Bailouts, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Tina Fey, George Ryan and Scott Green…Who got to have the best semester ever?

Originally published December 12, 2008. Republished December 16, 2008.

After the initial ruckus surrounding the planning of the primary bailout package (maybe most notably concerning John McCain’s cancellation of his appearance on the “Late Show” with David Letterman back in September, when he decided to put his campaign on hold), the talk of bailouts has only increased. Financial corporations, automobile manufacturers, the housing market – everyone is getting a piece of the bailout pie!

Grad student Sarah Borys wrote in to the DI for hers on Dec. 1, and Moonstruck Chocolate Cafe could have used one back in October. Following the Tribune Company’s declaration of bankruptcy, Oren Spiegler made mention of the fact that the newspaper industry ought to be considered for bailout benefits before the Big Three.

Between the University’s hiring freeze and the coming tuition increase for 2009, we could all use a little bit of a bailout.

Let’s move on to Barack Obama: Over the course of the fall ’08 semester, he chose Delaware senator and former rival Joe Biden as his running mate, accepted the nomination as the Dems’ presidential candidate, raised record amounts of money (enough to run a 30-minute primetime campaign ad/documentary in October) and on Nov. 4, won it all. Who could forget the crowd that flooded Green Street, marched toward the Main Quad and laid down some sweet beats in front of U of I’s own “Obama Mater”?

And President-elect Obama’s popularity has yet to die down. We have so many questions!

What kind of “first lady” will Michelle make?

What is Robert L. Schulz’s problem?

And for God’s sake, what kind of puppy are Malia and Sasha getting?!

In the meantime, we’ve basically forgotten that George Dubya won’t leave the Oval Office until over a month from now, which makes him a candidate for the Best Semester Ever.

I seem to remember him inviting the Obamas to the White House, but other than that, he’s been flying so far under the radar that Dick Durbin asked him for a commutation of sentence on behalf of Illinois’ good pal, former governor George Ryan, who’s currently serving out his six-and-a-half-year sentence in Terre Haute, Ind. (a request Durbin said he would not make of Obama). Now that he’s a lame duck, Dubya can spend his last weeks as president doing whatever he wants. Oh, and getting shoes thrown at him by Iraqi journalists.

Then there’s SNL darling Tina Fey. Not only did her uncanny resemblance to Sarah Palin provide her with a semester filled with comedic gold, “30 Rock” won four more Primetime Emmys this year. Enough said.

Finally, Scott Green gets a “Best Semester Ever” nod for running in any and every possible opinions publication this semester, and for Aug. 28, when both columns that ran were his. What a go-getter.

So, who’s had the Best Semester Ever? It’s really up to you …

But I think it’s a tie between bailouts and Scott.

Chelsea is a senior in English and creative writing and can’t get enough of the Urbana Free Library.

List of bankrupt newspapers grows

Originally published December 11, 2008.

On Monday, the Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy. The company, which owns 8 daily newspapers (including The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, and The Baltimore Sun), 23 TV stations and the Chicago Cubs, came into the possession of Sam Zell over a year ago. Its current debt comes out to roughly $13 billion.

Tribune Co. isn’t the only one suffering, however, and it was certainly in dire straights prior to the nation’s current economic woes. McClatchy, another prominent publishing company, said Tuesday at the UBS Global Media and Communications conference that they too are hurting due to low ad sales. Rumors are flying that they may have to sell off The Miami Herald, though Gary Pruitt, McClatchy’s CEO, offered no information regarding the claim. Even the New York Times Co. is looking to sell or mortgage their headquarters in Manhattan in order to scrape up $225 million. So it’s easily believable that Zell would be willing to bargain with recent rock star Rod Blagojevich to sell off the Cubbies in order to make a dent in that $13 billion debt.

What’s the deal? If things have been getting worse since before the economic crisis because of a decline in advertising revenue and circulation (among other factors), the implication is that the newspaper industry is dying. Readership is declining and because of this, advertisers are taking their business elsewhere.

The problem with this theory is that, while statistics regarding online news readership are rising surely, they are rising slowly (despite the seemingly-increased turn toward free online news content). Many more people are inclined to get their daily news via television, and this has been the case for some time.

So perhaps the decrease in advertising and circulation don’t even stem from a mass exodus toward other free news media. Maybe the problem is just that people care less about reading the news. As our brains begin to form a dependence on instantaneous resources like Wikipedia and Google, maybe we just can’t make ourselves concentrate on boring, real-life events for the entire length of a column. Sam Zell seems to think so-he’s already been working on re-vamping the Tribune to have “snappier layouts and shorter stories,” according to NPR’s David Folkenflik on Tuesday’s Morning Edition.

Admittedly, a good chunk-probably around $8 billion-of Tribune Company’s debt comes solely from Zell’s purchase and privatization, a sketchy deal in and of itself. But that doesn’t mean that the impending threat to all newspapers isn’t real.

There’s something to be said about the hard reality of a newspaper in your hands on your morning commute or during that post-breakfast cup of coffee. Quality journalism, especially in news reporting, is difficult to come by, and it will only become more so as journalists are forced to spend their time worrying about what everyone else is worrying about, instead of just writing about it: employment benefits and health insurance, especially for Tribune employees, whose pension funds Zell borrowed against in his purchase.

Not only do people miss out on more (and often better) news than what they find on television or political blogs, but their inattention also leads to “restructuring” (which Blago might be pleased about, should it pertain to John McCormick). In these worsening economic times, more people will be left jobless, and the wide range of experience and talent in the field of journalism begins a drastic decrease.

And for what? Sources like the Drudge Report and the Huffington Post? The debate over journalist ethics is a time-honored tradition, but do we as Americans and readers care so little about the integrity of our news that we’re willing to scrape it up from anywhere so long as it’s free of charge?

I know I’m biased-I write for a paper, despite writing an opinions column. But I can only believe we’re down, we’re not dead. And whether it’s the annoying scam banner ads online that are tailored to your browsing habits, the aggravation your eyes experience from staring at a screen too much, your desire for quality journalism, or just your longing for the feel of the morning paper in your hands, you’ll look back to your trusty standby. We’ll be here.

Chelsea is a senior in English and creative writing and is taking advantage of her Reading Day by drinking her coffee and reading the newspaper.

U.S. shouldn’t nationalize Christmas

Originally published December 4, 2008.

During the days leading up to Thanksgiving (or up to Halloween), it was difficult not to notice the Christmas music playing in stores, decorations for sale and advertisements for Black Friday. In some places, you’re fortunate enough to find items for Chanukah, sometimes Kwanzaa. But even when retailers set up a generic “holiday” section within, items like colored string lights, fake holly and mistletoe, and pine trees are all associated with Christmas.

Despite the fact that Christmas is based in Christian beliefs and the better portion of the U.S. population identifies as some form of Christian, many seem wholly uninterested in the traditional background from which the holiday itself has sprung. Yes, there are plenty of Christians here who celebrate with church services and the well-known story of the birth of Jesus Christ.

But for each of them, there seems to be a growing number of people, Christian and otherwise, who view Christmas without the context of religion. It’s easy to “get into the Christmas spirit” with December decorations that, in the minds of many Americans, have little to do with baby Jesus chilling out in a manger, trees decked out in tinsel, lights, and ornaments that may have personal significance, bows and wreaths on front doors, light-up reindeer, candy canes, penguins and snowmen covering the front yard.

Regardless of the roots of such traditions, their function in the present resonates with Jean Baudrillard’s concept of the simulacrum. Many of these images have moved beyond their original Christian symbolism to stand simply as coverups for what they once represented, if not as purely independent images themselves, free of any relation to Christian concepts.

Despite the thrill that comes from seeing lights outside through the haze of your own breath condensing in the cold, we should consider the cultural backlash of holiday sentiment. Some might suggest that the explanation of the secularization of Christmas is rampant materialism and consumerism proponed by big business. This rings especially true this year, when retailers began advertising their Black Friday deals earlier than ever before in an effort to encourage enough spending to jolt the economy a little.

Christmas, for many, deals primarily with spending money on plane tickets and hotel rooms, on multitudes of expensive gifts and on large quantities of food. Americans are encouraged to celebrate the holiday in the interest of the U.S. economy.

The other reason for a secularization of Christmas lies in the cultural significance we place on its celebration in the United States. It has become a big American holiday from a big Christian one, and people who are neither Christian nor American face the potential scorn of their peers for forgoing Christmas, as if doing so is somehow “un-American.” Americans view even other Christmas celebrations in the context of their own, dominated by a fat, jolly guy leaping down chimneys with toys and a kid who just wants a Red Ryder BB gun without being told he’ll shoot his eye out.

People who explain that they aren’t Christian are still faced with questions like, “But you really don’t celebrate Christmas?” and “Diwali/Chanukah, is that like your Christmas?” Any holiday that deals with the potential giving of gifts becomes synonymous with Christmas.

In secularizing the holiday, it seems we’ve made the mistake of channeling its religious significance into nationalism – dangerous territory which no silly, contrived celebration like “Chrismahanukwanzakah” will bring us out from. We don’t question people who don’t celebrate Thanksgiving because we understand how strained family relationships can be. But Christmas is bigger than that because of its Christian majority roots. The fervor for the holiday has been channeled into a display of American support over the course of long years that drives even people who celebrate secularly to take offense when they hear “Happy Holidays!” instead of “Merry Christmas!”

Between those songs on the radio, decorations outside stores and houses, and the temporal placement of “winter break,” it’s difficult to opt out of Christmas festivities and not feel alienated in your own home. There’s nothing wrong with spending time with loved ones and exchanging meaningful presents, or feeling grateful for what you have. But in these postmodern times, we need to consider what nationalism obscures – the appreciation of all our little differences, and more importantly, the ability to live and let live.

Chelsea is a senior in English and creative writing and has recently found herself addicted to NPR.

Water, water nowhere…

Originally published November 20, 2008.

Despite the cost of seeing a movie on a weekend evening, I checked out Quantum of Solace last Saturday. The film takes the title of a Bond short story by Ian Fleming, but that’s the singular contribution of the text. If you’ve seen the movie, you probably already suspected that the plot was something Fleming never imagined.

Though scenes with various foreign ministers and agents illustrate the global concern over sources of oil, the audience learns that the real target of monopolization is another natural resource, the control of which will truly determine the balance of power in the world: water.

Perhaps the most disconcerting part of this Hollywood depiction of water privatization is that it’s actually happening.

The filmmakers were conscious enough of this to center their conflict in Bolivia, a real-life battleground for public water in cities like Cochabamba and El Alto. Instead of naming the mysterious group behind Dominic Greene “Quantum,” the writers should have just flat out said “the World Bank Group and the IMF.”

In 1998, the International Monetary Fund gave the green light on a $138 million loan to Bolivia to help manage the country’s inflation and economic growth issues. As part of the deal, Bolivia’s government agreed to sell off any public enterprises remaining in order to comply with reforms mandated by the IMF.

The following year, the World Bank issued the Bolivia Public Expenditure Review, which strongly suggested that water should not be subsidized in Cochabamba due to potential interference with funding efforts by the IMF and the World Bank.

By the end of 1999, Bolivia legalized water privatization and signed a 40-year, $2.5 billion contract with Aguas del Tunari, awarding them the rights to provide water and sanitation services to the residents of Cochabamba (which would potentially force them to pay for the full cost of the services).

By January of 2000, water prices had as much as tripled for people living in the city. Protests, then riots, took place over the next few months. In the ensuing violence, Aguas del Tunari was forced to withdraw from Bolivia and the control of water was signed over to a grassroots coalition.

Oh, as a quick side note: Aguas del Tunari is a subsidiary of Bechtel, an American corporation whose privatization efforts have been funded by the International Finance Corporation-a part of the World Bank Group. In fact, in 2004, World Bank was estimated to have loaned about $20 billion to water supply projects.

This was right on the heels of the release of a study by the International Consortium of Public Journalists in 2003 which concluded that in the five years prior, the majority of the World Bank’s loans regarding water required the conversion from public to private systems as a stipulation of the transaction.

Did I mention the goal of the World Bank is to “reduce poverty”?

Of course, Cochabamba isn’t the only example of large-scale water privatization. In 1997, El Alto’s municipal water system suffered the same fate, though protesting didn’t result in a break of contract with Suez, a French water corporation with World Bank connections, until January 2005.

While a James Bond movie is trivial, it’s getting at a much larger issue than many people realize. We aren’t dealing with a secret organization populated by international socioeconomic elite covering their wrongdoings with “philanthropic” efforts, making transactions at a trippy performance of Puccini’s Tosca. We’re dealing with international socioeconomic elite and their corporations making water privatizations efforts all over the world, including the United States and Europe.

Though Bolivia might sound like an extreme, Third-World instance, water is becoming a luxury item just as quickly in our own country as companies like Perrier greedily eye Great Lakes water, without regard to water restrictions and shortages across the nation. As late as 2003, Atlanta fought to end its own privatization contract with Suez, the same tentacle of the World Bank that privatized water in El Alto, Bolivia.

We’re not Daniel Craig in a handsome suit fighting for justice against a faceless global evil. We’re the everyday moviegoers who complain about how much it costs to go to the theater while a known enemy sits in our own backyard-World Bank’s headquarters are located in Washington.

It’s difficult not to leave a Bond movie imagining your own life being half as exciting, but be careful what you wish for. While we worry about oil resources, we’ve got our own “Quantum” looming over us, and we’re entirely unprepared.

Chelsea is a senior in English and creative writing and drinks over two liters of water a day. No, really.

Chancellor should curtail Chief event

Originally published November 13, 2008.

I don’t need to explain “The Next Dance” to anybody–or the fact that quite a few people have an opinion about it. That number includes Chancellor Herman, who released a statement in Monday’s DI, and Robert Warrior, the director of the American Indian Studies Program and the Native American House. Warrior referenced resolutions against American Indian mascots from national organizations and urged “people of conscience” to oppose the rally and the attitudes behind it.

Herman, on the other hand, said that while the University does not support “The Next Dance,” students involved have the right to exercise their freedom of speech. And to an extent, this is true: The Student Code does not bar registered student organizations from sponsoring events that could be considered discriminatory, so long as no one is prevented from attending any event.

In 2006, however, similar circumstances went a little bit differently. Many members of the campus community have some idea about the “fiesta”-themed exchange (read: “Tacos and Tequila”) held by a couple of Greek organizations. People were outraged and staged demonstrations. The Illinois Student Senate passed a resolution condemning racist behavior. And finally, judicial sanctions were enacted against the two houses responsible for holding the party.

At that time Herman voiced his concerns about students’ freedom of speech in the same way he has done regarding “The Next Dance.” Despite punishment being levied for other reasons- namely alcohol-at least something was done. Because of the blatant racism of the party and the uproar it caused, many students would not have accepted a lack of penalization. Others still believed the disciplinary sentence was too lenient.

“The Next Dance” has generated just as much of a stir, partly because of Chancellor Herman’s indifferent attitude in regards to its occurrence. Before chalking up another incident to the first amendment, he should consider the possibilities for citation.

The University has already declared that Students for Chief Illiniwek cannot advertise for the event using the name “Chief Illiniwek,” as it is a trademark of the school. The Code specifically states that “no registered organization shall be permitted to use the name of or any symbol identified with the University.” If someone supposed to be the next Chief performs dressed as him at an RSO rally, it could be interpreted as usage of a University “symbol” under this ambiguous decree. This becomes especially problematic when the RSO is charging an admission fee-that is, making a profit-on the usage of this symbol.

The other possible problem presented by the Student Code lies with the type of funds used to pay for the event. If organizational funds (money from the RSO’s on-campus “bank account”) were used, the argument could be made that the money is paying for a rally that is not “related to the educational goals and objectives of the University,” i.e., goes against the institution’s efforts to create a nondiscriminatory and equal learning environment for all of its students. Such a claim is justified by the American Psychological Association’s resolution on mascots in 2005: Research concludes that the educational experience of all students, not just American Indians, is negatively impacted by the usage of American Indian mascots.

The University has landed itself in a sticky situation. Despite Herman’s denial of support for “The Next Dance” or a reinstatement of the Chief, the potential lack of punishment threatens to undermine the standard set by the University’s “commitment to the most fundamental principles of academic freedom, equality of opportunity, and human dignity” stated in the Student Code.

Without action, the University renders any damaging expression of discrimination of any kind acceptable under students’ rights to freedom of speech, so long as anyone can participate and no one gets busted for alcohol. And by allowing this RSO to march out “the next Chief” without penalty, the University condones his continued appearance following “The Next Dance.” If the higher-ups can wash their hands of responsibility by saying “we don’t support this,” then students can apparently compromise the educational experiences of all to whatever extent they like.

This isn’t just about stereotyping. It’s about establishing our school as a place in which everyone has access to an equal atmosphere and equal opportunities to learn. The chancellor must do more than talk, and so must we.

Chelsea is a senior in English and creative writing and believes it’s time to break with tradition for good.