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Show Page 3 Wednesday, September 20,2006 Editorial The Signpost Signpost Viewpoint ^OHNNT/5 TO FA WWAT HE NEEDS IS WY&CAL ACTNITV Students need to unwind As construction on the Shepherd Union Building continues, students are beginning to learn there's even less to do on campus than before construction began. Since last spring semester, students have lost the student lounge, half of the gallery, the TV viewing area next to the breezeway and the junction cafeteria, which included the glass room with another TV for students. They also lost the TV in the lair. In addition, the gallery has since taken on a dark, dreary shade with long, dark curtains closing in students and blocking out light. Besides the depressing surroundings of the gallery, students now only have the small foyer area on the third floor of the SUB. This area seems lately to be half-filled with people eating and half-filled with students trying to do homework. The area quickly becomes congested and sometimes seems impossible to maneuver through with all the bodies crammed into such a small area. For many students this is uncomfortable, and more students can be seen sitting in their cars in the parking lots doing homework or meeting with friends around the front end of someone's vehicle. Part of what keeps a campus alive and interesting is the ability it provides students to socially interact with each other. As it stands, Weber State University organizations, which put in long hours to provide students activities on campus, haven't had the strongest success rate in getting even mediocre participation from students. WSU is a commuter university, which means a majority of students show up to class and then run off to work or family and don't stay around campus. Those students who would stay on campus are now finding it difficult as well to find a reason to stay, since there are fewer places to socialize. Now that temperatures are dropping, more students are going to look for warm places to meet with friends, do homework or try to find some small nook to let them escape the rush of campus life. Or they may decide there's no point to hanging around campus and may simply decide to go home. How will this look to prospective students? How has this looked to prospective students that may have walked on campus, seen how small and dreary the student socializing areas are and decided there's nothing to do on campus? True, the construction on the SUB will provide greater areas to socialize than even before. True, there's only so much space that can be offered to students until the renovation is completed, but the last thing students need on top of fewer places to relax is to make these areas dark and depressing for when they start to struggle in class and need a place to unwind. Right-wing fantasy invades network television By Bronwyn Lance Chester, McClatchy-Tribune News Service You could have knocked me over with a primary culprits in our failure to head off feather when I heard that one of the major the 9/11 tragedy before it happened. But the television networks was going to air a mini- question remains - how did this liberalseries that would pin much of the blame for bashing piece of info-tainment end up on the 9/11 tragedy on the bungling and inac- the schedule of a major television netwprk? tion of the ClintQn administration. Isn't netWell, this may be a sign that ABC isn't work television supposed to be a sanctuary quite as liberal as conventional wisdom sugfor liberal pansies who worship at the altar gests. ABC is now owned by Disney, and deof all things Clinton? How could such a pro- spite the angst some conservatives have over gram have gotten past their far-left filtering that company's gay-friendly policies, it still system? leans further to the right than your average Well, it's kind of an interesting story. Let's entertainment-affiliated corporation. After all, it was ABC/Disney that signed start with a few salient facts about the creative team behind this "docudrama," which Cunningham to direct "Path to 9/11" in the I gleaned from an enlightening article by first place, and the suits who made that call Max Blumenthal over at The Nation (note to were undoubtedly aware of his ties to the budding young newspaper columnists: it's "take back Hollywood from the Sodomites" crowd. It's probably safe to assume that ABC not plagiarism if you cite your sources!): _The series director, David Cunningham, corporate headquarters doesn't lean quite as is the son of far-right activist Loren Cunning- far to the left as it may have in the past. ham, who runs a ministry dedicated to putShould we assume, then, that conserting the United States under biblical (rather vatives can look forward to more network than constitutional) law. Upon entering his television programming that will be more father's ministry, David founded a subsid- in tune with their point of view? Well maybe, iary called The Film Institute (TFI), whose but don't expect ABC to throw any more mission is to bring about "a Godly transfor- work Cunningham's way any time soon. mation and revolution TO and THROUGH The network was forced to edit out some the Film and Television industry." "Path to key scenes in the series at the 1 lth hour and 9/11" was the first big production by TFI. run disclaimers owning up to the fictional _Cunningham tapped Cyrus Nowrasteh nature of the events portrayed after an inito write the script for the 9/11 drama. tial screening was released to critics 48 hours Nowrasteh is a member of a small but grow- before the network telecast. Once the details ing network of conservative writers in Hol- of the storyline got out, it quickly became lywood looking to make inroads into the apparent that the "Path to 9/11" creative team was indeed very creative in the way traditionally left-leaning film industry. _Another prominent Hollywood conser- it portrayed certain events that occurred in vative and longtime Clinton-basher, David the Clinton White House. In other words, Horowitz, also had some peripheral involve- according to Clinton and staff members ment with the marketing of thefilm.He who were actually there when the events ocsought to stir up excitement in conservative curred, they made stuff up. circles during its development phase via arIt just goes to show that no matter whose ticles in his FrontPageMag online magazine. ideology holds sway on a television network So, given its pedigree, it shouldn't sur- one thing remains true - it's all make-beprise anyone that this miniseries ended up lieve. Any correlation with reality or objecportraying Clinton and his advisors as the tive truth is probably accidental. 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Anarvn*ojs tcniio -.v< I IIIJ :IH |J ITIIHIJ i li*» .'-'.vyyrnMi I ' * « I M H H lh*n tiyh 1;: H I 1 I H- Mt>-.n\ rHHytn-. «-H X|IHI:H sirrl Ifcinl -irrl .ilrr* iw-n-vnn H-rt -lgl-rf-in roii.rr: T> nrinr i r y InHir-r I rftnrr. rhr* i rl roi o**c«!05c-words. Brtrg onors-w tfoodliwra ctifcoln -COYIOO mho ew#£Ti uDraiy, irai DO: .'.nc c&,ffi>posr tv^ccr KLSK- unycrscy', uqacn, u«n, LETS SOW WITH STRETCHING EXR ARMSFULLY MUSCUES! ONEJWO! How to tick off a dictator By Bronwyn Lance Chester, McClatchy'-Tribune News Service Did you hear the one about the Kazakh comedian? No, of course you didn't. He's in solitary confinement. Or so the punch line would go if they had a sense of humor in the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan. What has the autocratic Kazakh president's knickers in a knot - that's important enough to appear on his agenda with President Bush this month - isn't his country's rampant corruption, his soldiers in Iraq or the murder of opposition-party politicians. Instead, it's a boob named Borat. For the uninitiated, Borat is a fictional, mustachioed Kazakh journalist who makes out with his sister, wears a Day-Glogreen thong, utters antiSemitic, anti-gay and antigypsy quips, and hits the fabled American highways on a quest to marry Pamela Anderson. His tourde-force of political incorrectness will soon be at the nearest Cineplex in the aptly named "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan." Borat is the alter ego of Cambridge-educated British comedian Sasha Baron Cohen - himself Jewish - best known in America for his riotous HBO series man. teller's ignorance and preju"Da Ali G Show," in which he It's hard to know which dice than they do on the butt interviewed unsuspecting camp looks more ridicu- of the joke. And judging from celebrities and politicians in lous here, Kazakhstan's sud- the "Borat" trailer, the movie a rapper guise. denly sensitive dictator or is less about poking fun at Now Borat's movie is do- the White House, which last Kazakhstan than it is about ing the same with average month - to great fanfare - Americans. Think the "To- launched a campaign against exposing the goofiness and night Show's" Jaywalking high-level foreign corruption bigotry in everyday America. A friend who served in the segment on crack. as "a critical component of Peace Corps in Kazakhstan Did I mention that Borat our freedom agenda." assures me that the Kazaks isn't real? Never mind. Nazarbayev do, indeed, have a sense of No matter. President not only gets an Oval Office Nursultan Nazarbayev is so tour, he gets a sleepover at humor. Perhaps they should livid over the "misrepresen- the see Borat as Bush tation" he intends to waste family coma boon inr the most powerful man in pound His government stead of a in the world's time kvetching Kennebunkhas already threat- battle. about fictional movie char- port. Thanks acters. Maybe the ened Cohen with to Cohen's His government has al- two leaders character, the most Western ready threatened Cohen with are commisKazakhstan the most Western of men- erating on of menaces - a has just reaces - a defamation lawsuit their mutual defamation lawceived more - and pulled the plug on his experience publicity borat.kz Web site. with pam suit - and pulled than it could Yet with Nazarbayev as dies of idiobuy with a their leader, it's no surprise cy. Or maybe the plug on his that Kazakhs don't under- it has some- borat.kz Web site. battalion of stand much about freedom thing to do PR agents, of expression. which, by with KazakhThe blast-furnace-opera- stan's vast oil reserves. the way, it recently hired. tor-turned-prez has systemInstead of threatening For the record: As a native atically muzzled the media, of Appalachia, I understand Borat, Kazakhstan should outlawed opposition par- a thing or two about negative be thanking him, maybe ties and harassed advocacy stereotypes. For years, we've even hiring him as a humorgroups, according to The been plagued by toothless Washington Post. And Trans- jokes, gene-pool jibes and ous travel pitchman. Hipparency International ranks Jeff Foxworthy. So I'm not per-than-thou yuppies and Kazakhstan as one of the wholly unsympathetic to the smirking backpackers would world's most corrupt coun- Kazakhs' gripes about Borat. undoubtedly flock to the National identity has been semi-desert nation. tries. a sensitive topic there since Instead of carping in Then there's the small the country's split from the matter of $78 million in Soviet Union. Washington, Kazakhstan bribes that U.S. prosecutors But I've also learned some- should take a lesson from accuse Nazarbayev of taking thing: Those eye-rolling saws Hollywood: There's no such from an American business- often shed more light on the thing as bad publicity. |