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i IDA Tuesday May 18 1999 Opinion Standard-Examin- 'jm Standard-Examin- er SERVING THE TOP OF UTAH SINCE 1883 Scott Trundla Publisher Don Porter Editorial Page Editor Ron Thornburg Managing Editor OUR VIEW a wrong in effort to recruit jobs Hill rectifying commander’s meeting with LDS Church leaders was not the right method to recruit for jobs coming to the base Hill to officials at Base Force According tours for 3000 local leaders over the past year and met with many more off the base in an effort to spread the good word about the 2100 or so jobs coming to the base over the next few years But it turns out they spoke with one group too many the LDS Church Maj Gen Richard Roellig met with members of the church’s First Presidency - the top three officials of the church - weeks ago to apprise them of the wealth of new employment opportunities coming to the base from closing Air Logistics Centers in Sacramento Calif and San Antonio Texas However it was a meeting that shouldn’t have taken place Federal job recruitment among religious faiths is a clear no-n- o for plenty of reasons not the least of which is that people of all faiths - as well as people of no faiths - should be afforded the same opportunity to compete for jobs Roellig’s motives may have well-intention- ed been pure: to notify as many Utahns as possible about upcoming employment for skilled laborers - possibly thousands of them depending on how many workers transfer here from California or Texas Since the Beehive State is roughly 70 percent Mormon the general doubtless believed his method was an efficient one A little more careful consideration for the aforementioned reasons would have been in order Now the Hill brass is left to clean up the faux pas by meeting with representatives from other groups offended at being left out of the loop On Monday for instance the leaders of the Ogden Hispanic group Image de d Utah and Salt Lake Utah Coalition of LAR-AZmet with Roellig and other officials at the base City-base- A Maybe this regrettable situation will remind everyone that there are ample secular avenues to recruiting government workers ANOTHER VIEW Shaking up Kansas Kansas recently experienced its first earthquake since the 1930s and its residents are undoubtedly wondering why we don’t the forces of Normallybut this event was so unfair an exception must be made: Kansas had an earthquake True it was a weak tremor only registering 30 and since the last one was in 1931 hardly an everyday occurrence Damage appears to have been y office limited to a a and building parking lot in two-stor- Hot water Kansas City areas -California Italy Japan - have two hallmarks mountains and oceans In return for giving up that kind of scenery Kansas has every right to demand that earthquakes leave it alone Earthquake-pron- e The forces of nature should keep their part of the bargain - Scripps Howard News Service as in ‘cool’ Water used to be the inexpensive drink for all but now blossomed into a very trendy drink for the beautiful Water is hot or more cool not just with the fitness crowd The drink that used to be considered so boring it wasn’t really a drink referred to with a yawn as “just water” has come into its own in the corridors of power and a lot of other places No meeting worth its agenda is called to order anymore without the snap of plastic tops as participants crack open the H20 Coffee and soft drinks are still available of course but they do not carry the cachet of a tall clear one People who drink water are not only telling the world they’re thirsty but that they’re it has health-saw- y acceptably Spartan and progressively minimalist No wonder Boston the very soul of character is home to what appears to be one of the few water bars in the world called approit has “Waterbar” priately for the past year been serving more than 60 varieties of Mother Nature’s finest (Owner) Debora Mache serves no food and yet her bar still attracts a lunchtime crowd it is after all the per- - fect spot for the new power meal Not exactly ’’Cheers” but even if not everyone there knows your name they sure know what you’re drinking - The Boston Globe AND THEN THERE WERE THREE COLUMNS King’s dream belongs to all of us DThis public leader’s prase is not property of a private family BOSTON - At first it sounds like a question for a panel of philosophers: Who owns a dream? What happens when a vision that’s formed in the words of one person is released like a balloon into the air to be shared with everyone? Whose property is it then? The dream in this case was described by Martin Luther King Jr Standing before a crowd of 200000 at the Lincoln Memorial on that August day in 1963 he found the language to match the moment “I have a dream” he told the country in a speech that became a part of our collective eloquence as much a part of our heritage as the Gettysburg Address Dr King had a gift Now people are wrangling over the value of that gift Today the question of dreamers and owners words and property history and money has been set before a panel of three judges in Atlanta The King family is asking an appeals court to rule that CBS must pay them to use the dream speech in a documentary sold on videotape They claim that they - not the public - own Dr King’s words For years the King family has been protective or litigious - choose one or the other They sued and settled with Henry Hampton who produced the “Eyes on the Prize” documentary They sued and settled with USA Today They regard themselves as keepers of the legaand the accounting books cy In 1963 no one would have believed there was money to be made from civil rights history In his lifetime Dr King was interested in justice not profit His At last of a minister He contributed everything even his Nobel Prize money to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference ’Alien Dr King was assassinated the sum total of his estate was a $50000 insurance policy bought for him by Harry That plus his words These words are what the family lawyers call “intellectual property” It’s property that will soon be worth an estimated $50 million from multimedia deals licensing and real estate I do not mean to suggest that the family is in the protection racket solely for the money Schools are granted the use of the “Dream Speech” freely At the same time one of the many lawsuits was against a company that wanted to use Dr King’s image on refrigerator magnets It’s not surprising that the family would resist the trivialization of a man’s magnetism into a refrigerator magnet It’s far too easy in our culture to slip from being a martyr on a pedestal to a pop icon on a While we are talking about King and commercialism it is fair to ask the difference between the family profit - much of which goes to the Center for Nonvio family at times lived on the salary $6000-a-yea- r lent Social Change in Atlanta - and CBS’ profit But nevertheless there is still the little matter of public history and private property In the appeals court the case will not be decided on the grounds of greed but of copyright law and free speech On the one hand Dr King gave the press advance copies of the speech on the other hand the most eloquent passages were extemporaneous On the one hand he copyrighted the speech after it was given on the other hand he characterized it as “a living petition to the public and the Congress” Those of us who work with words for a living understand the desire to control our ephemeral “product” We are sensitive to the notion of intellectual property and do not take kindly to bootlegged editions of CDs or books or software that show up on black markets But Martin Luther King was not a rock star Or a software designer He was a preacher a leader a prophet a martyr He was in every sense of the word a public figure One day 36 years ago he gave voice to our collective idealism and words to our best collective yearnings: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” This is not a private dream It doesn't belong to his family estate It belongs to all of us Pulitzer columnist Ellen Goodman is associate editor of The Boston Globe Her column runs on Tuesdays and Fridays Prize-winni- a political fixation that matters Chicago’s Daley a romantic realist on education CHICAGO - Everyone will tell you Mayor Richard M Daley is a practical man not someone given to grand theory romantic ideas or crusades But when he sits down in his City Hall office and starts talking in his clipped rapid-fir- e way he sounds like a romantic when it comes to education He has a theory about the Democratic Party and has ideas Washington politicians could use to improve the quality of life - a phrase that of course never passes his bps First the ideas: Make public education work get the feds to be as eager to build and repair schools as they are to build and repair highways help parents who worry about what their kids are doing between the time school lets out and the time the workday is done and control guns Daley is obsessed with education He seized control of the city’s schools - creating a model for other mayors to follow He’s invested much of his energy and political capital in a crusade to fix them He comes back to schools whether the subject is urban sprawl neighborhood economic development the flight of the middle class from the cities or the uplifting of the welfare poor Sprawl? “The reason you’re getting urban sprawl" he says “is because the it’s younger generation is convinced easier for them to form a new school district” and “watch their children grow and go to a good quality school “They don’t want to sit back and fight the bureaucracy and fight the red tape and the problems of the school district They’ll go out 60 70 80 miles from here and form a new community and school district You’re not going to wait for some educator to tell you: In 12 years we’re going to change the school system” How to fix the schools? Here’s Daley’s traditionalist litany and he hardly draws a breath as he says: “Core curriculum: reading math communication skills writing - those are real skills There’s nothing wrong with going back to a core curriculum There’s nothing wrong with going back to ending social promotions There’s nothing wrong with going back to mandatory summer schools “There’s nothing wrong with mandatory homework” He’s talking even faster now “There’s nothing wrong with uniforms” or “with zero tolerance of narcotics and knives and guns” or “with having metal detectors in high schools” or “with having police in high schools to make the schools safe” Why has Congress been so averse to spending money on school construction? “They build highways they build bridges they build everything else” he says “They put money into higher education They surely could put money into elementary high school and early childhood education” You’ll hear this from other politicians soon: “If we can bomb Belgrade and rebuild it why can’t the federal govem- - ment rebuild schools?” And why he asks are schools closed when parents are still at work? “Why are you building these huge libraries the technology centers the recreation facilities?” Children he says “can do their homework there they can do arts and sports and intramurals and all that” Daley is cautious about school vouchers “If someone wants to try it so be it” he says He favors vouchers for programs Kids and their parents could “decide whether they should go to the Boys Club the Girls Club the YMCA the private school or a public school for programs - arts sports curriculum reading math techafter-- school after-scho- ol nology” Daley has led the trend of cities suing gun companies for damages and is confident the tide is turning in favor of tougher gun laws “Women are going to change the issue” he says because women ask: “Can their child go to a mall? A bowling alley? A movie theater? Can he or she go to school?” In the 1930s and 1940s he says “the Democratic Party was the instrument of change The Democratic Party was the instrument of the GI Bill the veterans coming home after the war the Depression and all that They took the bottom of the country and rebuilt it” With Daley it comes back to one thing “I hope the Democratic Party opens the window and looks out and tries to find out how we’re going to fix the public schools” If a politician is to have an obsession why not Daley’s? Unlike Washington’s obsessions over the last year this one matters EJ Dionne is a former reporter for the New York Times His column runs on days and Frulays Tues- |
