of Shaq up at the microphone in that infamous rap ...

"Hillary can't do it without me; Hillary can't do it without me; Hillary can't do it without me. Hey Barack, tell me how my @$$ tastes ... "

Alas, as they say, if a story is too good to be true, it usually is. Turns out the source was the British press -- always a red flag. And if you read the story, it's a quote of an anonymous source quoting another anonymous source supposedly quoting Bill. Which is to say, this story ain't worth the paper it's printed on.

Still, the also anonymously sourced Clinton denial of the story has some comedic value. Bill's defense, reportedly, is that he doesn't talk that way.

Funny, that's not how Paula Jones remembers things ...

Comings and Goings

2008-06-30T20:42:22Z

Just wanted to welcome the Daily News editorial intern, Lina Chung. Lina is a junior at at UCLA, and she'll be with us all summer. Welcome!

And, with a heavy heart, I report that Bridget Johnson won't be with us much longer. Bridget is leaving Southern California to become an editorial board member/writer, columnist, and online opinion editor at Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colo. Bon Voyage, Bridget -- and good luck!

About Lina Chung

2008-06-30T19:50:37Z

Lina Chung is an editorial intern for the Daily News. She is currently a third-year undergraduate student at UCLA, studying History and Art History. She is also a columnist for UCLA's Daily Bruin, and focuses on local environmental issues that affect the greater Los Angeles area.