University of South Carolina Libraries
Thursday, February IS, 1996 * Serving VSC Since Wendy Hudson, Editor in Chief Rya Tina Morgan, Brent Seeliger, Editorial Bo Chris Dixon, Martha Hotop, Karen Layne, Robt Ryan Sims, Stephanie Sonnenfeld, Cece von Ko ? Arrest, SG i should be n In case you've been [ SSvpij asleep for a few days, here ^HUhLU are a few things you might There are < like to know. things hap1 First, one of USC's in the w finest talents, starting around tailback Duce Staley, was MVff!V!rT] arrested early Sunday morning and charged with Hope yoi disregarding a traffic paying ato signal, driving without a license and resisting arrest. What ol does this mean? Well, it can mean b that one individual made a mistake, n Or, in light of Warren Moon's recent trial, it could be a sign that football d players are trained to be too aggressive. If you want to, you could ?i even remember some of the other c USC football players that had run- j ins with the law, such as Steve Taneyhill and Matt Campbell, and ^ make a general statement about the t USC football program. Another interesting tidbit of news t is that Phil Gramm, former Republican hopeful, has withdrawn from the presidential race. You might. 8 be asking yourself, "Who cares?" 8 besides Bob Dole, who probably did * a cartwheel when he heard the news. * c LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Commissioner r To those of you who may be fed up with the endless flyers, speeches, handshakes or other tactics the SG candidates have used to solicit your , vote, I encourage you to put an end to I this campaigning and cast your vote , today! To those of you who claim SG has no power, I encourage you to also cast your vote today. To those of you who are either running for an office yourself or know someone who is, I urge you to vote today, as well. Finally, if there are any of you who have somehow not noticed bulletin boards covered with campaign fliers, I just want to tell you that today is the day of the 1996 SG elections. Why should you vote if you're fed up with campaigning? Cheer up! Candidates are required to remove their flyers after the campaign ends, which is today for most candidates! At least youVe noticed the fliers, which obligates you to vote. Since you know that there is an election, I am sure you are a concerned student who believes that the right to vote is also a responsibility. So, stop reading this and go vote! Why should you vote if you believe SG has no power? I can't think of a better reason to vote! SG will never have as much power as the students desire until more students actually vote. The lack of a mandate creates a lack of power. If you believe SG has no power, then today is your lucky day. It is the day to put the power back in our hands by voting. Why should you vote if you are runninff vouraelf or know someone who is? Well, having met so many of you over the past three weeks, I am confident that you will be the first in line at the polls. The election is today from 9 a.m to 6 pm. everywhere except at the Medical School, which will run from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. "iSaffcodt Student Media Russell House-USO Co Wendy Hudson Robbie Meek EAtor in Chief Matt Pruitt Ryan Wilson Spotti Editors Managing Editor Allison Tina Morgan Williams Brent Seeliger Special Projects Viewpoints Editors Ethan Myerson Martha Hotop Graphics Editor Cece von Kolnitz Karen Layne Newi EdUors Deanna Chris Dixon McLendon Stephanie Copy Desk Sonnenfdd Ryan Sims Features Editor Online Editorr The Gamecock is the stadent newspaper of the Univeraty of Sooth Carolina and is published Tuesday through Friday during the fall and spring semesters, with the exception of university holidays and exam periods. Opinions expressed in The Gamecock are those of the editors or author and not thoM of the University of South Carolina. The Board of Student Publications and Communications la the publisher of The Gamecock. The Department of Student Media is its parent organization. -* ' r'' -If*'V: v~' ' i \ ck 1908 n Wilson, Managing Editor, Viewpoints Editors ard ?e Meek, Tyson Pettigrew, Matt Pruitt lnitz, Robert Walton, Allison Williams ION | slections loticed You might want to give UmH that some thought 2 lot of because this man could pening have been your or Id president. you. Yesterday was pwvjiw Valentine's Day. In case you missed it, your local 2 are drug store will have ention. cheap candy for at least a week. Take advantage f the bargain-priced sugar. It is the eginningof midterms, and you just light need it. In case you need something to o on a lonely Thursday night, the iussell House Union is showing Get Shorty" at 9 p.m. Where else an you get John Travolta and Gene lackman together for only $2? For all of you living on campus, be housing sign-up sheets are due o your area office today. Don't forget, r youll get stuck camping out on he Horseshoe next year. And, oh, by the way, in case you ee some etuvs all dressed up in ties ind nice slacks running around landing out stickers and shaking lands, SG elections are today. Why lon't you get out of bed and go vote? eminds voters Julye Johns Elections Commissioner Generation has many defining moments In response to the article "Future lacks defining moment for generation" (Feb. 13), I have a few questions. Why does a generation have to be "defined?" What is so terrifying about the possibility that our generation may be made up of individuals rather than clones? Do we have to have the devastation of something like Vietnam to make us legitimate? Our generation has experienced many memorable events. I pity you and your friends if all you can remember is "90210" and MTV. As you mentioned, we had the Challenger and the fall of the Berlin Wall. We also had the Gulf War (although short, it was a victory), the fall of Communism and the breakup of the world's largest country, recession, the tripling of the national debt, the efforts to form a unified Europe, Koresh's Cult, Exxon Valdez, AIDS, the Greenhouse Effect, gay rights and abortion protests, hurricanes, floods, fires and the hostage crisis. Yes, television and radio (pop culture in nanatiall unit# lie and reflftrt whfl we are as a generation, but we are also influenced by global events and the economy. Don't our elders say we are slackers and that we won't be able to do as well as our parents economically? Doesn't the hopeless view of our future as depicted.by the media affect all of our attitudes? Don't let us prove them right! We have a histoiy, and we have a future. We have to discover it and make the most of it. Kim Stogner Psychology sophomore 777-7726 tising: 777-4249 777-6482 Chris CarroU lumbia, SC 29208 Laura Day Tyson Pettigrew Creative Director Robert Walton Jeff A. Breaux Photo Editora Alt Ditertor Adam Snyder Sue McDonald Jennifer Stanley Jim Speelmon Aast. Newt Graduate Assistant Dipka Bhambhani Marilyn Edwards Jennifer Hansen Taylor Ami. Features Marketing Director Achim Hunt Erik Collins Asst. Sports Faculty Advisor Keith Boodreaux Jason Jeffers Circulation Editor Cartoonist Letters Policy The Gamecock will try to print all letters received. Letters should be 200-250 words and must include full name, professional title or year and major if a student. Letters must be personally delivered by the author to The Gamecock newsroom in Russell House room 321. The Gamecock reserves the right to edit all letters for style, possible libel or space limitations. Names will not be withheld under any circumstances. TEWPi QUOTE,UNQUOTE J "If you I It (cri Republicans ha Ah, yes. It is political campaign season, o and treason is in the air! What a glorious b time to be a political watcher! I have n been a campaign junkie for a large c portion of my life, and I believe the *96 b elections will be the most interesting ii in the latter of half of this century, h The potential in the American s electorate for three (and maybe four) major political parties is astonishing. A T rrAffmr* lr> floma firrhfa on T1 X I CLULCUULUU g^tbUig 111 11UUIV xignuj vu jthe Internet that there will never be i] a significant third party in the United a States, but we stand on the brink of t seeing that come to pass. i: What has changed in the American r electorate? I believe there are several t factors that lead to this massive change, s The first reason is that I believe a a significant voter realignment/ t dealignment has taken place. These I two words, realignment and dealignment, are fancy political science 3 words that mean a massive number of t voters either went to another party or i have become independent Mary political < observers have been predicting such a '< realignment (they occur about every < 30 to 50 years), and I think the '94 1 election might fit the bill. < I can hear the collective jaws of the { liberally minded dropping, but let's i take a look at the election results. Many liberal political observers want to tag i the $4 election as an "anti-incumbent" ] election, but that simply is not the case. 1 Of all the elections for Congress, only 1 one (count 'em ONE) Republican ] incumbent lost, whereas upwards of OA m/*nmW?nfo lrvat TtVvr fVift ( av i/ciuuviab uivuiuwvuvw ivwvi * wi ?u*v first time, a sitting Speaker of the House, Tom Foley, was ousted from office. Also, the Republicans won two-thirds of the Bad words are no Fart. If s not exactly a curse word, i but what vulgarity! Is there any human experience more base, more uncouth, 1 more universal and more equalizing than intestinal gas? I bring this discomfiting word to the forefront of my discourse, for I intend to explode the myth of vulgarity as being the ignorant speaker's last resort. Vulgarisms cause uneasiness because they are such powerful words; they speak about things society tells us are not acceptable, and yet these things are fundamental to our lives. In our inability to deal with these unsettling ideas, we then resort to euphemism and outright denial. This is not meant to be a defense of four-letter words shing for the sake of insult, nor the crude anatomical slang intended to degrade. Vulgarity refers to common language, as opposed to ornate, stylized language. Sometimes this means the use of fourletter words. And why not? They are short, to the point, and almost always sound like what they mean. Vulgarisms resist euphemism. If a person means to take the name of the Lord in vain, he should do it without resorting to watered-down versions like "Goldam." The intention is still there, but for the sake of propriety, the phonemes have been altered. But back to the F-word. In a 1991 workshop, a poet spoke about powerful words. Words have the power to turn heads in crowded rooms, he told us, and some words are more potent than others. He told us the third most powerful word in the English language was AIDS, the second cancer. What, then, could the most powerful word in the English language be? What concept could surpass the greatest killers of our time; what word could turn more heads in a crowded room than cancer or AIDS? Fart. On a more serious note, ignoring vulgarisms does have deti^mental effects on society. It is pint; cmTx > KNOW THAT\ > COULD HAVE \ ^ 5t SAD 'HIT / / N THE VJhY\H.y J=^ | ^JMPR lay down and shut up at me) is going to get wor SG President Amy Bigham ve a chance pen seats. I I Irian I elieveifthe | QAMBWELL | lood in the ountry had een antiicumbent, then that number would ave been more balanced, not obviously lanted in one direction. By the same token, I don't believe the anerican people have changed their arty loyalty. There has been a huge acrease in people not identifying with iny party. In my humble opinion, I hink a part of the electorate (primarily 11 the South) has undergone a party ealignment from the Democratic Party 0 the Republican Party. There is also 1 part of the electorate that underwent i party dealignment, and in this election hese people identified with the Republican Party. What has this got to do with anything, rou ask? This is an election year, and his mass movement of political loyalty vill have an impact on die presidential ilection. The largest impact will be in i) who the Republicans nominate as heir presidential candidate, b) who is Perods stooge in the "Reform Party" md c) whether or not Jesse Jackson joes through with his long-threatened ndependent run for the White House. A lot of people, especially in this newspaper, have been thrashing Bob Dole recently. I will admit the fact he does not inspire a great deal of enthusiasm within the electorate, but his campaign really hasn't started yet [ think he would provide firm, experienced leadership, but I don't think he is what the surly American voters want. Steve Forbes is a paradox. He is an extremely wealthy populist who is t an ignorant sp> important to I amy understand that [ harris "bad words" are I not bad. They may make us uncomfortable and causs friction in social circles, but they ar< only a collection of phonemes. The sigi is arbitrary; it is only a matter of chana a particular collection of phonemes wil come to signify a thing we frown upon If a word signifies something taboo like sex, bodily functions or blasphemy it becomes "bad," like its referent, am we try to ignore it. We can't stand t hear die truth in all its flagrant ugliness This is when euphemisms, a littl linguistic lacquer, come in handy. Euphemisms prevaricate; they avoi the heart of the matter bv beine les descriptive than the words for whic they are substituted. Who would hav the need to facilitate such a adjustment? Well, the first thing t remember is that we humans are symbolic species: our distinguishin feature is that we function almos exclusively by manipulating symbol Whoever controls words controls idea Consider the AIDS epidemic. Th disease (one) can be transmitted sexual (two) and causes a drawn-out, painf death (three distasteful aspects of life AIDS discourse faces considerab obstacles, one of which is the resistam to any discourse about AIDS at a] Precedent has shown that ignorir AIDS will not make the dying sto silence promotes ignorance, whi< promotes the spread of AIDS, a top bound up with fundamental aspects life: sexuality, death and drug abus Behind the steadfast silence of apathel government officials, fearful scho administrators and embarrassed parer are millions of terrified, furious, dyii people. The AIDS issue became cloud by a linguistic smokescreen, and write who grappled yith AIDS violent > \ OvES__ Hwm s s m out It, g se." c cl G in '96 election jj financing his own run for the White House. (Sounds familiar, doesn't it?) a Forbes has a good set of campaign o advisors, lots of money and no political ti strings, which make him a good o candidate. But, he has no political t experience, and I think the American d voters will hold that against him. The In 1 QQA onrl Dntvsf f I Ccisuil V/CU ici luoi in it/uu aim i vi ui i never gained wide popular support is I that people recognize that political s outsiders are lately ineffective in the I presidency. c I think the American voters see that 1 Clinton is not the reformer he said he was. Also, I believe Clinton is not the j reformer he said he was. I also believe i Clinton and his advisors will fall into 1 a classic election strategy trap. Because < of his weak record, he will have to run "against Congress." While the polls \ (and I love polls, but that is for another ( day) say the country is scared of Newt ( and ready to thrash Congress again, ; look at the approval ratings of the I individual Congressmen in their districts. | One constant of politics in the U.S. is that the Congress as a whole has a poor ! approval rating, but the individual i ratings are sky high. Most of the sitting Republicans have approval ratings in the 80 percent range. i I don't think the Republicans are going to lose the Congress. In fact, I boldly i predict they will actually gain seats in both the House and Senate (and maybe become veto-proof). I think if the Republican contender runs an effective i campaign the Republicans will take i the White House. And then, the real 1 fun begins. eaker's last resort 1 resisted this whitewashing trend. "Decorum," wrote Paul Monette in 1988, "is the contemptible pose of the politicians and preachers, the hypocrite slime } whose grinning hatred slick the dying 3 land like morning dew." A weapon 1 against decorum is the rawest language ^ we can muster, language that refuses ^ to conceal. Common words that are terse, blunt and invariably sound like I what they mean need not necessarily j be dismissed as ignorance. These words o have the power to unequivocally, ). efficiently communicate strong ideas, e meriting a rightful place in our vocabularies. They strip away the veneer d of civility that would deny the pain and s beauty of truth. "[The poetry of AIDS] h is about dying and fucking," writes e Rafael Campo in a statement resisting n ornamental language in favor of 0 vulgarity and, in its ugliness, assumes a power. Sometimes it is more important for g language to be beautiful rather than g honest?maybe even flattering?when the propriety of the situation is is understood by all involved. Think about ly eulogies, commencement speeches, 1 flirting. Shakespeare's Lear was s). infuriated when his daughter Cordelia le broke the formality of courtly language ? and failed to "draw a third more opulent ll- tnan inerj sisiers. '6 But in other cases, vulgarisms serve P' as the most honest, direct means of conveying an idea. We use language to ^ impose sense and order onto the nebulous chaos of the objective, [jc unspeakable universe. By denying the 0| kind of language that is crass, raw and rta grating, we acquiesce to propriety ? that damnable, lying decorum of soed called civilized society that wishes to srs gloss over fundamental truths about ly sex and death an?* suffering. 3^ eturn of old V show rings a smile drew I Folks, I stewart | have spent this past week in grand exul tion. My greatest desire has come to iss. No, folks, Ronnie Milsap is not coining Carolina Hie reason I feel like a new an is because The Dukes of HazzarcT is returned to television. Yes, Bo and Luke once again grace le television of this resident of ummerton (pop. 975). And not a oment too soon. However, the Duke boys were not, ad never will be, what many nonoutherners presume them to be: outhern Gentlemen. Just as the Grand Strand dsrepresents the rest of South Carolina, o and Luke Duke are as close to outhern Gentlemen as Ford is to hevrolet. Although the Dukes were somewhat livalrous and would have turned the eneral Lee into a New York taxi cab efore speaking rudely to their mother, ley still lacked many of the qualities ecoming of true Southern Gentleman. For instance, Bo and Luke were Iways dressed like farm workers. Even n days when Uncle Jesse would send hem into town to get Daisy a new pair f shorts, they still dressed in clothes hat looked like they had come from the lumpster. Another Southern man often mistaken or a Southern Gentleman is Rhett Sutler. Although he had the look, wagger and speech of a gentleman, Sutler was as low and dirty as a piece if cotton dropped in the bottom of a atrine. However, Rhett could act like a jentleman with the best of them. His latural charisma could make a nun lose ler religion faster than the weather :hanges in South Carolina. But I think the reason these characters vere so popular here as well as up North which includes south Florida and the Grand Strand) is because they served is a form of escape for Southern Gentlemen to live out the Redneck growing inside of them. Whether he admits it or not, every Southern Gentleman has the ambition WJ gtSl UUl Ull a Ull t iuau Ul uic vrcucicu Lee and get Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane in a car chase throughout Hazzard County before finally jumping over an old mill pond to safety as Roscoe falls straight in. Also, ask any Southern Gentleman his preference in "Gone With the Wind" Most of them would say the old scoundrel Rhett Butler. And why not? The leading Gentleman of the picture, Ashleigh Wilkes, was a wimp. He was as tough as a wet paper bag. Why, he couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag. But Rhett Butler was a man for all men. Although he was lowdown and dirty and as much a Southern Gentleman as Joey Buttafuoco, he still had a way with words and could make even the most lady-like lady swoon like a schoolgirl (even though it took him until the end of the movie to get Scarlett into his arms). However, while most Southern Gentlemen like myself aspire to emulate the Dukes and Rhett in our daydreams, I must point out that these two are not one in the same. Whereas Rhett Butler tried to portray himself as the type of gentleman fit to eat barbecue with Miss Scarlett at the Wilkes party, Bo and Luke Duke tried to act like Southern Gentlemen with all of the chivalry of Andrew Dice Clay. So, as you can see, Southern Gentlemen act like Ashleigh Wilkes to impress the ladies, satisfy their mothers and to put on airs for the high society their wives and girlfriends often try to impress. Buenever Southern Gentleman are alone, with the deer club or out in the middle of Rimini with nobody but the road and a pickup, we all tend to attempt to live out our wild fantasies of behaving like Bo, Luke and Rhett. VOTE! Your activity fees are watching you!