This week I ran into an unfamiliar problem. During my usual search through my favorite Internet sites, I couldn’t find a news story that evoked a strong enough opinion from me to warrant an article. Maybe it was a slow week for news or a bad week for me, but I couldn’t find a topic that deserved my full attention. So instead of a column with one main topic, here’s a column with a lot of little topics. Enjoy.
Who is the most powerful man in America? It’s not President Bush, it’s Vince McMahon. Why? Because he beat Ted Turner. Two weeks ago, McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation(WWF) bought World Championship Wrestling(WCW) from AOL/Time Warner. In the mid-’80s, Turner wanted to buy the WWF from McMahon, but McMahon refused. So in 1988, Turner formed WCW to put McMahon out of business. After a few turbulent years, the WWF emerged as the leader in sports entertainment while WCW lost $80 million for AOL/Time Warner last year. Vince McMahon beat Ted Turner. How many people can say they did that?
I’ve made it no secret that I don’t like President Bush and recently he’s given me a whole new reason to despise him: his disregard of the environment.
Recently he opposed the Kyoto protocol to decrease the emission of gases that cause global warming, citing the “incomplete state of scientific knowledge of the causes of, and solutions to, global climate change.” I guess President Bush thinks the greenhouse effect is an old wives’ tale cooked up by those nutty scientists in their fancy labs to scare his big corporate friends into caring about the planet. I wonder how the President feels about those other myths like evolution and thunder not being caused by God bowling.
Along with eliminating the limit on how much arsenic can be in your drinking water, Bush also wants to build roads in our national forests. I wasn’t aware that we had a shortage of roads in this country. Of course, those roads will be useless if the American people can’t buy cars because of the failing economy.
I’m not surprised by this. Bush got elected because of daddy and his rich, corporate friends. He’s showing his thanks to his supporters from the oil and timber companies by allowing them to keep destroying our planet. Next on the Bush agenda is probably corporate sponsorship of states. I can see the sign on the highway: “Welcome to California, sponsored by Exxon.”
The scariest people in the world aren’t psycho killers or crack heads, they are people who are fundamentally religious. And even scarier is the fact that a lot of them are in this country and they have their own colleges.
Ever heard of Bob Jones University? Think of it as Afghanistan for Christians. They have mandatory lights out at 11pm and wake-up time at 6:55am. Women must wear dresses below the knee and men have to wear ties until lunchtime. You need written permission to leave campus and you need permission from the Dean to go on a date with a member of the opposite sex, and if that date is off-campus you need a chaperone. Interracial dating used to be outlawed, but now you need a note from your parents. Your dorm room gets inspected every morning to see that it is clean and your bed is properly made and there’s a white glove inspection once a month. The rules there are so strict that even drinking milk can get you in trouble.
Even scarier is the alumni of BJU that the university is proud of and politicians who have visited BJU. Evangelist Billy Graham is a BJU alum as is the Rev. Fred Phelps who runs www.godhatesfags.com. Attorney General John Ashcroft has an honorary degree from BJU and President Bush stopped there during his campaign to rally conservatives behind him. Does anyone else think we’re in trouble here?
But what scares me the most is that people go there voluntarily. These are probably the same people who believe rock music contributes to the erosion of morals.
I’d like to return to a subject that I haven’t touched in a long time: Cabrini. First, I read that Cabrini was not going to kick seniors off-campus, but then I saw that if you had more than 90 credits, you weren’t eligible for housing. But to be considered a senior, you have to have over 89.5 credits. So if you’re trying to graduate from Cabrini in four years, you need to average about 15 credits a semester. So if you want to get ahead of the game by taking more than 15 credits a semester, you’re going to be punished for your scholarly efforts by being denied housing (unless you convince Residence Life with a little song and dance about why you should stay on campus). Cabrini loves students on the five-year plan. That’s another semester’s worth of tuition going to the college.
I don’t know why Cabrini seems to hate its seniors. I would think that a college would want to make sure its future alumni and future donators happy, especially in the most memorable year of their collegiate career. That doesn’t sound like good business to me.
Lastly, I’d like to talk about my time as Perspectives editor. Aside from the deadlines and rare squabbles about content, the thing that irritates me the most about my job is the lack of letters to the editor that I get. I know people get angry about things I write and I know people disagree with my opinions. But where are the letters of dissent? Where are the letters disagreeing with me? I write a column wanting to ban the Bible, no response. I write a column about banning religion, I get a response from one Loquitur staff member who got tired of me complaining about no one contesting my views. I write about how I don’t mind school shootings, an article I know made people livid, I get one response and it was from Perspectives regular Chris Nielsen, who is second behind me in the amount Perspectives articles written this year. It’s almost as if no one wants to oppose my views. Is it because I’m right and everyone agrees with me? Is it because people are afraid to differ with me? Somebody tell me.
