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EDITORIAL BOARD
EDITOR
Adam Beam
DESIGN DIRECTOR COPY DESK CHIEF
David Stagg Gabrielle Sinclair
NEWS EDITOR VIEWPOINTS EDITOR
Michael LaForgia Wes Wolfe
THE MIX EDITOR SENIOR WRITER
Meg Moore Kevin Fellner
IN OUR OPINION
USC stadium plan
right for Gamecocks
USC President Andrew Sorensen’s recommendation to
the Board of Trustees that USC build its own baseball
stadium was a good move for the University and its stu
dents.
For the past several years, the USC baseball team has
garnered national attention for our College World
Series teams and our SEC domi
The decision to nance This has resulted in an
build 3 new increased fan base in Columbia,
baseball stadium as wel1 as the rest of the state
was the right But while Sarge Frye Field has
move for the USC history, it has little else. It’s too
baseball team small and has none of the fea
and its fans. tures that are expected from a
top-ranked SEC program.
The new stadium, which might be built next to the
Colonial Center, promises to be an amazing complex
for USC baseball and its fans. If it is built next to the
Colonial Center, it will be an added benefit for students
because of its closeness to campus.
While the idea of a joint-use stadium with the city
made sense, it didn’t work out. Columbia Mayor Bob
Coble said the city just didn’t have the money to help
finance the stadium. We do feel it is unfortunate that
USC’s relationship with the city might be tarnished as a
result of these negotiations. Just a few weeks ago
Sorensen wrote a column on how he wanted to work
with the city and make the stadium happen.
But we feel that Sorensen was looking out for USC’s
best interests, as he should. USC waited two years on the
city to work out a deal, but unfortunately it didn’t hap
pen and we feel USC is justified to go ahead and build its
own stadium.
ITS YOUR RIGHT L
Exercise your right to voice your opinion
Create message boards at
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GAMECOCK CORRECTIONS
On Friday’s Page 2, the picture of the day should have been credited
to Jenni Dillard.
On Friday’s front page, the picture of the pharmacy school should
have been credited to Emily Sevins.
The Gamecock regrets the error.
If you see an error in today’s paper, we want to know. E-mail us at
gamecockopinions@gwm.sc.edu.
ABOUT THE GAMECOCK
EDITOR
Adam Beam
DESIGN DIRECTOR
David Stagg
COPY DESK CHIEF
Gabrielle Sinclair
NEWS EDITOR
Michael LaForgia
ASST. NEWS EDITOR
Jon Turner
VIEWPOINTS EDITOR
Wes Wolfe
THE MIX EDITOR
Meg Moore
SPORTS EDITOR
Jonathan Hillyard
ASST. SPORTS EDITOR
Daniel Kerr
SENIOR WRITER
Kevin Fellner
PHOTO EDITOR
Jason Steelman
SPORTS PHOTO EDITOR
Katie Kirkland
PAGE DESIGNERS
Erin Cline, Jennifer
Logan, Chas McCarthy,
Jessica Ann Nielsen
COPY EDITORS
Jennifer Freeman,
Anna Huntley, Jason
Reynolds, Jennifer
Sitowski, Daniel
Regenscheit, Steven
Van Haren, Joel
Wallace
ONLINE EDITOR
Brian Cope
PUBLIC AFFAIRS
Katie Miles, Jane
Fielden
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THE CHECHEN
I jafaff1
CARTOON COURTESY OF KRT CAMPUS
Conservatism isn’t compassionate
■ Democrats, then and
now, have led us down
a baseless party path
One thing the election suffers is a
dearth of conservatives. President
Bush has few strong issues save Iraq,
and among them are radicalizing
issues such as abortion and faith. As
for his weaker issues, health care
and education, Bush basically
proposes to spend less than his
opponent. This is after a projected
$2 trillion Medicare bill, a wealth
transfer to America’s richest income
group by age.
These past four years evince
the legacy of compassionate
conservatism, which isn’t
conservative at all. Conservatism
isn’t compassionate. “Compass
ionate” describes the president’s
domestic policy well: Bush pops
new programs like pills, especially
those that please evangelicals.
Actually, compassionate
conservatism is an argument to vote
Democrat in disguise. So lest we
forget why it is the Democratic Party
that deserves the title of most
compassionate and most odious,
here is a reminder: Bom from every
known corruption, last to embrace
truth and first to leave old truths
behind, it is good to hate the
Democrats.
Where, when should one start?
And are there in fact any depths to
plumb in the DNC, an ideologically
craven, lazy fraud of a party? Their
soul is
Roosevelt’s,
the pioneer
court stacker,
scheme maker,
boondoggler,
usher of
patronage
politics, source
COREY °f every
rADmnTT Democratic
GARRIOTT idea since the
FOURTH-YEAR New Deal,
ECONOMICS which is to say,
STUDENT that of
choosing to
whom to send
the next transfer payment.
The Democrats since flash by like
pale shadows of Roosevelt, all
ushers for the cult of the victim,
smugly self-satisfied it is they who
care for the poor because it is they
who dole out the cash. Could this be
class guilt? But the poor and the
Democrats have nothing in
common.
No group in history, claiming to
be philosopher kings, has been so
concerned with what the rest of us
think of their confounded, force fed
at gunpoint, loudly-given-for
maximum-impact charity.
Practically the only one with any
cojones was Kennedy, who cut taxes
— the party of pocket picking is
poised to grasp straws at the next
election all over again. With
practically the laziest candidate in
history, John Kerry, whose
discovered concern for the
everyman is countenanced only by
his affection for heiresses, all of
whose campaign proposals he
phrases in the negative (the better to
contradict Bush), whose only merit
indeed is that he isn’t Bush, why is
this election so close?
And lo, where does the
Democratic Party stand today? It
stands wherever it can assume the
posture of better-than-thou (though
never' holier-than-thou). It’s a party
where anything can be done under
the guise of “caring,” that
ubiquitous, vague intention that
rules over argument in Democratic
territory. Should these whiners be
let into power?
Those who divide the world into
winners and losers should be kept
far away from presidential podiums,
much less soapboxes. What new
proposal have they advanced since
1964, besides to tax the rich and
spend it to manufacture deficiency?
Have they taken a hard stand <Sn any
issue besides abortion, any issue at
all that counterintuitively might not
involve more spending? This gutless
group couldn’t hold a line against
terrorism or budget deficits any
more than Clinton could hold the
line of his zipper. Kerry doesn’t
know what lines are.
Today let us congratulate them
only for embracing the
disenfranchised and so dooming
them to fail. This is their
progressivism, and may it die.
IN YOUR OPINION
Fry’s letter shows
misguided rhetoric
Russell Fry (“Patrick’s
liberalism ignores real truths,”
Friday) took columnist Kim
Patrick to task for absorbing and
repeating the “rhetoric that the
Democratic Party spits.” Given
that his letter is composed in
such an overdramatic and
pretentious style, one can only
find it ironic that he should
accuse Patrick of employing
empty rhetoric.
For example, Fry describes
some terrorists’ “draconian
tactics of brutality.”
This phrase comes off badly
for several reasons: It’s
redundant, it’s formulated to
sound sophisticated but actually
conveys no specific information
and some of the words have
been chosen with regard only
for their obscurity, i.e.
“draconian.”
One could assert that the use
of this word in reference to
terrorists is absurd in that
“draconian” refers at least in
part to a body of laws (Seventh
century, Greece) whereas
terrorism is characterized not by
codified behaviors but by its
lawlessness and unpredictability.
Of course, one would have to be
perusing one’s dictionary rather
than thesaurus to realize this
point.
That’s only a brief example of
the number and the nature of
rhetorical sins Fry himself is
committing. I can’t help but
assume that the current
administration’s preoccupation
with certain words and phrases
— glib descriptions such as
“weapons of mass destruction”
and “enemies of democracy”
and so on that ultimately
confuse real meanings — must •
be informing Fry’s style. The
intentional obscurity, the
generality and above all, the
repetition of these catchwords
and slogans fog points and clog
arguments.
Put simply, if one is telling
the truth, one doesn’t have to
use such tactics.
CAT BAAB
Class of2004
New stadium means
even worse parking
Parking spaces are slowly
disappearing. We are forced to
pay $40 a year for a parking
sticker that does not guarantee a
place to park and sometimes we
still have to feed the meter.
Whenever one complains of
parking they are told to park at
the Coliseum and catch a
shuttle. The shuttles are a nice
necessity but you can’t ask 800
people to park at the Coliseum
and shuttle to their destinations
and only offer 500 parking spaces
for the shuttle takers and people
who attend class in the coliseum.
Not to mention that if there is
an event at the Colonial Center or
the Roger Center we are forced to
leave before 5 p.m., pay a $5
parking fee or find someplace else
to park. While watching the local
news, I recently discovered that
the gravel parking lot in front of
the Colonial Center would be
used to build a baseball stadium.
The only thing the news presented
as a problem was the fact that the
Bombers would no longer have a
place to play. No one even
considered the fact that this would
add to a problem that already
exists. When construction begins,
where does that leave us? Where
will people who use the parking
lots at the Coliseum, as suggested
by so many when we complain,
park when these lots are gone?
RAFAYELE O’BANNER
Third-year Technology Support
and Training Management
student
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COLLEGE QUOTE BOARD
I __ THE OBSERVER I
ITY OF NOTRE DAME |
Su consider yourself a man, and you choose to drink, you should
drink in the manliest way possible. Real men drink beer, and not
carb-ciStsdous fake beer beverages like Aspen Edge and Michelob Ultra.
Low-carb beer is about as manly as two guys sharing a large floral umbrel
la. Particularly in college, the unique flavor of a Natty Light or Keystone
should not be undervalued. i
■V
THE SHORTHORN
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT .ARLINGTON
While voters might get a general idea of a candidate’s platform
based on speeches, to know where someone actually stands on issues —
we must look to voting records, debates and previous actions. What a
politician says to fellow party members in front of TV cameras and
crowds of thousands isn’t necessarily their plan of action. Many times,
it isn’t even a template
U-WIRF.
Rebel flag
has no
place at
Carolina
m GameDay display of
controversial symbol
shames the university
I watched ESPN College
GameDay broadcast on
SportsCenter on Friday, and 1 got
heated when the entire nation saw a
r Confederate
flag flying in the
sea of garnet. A
live, national
broadcast was
not the time, if
there is one, to
fly the rebel
flag. The
student who
TERENCE flew that flag
WASHINGTON JJ^TTs
SECOND-YEAR school,
ELECTRONIC conditioned bv
JOURNALISM conamonea Dy
STUDENT the state of
South Carolina,
which remains
blissfully ignorant of racial issues.
Confederate flag defenders say it
warrants public display because of
its place in Southern history. By
displaying the flag, advocators say
they are recalling the South’s
heritage and the Confederacy’s fight
for states’ rights. They must have
forgotten that the South fought for
the states’ rights for the sake of
slavery and at the expense of the
freedom of the 4 million African
slaves who America stole. When
you fly the Confederate flag, you
support a state’s right to exploit an
innocent race of people.
The crowd at the GameDay
broadcast was supposed to be there
to cheer on the home team. Every
student there represented USC.
When the Confederate flag stood
without opposition in a crowd of
USC students, it said, regardless of
whether the bearer meant it, that
that crowd of USC students and the
university had closed their eyes to
the display of that flag. On national
television, USC condoned the
celebration of a culture that thrived
on tne enslavement or innocents.
Whoever flew the flag
undoubtedly did not consider the
implications when he hoisted it
above the crowd. The fact that he
did not think about his actions is
not entirely an insight into his own
conscience but more a testament to
South Carolinian complacency with
the state of race relations here.
I ask why: Why didn’t we learn
in high school about the Middle
Passage, where the black holocaust
occurred? Why isn’t “Roots” part
of high school and college
curriculums? Why weren’t we
taught what apartheid was, or who
Nelson Mandela is? Why is it that,
knowing that the NCAA won’t
allow South Carolina to play host
to postseason games until it’s
removed, our legislators leave the
Confederate flag on the State
House grounds, also knowing that
this state needs the revenue from
those games? Why is South
Carolina’s racist history more
important to them than the state
itself? Black people: Why don’t we
feel disrespected? We should be
colorblind, but even the colorblind
see black and white.
Black natives of the South are used
to seeing symbols of the Old South
raised to iconic status. While white
South Carolina denied it, we knew
Strom Thurmond had black lads, and
we don’t appreciate that his family
didn’t want to put Thurmond’s black
daughter’s name on his statue in
front of the State House.
As you fire up your computers to
try to defend your state, 1 just want
to say, in the amended words of
Malcolm X, I didn’t write this to
condemn South Carolina. I wrote
this to tell the truth, and if the truth
condemns this state, then it stands
condemned.