Opinion: In today’s pages: Obama and balloons, Barney and torture, McCain and young people
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
Patt Morrison preps for Obama’s upcoming speech at Denver’s football stadium, and KCRW commentator Rob Long urges John McCain to ‘go on the attack ... turn this election from being about left versus right, or Democrat versus Republican, into a winnable one: young versus old.’ Former ‘Barney and Friends’ music director Bob Singleton laughs at American interrogators’ use of the ‘I love you’ song, and writer Bernard Avishai strips away the stereotypes of a collective Palestinian consciousness:
... it is all too easy to assume that Jews and Arabs sort out into their respective national organisms; that every act of cruelty committed by any Arab or Jew is somehow expressing the DNA of the national organism as a whole; that atrocities like that committed by the Caterpillar driver July 2 would just not happen if Arabs simply condemned violence collectively enough, or if they didn’t secretly want atrocities to happen....This is, for God’s sake, no way to think about human beings. We do not need more fancy theories about the collective mind of Palestinians. We need to understand the grim logic of Jerusalem since 1967. We need to understand bell curves: the probable distribution of sociopathic outbursts within an angry population. An Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement will not put an immediate end to attacks like the one last week. But ... what, if not peace, eventually will?
The editorial board shakes its head at state officials -- like Don Perata, Fabian Nunez, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger -- for using political donors’ money for personal purposes: ‘It’s all perfectly legal, but it sure stinks.’ The board also wonders why YouTube has been hoarding users’ data, and hopes pre-Olympics China can be shamed into reforming its position on Darfur:
The peacekeepers lack trucks, armored personnel carriers and, most critically, helicopters, which are needed to effectively patrol the Darfur region, an area of Sudan the size of France. Some of the equipment is being held in port by the Sudanese government, which has also blocked the deployment of non-African troops. Yet the Western countries that approved the peacekeeping mission still stubbornly refuse to contribute the helicopters, without which it can’t succeed.China remains the second-biggest villain in this tragic tale, after the murderous Sudanese government. Beijing buys huge quantities of Sudanese oil and has obstructed efforts by the U.N. Security Council to impose tougher sanctions on the goons in Khartoum. A protest movement targeting the Beijing Olympics flared up during the international torch relay but has quieted since. We’re rooting for that to change by the time the Games open.
Readers react to the state’s budget woes. Bobby Fraker asks:
First, why don’t we review the methods of successful states -- Utah, Virginia, Washington -- to come up with a system to solve our problems? Second, would it be possible to have an easily accessible, statewide public forum, perhaps via a television station like C-SPAN, so legislators would have to defend their biases for all to see? Perhaps this would restore trust in our state government. We see very little that goes on in Sacramento. We need to be better informed about what happens in the Legislature so we can make good decisions when it is time to vote.
-- Amina Khan
*Cartoon: Bruce Plante / Tulsa World