The Debate

The moment Senators Barack Obama and John McCain took the stage at the Ford Center, my jaw and ears began to hurt because my smile was stretched so widely across my face.

I was one of the fortunate few who had a ticket. I was one of the proud 150 Ole Miss students who saw live and in-person the most historic debate since Kennedy and Nixon.

Cliches such as "my heart swelled with pride", "my face was beaming", and (literally), "tears sprung to my eyes", they don't do justice to the emotions that I felt.

But they are the closest I can accurately describe that one moment.

Moments before their appearance, I was making giggly, nervous small talk with other winners. There was definitely a sense of camaraderie amongst the winners. We were asking the usual questions, "What is your major, where are you from, how did you win a ticket?", etc., etc.

Then we began to take notice of the broadcasters below us, (Katie Couric was directly below me), and everyone began leaning over the balcony like completely unsophisticated tourists, leering and pointing. "There's Katie Couric. Look, it's Bob Schieffer. There's Shepard Smith. Ooh, and there's Tom Brokaw."

Katie caught my eye as we were gawking down at her, and instinctively I waved, immediately feeling foolish but grinning like a dope when she waved back. It was great, silly fun. We didn't care how lame we looked. Then, Dr. Robert Khayat asked the winners to stand and be recognized. John Kerry turned and waved at us. That was quite a moment. But it was soon eclipsed. The Senators took the stage and our silliness completely evaporated and was replaced by ear-splitting grins and more than a few watery eyes.

Economic Review/ Debate Response

I like Obama. I find him scholarly, charming, handsome, and well-spoken.

I like his website. It’s prettier and more navigable than McCain’s. As my friend Noah said, “Obama definitely has the branding down in this election.” There are few things we agree on, but that is most certainly one of them. If I were going to vote based on who has the cuter graphic tees and hotter wife, I’d certainly be pulling the lever (if we still voted that way) for the “half-honky, all donkey.” Not politically correct, but you gotta admit, that's funny.

Other friends described the site johnmccain. com as “stodgy and old-mannish much like his moratorium of a campaign headquarters.”

But I loved McCain in 2000, though. You know, when he really was a Maverick. No matter how sexier Obama is, I don’t think those are necessarily the right reasons to vote for him. (BTW, the military pic of McCain circa 196…hot)

But we’re not facing a potential economic recession or depression because Bush is ineloquent and unattractive.

It really is about the issues, despite the media hype of underlying racism, sexism, and elitism that has dominated the news prior to the current crises.

Obama wants to build the economy from the ground-up. McCain wants to continue the Raegan- style trickle-down economics that Bush has used for two administrations. Of course my economic professors, who tend to be predominantly Republican, have assured me over the years that it takes a decade or more to see the effects of economic stimuli. That’s how they explain the wealth and prosperity of the Clinton era and the slow and steady decline since Bush’s first inauguration. Granted it was a lifetime ago, but I seem to remember the economy slipping even before 9/11.

There are a few points that I culled last night from the toddler-esque quibbling that I witnessed live from the tip-top of the Ford Center balcony. (Not that I’m complaining despite what News Channel 3 edited me as saying). All right actually, I wasn’t on the last row or anything. More like front-row balcony, right above Katie Couric, who btw waved at me when I was peering over the edge like a star-struck goober. (You would’ve done it, too, don’t lie.)

Anyway, this is what I got: Obama says McCain wants to give tax breaks to corporations.

McCain says, no, he wants to give tax incentives to the corps, who are currently paying the second highest tax in the world, in order to prevent them from outsourcing to country’s with lower regulations. Sensible.

Obama’s rebuttal: They’d [big companies] would find loopholes anyway, so tax breaks for the top three percent is pointless. Alright-y.

Obama said that giving money back to 95% of Americans, so they can “buy computers for their kids homework and gas for their cars” is the better way to stimulate the economy. Not so sure.

McCain wants to increase the rebates and child credits because he thinks Americans could use the money to fund their own health care plans and cover the cost of daycare. Is it surprising that a man who does not know how many houses he owns or who has a ceiling fan installed in his trees would think that Americans could seriously pay health care premiums and day-care rates for an entire year with tax rebates. It wouldn’t cover one month, which is why I, as a single-parent in school have neither health insurance nor daycare and can be found frequently schlepping my kid to class with me as needed, much to some of my classmates dissatisfaction I’m sure.

McCain said that keeping taxes low and cutting spending for government programs is the way to pull us out of this financial crisis, which is direct opposition to Obama’s plan to increase spending.
But some of Obama’s spending is meant to create more jobs. Can’t argue there.

So, who wins? You’d think after I had the honor to sit in the same room as both candidates, I’d be able to make that call.

Yet, I’m chronically indecisive anyway and throw in brain-wrinklers like this economic catastrophe and it’s hard to judge whose policies would work and which are “pie in the sky” rhetoric.

All I know for certain is that I don’t want to be as shallow of a voter as I was at age 7. I voted for Dukakis in our Weekly Reader mock election because he was more attractive than Bush, Sr. (Of course, I don’t know which is worse, the fact that I changed the vote after I peeked at my boyfriend’s choice or that I voted for a Bush.

But maybe this time the prettier candidate is the better choice. There again, I’m torn. Young McCain or current Obama. Hopefully, I can make that crucial decision by November 4.

Tom Rose, managing editor of the Palm Beach Post, fell in love with journalism, as we all usually do, when he was a golf major in college.

His enthusiasm for the craft was apparent when he visited our journalism department Monday morning to lecture on how newspapers can continue to compete even as print is dying (supposedly). If you ask Dr. Husni, that's not an accurate perception.

Rose compared journalism to "The art of the tease".

"Think of feature stories as strip teases," he said. "Hard news stories are different, though.

You gotta give it all up at the front."

I was especially interested when he answered my question regarding the role of creative non-fiction in newspapers.

"Fiction writers know how to grab your attention," he said. "It's the same with creative non-fiction. I think it has a place in newspapers as long as it's real."

He had lots of good advice for young journalists:

"Use s and sh sounds to speed up your sentences. T and th sounds slow the reader down."

"Read good writers. Learn how the sentences click and purr when juxtaposed together. Throw off the shackles and write. Trying is how you learn."

Sometimes you get so caught up in just churning out stories that you lose sight, if only momentarily, of the power of words and the thrill of certain stories.

Rose's account of covering the Bear Bryant funeral in Tuscaloosa reminded me of the thrill of just finding the story sometimes.

When he first began recounting the day he arrived in Tuscaloosa, after having car trouble and hitchhiking to campus in a chicken farmer's truck loaded top to bottom with squawking poultry, I thought that would be the story he was looking for. He told about how that brusque, hardened man dissolved in tears at the mention of the legendary coach.

"He was the only damn thing we had to be proud of," the man repeated over and over.

But that wasn't his story. It wasn't until after the funeral, on the way from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham that he found his story. People were lined up on the freeway overpasses all the way there, just hoping for a glimpse of the funeral procession. Truckers were pulled off the road, holding their hats over their hearts in respect or cb'ing ahead to other truckers to report the processions' location.

That was his story he had to write.

"If you can write and you can report, there will always be a job in journalism for you," he encouraged us before he left.

I believe him.

Blues' Music as Protest

The University of Mississippi honored the seventh anniversary of September 11 with a variety of special lectures and events on campus. One unusual event mixed blues and politics at noon yesterday with a brown bag lecture at the John D. Williams Libary "Tell Every President to Listen to the Blues: Presidents, Politics, and the Blues. Greg Johnson, Ole Miss blues archivist, and Scott Barretta, producer and host of "Highway 61", a blues show broadcast on Mississippi Public Radio every Saturday night, played blues clips and discussed their relevance to the political scene.

"In a culture where blacks were ignored, blues said 'I am somebody'," Johnson said.

Prior to the civil rights movement, there were only four presidents that were explicitly referenced in blues recordings, Johnson said. According to Johnson, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, J. Edgar Hoover, and Franklin D. Roosevelt were the only presidents referenced in recorded blues prior to the Civil Rights Movement.

Many of the clips Johnson and Barretta played mentioned FDR because, as Johnson said, FDR was the president with the predominant number of tributes.

According to Barretta, there were not as many blues protest recordings before the Civil Rights movement not necessarily out of fear, but also because of economics.

"It wasn't the government going out and censoring the music, but the music being censored by distributors based on what would sell," Barretta said.

"Even during the 60's, protests music did not receive a lot of airplay," Johnson said. "After the civil rights movement, there were more explicit...

Johnson and Baretta arranged all the soundbites they played into 4 basic categories:

direct pleas to the President, tributes, complaints and if-I-was-president type songs.

The audience favorite became apparent with laughs and increased top-tapping when Johnson and Barretta played a recording by contemporary artist Bobby Rush's "Leave Mr. Clinton Alone".

The lecture brought not only students and community members to the third floor of the John D. Williams Library, but one visiting scholar who listens to Scott Baretta "even in Germany".

"I became a fan of Scott Baretta's when I first came to Mississippi doing research years ago. Since first coming to Ole Miss, every sabbatical and semester break I have spent in Mississippi. When I heard about this, I decided to come over," Olaf Hansen said.

Local resident, Anne Percy, says it was a wonderful presentation. "They told me they had several laments about President George W. Bush, but they didn't have time to play them," she said.

"Most of the blues seem pro-Democrat, thinking FDR and Truman, Kennedy too, were trying to save them. If you look at [they're] actual career, that's a false hope," says Bob Hodges, a first year southern studies graduate student who was also in attendance at the lecture.

Are we Jaded to Evil?

It’s commonly known that the gap between Expectations and Reality is Depression because it is inevitable to feel really low if expectations are not met that were really high.

That’s why one must beware of hype, whether it’s surrounding a musician, artist, writer, filmmaker, etc. One exception that I have found to this recently is “The Dark Knight”. I waited awhile after the film opened (mostly because of monetary reasons) before I saw it and I was not disappointed in the least. Heath Ledger’s performance still turns my stomach a bit if I think about it because he embodied evil in his performance as the Joker.

Normally I’m not that affected by films, much to my chagrin. Usually I feel jaded about many artists attempts at expressing misery, degradation, or inherent evil, but “The Dark Knight” got in my head and crawled around and wouldn’t let me alone, much like my first exposures to M. Night Shyalaman’s work.

William Christenberry’s work did not.

I appreciated the statement he was trying to make. I appreciated the macabre beauty of the sketching, paintings, sculptures, etc. I appreciated the educational value of the exhibit. I even saw great value in having such an exhibit at our University at such a pivotal time in Ole Miss’s history, right before the 2008 presidential debate turns the eyes of the nation onto our campus.

It sets a great example to the student body that the University isn’t just giving lip service to freedom of speech, but instead allows such a controversial exhibit at the University Museum at a time when Ole Miss would likely rather focus only on positive press.

Yet, for all that, the exhibit still did not “creep me out” as many of my classmates commented. Maybe it was the hype that ruined the experience. Maybe it was the curator/babysitter that chattered all through the tour so that I felt incapable of silently taking in the images and the enormity of the imagery. I hate to think that because of my white, rural, and relatively prosperous background that I am jaded to the suffering of others.

Obviously I have known pain and misery, albeit of a different sort. I try to find comfort in the fact that other artistic media has affected my psyche, just not the Site/Possession exhibition.