_______________SHUNNING AND SHAMING BY FIONA MORGAN (08/28/98)
	Our complete inability to make sense of criminality and responsibility has crested with the sad case of Sherrice Iverson. In one swoop we witness what tiny value a small girl's life has. Jeremy Strohmeyer and David Cash, like most of their peers, have become desensitized to how important it is that a person's right to simply live and grow up be respected. Sherrice's parents mask their guilt by covering up the possible revelation that their poor parenting may have contributed to her being killed by vilifying a boy who should have spoken but did not. We're dangerously close to criminalizing a non-crime, thus legislating morality. Maybe the entire city of New York ("it's none of my business") should be imprisoned. A crowd of ranters and hangers-on who really don't feel anything, but know that they should, protest for protest's sake. The outrage over her tragic murder is the most misguided effort to reconcile grief that I've ever witnessed. I'm no expert at dissecting motive and the pain of a beloved child's death, but having grown up in South Central Los Angeles, six years in Atlanta and now East Oakland, I've only had to look out my window to watch small girls and boys like Sherrice play every day. I do know that they attend inferior schools, suffer unusual health problems and lack access to the things that build the good lives that we take for granted. I never see anyone hopping on a bus protesting that. We live in a society that breeds insanity, and that insanity is in all of us, not just Jeremy Strohmeyer and David Cash. -- Russell Mondy Thank you for a thoughtful and interesting piece about the David Cash story. I tend to agree with the students who dislike Cash and would prefer not to attend class with him but who do not want to see him expelled. It should not be a university's place to judge the moral behavior of its students. If it were, protesters of all kinds at Berkeley would be equally likely to be expelled -- abortion rights activists, pro-lifers, religious zealots of all flavors and so on. Although Cash's behavior was questionable and reprehensible, he has not been convicted or even accused of any crimes. To expel him because he may have taken part in this horrible tragedy is as wrong as admitting students who may meet academic performance standards, even though no evidence exists in either situation to support these claims. The latter practice, you'll no doubt note, is called affirmative action. -- Jeff Goldman
_______________BREATHING LESSONS BY ARTHUR ALLEN (08/31/98)
	There is a very simple explanation for increased asthma among black youths. However, most fail to recognize it based partly on its simplicity and partly on the strength of corporate America. Believe it or not (search the scientific literature), the reason asthma has increased dramatically among all Americans in general is because laundry manufacturers are putting more and more antigens (allergy producing proteases derived from bacteria) into their products. And the reason that blacks in particular seem to be more prone to asthma is because many more blacks than whites cannot afford water-softening units, which partially help to wash this bacterial residue from our clothes. -- John S. Althaus
_______________BOGUS EMOTION AND MASS CREDULITY BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS (08/31/98)
	Didn't Christopher Hitchens' mother ever hold him when he was a child? I'm no fan of the British royals, but, sheesh! -- Jim Crutchfield Norfolk, Va. I have for the last two days watched several hours of TV documentaries memorializing the lovely Princess Diana, and wish I could watch more. I never tire of looking at her or reading about her and, like millions, was deeply disturbed by her death. Your Christopher Hitchens characterizes the massive mourning of Diana's passing as "mass credulity" and a "frightful bingeing and gorging of sentimentality." How foul his attempt at wit. Not only does he make levity of the woman's eating disorder, a problem that he as a man need not fear encountering in his own life, but he then implies that people's genuine sadness at this loss of life is akin to illness. Salon, Mr. Hitchens has the illness. His is the illness of resentment. The illness of debunkment. The illness of intellectual snobbery. And I find his commentary unforgivably sour. But worse than Hitchens is the fellow he cheerfully quotes, Glen Newey, who among other absurdities writes that in "Diolatry," "Utterly humdrum deeds became the stuff of eulogy." I suppose that if Diana were a man of action she'd be worthy of such attention in the eyes of sexists like Newey and Hitchens. To them, one must accomplish, achieve. One must build or destroy. Make millions. Rule nations. Hah! They don't care that she moved the soul. Her deeds were not the deeds of great men, but the deeds that only one great woman could achieve. Must people always be judged by the standards of Homer, the pope and the queen? Certainly there is more to life, something silent, personal, not available to a merely rational, moralistic, judgmental mind-set, but felt. Call me a dope, sentimental, gullible, but by Diana -- I have been touched. -- Damion Matthews
_______________JUST THE FACTS, RAM BY CHRISTOPHER OTT (08/28/98)
	Mr. Ott makes an interesting assumption in his dissertation on conservative vs. liberal values in technology-based education. His assumption is that liberal values are "dogma free." He states: Fewer and fewer people will understand the liberal political perspective if their education has gone no further than memorizable maxims. He fails to mention that understanding conservative perspective, or indeed any perspective, involves going beyond memorizable maxims. By stating it as he has, he implies that conservative thought is somehow stagnant, static and does not actually constitute thought at all, merely a regurgitation of right-wing maxims. Also included in the article is a statement about how the dissemination of information on various sexual topics is a victory for liberals, but does not mean that liberals are winning the "war." He apparently does not understand that this is the war. Whatever side controls the technology will control the dogma presented to the nation's youth. There is liberal dogma as well as conservative dogma. Thus far, liberal dogma has seen much better representation on the Web than conservative dogma. Conservatives are now feeling the need to fight back by making sure that their interpretations are represented in new education software as well as sites on the Net. I agree with the premise that over-use of technology in education could stifle the growth of independent logical thought. I disagree with the thinly veiled insult to conservative principles implied in the notion that if the youth can't think, conservatives somehow "win." We all lose if tomorrow's generation can do nothing but regurgitate "facts." -- Tyson Jensen SALON | Sept. 2, 1998

R E C E N T L Y+| NEWT'S GLASS HOUSE BY STEPHEN TALBOT

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