AMERICANS don't need a political candidate to tell us that it's time for a change in Washington. We need only look to Washington to see it ourselves.
MY TOUGHEST critic calls my columns "rants," looks at all the writing I've done on these pages and quite often wonders aloud whether I have anything positive to say about anything at all.
OBVIOUS from the first strains of a band playing thoroughly un-ironic covers of Avril Lavigne songs was the fact that the last week's release party for the University Women Center's Irismagazine wasn't about typical -- or at least not stereotypical -- feminism.
BEING a progressive in George Bush's America is a daily heartbreak. Caring about social justice, responsible foreign policy, and good government in Tom DeLay and Bill Frist's America means waking up to newspaper headlines each morning to find something else in which you believe under vicious attack.
WE'RE ALL guilty of jargon from time to time, of speaking in the tongues of our trades and letting clarity fall by the wayside.
A POX ON the house of the next pundit who calls Harriet Miers "Souter in a skirt," or the next Bushie who claims that opposing W's nominee is sexism.
DO THE math on 87 percent of 8.5 percent of the undergraduate body. It's no mandate. Public opinion is fickle, and student referenda in fall elections carry very little weight.
IF YOU'RE a dedicated Democrat, take a second to remember where you were two weeks ago when you heard that (now former) House Majority Leader Tom DeLay had been indicted for criminal conspiracy. Just for a moment, tap into that glee, that all-is-right-with-the-world feeling of comeuppance accompanying the news that Hammer finally got nailed. Feels good, doesn't it? As it turns out, the average American has absolutely no idea what that feels like.
IT'S DEPRESSING to imagine what they must think of us. The outside world, Virginians unaffiliated with our school and folks as far north as Boston, who read about the University over their morning coffee, clucking their tongues at news stories about, as the Washington Post phrased it "at least nine racist incidents -- slurs shouted from cars, ugly words written on message boards, a racist threat scrawled on a bathroom wall." It's disheartening that this is the face of Mr. Jefferson's grand project to those outside our community -- not the architectural glory of the Lawn, not the top ranked academic programs, but the shameful acts of a handful of cowards.
The words come in a drumbeat:Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, in a heartbroken opinion editorial, laments that "I've cried a lot of tears the past few days as I watched television -- to see somebody lying dead outside the convention center.
