Matt Ortega

How someone could back up the comments of Bill Bennett is beyond me. I was surprised that people in the mainstream media attempted to do so (Fox News anchorman Brit “The only black people I see are on TV” Hume). However, Scott Patterson’s recent column “Bennett owes no apology” did just that.

Bill Bennett served as the secretary of education under President Reagan from 1985 until his resignation in 1988, and often ridiculed (heaven forbid) multicultural courses. In the conversation, which Bennett describes as a “thought experiment about public policy on national radio,” he was speaking with a caller about abortion and lost revenue from the aborted babies, who in life would have become consumers and eventually taxpayers.

He and the caller hypothesized about it, “assuming they were all productive” (i.e. did not sponge off the government). Bennett asked the caller about the “disproportionate” occurrence of abortions with single mothers. However, one could not link all single mothers to poverty, but that “fact” is assumed in this instance.

Of course, everyone knows the age-old equation “poverty = crime.” Thus if you abort black babies, his argument claims, the crime rate would go down. There is no differentiation between poor or wealthy blacks, but it is only insinuated on the belief that a woman could not possibly support a child financially by herself - not with what their “traditional values” would allow anyhow. But that’s beside the point.

Bennett’s “thought experiment” is laden with the “traditional view” (i.e. his conservative view) of American society, which is, of course, always right. His argument is an “extrapolation,” as he puts it, of the “poverty = crime” equation. In it, he’s saying because black children are typically born into broken homes, the child is raised by a single mother who is, of course, poor and unable to raise her child properly. Thus the child is going to commit crime. The result? An “unproductive” delinquent who, if aborted, would cause the crime rate to go down.

Well since we’re making “morally reprehensible” suggestions, I suppose if you aborted every white baby, race-related hate crimes would go down, because every white child is predisposed to hating every other ethnic group and culture on this planet. Right? I’d like to see Mr. Patterson come out of the woodwork to support that comment as “factually accurate.”

(Editor’s Note: This originally appeared as a Letter to the Editor in the Arizona Daily Wildcat, the student-run newspaper for the University of Arizona, on October 19, 2005.)

1) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

2) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

3) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

4) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can’t marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

5) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Brittany Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

6) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn’t be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren’t full yet, and the world needs more children.

7) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

8) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in America.

9) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven’t adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

I am writing in response to Silas Montgomery’s guest column “ACLU, atheism taking aim at the religious.” First, I want to note that I do not have a problem with religion, but simply feel it is not for me. I am a firm supporter of any person’s right to practice whatever religion they choose as granted in our Constitution. No one should be persecuted for his or her religious beliefs and no one should be forced to live a life of a religion they do not practice.

However, I believe the removal of the cross from the village seal is supported by the First Amendment. There is a difference between public displays of religious symbols and those that are state-sponsored. If you want to advertise your church on a billboard or wear a T-shirt that says “Jesus is my homeboy,” you should have every right to do so.

But no government, local, state or federal, has the right to impose any religious symbols or practices because that would breach the social contract of the Constitution as provided in the First Amendment. Also, if the Tijeras case is ruled favorably for the town, then you will definitely see areas voting to include other religious symbols, such as the crescent or Star of David on local emblems, depending on the religious backgrounds.

Contrary to Mr. Montgomery’s argument, the separation of church and state is evident in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. While the phrase “separation of church and state” is not explicit, the meaning and intent behind it is evident. It proclaims the inability of the government - local, state and federal - to establish a single religion as favorable to the state.

Unfortunately for Mr. Montgomery, atheism is not a religion. It is the absence of religion, and that is how I prefer my government to remain. I am refusing to accept my fate at the hands of others. In fact, I am writing to prevent others from shaping it, a little at a time, to eventually mandating myself and others to live Christian lives.

(Editor’s Note: This originally appeared as a Letter to the Editor in the Arizona Daily Wildcat, the student-run newspaper for the University of Arizona, on October 15, 2005.)

David Shuster, investigative reporter for MSNBC, spoke to his hometown newspaper, the Bloomington Herald-Times, about his experiences working for FOX News Channel.

The University of Michigan graduate said the gist of his address will focus on how the changing mood of the country has driven news coverage to be more critical of the administration. “I don’t want to say the media always follow the weather vane of public opinion, but in any administration there is an accumulative effect and the particular circumstances of the past five years have driven the media to examine issues more critically than was the case early on,” he said.

When asked whether he would have had that opportunity while working at Fox, Shuster laughed, remained silent for a pregnant pause and said, “No. The answer is no.”

Shuster continued:

He went on to recount his six-year tenure at Fox. “At the time I started at Fox, I thought, this is a great news organization to let me be very aggressive with a sitting president of the United States (Bill Clinton),” Shuster said. “I started having issues when others in the organization would take my carefully scripted and nuanced reporting and pull out bits and pieces to support their agenda on their shows.

“With the change of administration in Washington, I wanted to do the same kind of reporting, holding the (Bush) administration accountable, and that was not something that Fox was interested in doing,” he said.

“Editorially, I had issues with story selection,” Shuster went on. “But the bigger issue was that there wasn’t a tradition or track record of honoring journalistic integrity. I found some reporters at Fox would cut corners or steal information from other sources or in some cases, just make things up. Management would either look the other way or just wouldn’t care to take a closer look. I had serious issues with that.” [emphasis added]

Kylee Dawson, staff writer at the Arizona Daily Wildcat and friend of mine, penned an article about tattoos and piercings at the University of Arizona.

Political science junior Matt Ortega, 20, said it did not take much convincing or advice when he decided to get his ears pierced.

“Before I started dating my current girlfriend, I had asked her what she thought about earrings on me, and she lit up and told me how it would look really good,” he said. “So after that, I was sold.”