Politics Daily

Shall Boys Live with Girls? Gender-Neutral Housing and the Evolution of Dorm Living

Willy Hameline — 2010-01-28T12:30:00 00:00

Filed under: The Cram

I often hate my roommates. They're loud when I want there to be quiet. They're in the shower when I want to use it. They own ukuleles. They forget their keys and need to be let in. They say that, no, it's not OK for me to buy a ukulele because three is a perfect number of stringed Hawaiian instruments for one dorm room but four is too many and if I was so into ukuleles in the first place why do I always complain about their playing them?

In short, my roommates exist, and while that often means we often find ourselves caught in the irritating but inevitable snags of communal living, we are friends who chose to live together and things usually work out nicely. It's a natural thing to live with those with whom you feel most comfortable - those with whom you identify and relate - and, in most cases, university housing systems respect that. The dorm room is more than just the four walls that surround your bed (with room to spare, I hope) and support your posters of ironic motivational messages regarding drinking. It is, for better or worse, your home as best as you can make it. To live with those who make the space fun and comfortable and safe is an essential element, and it should be encouraged.

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Where the Gay Marriage Debate Should End

Willy Hameline — 2009-11-24T15:00:00 00:00

Filed under: The Cram

It is a wonderful feeling to have a say in something you really believe in.

Earlier this month, atop the ballot in Maine, Question 1 gave voters like myself the chance to determine the fate of a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in the state. Question 1 was a veto - a "Yes" vote would quash marriage equality, a "No" vote would uphold it.

Maine's ballots are charmingly low-tech. Two broken arrows - one for yes, the other for no - point at the issues, and it's up to the voter to color in the one he favors. When all was said and done, a majority - 52.7 percent - of the arrows flew in favor of the veto and, like the shafts of vengeful Apollo, dealt a painful death to the short-term hopes for marriage equality in Maine.

But are the hopes really dead? In Maine, referenda are not set in stone, so that the results of one can be reversed by another. A referendum can be challenged by counter-referenda ad nauseam - a lot of Latin - and that will likely be in the case in Maine as activist groups mobilize to introduce follow-up gay marriage ballot initiatives.

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Students Lost Maine Gay Marriage Battle, But Not the War

Willy Hameline — 2009-11-11T15:55:00 00:00

Filed under: Gay Rights, The Cram

When it was announced - lo, one year ago! - that Barack Obama had been elected president, students at colleges around the nation were ecstatic. Cold November weather be damned, young men and women here at Bowdoin took to the quad with screams of patriotism and pride that could electrify even the most politically apathetic. The overwhelmingly liberal student body had tasted success, and it was sweet.

After last week's state elections in Maine, Bowdoin students were decidedly more tranquil. Question 1, a people's veto of a bill signed last May legalizing gay marriage, had passed with 53 percent of the vote - gay marriage would be legal no longer.

The implications of the vote had been the cause of sweeping excitement among Bowdoin students. Bowdoin goes to great lengths to be an open and accepting place for gay men and women, so much so that one anti-gay marriage speaker called the college "a glimpse into the oppressive future of homosexualist ascendancy." Had Mainers rejected the veto, their state would have been the first to approve gay marriage by popular vote, and many saw the chance for a rebound after the passage of Proposition 8 in California last year.

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5 Edgy Costumes for Discerning Trick-or-Treaters

Willy Hameline — 2009-10-29T15:00:00 00:00

Filed under: The Cram

Ah, Halloween. It's the day when the barrier between the real world and the spirit world is at its thinnest. When we don costumes ridiculous or scary to act out our fears, subvert authority, or lose ourselves in escapist fantasy. It's the one day children can knock on strangers' doors demanding candy, and the one day we, the strangers, can offer it to them.

Although ghost, pirate, witch, and Hannah Montana outfits will always be sartorial staples of Halloween, the topical costume adds the spark of current events to any Oct. 31st festivities -- especially on college campuses and among informed-yet-revelrous adults.

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CNN Doesn't Monitor the Battle -- It Tosses Grenades

Willy Hameline — 2009-10-23T17:00:00 00:00

Filed under: Media, The Cram

CNN has a tough job. The cable network offers 24 hours of news and analysis while walking the precarious tightrope of media objectivity. Although the right and left will forever lob charges of bias at CNN, the network nevertheless maintains some middle ground between the likes of 24-hour cable cousins Fox News and MSNBC in the spectrum of media partisanship.

Whether struck by the opportunity for dispassionate analysis or bored by a lull in the political action, when CNN decided to fact check an SNL sketch on the successes of the Obama administration, the other media outlets pounced. Bill O'Reilly slapped the segment with the dubious distinction of "Dumbest Thing of the Week," but it was Jon Stewart who saw the piece as an opportunity to sink his satirical teeth deep into the ethos of CNN.

In an epic segment on Oct. 12, Stewart spent 11 minutes -- half of the entire Daily Show -- pouring through clips of CNN's blatant disregard for fact checking the statistics spewed by actual politicians and pundits on its shows. According to Stewart, "Fact checking is the function of news. This is the public service provided." Never one to make a point without sarcasm, Stewart added, "It is one of the reasons the health care debate has been so fruitful."

As usual, Stewart nails it. He argues that the news organizations should educate the nation with fact checking and an open, intelligent evaluation of each side of political debates so that the public discourse is not mired in lies and partisan bickering. Idealistic as it may sound, there is a word for this: journalism. Instead, CNN brings together partisan experts that bash each other in divisive quarrels masquerading as real information. Issues such as the uninsured and the deficit take a back seat to fiery buzzwords like death panels and socialism/fascism that have no basis in the reality of the health care overhaul. We are constantly bombarded by the explosive attacks of partisan conflict and emerge deaf to the real substance of our political debate.

As an arena for unchecked liberal vs. conservative brouhaha, CNN has emerged as the mouthpiece for what the Atlantic calls "political hit men." These are quick-tempered experts who come to the Situation Room, or any one of the political shows that fill CNN's 24-hour schedule, not to resolve political debates but to perpetuate them with bitter attacks on the other side. The Wolf Blitzers, Anderson Coopers, and John Kings stand by as any middle ground or hope for consensus gets torn to shreds. Quite literally, CNN = Politics.

The effect on the public is a left/right split. If, as the Atlantic article suggests, the "public good is only viewed through a partisan lens," then people will only understand issues based on the "factional priorities" that good news agencies are supposed to fact check. The pundits at CNN take cues from SportsCenter as they infuse otherwise mundane reports with competitive metaphor and hyperbole that heighten the sense of hostility and desperation in government. The effect on the politicians is just as scary. Candidates are forever "taking off the gloves" and "swinging for the fences" in campaigns that begin and end in "crunch time." This competitive atmosphere makes campaigns seem interminable. Politicians constantly feel the need to defend themselves and retaliate against partisan attacks. Politics does not progress during campaigns. It stagnates.

Perhaps CNN and stations of its ilk are only reacting to what we, the consumers of news, want to see. We turn on the TV for stimulus - drama, conflict, tension - and CNN provides it in the context of politics. If ratings surge during campaigns, why shouldn't CNN turn up the burners of hostility on the simmering sausage of health care reform and get people watching? Amid the charged spectacle of our entertainment-media landscape, CNN has few choices. Perpetuating political squabbles isn't personal; it's strictly business.

But politics is not just conflict -- it's resolution, too, and CNN does all of the former at the expense of the latter. The purpose of sound and truthful political discourse -- which the news is supposed to foster -- is to aid in the settlement of legislative and policy battles on some common ground. As a 24-hour network, CNN has literally all the time in the world to flesh out the sides of an argument with analysis and perspective, but instead it revs the nation's political engine to dizzying speeds with a never-ending stream of "recent developments" and "this just in's." If viewers are only fed the heaping portions of diced soundbites and juicy vitriol that CNN's up-to-the-minute ethos provides, then they will not develop a deep understanding of the issues. Death-panel distractions that have no legislative basis will multiply. If the public is artificially polarized and the politicians have to answer the public's phone calls, read its letters, and hear its shouts in town hall meetings, when it comes to representation, they will be forced to abandon the political middle ground that gets bills passed into law.

CNN is certainly not the worst of the news organizations, but it invites criticism because it claims to be an arbiter of sound political discourse, and it is not. Other 24-hour news networks -- FOX and MSNBC, I'm looking at you -- add an overt partisan element that feeds and perpetuates the left/right split that makes politics so divisive these days. The 24-hour network news model is not inherently flawed, but its current form is unacceptable.

The networks need to burn out. They have taken things too fast and too far from actual legislative substance. If all the anchors could take a collective deep breath, step back from the news wire's edge, and return to their desks without the inflamed eye of the instigator, our news would not be the mess of partisan malice that it is today. CNN has pulled an all-nighter every day since its inception in 1980. Maybe it just needs a nap.

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As Goes Maine, So Go Health Care and Gay Marriage?

Willy Hameline — 2009-10-13T10:43:00 00:00

Filed under: Senate, Republicans, Health Care, Gay Rights, The Cram

There are many perks to going to college in Maine. The lobster. The breathtaking scenery. L.L. Bean. An appreciation for summer weather. Did I already mention the lobster?

But the rumblings of social, political, and economic debate are boiling up among Mainers, and upcoming legislative battles in the state have the potential to burst from our quiet corner of the country like an icy Nor'easter. It's enough to make a college student from New York cast off the detached respect of an outsider and embrace the issues with the engagement of a native (albeit without the accent).

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You're Watching: Barack Obama. Up Next: Barack Obama

Willy Hameline — 2009-09-25T20:00:00 00:00

Filed under: The Cram

It's no secret that many of those displeased with the direction our country has taken since Barack Obama's swearing in eight months ago feel the federal government has gotten too big. As if the series of bailouts to banks and automakers weren't enough, the health care overhaul was yet another unacceptable encroachment of the government's long fingers into the pies many would rather keep private.

It's also no secret, but apparently hard to swallow, that America is not the privatized bastion of small government that tea party protesters say they are trying to defend. The government is widely involved, from the obvious (military, police, education), to the less obvious (firefighters, postal service, libraries), to the obvious but misunderstood -- Medicare.

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Children of the Corn: Subsidies, Incentives and Health Reform

Willy Hameline — 2009-09-24T16:54:00 00:00

Filed under: Economy, Health Care, The Cram

In 1959, as the tensions of the Cold War seethed into their second decade, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev paid a visit to the United States. His stops included New York, Washington, Los Angeles, and, much to the head-scratching of the CIA, a little stop in between: Iowa (and yes, a 50th anniversary commemoration exists).

Russia had stolen the formula for the atomic bomb. She could send satellites into space. But the one area where we the capitalists had her beat wasn't in a secret smuggled around in briefcases handcuffed to wrists but in a practice as old as civilization itself: agriculture.

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How Obama Would Have Addressed College Students

Willy Hameline — 2009-09-10T18:15:00 00:00

Filed under: The Cram

So Obama's speech to our nation's students on Tuesday didn't strike the socialist tone some had expected.

The president:

" . . . we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world -- and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed. And none of it will matter unless all of you support my socialist scheme to choke all that is free-thinking and pure about America with the piano wire of big government -- starting with health care for all!" [Lightning strike, a diabolical laugh, and the screams of children as a cartoon Karl Marx appears to read his Communist Manifesto.]

That last part didn't make the prepared remarks, though many heard those sentiments echoing throughout.

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Weighing the Afghanistan Troop Increase From the Dorm Room

Willy Hameline — 2009-09-08T13:12:00 00:00

Filed under: The Cram

One afternoon in 11th grade, while flipping through a magazine, I came across an advertisement for the Marines. It touted the glory of being one of the few and the proud, but my eyes went straight to the offer at the bottom. If I filled out a form with my mailing address and phone number I would receive a free monocular with the Marines logo emblazoned on the side. A free monocular! With visions of night-vision dancing in my head, I scribbled my info and sent the card away.

The monocular would not come for six months, but in just one week I received a different sort of present. Marine Sgt. Lopez called my house that week and every week for several months, asking me to enlist. I don't know if our Armed Forces were desperate or if there was indeed a strong correlation between free monocular giveaways and Marine enlistment, but the weekly calls always shocked me. You want me to join the Marines? I tried to let Sgt. Lopez down easy. Like Daphne, who fled a love-drunk Apollo so far as to be transformed into a laurel tree, so did I duck and dive Sgt. Lopez until my transformation into a college student, when he gave up.

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