THINGS THAT ARE VERY IMPORTANT AND EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT

Summarizing today’s Red Eye Headlines so you don’t have to:

• Paula Abdul looked confused last night on American Idol. Muttered! Stumbled! Is it drugs? Booze? Is she crazy? Are we crazy? What is reality? If the words we use to describe experience can be denuded of sense, can experience itself be erased? Good thing Ryan Seacrest was there to make everything less awkward! What a lifesaver.

• Is Knut the polar bear a homosexual? Does he have a weight problem? He looks like he has a weight problem. You know my cousin Arnie was pretty chubby too. Turns out he was eating because he was stressed out. About being gay. Does Knut have the same problem? Do genders have an essential nature as opposed to differing by a variety of accidental or contingent features brought about by social forces?! Only Knut knows, and he’s not saying knut-thing.

• Hey, aren’t we at war? Wait, actually– don’t worry about it.

• Photo Gallery: Look at these people. We got pictures. In some pictures they are young. Now they are old. Old, old, old. God, I hope you never get old. It won’t end well, I can tell you that much.

• We are hip. We are very hip. This newspaper is for hip people only. Don’t you want to be hip too?

• Remember Ashley Dupre? No? We’re going to remind you. Every day. She was in “Girls Gone Wild.” Remember that. It could save your life one day. Also, Spitzer slept around. Spitzer Spitzer Spitzer. Sex sex sex.

Studs Terkel: Chicagoan Legend

Listen to the interview with Studs Terkel broadcast on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman:

Interview with Studs Terkel

“I have, after a fashion, been celebrated for having celebrated the lives of the uncelebrated among us; for lending voice to the face in the crowd.” That is the opening line of Studs Terkel’s long-awaited memoir, Touch and Go. At 95, Terkel has taken a break from recording the lives of others, and put the spotlight on his own life.

An American legend, Turkel is at once a broadcaster, author, and social historian. Born in 1912 in New York City, Studs Terkel moved with his family to Chicago at the age of ten, where he spent most of his life. Over the years he has worked as an activist, a civil servant, a labor organizer, a radio DJ and a television actor. But he is best known as a Chicago radio personality, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.

For forty-five years, Studs Terkel spent an hour each weekday on his nationally syndicated radio show interviewing the famous and the not-so-famous. With his unique style, he created portraits of everyday life in America. He has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the George Polk Career Award and the presidential National Humanities Medal.

Bush Approved Harsh Interrogation Tactics

In an eye-popping admission on the April 12 broadcast of ABC news, President Bush admitted that he knew his top national security advisers discussed and approved specific details of the CIA’s use of torture. Bush reportedly told ABC, “I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.” Bush also defended the use of waterboarding.

Recent reports indicate that high-level advisers including Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and George Tenet were part of the National Security Council’s “Principals Committee” that met regularly and approved the CIA’s use of “combined” “enhanced” interrogation techniques, even pushing the limits of the now infamous 2002 Justice Department “torture memo.” These top advisers reportedly signed off on how the CIA would interrogate suspects – whether they would be slapped, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning.

“We have always known that the CIA’s use of torture was approved from the very top levels of the U.S. government, yet the latest revelations about knowledge from the president himself and authorization from his top advisers only confirms our worst fears,” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. “It is a very sad day when the president of the United States subverts the Constitution, the rule of law, and American values of justice.”

You can take action, by checking out the ACLU, and writing to your member of congress. ‘Cos freedom can’t protect itself.

Newspapers are Shrinking– but why?

The incredible shrinking newspaper! The Chicago newspaper industry is sinking. Some blame the internet; others, Wall Street.

To make up for declining revenues, papers like the Red Eye have popped up, garnering profits from advertising. However, is the content of the Red Eye news? Is it probing, in-depth, informative? Does it succeed in its alleged mission to be a news source for young Chicagoan? Or is it merely a marketing tool, devoid of any true substance?

Boeing Company Extraordinary Rendition Program

Boeing is the main provider of “torture flights”, which transfer terror suspects where the U.S. government knows detainees are routinely tortured.

Are U.S. Cities Ready for Bike Sharing?

The Velib in Paris, a new venture owned and operate by the city, has become the most comprehensive and successful bike-sharing program in the world.

Is Chicago next?

Who Rules Columbia?

“I have been driven to the conclusion that the University is really under the control of a small but active group of Trustees who have no standing in the world of education, who are reactionary and visionless in politics, narrow and medieval in religion. Their conduct betrays a profound misconception of the true function of a university in the advancement of learning.”

–Charles Beard, upon his resignation from Columbia University, October 9, 1917 \

Who Rules Columbia?

Anniversary of Columbia Protest

This week marks the 40th anniversary of the Columbia protest, wherein students went on strike against what they felt were unfair, illegitimate university policies. They occupied five buildings, including the president’s office in Low Library, and barricaded themselves inside for days.

The protest was sparked by student dissatisfaction with two situations in particular:

1.) Columbia’s involvement with the IDA (Institute for Defense Analysis), a weapons research thinktank associated with the US Department of Defense. When the connection was discovered, it touched off a Columbia SDS anti-war campaign between April 1967 and April 1968, which demanded that the Columbia University administration resign its institutional membership in the Institute for Defense Analyses.

2.) The university’s decision to build a gymnasium on public land, Morningside Park. The park was a barrier separating Harlem from the university, and the plan was to include a “back door” on the Harlem side. This offended many people, naturally. “Gym Crow”, anyone?

You can read all about the students dissatisfaction with Columbia in this original document, “Who Rules Columbia.”

So: kids protest, police come.

It raises a whole host of questions…

Kids at Columbia felt powerless, that this sort of resistance was the only way to get their voices heard. Their university, they felt, was treating them like children. Has anything changed? Are our voices heard more clearly these days?

Why haven’t there been more protests around college campuses in regards to the Iraq war? Are we apathetic? Misinformed?

You can read more in the Democracy Now article.

We Critique Because We Care.

Red Eye editor Jane Hirt has said countless times in interviews that the free daily paper, The Red Eye, a subsidiary of Chicago Tribune, contains stories of greatest interest to an 18-35 demographic.

“I think the reason we decided to launch a paper now, when everybody else is seeing declining circulation, is we thought there was an opportunity to give the people what they want. When we looked at younger readers in a certain stage of their lives, before they maybe have kids and move to the suburbs, we found the main reasons traditional newspapers don’t appeal to them are a perceived or real lack of time, not feeling that what they were reading was relevant to them or not enough of it was, and accessibility. We wanted to be where the people were with something they wanted to read.”

Is this true? Has Red Eye successfully catered to our demographic? Does anyone actually like the Red Eye? And if you (yes, you, out there) DO read it, why?

We submit that the Red Eye is NOT a credible paper for young people, but, rather, a marketing tool for the Tribune; a vehicle for advertising and little more. To present it as anything else is ludicrous and frankly, insulting.

We understand the newspaper industry is ailing. But perhaps the best way to counteract this it to make newspapers more credible, rather than a gossip rag chock full of frivolous fluff.

College students in particular are prime targets for Red Eye. We think that our generation deserves a lot more respect than Ms. Hirt clearly has for us. We are young, we are energized, and we have demonstrated that we have the capacity to change the world. We should have a newspaper that reflects that, right?

A newspaper that:

1) puts a spotlight on the efforts of young people to improve society

2) shares stories too often repressed and ignored by corporate-controlled newspapers

3.) gives young people the tools they need to provide them with “intellectual self defense.”

“Your fellow citizens have been besieged by corporate, government and media propaganda. You know that the solution to all conflict and wrongdoing is Truth. The answer is in providing honest information.”

Letter to Media Dissentor Blog, Danny Schechter