September 2008 Archives

By Andrea K. Lerew

As a senior professional writing major at York College, I often wonder if a college degree is more important than the handful of connections that I have acquired over the years. Currently, I am interning as a grant writer at Martin Library in downtown York. But I didn't stumble upon this job through York College's internship placement process. Instead, I learned of this job opportunity through a friend--a connection.

Rewind to my freshman year when I needed to make a little extra cash. Through financial aid work-study program at YCP, I was placed in the Alumni Office to help out with event planning and alumni record-keeping. While there, I became close friends with my supervisor, Karla. At the end of my sophomore year, Karla left YCP to take an administration position at Martin Library.

In the fall of my junior year, I received a call from Karla offering me a part-time job to fill in for her assistant who would be out for a few months due to major surgery. Of course, I gladly agreed. In an effort to keep me on-staff at Martin Library once her assistant returned to work, Karla created a grant writing position for me. I am so thankful for this position because I am using my education every single day and I am doing something that I have enjoyed since I was a little girl--writing.

Fast-forward to the present when I am sitting here wondering if a writing position would have been created for me if I had not known someone on-staff at Martin Library. Though Karla knew that I have a strong background in writing, she didn't create the position solely for that reason. We are friends. Friends often bend the bar for their friends. If I had never met Karla, I wouldn't have such an amazing and rewarding job to look forward to each day.

York College didn't place me into this career path; my connection did. My internship advisor even stated that I was the only professional writing major at YCP that he could remember who held a paid intern position. At first, this made me believe that my connection with Karla was far more useful that my pursuit of a degree at York College. As I gnawed on this thought for a while, I began to see my mode of thinking was wrong.

Connections don't always get you the job, and a college degree doesn't always get you the job. But when connections fail, you have your degree to fall back on. And when your degree fails you, you have connections to fall back on. Finding that first job out of college may require a little of both of these assets. I would not have made a connection at Martin Library if it weren't for my York College work-study job, and Karla wouldn't have created a writing position for me if I had not been pursuing it at York College.

If it seems like I'm writing in circles, it's because I am--only to show you what it took for me to acquire my writing position. I had to use professional and social resources to get the job. Rather than looking down one path, I opened my eyes to both paths and found my dream job waiting somewhere in the middle.

FADE IN:

Cue cascading images of Sarah Palin with John McCain.


Cut to image of Palin with rifle.


Cut to image of the women's club from I Love Lucy, featuring Lucy, Ethel and the gang.


Gunshots ring out. The screen goes black momentarily.

Cut to images of Sarah Palin raising her fist triumphantly at the convention.


Cut to image of Sarah Palin with a rifle. Slowly fade from color to black and white.


Cut to image of pop singer Pink, comic Margaret Cho and actor Matt Damon.


Cut to black. The text on the screen reads, "Paid for by DUMB 2008."

FADE OUT.

The issue of abortion illustrates nearly everything that's wrong with American politics. It's not that the left is full of irresponsible loons who think they have the right to kill, and it's not that the right is full of sexist zealots who think they have the right to impose their  beliefs on the rest of us. The problem is that neither side can see the other's point of view. And, by and large, neither side shows signs of caring.

The absolute crux of the debate is when a fetus gains the right to life. If it's at conception, a woman has no right to abort even under the principle of self-ownership. This would be akin to shooting a shoplifter (of course, barring a health risk to the would-be mother). But if it's at birth, then surely the woman's right to take ownership of her own body would trump the fetus's nonexistent right to life.

It's a simple issue with two clear-cut ways of looking at it, but neither side takes the time or trouble to look through the other's glasses. Aside from the eternal bickering this leads to, we also see some outrageous accusations hurled across the aisle. Suddenly, Ted Kennedy assumes the role of a mass murderer for his decades-long advocacy of abortion. Suddenly, Sarah Palin relinquishes her feminist credentials because she, as irrelevant pop "star" Pink says, hates women.

What people should be talking about in regards to abortion is how to determine when the right to life begins. You can't convince an atheist that God exists by saying he or she will go to Hell, and you can't win a debate, or even have a constructive one, by making arguments that ignore the true heart of the matter and rely on the assumption that your side is right.

I know, I know. I'm a writer. I advocate liberty. I'm generally against censorship in all forms. But there comes a time when a man must draw the line, not for the preservation or purification of language, not for the betterment of the writing profession, not even for the public good. The following words and phrases need to become extinct, if not for eternity then at least for this campaign, for no reason other than because they drive me nuts.

Veepstakes
Don't get me wrong, I love wordplay. The whole veepstakes/sweepstakes thing would be plenty cute if not for three agonizing reasons: 1) Its first component uses an obnoxious abbreviation...of an abbreviation. Veep. Not to mention, it sounds like some sort of slang word for a sexually transmitted disease. "Hey bro, I think I caught the veep." Ugh. 2) The word it's based off of already has a sharply negative connotation that conjures images of a sweaty guy, in a suit with dollar signs on it, promising a small fortune or a ticket to see the Backstreet Boys if you just send him enough money for him to stealthily leave the country before anyone has the chance to say, "I want it that way." 3) And most importantly, I think I heard the word this summer about five times for every person that saw Barack Obama speak in Germany. Enough said.

Despite John McCain's surge in the polls and Joe Biden's suspicious gaffe calling Hillary Clinton more qualified than himself, this word should be gone for a while. I hope.

[Anything]-gate
Once again, wordplay surpasses its nauseating limit. The Nixon administration's Watergate fiasco was colossal, and for good reason it filled the role of quintessential scandal. But people, it gets old. Bill Clinton's Monicagate. The New England Patriots' Spygate. Sarah Palin's Troopergate. Where is the originality? Or, more frighteningly, where is this heading? How close are we to the days when disgruntled wives give their husbands the cold shoulder over Toiletseatgate?

Heartbeat away
This charming phrase has equally charming implications. If the McCain-Palin ticket gets elected, Heartbeat Away whispers under its breath, McCain will limp through inauguration only to die seconds later, ceding power to some good-looking lady from Alaska and making William Henry Harrison's presidency of nearly one month seem like a century. The even deeper implication is that American's shouldn't vote for the Republican nominee because he'll die.

How morbid can you get? There are plenty of reasons to suggest the senator from Arizona will survive a full term, his mother of 96 years and his doctor's clean bill of health among them. Why are people so willing to hint about the inevitability of McCain's death by natural causes, but not the possibility of Obama's by assassination?

Out of touch
The voices from both sides are absurd. John McCain is out of touch with Americans because he's old, doesn't know off-hand how many houses he owns, and he's been in Washington for decades. Nuh uh, Barack Obama is out of touch with Americans because he bowled a 37, is elitist, and is really a Kenyan-born Muslim!

With the occasional exception of specifics, both sides are correct. McCain and Obama don't live like the rest of us. Most of us know, without even having to think about it, that we own zero, one or, if we're especially lucky, two homes. Most of us can bowl at least double Obama's score when we're drunk. Most of us work instead of legislate for a living. Most of us don't even know what arugula is. Of course both candidates are out of touch; it's a moot point. But it's character and political philosophy that matter, not whether a candidate orders the same value meal at McDonald's as we do.

Change
Again, the left and the right squabble over a superlative unearned by either party's national ticket. In the 2008 yearbook under Most Likely to Bring Change, you'll find neither Obama-Biden nor McCain-Palin. All four people are career politicians. For the Democrats, you have a man who has voted in the senate straight party line a reported 97% of the time. For the Republicans, you have a man who has voted with the Republican incumbent a well-publicized 90% of the time. For the Democrats, you have a VP nominee who has been in the senate since the pre-Disco era. For the Republicans, you have a VP nominee who as governor stands by her requests for $200 million of federal earmarks for her state.

None of the four are breaking the mold by any means. Regardless of who wins, Americans will get what they've gotten for years--higher inflation, more wars, and bigger government.

In the numbered days to come before the Most Important Election Ever (as they all are), the dueling senators will hit We the People hard between viral advertisements, tedious debates and more campaign speeches than we can shake a tire-pressure gauge at. We can expect snappy one-liners, we can expect smears lower than low, and we can expect heartbreaking stories. But we'd better not hold our breaths for either candidate or the media to talk about the most important issue at all.

No, I don't mean the economy. I don't mean the energy crisis, Iraq, or health care. I'm talking about the issue that was most important in 1776 and ever since, and likely the most oft ignored. The issue that fueled the abolitionist movement. The issue at the root of all others:

Freedom. A word said by many and understood by much fewer. The radical idea that a government's legitimacy is gained only through the consent of the governed--that the individual rights to life, liberty and property are inalienable, that these rights don't come from governments, that instead the protection of these rights is the sole responsibility that governments have.

Sure, Barack Obama and John McCain, following the status quo in their parties, pay fleeting lip service to a vague idea called freedom. But what does that idea mean to the powers that be? A nation suitable not for the monument currently on Ellis Island but rather the Statue of Entitlement.

Democrat-filled crowds lauded Hillary Clinton when she said health care should be a right. The sentiment is echoed by her former opponent and their party when they repeatedly justify entitlement programs. But positive rights--like the "right" to health care or the "right" to financial support--can only be legitimate in a universe where something can come from nothing; otherwise, every entitlement is matched by the obligation to provide the entitlement, an obvious violation of liberty. We the People don't live in that universe.

On the other side of the increasingly narrowing aisle, Republicans are talking about entitlements as well. These positive rights, they say, are essential, whether it be to an aggressive military that wages wars irrelevant to protecting the rights of those who fund them, to an airline safety administration that violates more people's rights in one day than it will ever protect, or to any other of the policies based on the idea that one should and must concede liberty for the sake of security. With little if any disagreement coming from the Democratic Party, the Republicans score a hat trick: the forced providing of these entitlements violates the right to liberty, the forced funding of them violates the right to property, and the enacting of them occasionally violates the right to life.

The intended purpose of government is to protect the freedom of its people, but the only way either major party operates is by violating legitimate, negative rights--rights that don't require anyone to do anything against their will.

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans nominated a candidate running on the inalienability of the rights to life, liberty and property. What does that say about We the People, who keep voting people into office who aim to provide freedom by denying it?

"In a democracy," it is said, "the people get the government they deserve."

Something hit me during my parents' visit this weekend when I was sitting in their hotel room and talking to them for hours: I was sitting and talking to my parents for hours--and enjoying it.

More than anything, more than an ending or a beginning, college means change, and most of those changes can be boiled down to independence. The authority granted to your teachers and parents retracts, and the authority you assume over your own life dramatically increases. This is not only demonstrated in your successes and failures, but, more subtly, the way you relate to these former authority figures.

The roles are tweaked. We are no longer defendants, and parents and teachers are no longer judges and juries. We are now as we appear--individuals working toward an individual goal. Parents and teachers are now facilitators in our quests. Some of us will succeed with minimal help from them, and others of us will need to rely heavily on them. The important thing is the more level ground on which we all stand.

It's hard not to notice this particular change when we get out of class early but stay, of our own volition, to talk with our teachers just for fun. It's hard not to notice when we begin arguing with our parents over who gets to pay for supper. When we call home regularly not because we have to but because we want to.

It's hard not to notice when we're sitting in our parents' hotel room, talking for hours--and enjoying it.