Ever wonder what the future of journalism might look like? Look no further than the UCLA student newspaper, the Daily Bruin. The Bruin wrote an editorial last week calling for the University of California to divest from Israel. They're not taking sides in the conflict, of course, and they're truly outraged by all the violence going on in the world, especially all those icky suicide bombings. Of course, if the Palestinians had a state of their own then the Bruin would demand divesting from Palestine too, but the Palestinians don't have a state yet, so until they get one, the very concerned editors have to do SOMETHING for the cause of human rights. So the desperate and oppressed revolutionaries from Westwood have no choice but to do demand economic sanctions against the only human rights violator that their very thorough research could come up with.
And while they're at it, the So-Cal mall rat sages beg all of us here in this country to really chill out dude, and not to worry ourselves over a certain non-event of a non-terrorist shooting at the ticket counter of a non-targeted airline at a certain airport on a certain national holiday.
The editor in chief of the Bruin is named Cuahtemoc Ortega. At this rate, "Cuahtemoc" is destined to become a verb in a few years, sort of like "Fisk" is a verb today.
UPDATE: I sent the Bruin editors a polite email. I pointed out that while they were claiming to be even-handed they did not call for divestment from, say, Saudi Arabia. I also enclosed a picture of the Hamas photo from my previous post, and pointed out that they were demanding economic sanctions against the surviving relatives of the bus driver and the people in the body bags.
Cuahtemoc came back with this specious reply:
If you read the editorial again Mr. Sharkansky, you will notice we support a petition already being circulated. We would support a similar petition with Saudi Arabia as the subject in question as well if it existed. We never state our support for Palestinians, suicide bombers or any of their allies.Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at July 17, 2002 11:37 AM
It would be wise for universities to insist that student paper write only about items dealing with the reality of campus life (beer drinking, babes etc) and avoid writing on world issues till they are able to prove that they have read a few books and understood them.
Posted by: fred lapides on July 17, 2002 05:30 PM