Newspapers / Brevard College Student Newspaper / Feb. 15, 2008, edition 1 / Page 3
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Feb. 15, 2008 \ The Clarion Editorial Page 3 Generation Fluff? A couple of years ago Vanity Fair conducted an essay contest posing a question about the differences between college students of last generation and college students of today’s generation. This question came to mind the other day as I was thinking about significant similarities between war, conflict and college students. College students in the 60’s during the Vietnam War were actively reaching for a revolution. They desperately sought a solution and a change to the government that was controlling and disrupting their future. Today, while we comfortably expand our minds in cushy classrooms, we seem to turn a blind eye to the conflict in Iraq and the Middle East because we’re used to it. So what happened in forty years that changed how we react to governmental injustice? We are called the MTV generation. Why don’t we find this insulting? Perhaps, I would feel differently if MTV were still a legitimate music-showcasing network. Instead it’s been replaced by reality shows of monetary excess and sexual experimentation, promoting insecurities for pre-teenage girls wondering why their lives are so different from those in reality. MTV revolutionized the music industry in the 80’s and early 90’s but now it had been swindled down to nothing but trivial superficial fluff. Does that make our generation defined by fluff? While students in the 60’s were protesting the Vietnam War with passion and conviction, rather than pay attention to the destruction of our future (I will repeat this: Our Future,) we obsess over violent war promoting video games and the next time we can get drunk. Earlier this week, there was a conversation that took place at my house. It gave me hope for our generation and our future. There was a group of college students talking about the hidden agenda of our governmental leaders, the insanity of the current conflict we’ve found our country in, and the realization of why the rest of the world hates Americans. This gave me hope because it showed that maybe we aren’t all at trivial as the fluff found on the network that defines our generation. Maybe we do pay attention to our country’s contradictions and the changes we need that are hopefully on the horizon with the upcoming presidential election. We do care about preserving our future as adults in this country. The biggest difference between college students of the 60’s and us is our unbridled access to information from all around the world. With the Internet, we can expose ourselves to media that is not American. Media that isn’t intended to put us in a state of fear or show us what only the corporations and the FCC want us to see. We can be in control of the information we gather about the world and our nation. With this information, literally at our fingertips, we can become the change we wish to see. Risa Dimond Managing Editor Note to Rocket: Abort Mission Roger Clemens was a pioneer on the baseball diamond. He was the first pitcher to strike out 20 batters during a nine-inning game. He is also the only pitcher ever to record his 4,000'** strikeout and 300'** win during the same game. And he is the only player I can recall getting kicked out of his son’s little league game for harassing a 17- year-old umpire. Clemens is now retired, but he is still a trailblazer. In an attempt to find ways to pass his time that don’t involve resin bags and smokeless tobacco, it seems that Clemens has invented an entirely new profession- personal lobbyist. Clemens spent last Thursday and Friday meeting with 19 members of Congress, hoping to dissuade them from believing that he took steroids during his professional baseball career before testifying before them in a congressional hearing on Wednesday. In Senator George Mitchell’s report on the proliferation of steroids in baseball, Clemens’ former trainer claimed that he injected Clemens with Winstrol 16 times from 1998 to 2001. Clemens vehemently denies this, of course, and apparently willing to waste the time of our nation’s elected representatives in order to prove his innocence. Clemens’ Capitol Hill schmoozing comes only a few weeks after Clemens called a nationally televised press conference in order to play a taped telephone conversation that Clemens apparently thought would prove his innocence. It didn’t work. The tape gave no information as to his innocence, and the only thing anybody really learned from the press conference was never to talk to Roger Clemens over the phone, because he probably has the wire tapped. Clemens’ behavior over the last month is best explained by paraphrasing Hamlet. The Rocket doth protest too much, methinks. The circumstantial evidence stacked against Clemens is substantial. In 1996, Clemens had the worst year of his career, going 10-13 with a 3.63 ERA. Two years later, Clemens was magically untouchable, posting a 20-6 mark with a 2.65 ERA. It may be just a coincidence that Clemens’ career saw a magical turnaround in 1998, but my guess is that it is the same kind of coincidence that causes pro wrestlers have acne on their backs and no discernible bulges in their skintight spandex. Besides the statistical evidence against him, several of the other players named in the Mitchell Report, including Clemens’ training partner Andy Pettite have already admitted to using steroids, giving the report solid credibility. It also came out this week that there is evidence that Clemens had his trainer inject his wife with Human Growth Hormone prior to a 2003 swimsuit photo shoot. Sometimes airbrushing just doesn’t do the trick. And now Clemens’ former trainer has supplied Congress with the syringes that he says he used to inject Clemens with steroids. The DNA results on the syringes should be released soon. Being the only man to ever strike out 20 batters in a game twice has put Clemens on such a high pedestal in the minds of sports fans that it will take a monumental event to cause him to descend from it. A positive result on the DNA test on the syringes would be that event. Americans are a forgiving breed. We love our heroes unconditionally, except when they lie to us. When Roger Clemens threw a broken bat at Mike Piazza, saying that he thought he was fielding the ball, people looked past it saying that it is good for an athlete to be intense. When Clemens demanded the Gross Domestic Product of a small nation in order to pitch half a season, America overlooked Clemens’ greed just to see his prowess on the mound a few more times. When Clemens signed with the arch nemesis of the team that he had spent the best years of his career with, sports fans applauded Clemens’ drive to part of a winning team. But deceiving the people that have forgiven his flaws so many times already- that is finally something that is unforgivable. Joseph Chilton Editor-In-Chief
Brevard College Student Newspaper
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