Friday, September 07, 2007
Does Becky O'Malley take bribes?
Becky O'Malley writes an editorial with her usual warped worldview in order to deride her enemies on the football-hippie-tree thing.
One has to wonder, though, why she writes this piece. She certainly doesn't have to, since most folks who read probably agree with her. Perhaps someone, such as anti-UC folks who are wealthy enough to fund having folks sit in trees for months, are cutting her some checks.
Baseless accusation, you say? O'Malley doesn't mind, don't worry:
The sponsors of the ASUC resolution put out a Facebook call-to-action before the City Council meeting:
"LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD!" Meet on the Sproul steps at 3:30. We will take the bus to the City Council special session together and let them know we want a safe and state-of-the-art facility for the best student-athletes in the country!"
Why sports-minded young folks thought they needed a bus to get to the City Council chambers, a few blocks from Sproul, is not clear. Perhaps someone, for example the Cal athletic department, offered to provide a bus for them? Well, that's okay. Wild accusations are perfectly acceptable in editorials. And news articles, for that matter:
UC Berkeley did its own mobilization, bringing student athletes, their supporters, university officials and others to speak to the council in favor of UC's offer.
...
"Several women's teams have no facilities," Berkeley resident Mitchell Wilson told the Daily Planet before the public comment period began, adding that building the stadium anywhere else would be "radically inconveniencing students." Wilson, who held a printed sign calling for settling the lawsuit, said he is unaffiliated with the university. But let's move on. On a letter from that Vice Chancellor dude:
"Moreover, seismologists and engineers know from studies of past earthquakes that the level of ground shaking is approximately the same right next to a fault as it is anywhere else within two miles of the fault".
Exactly. Shall we discuss the failure of logic in the preceding paragraph, class? Proving that there are no active fault lines under the site proves.....what? Within two miles, it's what we all agree is a toss-up, pun intended. I'm not quite following the failure of logic here... is O'Malley suggesting that no one should build anything within 2 miles of a fault line? We're going to have to move a shitload more than just an athletics facility to pull that off.
One more point: on Thursday the UC student council, now grandly named the ASUC Senate, passed a resolution saying, among other things: "the ASUC encourage the City of Berkeley to engage in dialogue with the University of California regarding a settlement before the lawsuit goes back to court on Sept. 19, 2007." How old is the name "ASUC Senate"? I don't know. I don't think it's particularly recent. At least, not recent enough to warrant a "now grandly named" comment. Besides, I don't think I want to hear about grand naming from a lady who runs a twice-weekly Berkeley Daily Planet.
Finally, O'Malley reveals her superhag status with:
And not all students responded enthusiastically to the rallying cries. Here's one Facebook naysayer: "Use that money to pay for tuition. This is a public university, not a football fan club. If our donors don't like us without a good football team, then what does that say about them? College is about education, not thinly-veiled homoerotic wargames. We have a real war going on, anyway. You want to see grown men hurting each other, switch on CNN. Only in Iraq, sometimes kids get in the way."
The writer has no business blaming only gay men for excessive drooling over virile football players, since many women have the same problem, but otherwise he speaks for a lot of students and alumni, and for many Berkeley citizens. Uh... has she never heard any discussion of homoeroticism in sports? When you say sports are homoerotic, you aren't saying that sports are a place to showcase hot guys for gay watchers. Not even close. Apparently, she knows less about sports than I do, which is impressive.
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