I Monday, July 26, 2010
TII K DAI I- Y
Collegian
Elizabeth Murphy
Editor in Chief
Kelsey Thompson
Business Manager
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rial opinion is determined by
its Board of Opinion, with
the editor holding final
responsibility. The letters
and columns expressed on
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Inc. or The Pennsylvania
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State. Editorials are written
by The Daily Collegian Board
of Opinion.
Members are:
Kevin Cirilli, Jenna Ekdahl,
Bill Landis, Elizabeth Mur
phy, Laura Nichols, Edgar
Ramirez, Andrew Robinson,
Heather Schmelzlen, Jared
Shanker, Katie Sullivan, Alex
Weisler, Steph Witt and
Chris Zook.
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Off-campus housing plan needed
There’s no question a
student housing shortage
exists in State College.
There’s also no question
that Penn State needs to
step up and do something
about how students who
live off-campus find places
to live. Right now, though,
only the borough seems
concerned about it. Mayor
Elizabeth Goreham met
with UPUA President
Christian Ragland to dis
cuss the issue last week.
Students are guaran
teed one year of on-cam
pus living as a freshman,
but after that all bets are
off in most cases, which
should be an easy prob
lem to work around if a
student’s housing contract
isn’t renewed.
lIP* 5
Lilith criticisms full of hypocrisy
By Alex Weisler
Chalk it up to being
raised by a strong
woman.
I’ve never
bonded with
NASCAR or
even Little
League. My
iTunes features
nine songs by
Bruce
Springsteen and
45 by Joan
Baez. Ancient
Hillary Clinton
campaign speeches can still
make me cry. My roommate
bought me an unauthorized
biography of Jewel for my 21st
birthday.
And yeah, I’m straight.
MY OPINION
I went to Toronto this week
end to catch Lilith Fair, the 2010
revival of the late ’9os tour
founded by Sarah McLachlan
and designed to “celebrate
women in music.”
It’s no surprise that I drove
six hours (across an internation
al border!) this weekend to
catch the concert. Intimate, fem
inist singer-songwriters are kind
of my wheelhouse, so going to
Lilith Fair was always a given.
What shocked me, though,
was the level of vitriol and con
descension directed at
McLachlan and her band of
empowered troubadours.
The New York Times, in a
piece dissecting the influence of
Lady Gaga on today’s pop land
scape, calls resurrecting Lilith
However, there is no
timetable for a student to
receive confirmation or
rejection of housing, leav
ing many students with
nowhere to live after most
complexes have filled
their apartments.
Penn State offers no
real provisions for stu
dents in need of off-cam
pus living. For non-fresh
men, some still as young
as 18, the prospect of pick
ing a place to live is a
challenging and intimidat
ing task, and students
often have to go through it
without any assistance.
International students
are often left in a worse
position than students
already at University Park
or transferring from a
BI?EAKiM6 NEWS: 81066ER5
Reliable source
MATioN...
“You can’t accuse McLachlan of peddling a
monolithic view of womanhood if you’re push
ing for Lilith to feature just as rigid a stereo
type young, hot, writhing and Auto-Tuned.”
“a doomed decision from the
start.” Toronto’s Eye Weekly
arts magazine lambastes the
tour as “a standard, for-profit
tour with a marketing strategy
that uses sisterhood to sell
singers in the same way Warped
Tour uses punk’s legacy to sell
shoes.”
Other voices are even angrier,
demanding to know why Lilith’s
lineup doesn’t look like the
Billboard Hot 100, asking why
Lilith is necessary in an era
when Rihanna and Katy and
Kesha and Miley and, yes, Gaga
rule the charts.
Sure, Lilith celebrates a cer
tain type of woman she’s
probably gay, she’s probably 40,
she’s probably wearing a chunky
necklace and she definitely
knows all the words to “Building
a Mystery.”
But you can’t accuse
McLachlan of peddling a mono
lithic view of womanhood if
you’re pushing for Lilith to fea
ture just as rigid a stereotype
young, hot, writhing and Auto-
Tuned.
Lilith was commercial in its
day, too, spotlighting folksy
singer-songwriters at that
bizarre and wonderful time in
American music when Jewel
was a superstar.
commonwealth campus.
Students coming in from
overseas need to find
housing again on then
own before even com
ing to Penn State.
The university needs to
do something to help the
students in need of hous
ing. This is not a borough
issue; the root of the issue
is Penn State.
Student housing is going
to remain a problem until
someone steps in and
takes a look at the whole
system.
While it won’t be fixed
overnight, the university
should start by at least
implementing an organ
ized system meant to help
students find suitable
housing.
ELATED STORY:
EITHER
;MS UKE
SPECIAL
-lON JUST
€ THINGS
fOIfSE...
But now Lilith is all about the
fringes. Lilith is necessary
because no one is celebrating
those women these days no
one except Sarah McLachlan.
Collegian Editor in Chief Liz
Murphy and I trekked to the
Molson Canadian Ampitheatre
in the pouring rain Saturday
night. We camped out under a
giant rainbow umbrella and sat
on a raincoat. We watched Mary
J. Blige cover “Stairway to
Heaven” and sang along to
every word of McLachlan’s
“Adia.”
When a flock of birds took* off
from the ampitheatre’s roof at
sunset, the entire arena
applauded. Simply put, Lilith
attracts weirdos.
But a 50-something woman in
a caftan flailing around wildly
during a Peter, Paul and Mary
cover is no stranger than Lady
Gaga showing up to an awards
show in a dress made of Kermit
the Frogs.
Why are we so hell-bent on
celebrating just one type of
woman in music? There’s room
for both.
Alex Weisler is a senior majoring in
journalism and is the Collegian’s man
aging editor. His e-mail address is
acwsoB4@psu.edu
Attacks aimed
at journalists’
opinions unfair
My name’s Aubrey
Whelan, and I’m
a liberal.
Need more? I voted for
our current president. I am
embarrassingly obsessed
with Hillary Clinton. I find
Sarah Palin hilarious and
frightening. I believe in gay
marriage and universal
healthcare and feminism
and global warming.
A lot of people would have a problem
with that paragraph. I know where they’re
coming from. The public tends to put jour
nalists in a class of our own when it comes
to expressing opinions and rightfully so.
We decide what’s news and what’s not. We
shape the public opinion. And because we
have that privilege, that responsibility,
we’re obligated to be as unbiased as we
possibly can. It makes sense.
But journalists are people, too, not neu
tral automatons, and we’re bound to have a
few biases. In fact, because any journalist
worth their salt will immerse themselves in
the issue they're covering, we’re that much
more likely to develop an opinion on it, just
based on sheer proximity. But unless you
have the distinct privilege of being an opin
ion columnist, you really shouldn’t be tak
ing to the rooftops to proclaim your love for
[insert cause here]. So when conservative
pundit Hicker Carlson and his ilk started
foaming at the mouth a few weeks ago over
a private online forum called JournoList,
naturally my ears perked up.
Launched in 2007, JournoList was essen
tially a group of about 400 center-to-left
leaning journalists and academics who
chatted about politics and the media on a
regular basis. No one paid much attention
to it until this June, when the Carlson-run
website The Daily Caller leaked a
JournoList e-mail from Washington Post
blogger Dave Weigel. In it, Weigel wrote
that archconservative blogger Matt Drudge
should set himself on fire.
Weigel resigned within hours. The
Internet exploded.
And the hits just keep coming with the
Daily Caller leaking more and more posts.
One was a discussion that took place dur
ing the Democratic primaries where partic
ipants debated what to do about the contro
versy surrounding Jeremiah Wright,
Barack Obama's fiery former pastor.
“If the right forces us all to either defend
Wright or tear him down, no matter what
we choose, we lose the game they’ve put on
us,” wrote then-Washington Independent
writer Spencer Ackerman. “Instead, take
one of them Fred Barnes, Karl Rove,
who cares and call them racists.”
A post from a UCLA law professor won
dered if the Federal Communications
Commission could revoke FOX News’
broadcasting license for espousing a politi
cal agenda. Other posts suggested that
commentators painted Palin’s vice presi
dential nod as sexist.
Carlson and company are, predictably,
pointing to JournoList as evidence of a lib
eral conspiracy to take over the media.
It’s true, a lot of the posts released so far
are cringeworthy at best. And at worst, the
JournoList participants look like shrewd
political operatives plotting to get their can
didate elected.
But what Carlson seems to forget is that
nearly every journalist on the list is you
guessed it an opinion writer. The cushy,
left-leaning sentiments expressed on the
list were barely different from the columns
and blogs its authors wrote for the public.
And it’s patently absurd for Carlson an
unabashed conservative himself — to bash
a bunch of liberal opinion writers for toeing
a party line. Take a look at FOX News, or
even The Daily Caller. Isn't that what they
do every day?
Everyone’s a pundit these days, and
that’s the real problem exposed by the
JournoList controversy. Were we to stum
ble upon a similar right-wing forum, there’s
no doubt the left would be writing gleeful
pieces on a conservative media conspiracy.
Political reporting in this country has
devolved into an echo chamber, a scream
ing match where pundits compete for blog
hits and comments and links on the
caglecartoons.coffl
Huffington Post. We need commentary, fair
and balanced or not; it’s an essential part of
a free press. But at the end of the day, one
piece of refreshing, well-researched, unbi
ased news is worth more than a million
JoumoLists.
And as for the few journalists on the list
who weren’t openly liberal well, every
one’s allowed to have an opinion. But if you
call yourself an objective journalist, for the
love of Woodward and Bernstein, don’t
write it down. It might sound unfair, but
that’s the sacrifice we make as reporters.
Journalism has taken enough of a beat
ing this past decade. Let’s not give people
more reasons to dismiss it.
Aubrey Whelan is a senior majoring in journalism
and French and is the Collegian's Monday colum
nist. Her e-mail address is ajwsl39@psu.edu.
The Daily Collegian
Whelan
Footblog
Former Penn State linebacker, Sean
Lee agreeded to a four-year contract
with the Dallas Cowboys. ... Lee was
selected by Dallas in the second round....
Read more of The Daily Collegian’s blogs at
psucollegian.com/blogs.
MY OPINION