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Show OPINION . MAGGIE GALLAGHER COMMENTARY ....•..• ::·::·t : : ... -··- - -- - ..- - .. if !; NATHENTOFF COMMENTARY 1, ·~....,_ ....,.., Is 1998 to be the year of the homemakerl College newspapers burned for racist remarks 1998 is shaping up to be the Year of child-care tax credit to change their th e Hom em aker, and boy, is ' i t behavior. Charles Murray, the father o f making a whole lot of people spittin' welfare reform, similarly argued in the mad. Child advocates cannot believe such -pages of The Wall Street Journal that mere amateur caregivers are wresting "subsidizing" stay-at-home m oms the debate over "child care" from the was absolutely futile: "The m other professionals. "We will no t have a who quits her job to stay home with serious debate about how to allocate her child, forgoing a $20,000 income, scarce reso urces," Faith Wohl, is out of pocket $18,~ a 10 percent president of the Child Care Action reduction in her sacrifice and a very Campaign , huffed to Th e Boston weak fin ancial incentive t o st ay Glabe, "as long as the issue being home." Such argum ents miss the poi nt: discu ssed is paren tai equity rather Bribing mothers to than the child-care stay home is n ot infrastructure." the ultimate goal of The House voted ex t ending h eavy unanimou sl y in tax credits. The favor of a bill that goal is to give famapplauds the efforts ilies choices. o f stay -at- ho m e Mothers are parents. At a recent particularly inep t hearing o n child , wealth-maximizers, care spo nsored by as Murray sh ould Sen. Dan Coats, Rknow from his own Ind., even the very research on t he liberal, very Demowelfare system. It · c ra t ic Sen . Paul was Murray who Wellst one agreed po inte d out that that helping the welfare moms don't hard-p ressed homedo anythi ng so ma ki n g fa m i lies crude as to have was, in fact, a good babies in o rder to idea. get money. It's just not hip to Instead, welfa re be agai ns t homeprogram s in the makers an ym ore, United States have at leas t in Wash enabled women to ington. Politicians - --"-"'"'"-~ " do what they ' ve have wised up to = ..:::::......:::z:;...._= :.....:.::.: the obvious fact " traditional families" wanted to do anyway: have children are by no means the extinct species without worrying about who will be th e advocates, cooked stats suggest . paying the rent next month. T here isn't a 1noin in America who Polls of paren ts show m ore than 80 percent of children under the age of is going to be "incentivized" to stay fo ur in the U n ited States are still hom e in order to get extra money bei ng cared fo r primarily by famil y from the tax code. But being allowed members- overwhelm ingly, by the to keep an extra hundred or two a month of family inc9me will help a parents themselves. Child-care advocate.s are in part the mother who wants to find ways to victims of t he ir own rheto rical spend more time caring fo r her own cleverness: T hey renamed day care children . And it will e nsure that ''child care" because the latter sounds mothers· who prefer the care given to her kids while they work comes from so much cozier. But if good child care is your goal, relatives won 't be punished for that why create a rigid, inflexible benefit choice, either. Staying home with a child even for a structure that rewards only parents few years never makes any econom ic who use such cornmercia] child care? Pa rti cularly gi ve n th e fac t that sense. A woman who does so not only married families with one income are loses her current wages, but she faces in fact much less affluent than dual- long-term reduct ions in her earning earner couples who pay for substitute power. That so many women long to pu t care? Some critics are taking refuge in the their first, best effo rts into th eir idea that the so-ca Ued "incentives" children and let the large corporations for at-home parenting are doomed to make do with what's left o ver is a becom e fail u res. Paul Harrington, testament (econo m i.sts ta'ke note): associate director of the Center for There aie fo rces at wo rk in the Labor Market Studies at N ortheastern universe that are even more powerful Uni versity, told The Boston Globe than money. that today's woman is so committed to being a part of the labor force, i t Maggie Gallagher is a na tionally would take "a minor miracle" for the syndicated columnist. According to the Cornell Review- a c onservativ e stud·e nt new spape r on campus- a black Ba ptist p re ach er in C o lorado as ked syndicat ed caHoonist Chuck As ay if he w o ul d sha rply illuminate the hi gh pe rcen t age of abortions among black women. The resultant cartoon was titled "Which One of These Kills More Blacks?" and contained three panels. One showed a Ku Klux Kla n murder b y fire. Th e second summoned followers of Hitler in front of a large swastika. And in the last frame, a doctor is abou t to perform an abortion in front of a sign: Planned Paren th ood abortfon clinic. The cartoon was reprinted last October in th e Corn ell Review, which was in strong agreement wi th its message but also wanted to support the Boston College Observer, which had c re at ed a furor on campus b y p ubli sh i ng the cartoon. A number of copi es of t h e Boston College paper were destroyed by protesters. On t he Cornell campus, the first sign of an im pe n d in g bonfi re was a series of posteTS proclaim ing that " Th e Cornell Review has gone too fa r again! Copies will be bu rned at 11 :30." And no t for the fir st t im e. Iss ues of the Co rn elI Review b ad been stolen and burned in the spring because it ran a parody on ebonies. At the appo inted time, in front of the main dining hall- according t o tb e C ornell Sun, th e mains tre am studen t newspaper- some 500 copies of the Com eJJ Re.view were set on fire. Presiding over the cleansing of bad ideas from th e univ ersi ty community was a student, Shaka D avis. H e's a communications m ajor, now adding new luster to that Cornell department. Davis was imp elled to his act o f redemptive destruction because, he said, the cartoon was both " racist" and ,1aotihuma n ." The p urifying flames, D a vis added, "really felt good. I wanted to show my awa.r eness of the Cornell Review and raise awareness. How could they have the audacity to print this?" Had none of Shaka Davis' p rofessors ever shown him photographs of the burning of subversive books in another t ime across the sea ? Probably no t. Prac tically no faculty members have objected publicly to the theft and burnin g of the Cornell Review. The Cornell adm inistration has had the same re ac tion as l as t sprin g w he n I interviewed D ean of Students John Ford, among others. Then Ford said he had no evidence that an y copy of the Corn ell Review had been set on fire . Th is time Fo rd was standing right there at t he burn ing. H owever, like the rest if the administration, Ford saw no reason for any san ctfons agains t vioJating the right to publish and the tight to read. A number oi administrators describe the burni ng as a fo rm of free expression . Jacqu eline Pow e rs, a spok eswom an for Co rnell, tol d the Chronicle of Higher Education: " It w ould not have be en approp riate fo r anyone to prevent th is symbolic burning. We support the right of newspapers to publish and the right fo r people to protest what is published." And what if the symbolic flames were to envelop such books as Huckleberry Fin n, often accused of being " racist"? Would that be- perm itted at Cornell as a form of free expression ? Alter all, the university w ould have permitted the publishing of the book. Ano ther· part y line am ong Corn eil administrators is tha t fr ee papers- and most campus newspapers do not ch arge-cannot be stolen because t h ey a re free. Th erefore, anyone can take as many copies as he or she wants and do wha t the y will with them. However, the Student Press Law Cente r in Arlington, Va ., points out studen t plunderers . of three free papers-the U nive rsity o f T exas ' Daily Te,xan at Austin, the University of Nort h C aro lina 's D aily T a r Heel and the University of Kentucky's Kentuck y Kernel-have all been prosecuted for what CorneU official s call "symbolic acts." Th e ch arge in N ort h Carolina was: "Restrain ing freedom of speech of another s tudent o r group b y re m o vi ng pub lications." In Austin, a guilty plea to a charge of theft was entered. There were acquittals in Nort h Carolina . In Kentuc k y three U ni ve rsi t y o f Ken tu ck y st udents were sentenced to community service fo r the school's disabled students or at a nature sanctuary. In another case, criminal charges were fi led against four Universi ty of Florida students for steali ng free issues of the Florida Review. They have been sentenced t o six mon t hs unsupervised pr obati on, community service, and court costs. Meanwhile, the Cornell Review asked for an investigation. In charge was Barbara Krause, the university's judicial admi nistrator. She told me recently, "There was no violation of the Code of Conduct." That code says, by the way, "The right to free expression ... requires respect for the rights of others." Nat Hentoff is a nationally syndicated columnist. |