Sun-Times: Off With Their Heads!
To spur the sort of civic debate it believes appropriate to a time of crisis, the Sun-Times editorial page introduced the occasional feature “Oh Shut Up.” This recently was succeeded by “What the ‘experts’ said,” which the Sun-Times explained would be “spotlighting what the self-appointed experts had to say about the war on terrorism to show how wrong they turned out to be.” Self-appointed experts are those notorious folk who don’t wait to be asked before saying things the rest of us disagree with.
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Its aggressive campaign against war skeptics puts the Sun-Times in fast company. Its new friends include the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, whose founding chairman is Lynne Cheney, the vice president’s wife, and whose “Defending Civilization” report can be found on-line at www.goacta.org. List making thrives in times of war, and the list offered here consists of 115 “expressions of pervasive moral relativism” uttered on campuses after September 11–expressions such as “Hate breeds hate,” which was a sign spotted at the University of Maryland. “Defending Civilization” regretted that American universities responded to September 11 by “rushing to add courses on Islamic and Asian cultures” rather than American. Cheney herself was quoted: “To say that it is more important now [to study Islam] implies that the events of Sept. 11 were our fault.”
The Sun-Times promptly made clear its contempt for Marilyn Lemak: “Before we gratefully forget about Lemak–and the mind is eager to push her away, particularly at this time of year–there is an important lesson in her case that should be understood and remembered, because it will come up time and time again.”
Unsure and Uninsured
Tasini’s assistant, Chris Zic, E-mailed Lisberg that by some familiar yardsticks the NWU isn’t exactly a union. “The NWU’s membership is rather different from the traditional labor union mode, certainly from the general constituency of the UAW,” he wrote. “As our members engage in all sorts of different professional practices under the rubric of ‘writing’ and moreover are dispersed throughout the country and are not contained in a given factory or workplace, the kinds of health insurance that the UAW provides for its members does not apply to us.”
Legal action?
