Show 1 0A Wednesday Standard-Examtne- Opinion April 21 1399 - v r 'Ss S' Standard-Examin- er SERVING THE TO? OF UTAH SINCE 1833 Scot! Tomte Pulrser Do" Porter E&tonal Page Editor PonTbombirg Managg Editor OUR VIEW US needs school violence ‘time-o- ut day’ n Massacre at Colorado high school is the latest worst in an epidemic of school shootings involving disgruntled students In so doing we should be a student pulled and began prepared to discuss all the eleshots at Syracuse ments that may be playing a in FebruSchool role in these frightful situaJunior High tions: ary 1998 no one was shot or killed We only need look at Where is the parental or Tuesday’s mass murder in the adult support for halls of Columbine High students who are relentlessly School in Littleton Colo to taunted or criticized by other realize how much worse the students? Did any adults atDavis County incident could tempt to intervene on behalf have been the members the When non-parent- al of As these words are being written it is believed as many as 1 5 people were killed at Columbine High on Tuesday Students who witnessed the carnage blame disaffected youths known as the “Trench Coat Mafia” for spraying the school and its occupants with bullets and detonating explosives “They’re basically outcasts” one student explained to a reporter on the scene Another survivor said that the gunmen - gunchildren? - who wore trademark black duster jackets were frequently picked on by other students because they were “weird” What has this nation come to that school shootings -most committed by students -are becoming a common occurrence? Aside from the bloodless Syracuse shooting and hostage stand-of- f four incidents have claimed lives at schools across the country since 1997: Two died in Pearl Miss five in Jonesboro Ark three in West Paducah Ky and tw o in Springfield Ore While Top of Utah school districts especially the Davis County School District have taken steps to address the problem it is time for all parents teachers school administrators and political leaders to pause from their daily routines and convene a national time-oday on the subject of school violence We must come together on this subject and figure out ways to prevent future catastrophes ut tion? How did these students access weapons and ammunition and the materials and expertise to make bombs? Do we need to modify weapons laws? Would it do ?nv good considering the number of w eapons already in circulation? What role if any does popular violence-drenche- d entertainment have in such scenarios? Are some children lacking the maturity of adults particularly susceptible to the images of romanticized violence presented in some movies TV shows and music? In other words are we damaging children by letting them watch or listen to such “diversions”? There are more questions and topics - infinitely more we suspect But we need a national dialogue conducted by those who are able to provide some answers and affect our children At some point society is failing the children who commit such killing sprees There are answers to be found but we must first organize ourselves to find them A national time-oday on school violence - or week or more - is a logical first step School shootings should become tragic shameful relics of our national history not incidents we nervously anticipate will happen from time to time ut ANOTHER VIEW A career on ice Each generation likes to taunt its successor generation about missing out on a supposed golden age of sports may have been a of sarcasm when Gretzsky was dubbed “The Great One” at the start of his career but not 20 seasons later at the end Gretzsky retired Sunday from the National Hockey League and in his honor his number 99 was retired league-wid- e He left with an astonishing 61 NHL records including e goals assists and points and other assorted honors such as nine MVP awards His final team was the New York Rangers but the most tumultuous point of his career was his trade from the Ed There all-tim- COLUMNS of Trench Coat Mafia? Are schools adequately equipped to deal with such complex personality dysfuncso-call- ed monton Oilers where he had won four Stanley Cups to the Los Angeles Kings There would be no more cups but he made NHL hockey a Sunbelt - and thus truly national - spectator sport By happenstance his retirement comes in a sequence of other sports landmarks the retirement of Michael Jordan from pro basketball after six championships Mark McGwire’s 70 home runs and Cal Ripken’s 2632 consecutive game streak in baseball Joe Montana retiring after four Super Bowls - Scripps Howard News Sen ice recor- d-smashing GOP seeks its own wedge in California Democratic stronghold threatened by infighting SACRAMENTO Calif - Last Thursday morning when a reporter walked into the office of state Sen Jim Brulte the unofficial mastermind of the beleaguered Republican minority in the capitol of this mega-stat- e he brought a bit of news: All hell was about to break loose in the first-flocorridor separating the offices of the two top Democrats Gov Gray Davis and Lt Gov Cruz Bustamante Davis had scheduled a news conference to announce he would appeal a district court decision that essentially nullified Prop 187 the 1994 initiative sponsored by former Republican Gov Pete Wilson that denied the children of illegal aliens access to California schools health clinics and social services Bustamante had learned within the hour of the decision and his press secretary had tipped oil the reporter he was furious Prop 87 and Prop 209 - ending racial preferences in admissions to California colleges - were denounced by Davis in his 1998 campaign as examples of the “wedge politics” he vowed to end Now he was about to announce that because “I have taken an oath to enforce all the laws of our state regardless of my personal views” he would invite the appeals court to mediate the case and determine w hat if any aspects of Prop 187 might pass constitutional muster Bustamante the state's highest Latino elected official ripped into the decision Joining the denunciation was Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa who said it would have been better to “close this chapter of the culture wars” It was the first serious split in the 1 Democratic leadership since Davis trounced Republican Attorney General Dan Lungren by 20 points last November giving the Democrats their biggest victory in two decades Wilson's “wedge politics” had mobilized and polarized the growing Latino vote - as it had labor and teachers and other constituencies - and had led to California joining Hawaii and Maryland as the only states with a Democratic governor and two Democratic senators Brulte who said Davis was only doing what he expected a “New Democrat” politician to do was not about to exaggerate his jubilation at the Sitting on his desk was a report from a young German-bopolitical scientist named Bemd Schwieren a man Brulte had hired from Jack Kemp's office for the Assembly Republican staff The month-ol- d report titled “The Emerging Republican Minority” was a grim assessment of the GOP's long-terproblems in the Golden State In 1997 Schwieren had delivered two analyses showing the decline of the Republican vote in Latino areas and among “New Economy” workers in the growing high-tec- h media and service sectors Those reports accurately foretold the Lungren debacle Now in 53 pages of texts and charts he documented the conclusion that the 1990s have seen California Republicans lose two presidential elections four Senate races and now the governorship because they have failed to adapt their past strategy to “a new electorate whose most dynamic elements - women Latinos and New Economy workers - are the most hostile to the Republican Party” Lungren ran a classic GOP campaign - appealing to core Republicans on economic issues and to “Reagan Democrats” or blue-collindustrial workers on cultural issues But both groups are smaller than they were The erosion Schwieren describes is dramatic In the 1990s Wilson -- who was a supporter of abortion rights - was the only Republican to win more than 40 percent of the women's vote As the Latino share of the electorate has doubled in a decade the Republican portion has declined from the mid-30- s to 20 percent Brulte a thoroughly pragmatic fellow says he thinks “our problem is more our messenger than our message” He is attacking it at two levels “My leadership PAC will give no more money to Anglo males in Republican primaries Every dollar I can raise is going to nominate Latinos and and women We have to expand our outreach” At the top of the ticket Brulte like almost every other Republican legislator is supporting Texas Gov George W Bush for the nomination in hopes he can success in duplicate his home-stat- e constituencies But it may take more than one set of nominees - or the Democratic split that surfaced last week - to reverse the trends Schwieren has documented ar Asian-America- David Broiler's column runs each Wednesday and Sunday Distrust those who seek the presidency Ambitious hopefuls like Gore Quayle act only in own interest If recent history tells us anything it is that we should be beware of those w ho obsess about anything - including being president of the United States This is particularly true when the obsession begins at too early an age and leads to confronting nearly all problems without the experience one needs to know the difference between political expediency and correctness Our most successful chief executives have had the job thrust on them or have come to it after a combination of successful public and private careers Presidents like George Washington Abraham Lincoln Theodore Roosevelt Franklin Roosevelt Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan all came to the White House with firm convictions formed from solid experience Whether one agreed with them or not they were extremely qualified Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton exhibited presidential ambitions from early ages and rarely made a move thereafter that wasn’t rooted in what was best for them politically Of the current crop of presidential possibilities Vice Presidents Albert Gore and former Vice President Dan Quayle most fit the model of those whose pre political careers were practically nonexistent Both came to their jobs without holding rny prior notable adult experience Quayle served as an assistant publisher for a very small newspaper owned by his family for two years and Gore was a cub reporter for a year or two Similarly they w ere children of privilege free of the sort of daily pressures that most Americans understand Quayle may not have dreamed about being president through a lifetime of undistinguished scholarship and government service during which he earned a reputation for never having met a golf course he didn't love His choice as vice president by George Bush was as much a surprise as was Richard Nixon's selection of Spiro Agnew and ultimately proved to be about as unwise During those four years when he wasn't on the links he was embarrassing his boss with his penchant for mala-propis- mis- spellings and non sequiturs While it is difficult for a vice president to help elect a president -Johnson was a notable exception in 1960 - the wrong candidate can hurt and political analysts warned Bush that Quayle was a problem in 1992 Quayle has little chance of winning the Republican nomination I le almost seems to be running because he has nothing else to do Gore however is the Democratic front-runnalthough his stock has been downgraded from certain to probable with the entry of former Sen Bill Bradley who polls now show to be gaining with a 34 percent rating Gore has his own problems with his mouth exhibiting a proclivity for exaggeration and distortion the most recent examples being his claims of having in vented the Internet and of his early experience at slopping hogs and other agricultural chores Even the Iowa farmers to whom he made the latter claim know he grew up in the swank Fairfax Hotel in Washington and attended elite St Albans prep school before heading for Harvard It would be difficult to determine w hen Gore began thinking of himself as presidential timber but he arrogantly launched his first White House campaign only a relatively few months after being elected to the Senate from Tennessee He must have been baffled w hen it never got off’ the ground Recent polls show the vice president is beginning to feel some of the voter disenchantment with the scandal ridden Clinton administration His own missteps in the campaign funding affair have not helped and his opponents rarely miss a chance to nail him on hi impeachment-da- y prediction that his boss would go down in history as one of the great presidents As vice president Gore has been like most taking what chores were assigned him but his “reinvention of government” initiative has been a sham and he seems to have had little influence in the Kosovo crisis spending most of his time darting about the country raising money and campaigning in the key early primary states Voters in both parties should take heed Ginton has been an example of what happens when all decisions are based on political considerations and problems are not solved from the background of solid experience Dan K Tkomasson writes for Scripps Howard News Service His column runs ira-geo- us |